Author Archives: rarefilm

The Slender Thread (1965) Frank Tashlin, Dick Powell, Debbie Reynolds, Anne Francis, Comedy, Drama

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Mark Christopher is a 35-year old, award-winning comedy scriptwriter who is struggling to be taken seriously as a drama writer. On Christmas Eve, two police officers bring 17-year old Susan (picked up for vagrancy and brawling) to Mark’s apartment. If she spends a few days with him, Mark could use Susan as inspiration to write a script about juvenile-delinquents and Susan could avoid spending Christmas behind bars.
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To the Ends of the Earth (1948) Robert Stevenson, Dick Powell, Signe Hasso, Maylia, Crime, Film-Noir, Thriller

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Based on the files of the United States Department of Treasury. Commissioner Michael Barrows is an American Government Agent. On board a Coast Gaurd boat off the California coast he chases a ship. The Captain of the ship, the Kira Maru, panics and ruthlessly sends 100 Chinese slaves to a watery death. Barrows recovers a live preserver that tells him the ship is out of Shanghai. He travels there to track down the ship’s captain and discovers that these deaths point to a huge drug smuggling operation. In Shanghai, while searching for the captain of the Kira Maru, he becomes suspicious of a women, Ann Grant, believing she’s Jean Hawks the narcotics ringleader. He follows the narcotics trail “to the ends of the Earth” taking him from Shanghai to Cairo, Beirut and Havana to stop the drugs and the jean Hawks ring at the US border.
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The Shining Hour (1938) Frank Borzage, Joan Crawford, Margaret Sullavan, Robert Young, Drama, Romance

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Olivia (Crawford), a New York nightclub dancer, tires of the fast life and marries Henry Linden (Douglas), a farmer. When Olivia moves to her new husband’s farm, in Wisconsin, she encounters trouble from his domineering sister-in-law Hannah (Bainter) and his brother David, (Young), who do not approve of her. Olivia finds an ally in David’s wife, Judy (Sullavan), who is in a loveless marriage.
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The Princess and the Pirate (1944) David Butler, Sidney Lanfield, Bob Hope, Virginia Mayo, Walter Brennan, Adventure, Comedy, Romance

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Princess Margaret is travelling incognito to elope with her true love instead of marrying the man her father has betrothed her to. On the high seas, her ship is attacked by pirates who know her identity and plan to kidnap her and hold her for a king’s ransom. Little do the cutthroats know that she will be rescued by that unlikeliest of knights errant, Sylvester the Great, who will lead them on a merry, and madcap, chase.
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The More the Merrier (1943) George Stevens, Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, Charles Coburn

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It’s World War II and there is a severe housing shortage everywhere – especially in Washington, D.C. where Connie Milligan rents an apartment. Believing it to be her patriotic duty, Connie offers to sublet half of her apartment, fully expecting a suitable female tenent. What she gets instead is mischievous, middle-aged Benjamin Dingle. Dingle talks her into subletting to him and then promptly sublets half of his half to young, irreverent Joe Carter – creating a situation tailor-made for comedy and romance.
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The Happy Road (1957) Gene Kelly, Barbara Laage, Michael Redgrave, Comedy

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While setting up a business in Paris, American widower Michael Andrews has placed his adolescent son, Danny Andrews, in a Swiss boarding school as Mike has no time during this phase of the business set-up to look after Danny on his own. Mike receives distressing news that Danny has run away from the school with another student, Parisienne Janine Duval. This news does not sit well with either Mike or Janine’s divorcée mother, Suzanne Duval. Suzanne believes Danny is a delinquent influence on her daughter, while Mike believes Janine is an enabler as non-French speaking Danny could not manage outside the school without some language assistance. They learn from another student that Danny is heading to Paris to show Mike that he is independent enough to live in Paris with Mike, while Janine tagged along because she sees herself as Danny’s girl and as she has not seen her mother in some time. As the children have not been gone long and as there is only one road between the school and Paris,…
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Notias (2016) Tassos Boulmetis, Yiannis Niarros, Themis Panou, Maria Kallimani, Comedy, Drama

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In the early 1970s, with Greece under the rule of a military junta, pre-teen Stavros discovers a strange accompaniment to the awakening of eros: he subverts the meanings of classical myths, creating strange physical symptoms in those around him. Stavros’ conservative parents, perplexed and flustered, take him from specialist to specialist. Diagnoses vary, until a fortune-teller deems that the boy is victim of a rare, ancient disease, which exhibits himself when he is in love. After the collapse of the junta, as Stavros meets the toils of love and politics in university, the influence of his strange affliction extends, from his immediate environment into the political arena.
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300 hommes / 300 Souls (2014) Aline Dalbis, Emmanuel Gras, Documentary, Biography

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‘Three hundred men’ is one long night at Saint Jean de Dieu, in Marseille. The center welcomes and confines three hundred homeless men every night over the winter. This documentary is neither the description nor the chronicle of the life of a shelter. It portrays humanity reduced to its essence, when only remain speech, humor, anger or madness to affirm that one still exists.’
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11’09”01 – September 11 (2002) Youssef Chahine, Amos Gitai, Maryam Karimi, Mohamad Dolati, Agelem Habibi, Drama

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Eleven directors from 11 countries each contribute an 11-minute short reflecting on the events of 11 September 2001. A village teacher in Iran tries to explain to her young students what’s happened. City kids in Burkina Faso think they’ve spotted Osama bin Laden. A deaf Frenchwoman in Manhattan writes a Dear John letter to a man who has left that morning for work at the World Trade Center. A Chilean remembers Allende. Events recall other deaths. A mother endures more than her son’s death. And so on. The tone varies, as do the locales. Most stories are about others coming to terms with the events of the day, but at least one confronts the viewer with tragedy and death.
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La faute à Fidel! / Blame it on Fidel (2006) Julie Gavras, Nina Kervel-Bey, Julie Depardieu, Stefano Accorsi, Drama, History

La faute a Fidel! (2006)
Hello, my name is Anna and I am nine years old. I wish you had known me before – I mean before my aunt Marga and my cousin Pilar came to my parents’house -, I was such a happy little girl. Before their coming life was a bed of roses. Of course my little brother could be a pain in the neck – little brothers always are, aren’t they? – but there was that wonderful big house, there was my Cuban-born nanny who cooked so well, there was the bath before dinner, not to mention this wonderful catechism class at the catholic school. But they did come, those Spanish intruders. And now never heard before names like “Franco”, “Allende”, “Women’s Lib”, “abortion”, the lot, have got into my life. Daddy and Mummy have suddenly become “communists”, although this a term that Bon Papa and Bonne Maman (my grandparents from Bordeaux, in fact) just hate. Because of the intruders not only did we move to a tiny apartment but the place is invaded day and night by “barbudos” (bearded men). No more bath before …
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