Le bonheur / Happiness (1935) Marcel L’Herbier, Gaby Morlay, Charles Boyer, Paulette Dubost, Comedy, Drama, Romance

Le bonheur AKA Happiness (1935)
Released in English-speaking countries as Happiness, Le Bonheur was based on a play by Henry Bernstein. Charles Boyer stars as a fervent anarchist who vows to kill anyone who represents “the establishment.” As a result, he ends up shooting idolized music-hall singer Gaby Morlay in full view of her audience. After this unpromising start, Boyer and Morlay get to know each other, eventually falling in love. At his attempted-murder trial, Morlay offers to testify on Boyer’s behalf – but he refuses, determined to become a martyr to his cause. Things work out in a most unexpected fashion in this offbeat romance, released in the U.S. in 1935 to capitalize on Boyer’s burgeoning American popularity.
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In Gay Madrid (1930) Robert Z. Leonard, Ramon Novarro, Dorothy Jordan, Lottice Howell, Drama, Musical, Romance

In Gay Madrid (1930)
Ricardo, a young law student in his home town of Madrid, is a carefree playboy who loves nightclubs and courting pretty girls. His father hopes to instill a more serious attitude in his son by transferring him to a school in the rural town of Santiago. At Santiago, his father’s old friend is to be his guardian. When Ricardo arrives at Santiago he joins a fraternity, and continues his carefree lifestyle while serenading and courting his guardian’s daughter, Carmina. But when Ricardo’s former girlfriend Goyita arrives for a visit, events take a serious turn …
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Down in the Valley (2005) David Jacobson, Edward Norton, Evan Rachel Wood, David Morse, Drama, Romance, Thriller

Down in the Valley (2005)
Tobe is a teenage girl in a dysfunctional American family, but one that appears both realistically normal and deeply embedded in suburbia. This is the landscape of Spielberg, but the family, inadequate father, rebellious daughter and quasi-autistic stepson, seems alienated and distant from the world around it. Into this milieu drifts Harlan, a young man whose roots are at least partially fantasised, part cowboy part movie cliche, and whose reality remains unclear. The pair embark on a romance that threatens her father, captivates her little brother and is destructive to them all. The sparse writing avoids cliche in this subtle, ethereal, independent film that is thought provoking in its mock simplicity.
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Aldeia da Roupa Branca / The Village of White Clothes (1939) Chianca de Garcia, Beatriz Costa, Manuel Santos Carvalho, José Amaro, Comedy

Aldeia da Roupa Branca AKA The Village of White Clothes (1939)
Gracinda, a young laundry washer, lives with her godfather, “Uncle” Jacinto, and together they run a family business, doing the laundry for residents of Lisbon in their small village in the outskirts of that city (Canecas). Unfortunately, the business is not going very well, but that changes when Gracinda decides to go to the city to try to convince Chico, “Uncle” Jacinto’s son, with whom she is in love, to return to the village and give new life to the business. The village is preparing for the annual festivities and a dispute erupts between “Uncle” Jacinto and his business rival , the widow Quiteria, when each of them invites different bands to play at the same time during the party and dances.
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Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky / A Trick of the Light (1995) Wim Wenders, Stefan Barber, Wiebke Bayer, Nadine Büttner, Biography, Drama, Documentary

A Trick of the Light (1995)
A rare gem of cinematic storytelling that weaves docudrama, fictional reenactment, and experimental photography into a powerful, reflective work on the early days of German cinema. The film tells the story of the Skladanowsky Brothers, the German-born duo responsible for inventing the “bioskop”, an early version of the film projector.
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Overboard (1987) Garry Marshall, Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Edward Herrmann, Comedy, Romance

Overboard (1987)
Snobbish and wealthy Joanna Stayton (Goldie Hawn) is living a life of leisure with her husband, Grant (Edward Herrmann), when she falls off their yacht and suffers amnesia. Grant takes the opportunity to rid himself of the demanding Joanna – but Dean (Kurt Russell), a widowed carpenter with four kids who once worked for Joanna, arrives and claims she’s his wife. Joanna can’t remember her past identity, but has trouble believing that she was ever meant to be a working-class mother of four.
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Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) Edward D. Wood Jr., Gregory Walcott, Tom Keene, Mona McKinnon, Horror, Sci-Fi

