• Preston Sturges – The Great Moment (1944)

    1941-1950ComedyDramaPreston SturgesUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    In the winter of 1868, Eben Frost (William Demarest) goes to a Boston pawnshop and redeems a silver medal, inscribed to “Dr. W.T.G. Morton, the Benefactor of Mankind, with the Gratitude of Humanity.” Frost drives to a country farmhouse and gives the medal to Morton’s widow, Elizabeth Morton (Betty Field) who explains to her daughter, Betty (Donivee Lee), that Frost was the first person given anesthesia by her father, Boston dentist Dr. W.T.G. Morton (Joel McCrea.)Read More »

  • W.S. Van Dyke – Night Court (1932)

    1931-1940CrimeDramaUSAW.S. Van Dyke

    Quote:
    Judge Moffett is as crooked as they come and the Board of Judicial Corruption is after him. So he hides out in the poor part of town. While there, she drops the bankbook that Moffett has listing his accounts and Mary returns it to him. But Moffett thinks Mary saw the book and he puts her away for six months on a trumped up charge. Mike is overcome with grief and when he comes to his senses, he talks to Mary who tells him about the book. This gets Mike beat up and put on a boat to South America, but he jumps ship and plots his revenge.Read More »

  • Júlio Bressane – Matou a Família e Foi ao Cinema (1969)

    1961-1970BrazilDramaJúlio Bressane

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Carlos Adriano wrote:
    This film caused controversy in 1969, not just for its content, but above all for its daring and sparse approach to that content. Today, it is regarded as a classic of Brazilian cinema. The title of the film was inspired by the headlines of the ‘gutter’ or yellow press. Right from the start the title is literal: a young, lower middle class man kills his father and mother and goes to the movies… to see Lost in Love. From then on the film-within-a-film takes over. Fiction and fact blend into each other and it is no longer clear on what level of ‘reality’ – or of the imaginary – we are existing. The film gets rid of the usual parameters of representation and the stories overflow their boundaries, that usually circumscribe action. In Lost in Love two upper-middle-class girls hide away in a mansion in the hills. But there is also an affair between two poor girls, there are two tormented young men of different social standing, there are references to the political context of the time. To make matters more uncertain, the same actors play different characters. The actions of social violence correspond to acts of violence against the syntax of the film itself: the discontinued and fragmented development, the daring ellipses, the juxtaposition of disconnected elements, the rupture of the sound space. Bressane works on his dialectics of discomfort. Projected onto the screen is a true ‘impression of reality’ and a ‘suspension of disbelief’ in the cinema.Read More »

  • Jirí Menzel – Skrivánci na niti AKA Larks on a String [+Extra] (1969)

    1961-1970ArthouseCzech RepublicDramaJirí Menzel

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Long-Repressed Tale of Repression
    The junk heap to which the characters of “Larks on a String” are consigned is a kind of paradise. Here, in the early 1950’s, former members of Czechoslovakia’s banished bourgeoisie are nominally engaged in forced labor, but in fact are free to play cards, discuss philosophy, joke sardonically about their situation and languish as they choose.

    The men in this group — among them a professor who refused to destroy decadent Western literature, a saxophonist whose very instrument was considered an offense against the state and a lawyer who upheld the radical idea that a defendant ought to be allowed to plead his case — also spend a lot of time trading secret smiles and sidelong glances with a group of female prisoners nearby. The women, dressed in drably functional uniforms, nonetheless manage to look nymphlike as they laugh and frolic and hum little tunes. The setting is bleak and the season unspecified, but in spirit, it might as well be spring.Read More »

  • Mania Akbari – 10 + 4 (Dah be alaveh chahar) (2007)

    2001-2010ArthouseDocumentaryIranMania Akbari

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    After casting painter and video artist Mania Akbari as the central figure of his groundbreaking Ten (2002), and then witnessing her outstanding debut as a feature film director in 20 Fingers (2004), Abbas Kiarostami urged her to direct a sequel to the film. In Dah be alaveh Chahar (10 + 4), though, circumstances are different: Mania is fighting cancer. She has undergone surgery; she has lost her hair following chemotherapy and no longer wears the compulsory headscarf; and sometimes she is too weak to drive. So the camera follows her to record conversations with friends and family in different spaces, from the gondola she had famously used in her first feature to a hospital bed. Yet, while he body shows the effects of the disease, Akbari is as tough, charismatic, and argumentative as in her previous screen appearances her luminous presence all the more alluring and precious as it becomes a sign of how fragile life itself is. Her cinematic language has been expanded and refined from the rigorous explorations of 20 Fingers, to take into account the unexpected aspects of facing simultaneously death and survival, social stigma and sympathy. Treading an elegant line between documentary and fiction, Akbari takes a daring look at complex social situations that arise in the face of mortality and emerges with a new zest for life.Read More »

  • Pablo Fendrik – El asaltante AKA The Mugger (2007)

    2001-2010ArgentinaDramaPablo Fendrik

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    Quote:
    Clocking in at only 70 minutes, Argentine director Pablo Fendrik’s unsparingly tense drama El Asaltante (AKA The Assailant, 2007) observes – in real-time – the various conflicting emotions undergone by a perpetrator before he commits a serious and potentially lethal act of aggression. After premeditating the event in his mind for ages, the titular assailant opts to move forward, step by step, and experiences a co-mingling of fear, apprehension, rage, and an overriding loss of hope that will ultimately drive him to commit the most desperate act of his life.Read More »

  • Marko Skop – Eva Nová (2015)

    2011-2020DramaMarko SkopSlovakia

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    The story of a woman fighting for her son. Many years ago she abandoned him for her career. Now she is coming out of rehab determined to rectify something for which she has lacked the courage for years.
    Read More »

  • Robert Bresson – Au hasard Balthazar aka Balthazar [Criterion] (1966)

    Drama1961-1970EpicFranceRobert Bresson

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Jim Ridley wrote:
    With exquisite, heartrending calm, Bresson’s 1966 masterpiece Au Hasard Balthazar lays out the life of a donkey, from first brays to final rest. Baptized Balthazar, the donkey goes through passages of life parallel to his early owner, a farmer’s daughter named Marie (played as an adult by Anne Wiazemsky).
    Together and separately, they experience the full spectrum of man’s failings: Balthazar is kicked by passing thugs, beaten by an owner, and eventually used for theft, while Marie is seduced, abandoned and ultimately assaulted. Yet while Bresson’s vision is harsh, it’s also redemptive, even merciful. It ends on a note of quiet transcendence, as if to say all suffering, no matter how grave, cannot last.Read More »

  • Henry Hathaway – Seven Thieves (1960)

    Drama1951-1960CrimeHenry HathawayUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    Discredited professor Edward G. Robinson organizes a seven-person criminal gang. Robinson plans to steal a fortune from the underground vaults of the Monte Carlo casino. Despite a few tense moments, the plot moves like clockwork. Alas, Robinson isn’t around long enough to enjoy the fruits of his labors. As for the other criminals, they find that fencing their stolen booty is next to impossible. All they come away with is $3000–won legitimately at the gaming tables. Those not interested in the male contingent of Seven Thieves (Robinson, Rod Steiger, Eli Wallach et. al.) are advised to feast their eyes upon leading-lady Joan Collins, in her considerable prime. ~ Hal Erickson, RoviRead More »

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