Drama

Die Screaming, Marianne (1971) Pete Walker

Die Screaming, Marianne (1971)
After their parents divorce, one daughter lives with her mother in England while the other lives with her father in Portugal. After the untimely death of her mother, the one daughter stands to inherit a large sum of money and also a number of documents containing information that will incriminate her father, who was a crooked judge. While her father wants the documents, her sister wants the money and they will each stop at nothing, even murder, to get what they want.
Read More »

Paloma de papel / Paper Dove (2003) Fabrizio Aguilar

Paloma de papel (2003)
Juan, a young man convicted of terrorism, is given amnesty from a Lima prison; he boards a bus to return home and, in his mind’s eye, recalls events in his village near Huaraz when he was 10 or 12. His father is long dead, his mother lives with Fermin, secretly a sympathizer with the Communist guerrillas in the hills. Town leaders are assassinated at night. When Juan discovers Fermin’s secret, Juan is spirited away to the guerrillas to learn Marxist slogans and how to fight. When the band decides to attack the town to avenge the death of a comrade, Juan must choose. There are no white hats on any side: critical thought without love of life bears no fruit, writes Erich Fromm.
Read More »

Sergeant York (1941) Howard Hawks

Sergeant York (1941)
A hillbilly sharpshooter becomes one of the most celebrated American heroes of WWI when he single-handedly attacks and captures a German position using the same strategy as in turkey shoot.
Read More »

Sylvia Scarlett (1935) George Cukor

Sylvia Scarlett (1935)
Escaping to England from a French embezzlement charge, widower Henry Scarlett is accompanied by daughter Sylvia who, to avoid detection, “disguises” herself as a boy, “Sylvester.” They are joined by amiable con man Jimmy Monkley, then, after a brief career in crime, meet Maudie Tilt, a giddy, sexy Cockney housemaid who joins them in the new venture of entertaining at resort towns from a caravan. Through all this, amazingly no one recognizes that Sylvia is not a boy…until she meets handsome artist Michael Fane, and drama intrudes on the comedy.
Read More »

L’espion / The Defector (1966) Raoul Lévy

L'espion (1966)
Montgomery Cliff (in his last role) plays James Bower, an American physicist visiting West Germany who’s recruited by a shady CIA agent, named Adam, to help them with the defection of a Russian scientist. But an East German secret agent, named Peter Heinzeman, learns of Bower’s meeting with Adam and threatens Bower to mind his own business, while Bower learns of a back story to all this involving stolen microfilm that each side wants.
Read More »

Nora Prentiss (1947) Vincent Sherman

Nora Prentiss (1947)
Quiet, organised Dr Talbot meets nightclub singer Nora Prentiss when she is slightly hurt in a street accident. Despite her misgivings they become heavily involved and Talbot finds he is faced with the choice of leaving Nora or divorcing his wife. When a patient expires in his office, a third option seems to present itself.
Read More »

Crime et châtiment / Crime and Punishment (1956) Georges Lampin

Crime et chatiment (1956)
Convinced of his own intelligence and talent, René Brunel (Robert Hossein) decide to try that is above the bourgeois and kills an old pawnbroker in cold blood morality. Gallet commissioner (Jean Gabin), case manager, we will pursue relentlessly and subtle, convinced it has something to do with it. Suffocating pressure that added to the ideas raised in his talks with Lili Marcelini (Marina Vlady), a prostitute he has met recently, make awareness of René fall on him without mercy.
Read More »

La balance (1982) Bob Swaim

La balance (1982)
Nicole is a Parisian streetwalker and Dede is her racketeer boyfriend, on the outs with his mob bosses because of a dispute over Nicole. When a police informant (“balance”) is murdered, the cops have to scramble for a replacement. Deciding on Dede, they begin to put a nasty squeeze on him and Nicole.
Read More »

Maria no Oyuki / Oyuki, the Virgin (1935) Kenji Mizoguchi

Maria no Oyuki (1935)
Oyuki, the Virgin is based on Kawaguchi Matsutaro’s adaptation of Maupassant’s “Boule de Suif” (“Lump of Fat,” also the inspiration for Ford’s Stagecoach). To this story Mizoguchi added some of his own elements. Maupassant’s original work, set during the Franco-Prussian War, is the story of a group of people who try to flee the battleground in a horsedrawn carriage. The bourgeois use the expression “lump of fat” to refer sarcastically to the prostitute who is riding along with them. When they are caught by the enemy, they offer to send her to the commander as a human sacrifice. This done, when they leave the battlefield the next day, all they do is censure her and call her vulgar.
Read More »

Holy Matrimony (1943) John M. Stahl

Holy Matrimony (1943)
Famed English painter Priam Farll has spent the last 25 years living in various remote locations with only his trusted manservant, Henry Leek, for company. While Farll is summoned to London to receive a knighthood, Leek falls ill and dies. Wishing to avoid the ostentation knighthood ceremony, the reclusive painter assumes his valet’s identity. Farll, posing as Leek, soon receives a letter from Alice Chalice, a widow who has been corresponding with Leek through a marriage bureau and is expecting to finally meet her beloved in person…
Read More »

Tiger Bay (1959) J. Lee Thompson

Tiger Bay (1959)
Gille Jenkins, a 12 year old tomboy and compulsive liar living in a sordid tenement with her single parent mother, witnesses the murder of an immigrant Polish woman living in an nearby apartment by her former boyfriend, Bronislaus Korchinski. The young merchant marine becomes distraught when he discovers that she has become the mistress of a married British sports announcer and shoots her with her own gun. Gillie lies about the circumstances in order to keep the gun which she discovers where Korchinsky hid it. She ultimately bonds with him and misleads the police in their investigation.
Read More »