Arakure / Untamed Woman (1957) Mikio Naruse, Hideko Takamine, Ken Uehara, Masayuki Mori, Drama

Arakure (Mikio Naruse, 1957)
Set in the Taish? period of Japan (dating from 1912 to 1926), Untamed follows the fiery Oshima (in a superbly eccentric performance by Takamine) as she passes from one suitor to another, a series of calamities befalling her along the way. Characteristic of Naruse’s work, urban and rural settings are juxtaposed: the moody Tokyo streets against a majestic mountain village. At each point, the various situations Oshima is caught in seem uncannily bound up with her surroundings. It’s worth noting that the film, while not widely known, is singled out for praise by critic Chris Fujiwara.
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Bedtime Story (1964) Ralph Levy, Marlon Brando, David Niven, Shirley Jones, Comedy

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Benson, is a Casanova who despises women and invents all sorts of tricks to bed them and leave them. His favorite one is going through Germany posing as an American GI of Teunonic extraction. Whenever he spots a girl he likes, he takes a Polarod picture of her house, knocks on the door waving the photo and pretending to be on a pilgrimage to this very cottage his grandmother so vividly described. It is an infallible system for a hit-and-run seduction. Benson seems content with his game until he meets Jamison, a real operator who has learned to combine sex with money. Jamison poses as an exiled prince and not only gets women to share his bed but also to bestow their jewels on him for the sake of the counterrevolution. Benson decides to corner Jamison’s market on sex plus finance. A contest develops, and whoever wins will dominate a small Riviera resort as “King of the Mountain,” the film’s original title. Remade in 1988 as “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.”
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Rififi / Du rififi chez les hommes (1955) Jules Dassin, Jean Servais, Carl Möhner, Robert Manuel, Crime, Thriller, Film-Noir

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After making such American noir classics as Brute Force and The Naked City, the blacklisted director Jules Dassin went to Paris and embarked on his masterpiece: a twisting, turning tale of four ex-cons who hatch one last glorious robbery in the City of Light. Rififi is the ultimate heist movie, a mélange of suspense, brutality, and dark humor that was an international hit, earned Dassin the best director prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and has proven wildly influential on the decades of heist thrillers that have come in its wake.
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Kidnapped / Secuestrados (2010) Miguel Ángel Vivas, Fernando Cayo, Manuela Vellés, Ana Wagener, Horror, Thriller

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Jaime, his wife Marta and their teenage daughter Isa move to a dream house in Madrid and they plan a family dinner to celebrate. Out of the blue, three violent hooded thieves break in their house and hold the Marta and Isa hostage while their leader goes to the bank with Jaime to withdraw money from the family bank accounts in a tragic night of terror.
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Shadow on the Wall (1950) Pat Jackson, Ann Sothern, Zachary Scott, Gigi Perreau, Crime, Drama, Film-Noir, Thriller

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Angered that her sister Celia has stolen her fiance, Dell Faring kills her and allows Celia’s husband David, knocked out in an argument with Celia, to take the blame and end up on death row. Later Dell, finding out that David’s young daughter Susan was witness to the crime and is undergoing psychiatric treatment, plans to eliminate her before her memory returns.
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Zarak (1956) Terence Young, Victor Mature, Michael Wilding, Anita Ekberg, Action, Adventure, Romance

Zarak (Terence Young, 1956)
On the mountainous frontier between British India and Afghanistan, circa 1860s, Zarak Khan kisses Salma, the youngest wife of his father, Haji Khan. Outraged, his father orders Zarak to be flogged to death but spares his life at the urging of an elderly Mullah. Zarak now leaves his village and becomes a notorious outlaw, prompting the British to assign a Major Ingram to capture him. Zarak and Ingram have several encounters, developing a grudging respect for each other. When Ingram is captured by Ahmad, one of Zarak’s rivals, Zarak risks his life to save the British officer.
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Christmas Eve (1947) Edwin L. Marin, George Raft, George Brent, Randolph Scott, Comedy, Drama

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The greedy nephew of eccentric Matilda Reid seeks to have her judged incompetent so he can administer her wealth; but she will be saved if her three long-lost adopted sons appear for a Christmas Eve reunion. Separate stories reveal Michael as a bankrupt playboy loved by loyal Ann; Mario as a seemingly shady character tangling with a Nazi war criminal in South America; Jonathan as a hard-drinking rodeo rider intent on a flirtatious social worker. Is there hope for Matilda?
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Snowbound (1948) David MacDonald, Dennis Price, Mila Parély, Stanley Holloway, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

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A frequent visitor to the Late Late Show, the Anglo-American Snowbound is set in the frozen Alps. Robert Newton and Dennis Price head an expedition in search of a fortune of gold, stashed away by the Nazis in the last days of the war. Snowed into an old cabin, the men quickly get on one another’s nerves. Just when tension reaches the boiling point, one of the party saves the day. He happens to be a movie screenwriter, who uses his cinematic knowhow to reach a solution to their dilemma. Snowbound is based on The Lonely Skier, a novel by Hammond Innes.
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Thieves Like Us (1974) Robert Altman, Keith Carradine, Shelley Duvall, John Schuck, Crime, Drama, Romance

Thieves Like Us (Robert Altman, 1974)
Two convicts break out of Mississippi State Penitentiary in 1936 to join a third on a long spree of bank robbing, their special talent and claim to fame. The youngest of the three falls in love along the way with a girl met at their hideout, the older man is a happy professional criminal with a romance of his own, the third is a fast lover and hard drinker fond of his work. The young lovers begin to move out of the sphere in which they have met, a last robbery in Yazoo City goes badly and puts paid to the gang once and for all as a profitable venture, but isn’t the end of the story quite yet, as all three are wanted and notorious men with altogether different points of view on the situation they are faced with.
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