• Norman Foster – Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948)

    USA1941-1950250 Quintessential Film NoirsFilm NoirNorman Foster

    Quote:
    Bill Saunders, a former prisoner of war living in England, whose experiences have left him unstable and violent, gets into a bar fight in which he in kills a man and then flees. He hides out with the assistance of a nurse, Jane Wharton, who believes his story that the killing was an accident.Read More »

  • Nobuhiko Ôbayashi – Pekin no suika AKA Beijing Watermelon (1989)

    1981-1990AsianDramaJapanNobuhiko Obayashi

    Contemporary Japanese Film by Mark Schilling (1999):

    Topicality is tricky. Sylvester Stallone’s one-man war in Afghanistan in Rambo III might have suited the Evil Empire mentality of the early 1980s, but in 1988, with Russian troops rapidly withdrawing from the country, it was ludicrous. Rambo was battling a Cold War ghost.

    Beijing Watermelon, which tells the story of a Chiba vegetable seller’s encounter with Chinese students, was also overtaken by events. Filming scheduled for Beijing had to be canceled because of the tragedy at Tienanmen Square. But instead of plugging away as though nothing had happened, director Nobuhiko Obayashi seized the opportunity to comment on that tragedy and make one of the most original, moving films in recent memory.Read More »

  • Paul Sloane – The Woman Accused (1933)

    1931-1940DramaPaul SloaneUSA

    Synopsis:
    Jeffrey and Glenda are two lovers about to embark on a three-day cruise to nowhere. Their plan is to be married on board by the ship’s captain. As Glenda is packing to leave, she receives a threatening phone call from her obsessed, former lover Leo. Glenda confronts Leo and tells him that it’s over. Leo, a high-powered attorney calls a hit man to have Jeffrey eliminated. Glenda knocks Leo over the head before he can give the hit man a name. Leo is dead. Glenda sneaks back into her apartment, goes off on the cruise with Jeffrey and pretends that all is swell. Leo’s partner, Stephen Bessemer, suspects Glenda and follows her to the ship. Read More »

  • Alfred Hitchcock – Foreign Correspondent (1940)

    USA1931-1940Alfred HitchcockThriller

    Synopsis:
    Johnny Jones is an action reporter on a New York newspaper. The editor appoints him European correspondent because he is fed up with the dry, reports he currently gets. Jones’ first assignment is to get the inside story on a secret treaty agreed between two European countries by the famous diplomat, Mr. Van Meer. However things don’t go to plan and Jones enlists the help of a young woman to help track down a group of spies.Read More »

  • Leo McCarey – The Awful Truth (1937)

    USA1931-1940ClassicsComedyLeo McCareyScrewball Comedy

    Synopsis:
    Before their divorce becomes final, Jerry and Lucy Warriner both do their best to ruin each other’s plans for remarriage, Jerry to haughty socialite Barbara Vance, she to oil-rich bumpkin Daniel Leeson. Among their strategies: Jerry’s court-decreed visitation rights with Mr. Smith, their pet fox terrier, and Lucy doing her most flamboyant Dixie Belle Lee impersonation as Jerry’s brassy “sister” before his prospective bride’s scandalized family.Read More »

  • Jeppe Rønde – Bridgend (2015)

    2011-2020DenmarkDramaJeppe Rønde

    Sara and her dad Dave move to a small village, which is haunted by suicides among its young inhabitants. Sara falls dangerously in love with one of the teenagers, Jamie, while Dave, as the town’s new police officer, tries to stop the mysterious chain of suicides.Read More »

  • Mark Donskoy – Dorogoy tsenoy AKA The Horse That Cried (1957)

    1951-1960ArthouseDramaMark DonskoyUSSR

    Also known as At Great Cost, this adaptation of a story by Mikhailo Kotsyubinsky—a Ukrainian writer executed in the Stalinist purges but rehabilitated in 1955—anticipates the wave of Sixties poetic cinema in its focus on star-crossed lovers and its celebration of nature. Set in the 1930s, the film begins as Solomia is forced into an arranged marriage. She escapes with her lover, Ostep, and for a while it looks as if the fugitives will make a clean getaway. Yet eventually they come to the attention of the police, who mistake them for being part of a gang of thieves. One of the major figures of the earlier current of socialist realism, Donskoy, in one of his first post-Stalin era productions, here loosens his style to reveal a delicate romanticism rarely felt in his earlier films.Read More »

  • Kirill Serebrennikov – Leto AKA Summer (2018)

    2011-2020DramaKirill SerebrennikovMusicalRussia

    Plot: A love triangle emerges around a rock and roll musician, his protege, and his wife in 1980s Russia.

    The plot is based on little-known facts of Viktor Tsoi’s (Teo Yoo) life and unfolds in the summer of the early 1980s in Leningrad. The main storyline of the film tells the story of the relationship between the 19-year-old Tsoi, 26-year-old Mike Naumenko (Roman Bilyk), and his wife Natalia (Irina Starshenbaum), as well as the formation of the Leningrad Rock Club and the recording of Tsoi’s first album.Read More »

  • Nelson Pereira dos Santos – Boca de Ouro AKA The Golden Mouth [+Extras] (1963)

    1961-1970BrazilDramaNelson Pereira dos Santos

    When powerful outlaw “Boca de Ouro” dies, a reporter interviews his former lover Guigui, to try to outline his personality. But the woman offers him three different versions of the facts, following the changes of her own personal feelings towards the man.

    Quote:
    Nelson Rodrigues’ Rashomon-lite gangster melodrama gets a purposive physical rendering on the hands of Nelson Pereira dos Santos. The filmmaker always described this as gun for hire work, but it is one of his most dramatic exact films and the cast is terrific. (Filipe Furtado)Read More »

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