1960s

In 1963, Japan was in the midst of its long period of high economic growth and Tokyo was busy revamping its urban infrastructure. When most were celebrating the economic expansion, Noriaki Tsuchimoto focused his analytical gaze on the life of one taxi driver. What he saw were miserable and unhealthy labor conditions, a Tokyo littered with traffic jams and construction work, a city where traffic accidents were multiplying and pedestrians unsafe. Coupling the tense visuals with impressive music, Tsuchimoto likens this supposedly new Tokyo to a skeletal wreck.Read More »

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This is a short story woven into the scenery of Kraków’s students’ festival. The camera is always at the center of events and is accompanied by the main character – Jurek, in search of his sister. In this film, events are part of a larger whole. The main role in this film is filled by Andrzej Paczkowski, now a known historian.Read More »

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George Baxt scripted this extraordinarily good chiller from a story by Milton Subotsky, who also co-produced. A college student (Venetia Stevenson) with an interest in witchcraft goes to the Massachusetts town of Whitewood. It’s a foggy, spooky town which gets even scarier when Stevenson discovers that the owner of the Raven’s Inn, Mrs. Newlis (Patricia Jessel) is in fact a 268-year old witch. Jessel sold her soul to the Devil to regain her life after being burned at the stake. The whole town is her coven. Stevenson’s boyfriend and brother arrive to look for her and discover human sacrifices and all sorts of evil goings-on. One of the few horror films of the period which still has the power to frighten, Horror Hotel is required viewing for genre fans. **** out of 5 stars – All Movie GuideRead More »

LBJ is deservedly one of Alvarez’s best known shorts, a stunning piece of visual and musical montage using found materials, reaching a high pitch of satire Alvarez seems to have reserved for President Johnson. The film contains three main sections, with a prologue and an epilogue. The sections correspond to the three letters of Johnson’s initials. Alvarez uses them to stand for Luther as in Martin Luther King, Bob as in Robert Kennedy, and Jack or John, his brother. It’s a bold play on the strange coincidence that the corpses of these three men littered Johnson’s ascent. The film steers pretty close to libel, so to speak, in linking Johnson to the assassinations, but this is not the point…. What Alvarez does is to portray Johnson’s presidency as the culmination of a whole history of socio-political corruption, not of individual presidential corruption of a kind that was yet to come.Read More »

Synopsis:
A husband and wife’s love for each other and plans for the future are shattered when the man dies in a car accident. Misery is compounded when the man’s parents disinherit his now widow and their former daughter-in-law. In the meanwhile, the chauffeur who accidentally killed a man is racked with guilt. In the melee, the driver and the widow begin to develop feelings for another.Read More »

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Based on the novel of the same title by Heinrich Böll.

The young electrician Walter Fendrich has started a promising career. Everything seems to be on the right track. As the future husband of his employer’s daughter Walter even can hope to once succeed him as head of the company. All of a sudden, the visit of a girl from his home town, whom he last saw seven years ago, changes his entire life. Walter realizes that his entire life so far has been all wrong. He breaks out of his former “reasonable“ life and gives up and the wonderful security of the affluent society. He simply disapperas without a farewell or explanation… Read More »

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In 1966, a former gymnast returns to his hometown Danzig, which is now a part of Poland. He begins to reflect on one of his classmates, Joachim Mahlke, who disappeared during World War II. Mahlke was initially marked as an outsider due to his oversized Adam’s apple, but when he turned out to be a great diver, the in-crowd embraced him. Then he steals a Knight’s Cross from a soldier and is expelled from school. Volunteering for war service, he earns a medal himself and hopes his reputation will be rehabilitated. But the school principal refuses and Mahlke deserts from the army … Read More »

Review Summary

This combination romance and wartime drama by Etienne Perier was unusual at the time it was released because it portrayed World War II in the Pacific from the perspective of Gwen Terasaki, a woman from the Southern U.S., married to a Japanese diplomat. Based on her autobiography, the interesting story relates how the couple left for Japan after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and remained in Japan throughout the duration of the war. Their experiences and hardships during the war are detailed, as well as the tragedy that separated them once the war was over. Since the suffering of the ordinary Japanese citizen at this time and the racial undercurrents connected to the Pacific war are brought forward, the film stirred some controversy when it was released. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie GuideRead More »

A look at the cuban revolution told from three different perspectives in
italian neo- realist style, the first film of legendary cuban film auteur Tomás Gutiérrez Alea.

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Three vignettes about war in Cuba feature a wounded fighter, guerrilla bombardment and a funeral cortege.Read More »