1960s

Filmed as a traditional Japanese play, a yakuza boss is released from prison, but finds his gang usurped by a shady politician. With the help of his former cell mate he decides to assassinate the politician with an explosive pen.Read More »

Quote:
A milestone of the Czech New Wave, Milos Forman’s first color film The Firemen’s Ball (Horí, má panenko) is both a dazzling comedy and a provocative political satire. A hilarious saga of good intentions confounded, the story chronicles a firemen’s ball where nothing goes right—from a beauty pageant whose reluctant participants embarrass the organizers to a lottery from which nearly all the prizes are pilfered. Presumed to be a commentary on the floundering Czech leadership, the film was “banned forever” in Czechoslovakia following the Russian invasion and prompted Forman’s move to America.Read More »

When Max, a young poet hires a marketing company to turn his suicide-by-jumping into a mass-media spectacle, he finds that his subversive intentions are quickly diluted into a reactionary gesture, and his motivations are revealed as a desperate attempt to seek attention through celebrity.Read More »

SYNOPSIS:
Clay Spencer is a hard-working man who loves his wife and large family. He is respected by his neighbors and always ready to give them a helping hand. Although not a churchgoer, he even helps a newly arrived local minister regain his flock after he and Clay get into a bit of trouble. If he has one dream in life it’s to build his wife Olivia a beautiful house on a piece of land he inherited on Spencer’s mountain. When his eldest son, Clayboy, graduates at the top of his high school class and has the opportunity to go to college, Clay has only one option left to him.Read More »

Small time crook Napoleone falls into an unlikely gang made up of a gangster, called The Baron, and his two cohorts, Agonia and The Captain, where Napoleone takes them to Rome where they shack up with a shady used car dealer caled Il Cajella to help finance their new life of crime by planing to rob a statue from the Vatican. But a big-time American gangster, named Joe Ventura, hears about the heist and wants the priceless statue for himself by having his mistress, Samantha, come onto and betray the woman-hungry Cajella to give the statue away to her.Read More »

Documentary about Brazilian pop diva Maria Bethânia, in one of her first shows in Rio de Janeiro. The film also show scenes of her daily life and meetings with other musicians.Read More »

Synopsis:
Cockney cat burglar Harry Dean needs Hong Kong dancer Nicole Chang’s help to pull off the perfect heist. With a simple makeover and a new wardrobe; Nicole’s resemblance to wealthy recluse Mr. Shahbandar’s late wife is uncanny. While Shahbandar is distracted by the mesmerizing Nicole, Harry takes steps to swipe a priceless artifact from under the tycoon’s nose. But even the most foolproof schemes have a way of backfiring.Read More »

Synopsis:
The film begins with exposition as a lunatic asylum “mad scientist” ex-Nazi played by Amamoto Eisei (he and his pals switch back and forth between menacing Japanese and scary German the whole film) discusses how a massive diamond was lost and a young Japanese (Nakadai Tatsuya) has it in his possession. A league of assassins make comedic attempts at Nakadai’s life (along with a girl, Dan Reiko, Yuriko from Ozu’s The End of Summer and a goofy pal) which are all thwarted, naturally, since even playing a little bit of a “dweeb”, Nakadai is still graced with luck and a certain charisma (a natural fighting ability). Turns out that the diamond…Read More »

Quote:
The most electrifyingly timely movie playing in New York was made in 1965. Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers is famous, but for some time it’s been available only in washed-out prints with poorly translated, white-on-white subtitles. The newly translated and subtitled 35-millimeter print at Film Forum is presumably the version that was privately screened in August for military personnel by the Pentagon as a field guide to fighting terrorism. Former national-security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski volunteered this blurb: “If you want to understand what’s happening right now in Iraq, I recommend The Battle of Algiers.” I wonder if these politicos are aware that Pontecorvo’s epic was once used by the Black Panthers as a training film? In fact, not much in the current Iraq situation is historically comparable to the late-fifties Algerian struggle for independence dramatized in The Battle of Algiers, but its anatomy of terror remains unsurpassed—and, woefully, ever fresh.Read More »