1950s

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Truffaut and Godard gave a bad name to the “quality” French cinema that preceded them. This film was one of their pet examples of what they saw as staid, boring, unadventurous cinéma de papa. Without an axe to grind, it is actually a breathtakingly bold modernization of the Faust legend, ravishing to look at with its highly stylized sets (Trauner on LSD) and containing multi-layered undercurrents, including a message on the unthinking destructiveness of youth which seems almost like a prescient reply to its New Wave critics.Read More »

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Malle’s first feature, a straightforward but classy thriller about an ex-paratrooper’s attempt to dispose of his mistress’ tycoon husband in a perfect murder. It became associated with the early excitements of the nouvelle vague mainly through the performances of Ronet (playing a prototype of the disgruntled Vietnam veteran) and Moreau (who does some moody solo wandering in the streets searching for her missing lover). The ingenious plot, using a malfunctioning lift as its deus-ex-machina, has one carefully plotted murder conjure another as its shadow image. But the cement holding the film together is really the splendid jazz score improvised by Miles Davis.Read More »

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The film takes place in Belgrade during the German occupation in World War II. The main character is Predrag Simonović, played by Milivoje Živanović, a professor who is not concerned with politics and war, but who accidentally comes into possession of a list of resistance movement members and becomes involved.Read More »

Istvan Szőts’s short, Christmas-themed film starring József Bihari and Andor Ajtay, based on Mór Jókai’s novel of the same title. The premier of the film was in the Venice Film Festival in 1957, where it received recognition.

Only a TV-rip is available at the moment.Read More »

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Inheriting $1,450 upon the death of his aunt, gullible sailor Tim Dunnovan (William Bendix) purchases a race horse, to the dismay of his best friend, Benny Linn (Groucho Marx), who assumes Tim has been swindled. Tim and Benny learn that the horse, Little Erin, has weak ankles and is a poor racer — but his devoted groom reveals that he has a twin, Little Shamrock, in excellent condition. Discovering the whereabouts of Little Shamrock, Benny schemes to switch the horses, but complications arise.Read More »

Synopsis:
Based on a girl’s prize-winning school essay on the subject of “My Mother”. Mizuki Yoko fashioned one of her most moving scripts. Upon the death of her husband the mother (Tanaka Kinuyo) runs the family laundry by herself. She is helped by her first daughter (Kagawa Kyoko) bust must send her second daughter to live with relatives because she cannot afford to keep her. A real shomingeki with lots of heart
— Donald Richie, A Hundred Years of Japanese Film.Read More »

This action-filled police drama chronicles the difficult first year of a rookie cop. The trouble begins on his very first day on the beat when he has a conflict with the criminally connected owner of the local tavern. Against the more moderate advice of his experienced partner, the rookie insists on strictly enforcing every law on the books. His unbending toughness creates hard feelings with the neighborhood toughs and soon he becomes their target.Read More »

Japanese Title: 森と湖のまつり

quote:One of the major joys of writing about Japanese movies is that whenever you begin to get that tired, jaded feeling that you think you’ve seen it all and that there’s nothing left that’s ever going to set your pulse racing, you stumble across a whole previously hidden seam of movies that completely revolutionises any ideas of what Japanese cinema is. I remember getting this feeling watching the works of Hiroshi Shimizu at the 2003 Tokyo FILMeX, and I got it again at the same festival exactly one year later, during a 13-film retrospective of Tomu Uchida, which travelled to the Rotterdam Film Festival in a slimmed-down version a couple of months later.Read More »

Brief Synopsis:
A hot-shot reporter risks his life to land an interview with a notorious crook.

Quote:
Hot Summer Night is an out-of-the-ordinary crime yarn from the TV/radio production team of Morton Fine and David Friedkin. Unemployed journalist William Joel Pertain (Leslie Nielsen) hopes to reestablish himself by capitalizing on a recent wave of bank robberies. Pertain has a “lead” to the gang’s leader Tom Ellis (Robert Wilke), and intends to parlay this into a hot news story. Instead, he places the lives of himself and his wife Irene (Colleen Miller) in dire peril. Of interest is the fact that the villain is portrayed with a modicum of sympathy, while the reporter comes off as a bit of a jerk. — Hal EricksonRead More »