1980s

  • David Mamet – House of Games (1987)

    USA1981-1990CrimeDavid MametThriller

    Synopsis:
    A famous psychologist, Margaret Ford, decides to try to help one of her patients get out of a gambling debt. She visits the bar where Mike, to whom the debt is owed, runs poker games. He convinces her to help him in a game: her assignment is to look for “tells”, or give-away body language. What seems easy to her becomes much more complex.Read More »

  • Paul Vecchiali – Trous de mémoire (1985)

    1981-1990ArthouseFrancePaul Vecchiali

    Improvisation by Paul Vecchiali and Françoise Lebrun – On Paul’s initiative, Françoise and Paul met after a long separation, on the pretext to search in commun for a lost memory, a song. It soons appears that Paul’s objective is to win her back.

    Quote:
    Quand j’écrivais le scénario de En haut des marches, je me suis trouvé en panne à un moment du récit. Impossible de discerner ce qui me bloquait. En sortant d’Auditel, qui comptait une dizaine de salles de montage où travaillaient, entre autres, Jacques Demy et Éric Rohmer, j’ai croisé Françoise Lebrun, connue elle aussi au Studio Parnasse.Read More »

  • Shinsuke Ogawa – Nippon-koku Furuyashiki-mura aka A Japanese Village (1982)

    Documentary1981-1990JapanShinsuke Ogawa

    Synopsis:
    This is Ogawa Productions’ first major film from their Yamagata period. They had already started photography on Magino Village-A Tale but they were drawn to this village deep in the high country above Magino when a particularly cold bout of weather threatened crops. Inevitably, their attention strayed from the impact of weather and geography on the harvest to the “life history” of Furuyashiki Village. On the one hand, Ogawa returns to his roots by playing with the conventions of the science film. At the same time, he discovers a local, peripheral space in which to think about the nation and the state of village Japan. From this “distant perspective” in the very heart of the Japanese mountains, Ogawa discovers a village still dealing with the trauma of global warfare and struggling for survival as their children flee for the cities.Read More »

  • Clint Eastwood – Bronco Billy (1980) (HD)

    1971-1980Clint EastwoodComedyDramaUSA

    Eastwood directs and stars as Bronco Billy in this sweet comedy about the cowboy who heads up a seedy Wild West show and the stranded Park Avenue heiress he rescues. The Wild West has been tamed, leaving no place for a group of romantic roustabouts except their small traveling show. Meanwhile a desperate heiress (Sondra Locke), who has been left stranded by her con-artist husband, will do anything for a ride to the next town—even if that means allowing a blindfolded Bronco Billy to throw knives at her for a scant audience. So begins a tumultuous relationship and roller coaster adventure.Read More »

  • James Bridges – Mike’s Murder (1984)

    1981-1990CrimeJames BridgesMysteryUSA

    Quote:
    Naive young bank teller Betty Parrish falls for her tennis instructor who is living a separate life as a male hustler and small time drug dealer. He gets in over his head and as the films title would indicate is murdered triggering Betty to start poking around Mike’s other life to find out what happened and who he was.Read More »

  • Werner Schroeter – Palermo oder Wolfsburg AKA Palermo or Wolfsburg (1980)

    1971-1980ArthouseGermanyWerner Schroeter

    Quote:
    This film begins in the town of Palermo, where the film’s central figure, Nicola, is a young victim of Sicily’s high rate of unemployment. He decides to leave Palermo for Wolfsburg in Germany in search of employment. Along with Fassbinder’s Angst essen Seele auf (1973), Schroeter’s film becomes one of a handful of films to broach the subject of the difficulties foreigners faced in their attempts to integrate into German society without the support of the family and community structures they had left behind in their home countries. Like Regno di Napoli, Palermo oder Wolfsburg follows a chronological structure, but Schroeter’s innovation in this film is to divide the narrative into three distinct sections or acts, each having their own particular style. Palermo oder Wolfsburg won the prestigious Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1980, notably the first Golden Bear ever awarded to a German director.Read More »

  • Masayuki Suo – Fanshî dansu AKA Fancy Dance (1989)

    1981-1990ComedyJapanMasayuki Suo

    Quote:
    Yohei, a punk rocker, has to become a Buddhist monk in order to inherit a mountain temple. Yohei though initially rebelling against the tough monastic discipline learns to adjust. Then his girlfriend shows up, enticing him to return to his rock ‘n’ roll roots.Read More »

  • Samuel Fuller – The Big Red One (1980)

    1971-1980Samuel FullerUSAWar

    IMDB:
    A US Army sergeant who participated in the First World War now leads a rifle squad in the same division in which he’d served, the First Infantry. The squad participates in combat action from storming Vichy French Africa into the long siege of Sicily and Italy, into D-Day at Omaha Beach, and onward through the push to Germany. Along the way the squad gets involved in several incidents with civilians, such as a French woman about to give birth and also in a firefight in an insane asylum. Throughout the war the Sergeant has engaged in a mini-battle of wills with Pvt. Griff, a semi-pacifist whose convictions are destroyed in a horrific scene amid the human genocide of a concentration camp in 1945.Read More »

  • Pim de la Parra – Paul Chevrolet en de ultieme hallucinatie AKA Paul Chevrolet and the Ultimate Hallucination (1985)

    Arthouse1981-1990CrimeNetherlandsPim de la Parra

    Paul Chevrolet is the alias of a writer of hard-boiled detective-novels, Leopold (Peter Faber), who still owes his ex-wife Willie (Jenny Arean) a great deal of money. In his latest detective-novel, gangster-boss Boy Pappa (Eddie Constantine) is introduced, who gets pursued by Leopold’s alter ego: Scotty. After writing a philosophical manuscript, ‘The Ultimate Hallucination’, Leopold gets in contact with publisher’s daughter Susanne (Liz Snoyink) who resembles his character Savannah MacKnight. Also, Boy Pappa really seems to exist. From that moment on, reality and fiction intertwine.Read More »

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