“The Man from Cairo”, a Michaeldavid production for distribution by Lippert, with Ray Enright the only credited director on the film print, finds Mike Canelli, the man from Cairo, nosing around Algiers with mystery surrounding the people he meets and the things he does and has done to him, all deriving from the war-time theft of $100,000,000 in gold which lies somewhere in the adjacent desert. People representing many nationalities and reasons are also seeking the gold. It boils down to a battle between Canelli and the original looter aboard a speeding train.Read More »

England’s prime minister (Norman Wisdom) pulls some strings to get his hapless grandson Norman (also played by Wisdom), a newspaper vendor in London, a job as a reporter in the sleepy seaside town of Tinmouth. Once there, the lad doesn’t take long to find trouble on the job — and his habit of making up the news isn’t helping — in this breezy comic vehicle for Wisdom, who also plays Norman’s suffragette mother in flashbacks.Read More »

Synopsis:
Rich Lois Frazer, divorcing her fortune-hunter husband, finds he’s bought a gun. Suspecting he plans to kill her, she calls in her lover, who just happens to be Homicide Lieutenant Ed Cullen. When Ed arrives, the gun gets used…and because of his relationship with Lois, Ed is compelled to compound a felony. The good news: Ed himself is assigned to the case. The bad news: Ed’s hotshot younger brother Andy, a new- minted detective, is also on the case…and anxious to prove himself.Read More »

In London at the turn of the century, the bandit Mack the Knife marries Polly without the knowledge of her father, Peachum, the ‘king of the beggars’.
Quote:
Brecht’s opera, as we have seen, is not as ideologically pure as he would have us believe, nor is Pabst’s film as apolitical as Brecht charged. Both works are to be valued in their own right, although to my mind, Pabst’s film is ideologically more correct from a Marxist point of view. One can argue, then, that despite Brecht’s objections to the film, Pabst’s version of THE THREE PENNY OPERA is the most Brechtian film adaptation of Brecht’s work to date.Read More »

Synopsis:
During the Cold War, a scientific team refits a Japanese submarine and hires an ex-Navy officer to find a secret Chinese atomic island base and prevent a Communist plot against America that could trigger WW3.Read More »

Synopsis:
Unable to accept the the loss of their son in the 2005 Tsunami, Jeanne and Paul Bellmer have remained in Phuket. Desperately clinging to the fact that his body was never recovered, Jeanne has convinced herself that the boy was kidnapped by traffickers in the chaos that followed the catastrophe… Paul is sceptical, but cannot bring himself to shatter his wife’s last hope. The traumatized couple embark on a quest that will plunge them through paranoia and betrayal, ever deeper into an alien universe, a supernatural realm where the dead are never truly dead, and where nightmares, obsession and horrifying reality converge.Read More »

Synopsis:
Patrick Magee is a psychic that can communicate with the dead. He also has the ability to control the mind of his cat (who incidently is black). He uses the cat to take vengeance upon his enemies. A photographer (Mimsy Farmer) who happen to be working for the local constables (David Warbeck, Al Cliver) begins to notice cat scratches on some of the accident victims that are turning up. She pays a visit to Magee (kitty just happens to be present) and conveys her suspicions of the cat’s involvement in some of the local deaths. Kitty doesn’t like this at all, and it’s his turn to control the mind of owner Magee to take it’s vengeance out.Read More »

The latest short film from João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata is a dreamy, experimental look at a deactivated fireworks factory in Macao.

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Macao, Taipa Island, 2014.
The word “panchão” was first heard in Macao. From the Chinese “pan-tcheong” or “pau-tcheong”, dictionaries define it as a Macanese regionalism also known as “China cracker” or “Chinese rocket”.
Who inhabits the ancient Iec Long Firecracker Factory?Read More »

João Pedro Rodrigues’ ESTC graduation short film.
Formally assured, and consisting mostly of long shots, it tells the story of a shepherd who, at the age of 65, is forced to retire. It is unsurprising to learn that António Reis was one of Rodrigues’ teachers at ESTC, considering how much it reminded me of Reis’ own semi-ethnographic portrayals of quotidian rural life in Trás-os-Montes and Ana. Still, it is a mere curiosity.Read More »