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)
In California, an old man (Bela Lugosi) grieves the loss of his wife (Vampira) and on the next day he also dies. However, the space soldier Eros and her mate Tanna use an electric device to resurrect them both and the strong Inspector Clay (Tor Johnson) that was murdered by the couple. Their intention is not to conquer Earth but to stop mankind from developing the powerful bomb “Solobonite” that would threaten the universe. When the population of Hollywood and Washington DC sees flying saucers on the sky, a colonel, a police lieutenant, a commercial pilot, his wife and a policeman try to stop the aliens.
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Xiao cheng zhi chun / Spring in a Small Town (1948) Mu Fei, Chaoming Cui, Wei Li, Yu Shi, Drama, Romance

Xiao cheng zhi chun AKA Spring in a Small Town (1948)
Following WWII and with China brought to it’s knees by the actions of the Japanese, prior to the rise of the Communists, led by Chairman Mao. This is the time during which Fei Mu’s film takes place. Wei Wei plays a woman who lives a lonely life, shackled by her care for her gentle, but ill husband (Shi Yu)- that is until her first love reappears into her life. This is Fei’s penultimate film as director, but is still enjoyed by many today as one of his best works. It has now been a firm favorite of many since it was restored in the 80’s by the China Film Archive and some rate it as one of the greatest Chinese movies in history.
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Tokyo-Ga (1985) Wim Wenders, Chishû Ryû, Werner Herzog, Yûharu Atsuta, Documentary

TOKYO-GA, Spanish poster art, 1985, ©Gray City

TOKYO-GA, Spanish poster art, 1985, ©Gray City

Taking a breather from the Paris, Texas shooting, Wim Wenders hopped a plane, camera in hand, to look for the Tokyo enshrined by the late Yasujiro Ozu (whose work Wenders dubs “the sacred treasure of the cinema”). What he found instead, documented in this filmic journal, was an urbanized dislocation not far from the forlorn emptiness he coached out of German and American vistas. Whether abstracting businessmen teeing off atop skyscrapers or the rigorous, artisanal craft of building a wax sandwich display, Wenders scrambles for humanity seeping through neon and steel – a humanity linked, inevitably, to the old Japan of Ozu’s films (rebellious tykes, cherry blossoms, tranquil countrysides). A far less queasy piece of hero-worship than Lightning Over Water, the picture meditates not so much on Ozu the filmmaker than on Ozu the vanishing feeling, motifs and images reconsidered in a modernized Japan circa 1983 (the trains that fill the Japanese master’s pictures with notions of inexorable movement have now become bullet expresses, gliding with smooth, ominous impersonality). Elsewhere, Wenders bumps into Werner Herzog (who bitches about having to space-travel to find pure images nowadays), Chris Marker (whose Sans Soleil would make a superb double-bill with Tokyo-Ga) and two aged Ozu stalwarts, gracious, dignified leading man Chishu Ryu and anecdotal camera operator Yuuharu Atsuta. Wenders’ eulogy for a culture alienating its own roots is built, characteristically, upon cinema’s capacity for regenerative beauty, though his links to Ozu are, if anything, more tenuous than his affinity with Nicholas Ray – Ozu’s images distill life, Wenders’ etherealize it. Cinematography by Edward Lachman.
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Targets (1968) Peter Bogdanovich, Boris Karloff, Tim O’Kelly, Arthur Peterson, Thriller

Targets (1968)
Seemingly happy gun enthusiast Bobby Thompson (Tim O’Kelly) tells his wife Ilene (Tanya Morgan) that he’s feeling disturbed, but she hasn’t time to hear him out. Aging horror film star Byron Orlock (Boris Karloff) reluctantly agrees to a public appearance at a drive-in, even though he’s bitter and has announced his retirement. Their paths will eventually cross, as Tommy embarks on a wave of modern horror that outpaces anything in Orlock’s old movies.
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Special Agent (1935) William Keighley, Bette Davis, George Brent, Ricardo Cortez, Crime, Drama

Special Agent (1935)
Newspaperman Bill Bradford becomes a special agent for the tax service trying to end the career of racketeer Alexander Carston. Julie Gardner is Carston’s bookkeeper. Bradford enters Carston’s organization and Julie cooperates with him to land Carston in jail. An informer squeals on them. Julie is kidnapped by Carston’s henchmen as she is about to testify.
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You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939) George Marshall, W.C. Fields, Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy, Comedy

You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939)
Larson E. Whipsnade runs a seedy circus which is perpetually in debt. His performers give him nothing but trouble, especially Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. Meanwhile, Whipsnade’s son and daughter, Phineas and Vicky, attend a posh college. Vicky turns down her caddish but rich suitor Roger Bel-Goodie, but changes her mind when she learns of her father’s financial troubles. Will Vicky marry for money or succumb to the ventriloqual charm of Edgar Bergen? Will Whipsnade’s Circus Giganticus make it over the state line one jump ahead of the sheriff?
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