• John Ford – Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)

    1931-1940DramaJohn FordPoliticsUSA

    Synopsis:
    Few historical figures are as revered as Abraham Lincoln, and few director-star pairings embody classic American cinema as perfectly as do John Ford and Henry Fonda. In Young Mr. Lincoln, their first collaboration, Fonda gives one of the finest performances of his career as the young president-to-be struggling with an incendiary murder case as a novice lawyer. Compassionate and assured, this indelible piece of Americana marks the beginning of Ford and Fonda’s ascent to legendary status.Read More »

  • Nyrki Tapiovaara & Hugo Hytönen – Miehen tie AKA One Man’s Fate (1940)

    Drama1931-1940FinlandHugo HytönenNyrki TapiovaaraRomance

    The fifth and last film of Nyrki Tapiovaara (1911–40), released posthumously after his tragically premature death during the last days of the Winter War, and finished by one of the film’s actors, Hugo Hytönen, with some help from Erik Blomberg and Mirjami Kuosmanen, future collaborators on The White Reindeer. As with Tapiovaara’s earlier films Stolen Death (1938) and Kaksi Vihtoria (“Two Henpecked Husbands”, 1939), Blomberg was the film’s producer and cinematographer, while Kuosmanen had one of her first major roles in the film. The film was an adaptation of recent Nobel laureate F. E. Sillanpää’s 1932 novel and, along with Teuvo Tulio’s rural melodramas of the late ’30s (including one Sillanpää adaptation, the now-lost Nuorena nukkunut), one of the crucial trope-setters for Finnish cinema in the years to come, with its depictions of breathtaking landscapes, love on the hayfield, and drunken brawls at country dances.Read More »

  • Pavel Jurácek – Prípad pro zacínajícího kata AKA Case for a Rookie Hangman (1970)

    1961-1970ArthouseCzech RepublicFantasyPavel Jurácek

    The Lemuel Gulliver of Dlouhá Street takes an unexpected journey to the flying island of Laputa, in the realm of Balnibarbi, and back again. The parable about a totalitarian system, where bizarre laws are in force and unwritten rules are adhered to, mixes with a fantastical spectacle in which “dreams touch the world and the world touches dreams”. In twelve chapters, the Kafkaesque motion picture, Case for the New Hangman, tells the timeless tale of a foreigner who brings hope and excitement to the stagnant waters of Balnibarbi whereupon, instead of being received as a guest, he is treated with suspicion.Read More »

  • Howard Hawks – His Girl Friday (1940)

    1931-1940ClassicsComedyHoward HawksScrewball ComedyUSA

    Synopsis:
    Having been away for four months, Hildy Johnson walks into the offices of the New York City based The Morning Post, where she is a star reporter, to tell her boss, editor Walter Burns, that she is quitting. The reason for her absence was among other things to get a Reno divorce, from, of all people, Walter, who admits he was a bad husband. Hildy divorced Walter largely because she wanted more of a home life, whereas Walter saw her more as a driven hard-boiled reporter than subservient homemaker. Hildy has also come to tell Walter that she is taking the afternoon train to Albany, where she will be getting married tomorrow to staid straight-laced insurance agent, Bruce Baldwin, with whose mother they will live, at least for the first year. Read More »

  • Pascal Hofmann & Benny Jaberg – Daniel Schmid – Le chat qui pense (2010)

    2001-2010ArthouseBenny JabergDocumentaryPascal Hofmann

    Quote:
    Jaberg and Hofmann’s film takes us on a cinematic journey through the life and work of Daniel Schmid, one of the most unusual artists within Swiss film. Born into a hotelier family of the 1940s in the village of Flims, surrounded by snow covered mountains, visited by exotic guests from around the world, Daniel Schmid always was a dreamer. The young filmmakers offer a mysterious kaleidoscope of people and places related to the director. Even as a child, Daniel Schmid knew that there was a hidden world, caught between reality and imagination.Read More »

  • Joan Tewkesbury – Old Boyfriends (1979)

    1971-1980DramaJoan TewkesburyUSA

    John Belushi was the high school sweetheart who ruined her reputation with lies. Richard Jordan was the college lover that she almost married. Keith Carradine is the unstable brother of her first real love. Talia Shire is Diane Cruise a woman whose life has shattered in a myriad of pieces after the dissolution of her marriage she desides to delve into her past and seek out the men who marked the milestones of her life.Read More »

  • Hollis Frampton – Zorns Lemma (1970)

    1961-1970ExperimentalHollis FramptonShort FilmUSA

    “Zorn’s Lemma stands for – Every non-empty partially ordered set in which every chain (i.e. totally ordered subset) has an upper bound contains at least one maximal element.

    It is named after the mathematician Max Zorn.

    The terms are defined as follows. Suppose (P,≤) is the partially ordered set. A subset T is totally ordered if for any s, t ∈ T we have either s ≤ t or t ≤ s. Such a set T has an upper bound u ∈ P if t ≤ u for all t ∈ T. Note that u is an element of P but need not be an element of T. A maximal element of P is an element m ∈ P such that the only element x ∈ P with m ≥ x is x = m itself.Read More »

  • Hans Günther Pflaum et al. – R.W. Fassbinder – Criterion Bonus Disk (1993)

    Documentary1991-2000GermanyHans Günther PflaumRainer Werner Fassbinder

    Quote:
    This is an excellent hour-and-a-half documentary overview of Fassbinder’s career. For those new to the director, this is the perfect starting place (perhaps even before watching the films).Read More »

  • Leilah Weinraub – Shakedown (2018)

    2011-2020DocumentaryLeilah WeinraubQueer Cinema(s)USA

    Quote:
    SHAKEDOWN chronicles explicit performances in an underground lesbian club in Los Angeles. The story functions as a legend where money is both myth and material. Cumulatively, questions arise about how to diagram the before and after of a utopic moment. Directed by Leilah Weinraub.Read More »

Back to top button