USA

  • Wallace Wolodarsky – Coldblooded (1995)

    1991-2000ComedyCrimeUSAWallace Wolodarsky

    Plot: A quiet young fellow becomes a reluctant, but effective hit man in this comedy. Cosmo, a robot-like bookie, is promoted to hit man by his crime boss, Gordon. Cosmo’s teacher is to be the philosophical and chatty Steve, a real pro. Cosmo is an excellent shot and quickly learns. His problem is that he likes to get to know his clients and empathize with them before he kills them. In time Cosmo feels conflict after he begins to fall in love with Jasmine, his yoga-instructor. He wants out of the profession. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie GuideRead More »

  • Larry Gottheim – Four Shadows (1978)

    1971-1980DocumentaryExperimentalLarry GottheimUSA

    Like constellations wheeling round, a double chain of four image segments and four sound segments wheel past each other in sixteen combinations (a family of Gibbon apes, a landscape measured, a shadowed diagram after Paul Cézanne, a wintry urban scene, a text by William Wordsworth, a climactic scene from Claude Debussy’s opera “Pelleas et Melisande”). The stately ceremony can generate rich sensuous cinematic pleasure as well as a free-flowing stream of associations. Containment and flowing free, these are some of the issues. The third film in the Elective Affinities cycle.Read More »

  • Mitchell Leisen – Song of Surrender (1949)

    1941-1950ClassicsDramaMitchell LeisenUSA

    http://img546.imageshack.us/img546/3945/2wnoi7r.jpg

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    Plot
    Though her acting range was limited, Wanda Hendrix was cute as all get out, and this cuteness is pretty much all that’s required from her in Song of Surrender. The film is set in a small town of the early 1900s. Hendrix is cast as Abigail Hunt, the young bride of fiftyish museum curator Elisha Hunt (Claude Rains). Their connubial bliss is threatened when attorney Bruce Eldridge (Macdonald Carey) falls in love with Abigail, and she with him. When her neighbors discover her indiscretions, Abigail is driven from town. It is only during a near-tragedy that Abigail realizes that her true place is with her aging husband. Still, the script manages to wangle a happy ending for everyone concerned. Of interest in Song of Surrender is the utilization within the plotline of several vintage Enrico Caruso recordings.Read More »

  • Ti West – The House of the Devil (2009)

    USA2001-2010HorrorThrillerTi West

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    In the 1980s, college student Samantha Hughes takes a strange babysitting job that coincides with a full lunar eclipse. She slowly realizes her clients harbor a terrifying secret; they plan to use her in a satanic ritual.Read More »

  • Louis Malle – Vanya on 42nd Street (1994)

    1991-2000DramaLouis MalleUSA

    In the early nineties, theater director André Gregory mounted a series of spare, private performances of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in a crumbling Manhattan playhouse. This experiment in pure theater—featuring a remarkable cast of actors, including Wallace Shawn, Julianne Moore, Brooke Smith, and George Gaynes—would have been lost to time had it not been captured on film, with subtle cinematic brilliance, by Louis Malle. Vanya on 42nd Street is as memorable and emotional a screen version of Chekhov’s masterpiece as one could ever hope to see. This film, which turned out to be Malle’s last, is a tribute to the playwright’s devastating work as well as to the creative process itself.Read More »

  • William Keighley – The Street with No Name [+extra] (1948)

    1941-1950CrimeFilm NoirUSAWilliam Keighley

    http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/5953/streetwithnoname.jpg

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    Quote:
    In Center City, a housewife is murdered in a night-club by a gang of thieves. When a security guard of a bank is killed by the same gun during a heist, the crime becomes a federal offense under FBI jurisdiction. When the prime suspect is released and executed in the same night, FBI Inspector George Briggs recruits the rookie agent Gene Cordell to follow the last paths of the victim undercover in the identity of George Manly. Gene meets the powerful gangster Alec Stiles in a gymnasium, and later he is invited to join his gang. Working with his also undercover liaison Cy Gordon, Gene finds evidences to incriminate Stiles. However, he discovers also that somebody from the precinct is feeding Stiles with classified information.Read More »

  • Celine Danhier – Blank City (2010)

    USA2001-2010Celine DanhierDocumentary

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    Quote:
    Directed by French newcomer Celine Danhier, BLANK CITY captures the idiosyncratic, explosive energy of the “No Wave Cinema” and “Cinema of Transgression” movements. Stark and provocative, the films drew name and inspiration from the French New Wave, as well as Film Noir, and the works of Andy Warhol and John Waters. Filmmakers such as Jim Jarmusch, Eric Mitchell, Beth B, Charlie Ahearn, Lizzie Borden and Amos Poe showcased the city’s vibrant grit, and bore witness to the rising East Village art and rock scenes and the birth of hip hop. Short, long, color or black-and-white, their stripped-down films portrayed themes of alienation and dissonance with a raw and genuine spirit, at times with deadpan humor or blurring lines between fiction and reality. From Amos Poe’s enigmatic The FOREIGNER to James Nares’ comedic ROME 78 to Beth B & Scott B’s political BLACK BOX — the No Wave Movement was as varied as it was lively.Read More »

  • Mike Nichols – Wit (2001)

    2001-2010DramaMike NicholsUSA

    Plot:
    Based on the Margaret Edson play, Vivian Bearing is a literal, hardnosed English professor who has been diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer. During the story, she reflects on her reactions to the cycle the cancer takes, the treatments, and significant events in her life. The people that watch over her are Jason Posner, who only finds faith in being a doctor; Susie Monahan, a nurse with a human side that is the only one in the hospital that cares for Vivian’s condition; and Dr. Kelekian, the head doctor who just wants results no matter what they are.Read More »

  • Janet Bergstrom – Murnau’s 4 Devils: Traces of a Lost Film (2003)

    2001-2010DocumentaryJanet BergstromShort FilmUSA

    Quote:
    One of the cinema’s Holy Grails, Murnau’s lost Four Devils (1928) starred Janet Gaynor, fresh from Sunrise, in a circus drama set in Paris. In this 40-minute documentary, UCLA film scholar Bergstrom reconstructs the film through stills, set blueprints, and production drawings.Read More »

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