Author Archives: rarefilm

Una ragazza piuttosto complicata / A Rather Complicated Girl (1969) Damiano Damiani, Catherine Spaak, Jean Sorel, Florinda Bolkan, Thriller, Erotic

Una ragazza piuttosto complicata (1969)
This erotic sexploitation feature concerns a couple and their pursuit of sexual fulfillment with each other – and their mutually agreed upon third bed guests. Lesbian love angles includes the woman’s step-daughter. Alberto (Jean Sorel) is soon left alone when the women decides his services are no longer required. After acting on his erotic fantasies, he is left alone and driven to madness when his girlfriend marries another after leaving with her lesbian lover.
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Scrooge (1970) Ronald Neame, Albert Finney, Alec Guinness, Edith Evans, Drama, Family, Fantasy

Scrooge (Ronald Neame, 1970)
In 1860, cranky old miser Ebenezer Scrooge hates Christmas; loathes people and defends the decrease of the surplus of poor population; runs his bank exploiting his employee Bob Cratchit and clients, giving a bitter treatment to his own nephew and acquaintances. However, on Christmas Eve, he is visited by the doomed ghost of his former partner Jacob Marley that tells him that three spirits would visit him that night. The first one, the spirit of Christmas Past, recalls his miserable youth when he lost his only love due to his greed; the spirit of Christmas Present shows him the poor situation of Bob’s family and how joyful life may be; and the spirit of Christmas Future shows his fate. Scrooge finds that life is good and time is too short and suddenly you are not there anymore, changing his behavior toward Christmas, Bob, his nephew and people in general.
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Mangekyô / Kaleidoscope (1999) Naomi Kawase, Shinya Arimoto, Mika Mifune, Machiko Ono, Documentary

Manguekyo (Naomi Kawase, 1999)
Naomi Kawase collaborates with Shinya Arimoto, a Taiyo award-winning photographer she knows from university, to create a photo album of Machiko Ono (who Kawase scouted for her previous feature film Moe no Suzaku) and Mika Mifune (daughter of famous actor Toshiro Mifune) with the idea to contrast these two aspiring actresses, Ono coming from the rural Nara and Mifune from Tokyo. Kawase documents the photo shooting and interviews Arimoto, Ono and Mifune as the work progresses, while the tension between her and Arimoto increases over disagreement on the direction of the project.
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Malina (1991) Werner Schroeter, Isabelle Huppert, Lisa Kreuzer, Mathieu Carrière, Drama, Fantasy, Mystery

Malina (Werner Schroeter, 1991)
A complex and enigmatic plot that evokes the life of Bachmann. The story develops around an unusual triangular relationship, a threesome between a woman of unknown name, a man named Malina and a Hungarian, Ivan, with whom she falls in love. Ivan will be his last great love, but their need for exclusivity in love is so strong that it can not be understood or matched. Malina is a struggle, a confrontation between two worlds strange and hostile.
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Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) Paul Schrader, Ken Ogata, Masayuki Shionoya, Hiroshi Mikami, Biography, Drama

Mishima A Life in Four Chapters (Paul Schrader, 1985)
A fictionalized account in four segments of the life of Japan’s celebrated twentieth-century author Yukio Mishima. Three of the segments parallel events in Mishima’s life with his novels (The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Kinkaku-ji), Kyoko’s House, and Runaway Horses), while the fourth depicts 25 November 1970, “The Last Day”…
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Night of the Eagle / Burn, Witch, Burn (1962) Sidney Hayers, Peter Wyngarde, Janet Blair, Margaret Johnston, Horror

Night of the Eagle (Sidney Hayers, 1962)
A skeptical college professor discovers that his wife has been practicing magic for years. Like the learned, rational fellow he is, he forces her to destroy all her magical charms and protective devices, and stop that foolishness. He isn’t put off by her insistence that his professional rivals are working magic against him, and her protections are necessary to his career and life.
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