Drama

  • Ann Hui – Ji dao zhui zong AKA Zodiac Killers (1991)

    1991-2000Ann HuiDramaHong KongThriller

    PLOT SUMMARY
    A group of idealistic Chinese students move into Toyko’s Shinjuku district to attend school in a more relaxed, less competitive setting. However, they soon find themselves inextricably embroiled in the Yakuza underworld with little hope of survival.Read More »

  • Mikio Naruse – Midaregumo AKA Scattered Clouds AKA Two in the Shadow (1967)

    1961-1970ClassicsDramaJapanMikio Naruse

    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 »

  • Dinos Dimopoulos – O anthropos tou trainou AKA The man on the train (1958)

    1951-1960Dinos DimopoulosDramaGreeceMystery

    Synopsis:
    A respectably bourgeois couple, Mando and her husband, decide to go by car to Nauplion, along with a group of friends. At a train crossing, Mando sees someone she knows in one of the windows of the passing train. She becomes very upset, on the verge of fainting, but manages to control herself. A little later, she sees the same man at the ancient theater of Epidaurus during a performance of Medea. And, as if that weren’t enough, the man is staying at their hotel. He looks exactly like Giorgos Pavlidis, the love of her life, a man whom everybody thought was killed by the Germans, but who, from what it seems, is alive.Read More »

  • Herbert Vesely – Das Brot der frühen Jahre (1962)

    1961-1970DramaGermanyHerbert Vesely

    Quote:
    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 »

  • Hans Jürgen Pohland – Katz und Maus AKA Cat and Mouse (1967)

    1961-1970ArthouseDramaGermanyHans Jürgen Pohland

    Quote:
    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 »

  • Douglas Sirk – There’s Always Tomorrow (1955)

    1991-2000Douglas SirkDramaRomanceUSA

    Quote:
    Clifford Groves, toy manufacturer, is in full charge at the factory but feels left out and taken for granted by his wife and children at home. Alone and depressed, he meets old flame Norma, and one thing leads to another. While their relationship is still fairly innocent, his son Vinnie sees them together and suspects the worst. It’s time for tortured souls behind rain-streaming windows…Read More »

  • Maurice Gleize – Le récif de corail AKA Coral Reefs (1938)

    1931-1940AdventureDramaFranceMaurice Gleize

    Brisbane, Australia, late 1910s. A man on the run from a murder charge buys a place as a stowaway on a smuggler ship bound for Mexico, by way of a tiny coral reef atoll.

    Quote:
    Between 1923 and 1952 Maurice Gleize managed to direct twenty two films in France without distinguishing himself. This one, with a screenplay by top French scriptwriter Charles Spaak, had arguably the best cast he ever got to work with (on other occasions he directed Fenandel, Charles Vanel and Marie Bell) from co-stars Jean Gabin and Michele Morgan – hot on the heels of Quai des brumes that same year – to Saturnin Fabre, Gaston Modot and Julien Carrette but for all Gleize extracted from them it might as well have been John Lund and Maria Montez supported by Leo Gorcey and the Bowery Boys.Read More »

  • Ivan Andonov – Vchera AKA Yesterday (1988)

    1981-1990BulgariaDramaIvan Andonov

    Quote:
    The second half of the 60s. The era of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, the sexual revolution and the rebellion of youth. Those events indirectly penetrate behind the walls of an elite English language high school. The pupils are confronted with conformity and prejudice, friendship and betrayal, the death of a best friend – situations that have molded the generation of today’s forty-year-olds. A nostalgic and realistic vision of life in language schools during the years of Socialism. Friendship, betrayal, love, hatred – they all exist in that micro-society, and the scandals are of the most diverse nature, from the pregnant schoolgirl to the latest Western gramophone records. The impressive acting of the rising stars, the conspiring comradeship of the characters and the hit song, make it a cult work among young viewers.Read More »

  • Takashi Miike – Tengoku kara kita otoko-tachi AKA The Guys from Paradise (2000)

    1991-2000ActionDramaJapanTakashi Miike

    Quote:
    Allegedly based on a number of true cases, The Guys From Paradise is a prison story set in the Phillipines against a background of corruption, drug trafficking and paedophilia. This being a Takashi Miike film however, the results are far from conventional. It’s essentially a film of two parts: the first set in a prison named “Paradise” where a small community of Japanese prisoners led by veteran criminal Yoshida (Tsutomu Yamazaki) enjoy a life of relative freedom and privilege, the second the story of their exploits outside prison walls with police and a deranged yakuza on their trail.Read More »

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