Daily Archives: March 23, 2016

The Five Pennies (1959) Melville Shavelson, Danny Kaye, Barbara Bel Geddes, Louis Armstrong, Biography, Drama, Music

The Five Pennies (Melville Shavelson, 1959)
Loring “Red” Nichols is a cornet-playing country boy who goes to New York in the 1920s full of musical ambition and principles. He gets a job playing in Wil Paradise’s band, but quits to pursue his dream of playing Dixieland jazz. He forms the “Five Pennies” which features his wife, Bobbie, as vocalist. At the peak of his fame, Red and Bobbie’s daughter, Dorothy, develops polio. Red quits the music business to move to Los Angeles where the climate is better for Dorothy. As Dorothy becomes a young teen, she learns of her father’s musical past, and he is persuaded to open a small nightclub which is failing until some noted names from his past come to help out.
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Zulu (1964) Cy Endfield, Stanley Baker, Jack Hawkins, Ulla Jacobsson, Drama, History, War

Zulu (Cy Endfield, 1964)
Two Lieutenants, Chard of Engineers and Bromhead find that their 140 man contingent in Natal has been isolated by the destruction of the main British Army column and that 4,000 Zulu warriors will descend on them in hours. Each has a different military background in tactics and they are immediatly in conflict on how to prepare for the attack. Nearly a third of the men are in the infirmary, as the welsh company tries to somehow survive with no help in sight. Based on a true story.
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Little Red Monkey / The Case of the Red Monkey (1955) Ken Hughes, Richard Conte, Rona Anderson, Russell Napier, Action, Adventure, Crime

Little Red Monkey (1955)
Several murders of nuclear scientists, that baffles Scotland Yard, occur in London about the same time that Bill Locklin, a special officer from the United States State Department, arrives to oversee the transfer of Professor Leon Dushenko, a Russian scientist who as fled the U.S.S.R. An attempt is made on Dushenko’s life with a monkey’s paw-print found at the scene. Newspaperman reporter Harry Martin is covering the story. Duskenko is moved secretly to a nursing home, while Locklin stumbles onto the hideout of the gang behind the killings. He is captured along with Julia Jackson, niece of Superintendent John Harrington. Locklin is tortured to reveal Dushenko’s hiding place but escapes in time to avert Duskenko’s murder at the hands of the gang’s hired-killer–-a midget who is aided by a monkey.
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Our Mother’s House (1967) Jack Clayton, Dirk Bogarde, Margaret Leclere, Pamela Franklin, Drama, Thriller

Our Mother's House (1967)
Raised by their Bible-obsessed, invalid mother, seven children care for her and one another in a gloomy Victorian house. The mother dies, and the children, terrified of being separated and even more terrified of the outside world, build a graveside shrine to her in the backyard and carry on as if nothing has happened. When their long-lost father shows up, he seems to fall in with their plans. Then the children begin to realize he has a different plan altogether.
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The Flight That Disappeared (1961) Reginald Le Borg, Craig Hill, Paula Raymond, Dayton Lummis, Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

The Flight That Disappeared (1961)
A transcontinental flight from Los Angeles to Washington DC, carrying three top scientists, unexplainedly begins a climb to 10 miles up. With all other passengers unconscious, the scientists find themselves in a dimension where time does not exist. There they are put on trial by denizens of the future for their potential involvement in the creation of “the ultimate weapon”.
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The Last Voyage (1960) Andrew L. Stone, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, George Sanders, Drama

The Last Voyage (Andrew L. Stone, 1960)
Cliff Henderson and his family are traveling aboard the SS Claridon en route to Japan. The Claridon is an old ship, on its last voyage before heading to the scrap heap. An explosion in the engine room weakens the hull and the ship is now taking on more water that the bilge pumps can deal with. The Captain seems to have difficulty accepting that his ship will sink. Henderson’s wife Laurie is severely injured and trapped under a fallen beam. While the men in the engine room work frantically to shore up the hull, Henderson tries to free his wife from the wreckage with the help of one of the crew, Hank Lawson.
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The Road to Guantanamo (2006) Mat Whitecross, Michael Winterbottom, Riz Ahmed, Farhad Harun, Waqar Siddiqui, Documentary, Drama, War

The Road to Guantanamo (Michael Winterbottom & Mat Whitecross, 2006)
In 2001, four Pakistani Britons, Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul and another friend, Monir, travel to Pakistan for a wedding and in a urge of idealism, decide to see the situation of war torn Afganistan which is being bombed by the American forces in retaliation for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Once there, with the loss of Monir in the wartime chaos, they are captured by Northern Alliance fighters. They are then handed them over the American forces who transport them to the prison camps at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba. What follows is three years of relentless imprisonment, interrogations and torture to make them submit to blatantly wrong confessions to being terrorists. In the midst of this abuse, the three struggle to keep their spirits up in that face of this grave injustice.
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