• Ken Loach – Poor Cow (1967)

    1961-1970DramaKen LoachUnited Kingdom

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    A young woman lives a life filled with bad choices. She marries and has a child with an abusive thief at a young age who quickly ends up in prison. Left alone she takes up with his mate (another thief) who seems to give her some happiness but who also ends up in the nick. She then takes up with a series of seedy types who offer nothing but momentary pleasure. Her son goes missing and she briefly comes to grips with what is most important to her.Read More »

  • Miklós Szinetár – Az ember tragédiája AKA The Tragedy of Man (1969)

    2011-2020AnimationDramaHungaryMarcell Jankovics

    Quote:
    “The Tragedy of Man (Hungarian: Az ember tragédiája) written by Imre Madách was first published in 1861. The play is considered one of the major works in Hungarian literature and has earned a place in the national consciousness in that it is not only performed regularly in Hungary today but dialogue from the piece is often quoted and referred to.

    Starting with the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the three main characters; Adam, Eve and Lucifer travels through history, playing their roles, from Ancient Egypt through the nineteenth century, into a distant and uncertain future. In each era the merits of the human race are presented by Adam, who believes in mankind and human achievement. But it is Lucifer, as the role of his servant or confidant, who exposes his dreams as ones built on injustice and misery.
    Eve appears often as a temporary restorative for Adams disappointment in the failures of mankind.Read More »

  • Cleo Uebelmann – Mano destra (1986)

    1981-1990ArthouseCleo UebelmannEroticaSwitzerland

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    Drama. Dressed in dominatrix leather fetish wear, the director pictures herself tying up her consenting girlfriend in frozen black and white images cut to the sound of high-heels clattering down a never-ending corridor.

    “The German Swiss artist Cleo Uebelmann created a myth called “Mano Destra“ when she was only 22 years of age. This tough, black and white movie was first screened 1985 at the first SM Conference for Women „Secret Minds“ in Cologne and initiated a debate about SM. The movie displays a bondage session of dominatrix and her playmate, which demands absolute attention and awareness for both of them. The music, played by the female new wave band Vinyl is as cultic as the movie is a historical document of the SM movement.” (PorYes)Read More »

  • Benoît Jacquot – Journal d’une femme de chambre AKA Diary of a Chambermaid (2015)

    Drama2011-2020Benoît JacquotFrance

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    Quote:
    It is an odd film: the central relationship between Joseph and Célestine is not entirely plausible, even as a desperate amour fou. But it is well acted and confidently performed. The antisemitism is a key to the film’s oppressive atmosphere. The pale, pinched neatness and pleasantness of this bourgeois household conceal a secret poison sac into which all the evil is drained: Vincent’s horrible leaflets, which express what so many respectable folk are thinking. This is a minor, flawed movie, but watchable in its suppressed, pornographic melodrama. –The GuardianRead More »

  • Richard Elfman – Forbidden Zone (1980)

    1971-1980CultMusicalRichard ElfmanUSA

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    Quote:
    Oingo Boingo fans and midnight movie mavens will love this bizarre black-and-white feature packed with music, madness, and members of the Elfman clan. The story revolves around the Hercules family, who live in a house that just happens to hide a secret entrance to the Sixth Dimension in the basement. When daughter Frenchy (Marie-Pascale Elfman) skips school one afternoon, she finds herself irresistibly drawn to the forbidden door, and winds up a prisoner in this alternate world. King Fausto (Herve Villechaize), the diminutive leader of the Sixth Dimension, is enamored with the beautiful young Frenchy and keeps her in the same cell as his favorite concubines, despite the disapproval of Queen Doris (Susan Tyrrell).Read More »

  • Jean Rollin – Les Pays Loin AKA The Far Country (1965)

    1961-1970ArthouseFranceJean RollinShort Film

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    LES PAYS LOIN was Jean Rollin’s second short film. It was never screened in the cinema-or even film festivals- until years after it was made and, even then, on extremely rare occasions. This Encore release is the first opportunity that almost anyone has had to see this early work. The film is a science fiction piece in which a man and a woman are lost in a maze of streets and can’t remember how they got there. When they do make it out onto the busy, populated streets, things are no better. The landmarks are unfamiliar and the people speak a strange language. Even at this very early stage, one can already see the themes of loneliness and melancholy, and a yearning for release that are trademarks of Rollin characters throughout his entire body of work.Read More »

  • Dean DeBlois – Heima AKA At Home [+Commentary] (2007)

    2001-2010Dean DeBloisDocumentaryIcelandPerformance

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    ‘heima’ is sigur rós’s first ever film, filmed over two weeks last summer when the band undertook a series of free, unannounced concerts in iceland. they hauled 40-plus people round 15 locations to the furthest flung corners of their homeland for their debut venture into live film, to create something, well, inspirational.

    on their way they went to ghost towns, outsider art shrines, national parks, small community halls and the absolute middle-of-nowhere-ness of the highland wilderness, as well as playing the largest gig of their career (and in icelandic history) at their homecoming reykjavik show.

    ‘heima’ (icelandic for “at home” or “homeland”), truly, shows sigur rós as never before. whereas seeing the group live is normally a large-scale and sometimes overwhelming experience, making full use of lights and mesmeric visuals, ‘heima’ was always intended to reveal more of what was actually going on on stage. it does this via long-held close-ups and a rare intimate proximity, without ever once breaking the spell.Read More »

  • Jules Dassin – Brute Force [+Extras] (1947)

    1941-1950250 Quintessential Film NoirsCrimeFilm NoirJules DassinUSA

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    The meanest, heaviest, most unrelentingly grim hunk of American cinema you’re likely to see– at least prior to 1950– Brute Force is an explosive hybrid mixing aspects of the string of stark prison melodramas that stretch back to the silent era, and the broodingly dark crime dramas that sprung up in the postwar 1940’s that we’ve since come to identify as Film Noir.

    One of my personal favorite ‘noir’s of all time, Brute Force features a young, highly flammable Burt Lancaster (in his second film role, his followup to Siodmak’s The Killers, another crime drama produced by Mark Hellinger) in the role of inmate Joe Collins, a part that seems to fit him like a glove. A seething prisoner barely able to contain his rage over his incarceration and the vicious machinations of the warden, Joe dominates the men in his cellblock by the raw power of his presence.Read More »

  • Raoul Walsh – Me and My Gal (1932)

    1931-1940ComedyDramaRaoul WalshUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Synopsis:
    Young New York cop Dan falls in love with waterfront waitress Helen. Helen’s sister Kate falls for gangster Duke. Dan must do in Duke.Read More »

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