“Mammy Water” is mother sea, source of food. Jean Rouch filmed this short documentary in the Gulf of Guinea, in Ghana, where is held a colorful festival, the Chama, in which the participants offer cassava, gin and tobacco to the spirits of water and sacrifice a white ox to thank them and express their gratitude and respect.Read More »
Two brothers compete for the amorous favors of a young woman during a seaside summer of gambling, boating, and drinking, in this seminal Sun Tribe (taiyozoku) film from director Ko Nakahira. Adapted from the controversial novel by Shintaro Ishihara, and critically savaged for its lurid portrayal of the postwar sexual revolution among Japan’s young and privileged, Crazed Fruit is an anarchic outcry against tradition and the older generation.Read More »
A young composer is forced to work as a bar pianist. One night he gets hit by a car and is brought to a hospital. Severely injured he is injected with morphine. He becomes addicted.Read More »
A lonely woman recalls her first love thirteen years prior during a brief summer vacation.Read More »
In Sweden at the turn of the century, members of the upper class and their servants find themselves in a romantic tangle that they try to work out amidst jealousy and heartbreak.Read More »
Synopsis:
Having to leave Melbourne in a hurry to avoid various marriage proposals, two song-and-dance men sign on for work as divers. This takes them to an idyllic island on the way to Bali where they vie with each other for the favours of Princess Lala. The hazardous dive produces a chest of priceless jewels which arouses the less romantic interest of some shady locals.Read More »
AMG Overview:
by Hal Erickson
MGM’s Ricardo Montalban and Cyd Charisse were loaned to Universal for the Technicolor period piece Mark of the Renegade. Set in 19th-century California, the film stars Montalban as Marcos, in league with a band of pirates. Marcos falls into the hands of Don Pedro Garcia (Gilbert Roland), a despot who hopes to become dictator of California. Planning to force the cooperation of benevolent politico Jose De Vasquez (Antonio Moreno), Garcia orders Marcos to court De Vasquez’ comely daughter Anita (Cyd Charisse). It soon develops that Marcos is not the criminal he appears to be, and that he is dedicated to the vanquishing of the evil Garcia. Somehow, Mark of the Renegade finds an excuse for Cyd Charisse to perform a bewitching dance number.Read More »
A US rocket returning from Venus crash lands off the Italian coast, bringing back with it a strange creature that quickly begins to grow to terrifying proportions…
Clearly indebted to King Kong, and employing that film’s empathetic approach to its ‘monster’ (a trope that Harryhausen would continue to employ throughout his career), 20 Million Miles to Earth is a terrific slice of fifties sci-fi. It boasts some of Harryhausen’s finest work of the period, as well one of his most beloved and enduring creature creations.Read More »
From Amos Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art:
This is one of the first documentary films about the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It coldly records the lingering effects of the bomb on the victims decades later. In a succession of realistic, shocking sequences, their lives, difficulties, and camaraderie are examined. The very objectivity of incidents, scenes, and faces makes the film the more terrifying.Read More »