Tag Archives: english

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) Alex Gibney, John Beard, Tim Belden, Barbara Boxer, Documentary

Enron The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)
Enron dives from the seventh largest US company to bankruptcy in less than a year in this tale told chronologically. The emphasis is on human drama, from suicide to 20,000 people sacked: the personalities of Ken Lay (with Falwellesque rectitude), Jeff Skilling (he of big ideas), Lou Pai (gone with $250 M), and Andy Fastow (the dark prince) dominate. Along the way, we watch Enron game California’s deregulated electricity market, get a free pass from Arthur Andersen (which okays the dubious mark-to-market accounting), use greed to manipulate banks and brokerages (Merrill Lynch fires the analyst who questions Enron’s rise), and hear from both Presidents Bush what great guys these are.
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The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday (1976) Don Taylor, Lee Marvin, Oliver Reed, Robert Culp, Comedy, Western

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Sam Longwood, a frontiersman who has seen better days, spies the gold-mine partner, Jack Colby, who ran off with all the gold from a mine they were prospecting fifteen years earlier. He tells his other partners from that time, Joe Knox and Billy, and they confront Colby demanding not only the thousand dollars he took but an addition fifty-nine thousand for their trouble. After being thwarted in this attempt, they, and a would-be whore named Thursday, hatch a plan to kidnap Colby’s wife, Nancy Sue, who is coincidently Sam’s old flame, but find that Nancy Sue is not the sweet girl that Sam remembers.
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Within Our Gates (1920) Oscar Micheaux, Evelyn Preer, Flo Clements, James D. Ruffin, Drama, Romance

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Southern negro Sylvia Landry visits her cousin Alma in the north, where there is less racial prejudice than in her home town of Piney Woods in the deep south, and is anxiously awaiting her fiancé, Conrad. But Alma has designs on Conrad and tricks Sylvia into a compromising situation when he arrives, and he abandons her. Disheartened, she returns to Piney Woods to help a reverend running a school for young negroes. Sylvia learns that the reverend hasn’t the heart to turn away poor students, and unless he can raise $5,000 to supplement the $1.49 per child per year that the state supplies, the school will be closed. She goes up north again to try to raise the money and has little success, but meets kindly negro, Dr. V. Vivian, who helps her regain her stolen purse. When she saves a child from being hit by an auto, she herself is slightly injured. But the owner of the car is philanthropist Mrs. Elena Warwick, who is sympathetic to her quest and promises to donate the $5,000 to the school…
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Gruppo di famiglia in un interno / Conversation Piece (1974) Luchino Visconti, Burt Lancaster, Helmut Berger, Silvana Mangano, Drama, Romance

Gruppo di famiglia in un interno (1974)
Retired professor of American origin lives solitary life in luxurious palazzo in Rome He is confronted by vulgar Italian marchesa and her companions: her lover, her daughter and daughter’s boyfriend and forced to rent to them an apartment on upper floor of his palazzo. From this point his quiet routine is turned into chaos by his tenants’ machinations, and everybody’s life is taking unexpected but inevitable turn.
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Flight to Fury (1964) Monte Hellman, Dewey Martin, Fay Spain, Jack Nicholson, Adventure

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This adventure is set in the Philippines and chronicles the exploits of two men who survive a plane crash in the jungle. One of the men is an avaricious killer who has come to the islands to search for a fortune in diamonds. The other is an international adventurer. Now they must somehow overcome their vast personal differences and desires to survive in the steamy wilderness.
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The Golden Bowl (2000) James Ivory, Uma Thurman, Jeremy Northam, Kate Beckinsale, Drama, Romance

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Adam Verver, a US billionaire in London, dotes on daughter Maggie, an innocent abroad. An impecunious Italian, Prince Amerigo, marries her even though her best friend, Charlotte Stant, an alabaster beauty with brains, no money, and a practical and romantic nature, is his lover. She and Amerigo keep it secret from Maggie that they know each other, so Maggie interests her widowed father in Charlotte, who is happy with the match because she wants to be close to Amerigo. Charlotte desires him, the lovers risk discovery, Amerigo longs for Italy, Maggie wants to spare her father pain, and Adam wants to return to America to build a museum. Amidst lies and artifice, what fate awaits adulterers?
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