Tag Archives: UK

The Magic Box (1951) John Boulting, Robert Donat, Maria Schell, Renée Asherson, Biography, Drama

The Magic Box (John Boulting, 1951)
Now old, ill, poor, and largely forgotten, William Freise-Greene was once very different. As young and handsome William Green he changed his name to include his first wife’s so that it sounded more impressive for the photographic portrait work he was so good at. But he was also an inventor and his search for a way to project moving pictures became an obsession that ultimately changed the life of all those he loved.
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Sands of the Kalahari (1965) Cy Endfield, Stanley Baker, Stuart Whitman, Susannah York, Adventure

Sands of the Kalahari (1965)
A small airplane crashes in the sweltering deserts of southern Africa hundreds of miles from civilization. As parallels are drawn between the stranded group of seven passengers and a nearby pack of savage baboons, one of the men’s survivalist nature gets the better of him, as he decides his chances of survival would be better if the other men were eliminated one-by-one.
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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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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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Brick Lane (2007) Sarah Gavron, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Satish Kaushik, Christopher Simpson, Drama

Brick Lane (2007)
A young Bangladeshi woman, Nazneen, arrives in 1980s London, leaving behind her beloved sister and home, for an arranged marriage and a new life. Trapped within the four walls of her flat in East London, and in a loveless marriage with the middle aged Chanu, she fears her soul is quietly dying. Her sister Hasina, meanwhile, through letters to Nazneen, tells of her carefree life back in Bangladesh, stumbling from one adventure to the next. Nazneen struggles to accept her lifestyle, and keeps her head down in spite of life’s blows, but she soon discovers that life cannot be avoided – and is forced to confront it the day that the hotheaded young Karim comes knocking at her door
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La finestra di fronte / Facing Windows (2003) Ferzan Ozpetek, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Massimo Girotti, Raoul Bova, Drama, Romance

La finestra di fronte (2003)
Giovanna is a bookkeeper in a company which packs chickens. She is married to a man who has a precarious job. First she starts being curious about a young man who lives in the block opposite hers, and then she falls in love with him. The relationship between the two becomes much stronger when she starts to find out more about him from an old man who bursts into their lives. The old man, obsessed with the memories of some things that happened n the long past autumn of 1943, has lost his memory and finds refuge in Giovanna.
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The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (1952) Harold French, Claude Rains, Märta Torén, Marius Goring, Crime, Drama

The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (1952)
Meek head clerk Kees Popinga realises at the same time as the police that owner De Koster has stripped his Dutch company clean because of his infatuation with a Parisian girl, Michelle. After a confrontation between the two men, De Koster ends up dead and Popinga makes off to Paris with the remaining money. There he contacts Michelle, with the police in close pursuit.
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The Seventh Veil (1945) Compton Bennett, James Mason, Ann Todd, Herbert Lom, Drama, Music

The Seventh Veil (1945)
One dark summer night, Francesca Cunningham, a once world famed pianist, escapes from her hospital room and tries to commit suicide by jumping off a local bridge. She is rescued and taken back to the hospital and undergoes psychological treatment by Dr. Larsen. Larsen, desperately wants to know the events and persons who drove her to this state and help her. He makes Francesca talk about her past – a past with a controlling guardian, Nicholas, no friends, kept apart from the man she loved and forced to practice the piano 5-6 hours a day.
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Tower of Evil / Horror on Snape Island (1972) Jim O’Connolly, Bryant Haliday, Jill Haworth, Mark Edwards, Horror

Tower of Evil (1972) Horror on Snape Island
This gory low-budget British outing involves a team of archaeologists landing on fog-shrouded Snape Island – recently the site of a hideous double murder – in search of the tomb of a Phoenician chief and subsequently falling victim to an unseen maniac. Accompanying the shore party is a private detective (Bryant Halliday), hired by the family of the young woman suspected of the crimes (Candace Glendenning), who is determined to get to the bottom of the mysterious murders. Though it is eventually determined that the real killer is still at large, the archaeologists stubbornly refuse to abort their dig…and summarily suffer the consequences. Released originally in 1972, this crass, exploitative potboiler (based on a story by horror author George Baxt) found its way to American theaters in 1981 as Beyond the Fog in an attempt to cash in on John Carpenter’s 1980 film. Released later to video and cable as Tower of Evil.
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Wild Side (2004) Sébastien Lifshitz, Stéphanie Michelini, Yasmine Belmadi, Edouard Nikitine, Drama

Wild Side (Sebastien Lifshitz, 2004)
In Paris, the thirty-two years old travesty Stéphanie a.k.a. Pierre is a streetwalker that lives with the Egyptian gay hustler Djamel and the Russian gay Mikhail that works in a restaurant. When the hospital where her mother Liliane is terminal calls her, she travels with her two lovers to the countryside to look after her dying mother. While at home, she recalls her childhood and how she met Djamel and Mikhail.
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