Tag Archives: UK

The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966) Don Sharp, Christopher Lee, Douglas Wilmer, Heinz Drache

The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966)
Christopher Lee returns as Sax Rohmer’s insidious Asian villain Fu Manchu for the second of his five vehicles. This time Fu Manchu and his army of henchmen are kidnaping the daughters of prominent scientists and taking them to his remote island headquarters. Instead of asking for ransom, Fu demands that the fathers help him to build a death ray, which he intends to use to take over the world. But Fu’s archenemy, Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard, is determined not to let that happen…
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Max (2002) Menno Meyjes, John Cusack, Noah Taylor, Leelee Sobieski

Max (2002)
Munich, 1918. German-Jew Max Rothman has returned to much of his pre-war life which includes to his wife Nina and their two children, to his mistress Liselore von Peltz, and to his work as an art dealer. He has however not returned to being an aspiring painter as he lost his dominant right arm during the war. He is approached by an aspiring painter, a thirty-year old Austrian war veteran named Adolf Hitler, who wants him to show his works. Although he doesn’t think the paintings are all that original and he doesn’t really like Hitler as a person, Rothman takes Hitler under his wings if only because of their camaraderie of being war veterans, and knowing that Hitler had nothing and no one to come back to after the war unlike himself. Rothman believes that Hitler has promise if only he can find his original artistic point of view. In part out of need for money, Hitler, on the urging of Captain Karl Mayr, agrees to work for the army as a political spokesman in anti-Semitic propaganda.
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The Wrong Box (1966) Bryan Forbes, John Mills, Michael Caine, Ralph Richardson

The Wrong Box (1966)
A tontine is established for a dozen children, a tontine being a kind of bet/insurance, money is put in for each to grow with interest and the last survivor is to get the lot. We watch the group dwindle until only two brothers are left. One brother is watched by his nephews who will keep him alive at all costs, the other lives in ill health and poverty as the only support of his fairly stupid grandson. Statues and bodies are switched, in the wrong boxes until everyone is sure someone has died. Now if they can only make it seem as if the other brother died first, hundreds of thousands of pounds (in Victorian England when a pound was a pound) will be theirs.
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Sons and Lovers (1960) Jack Cardiff, Trevor Howard, Dean Stockwell, Wendy Hiller

Sons and Lovers (1960)
Jack Cardiff received a 1960 Oscar Nomination as Best Director for this lush, engaging film starring Trevor Howard, Dean Stockwell and Donald Pleasence, which was adapted from D.H. Lawrence’s classic novel. A young man with artistic talent who lives in a close-knit, English coal-mining town during the early 20th Century finds himself inhibited by his emotionally manipulative, domineering mother.
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Sous les bombes / Under the Bombs (2007) Philippe Aractingi, Nada Abou Farhat, Georges Khabbaz, Rawia Elchab

Sous les bombes (2007)
Under the bombs, a woman searches for her son. A man accompanies her. They have nothing in common. Toni is Christian and dreams of leaving the country. Zeina is Shiite, and has emigrated to Dubai. Back in Lebanon to try and save her son, she realizes she doesn’t want to leave anymore. And yet, despite this all, Toni and Zeina will love each other, as a kind of response to the death striking all around them.
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The Sea Wolves (1980) Andrew V. McLaglen, Gregory Peck, Roger Moore, David Niven

The Sea Wolves (1980)
In March 1943, in the World War II, the Germans use the neutral harbor of the Portuguese colony of Mormugoa to transmit information to a U-Boat about the allied ships to sink them in international waters. In Calcutta, the British Intelligence assigns Colonel Lewis Pugh and Captain Gavin Stewart to spy in Goa and they discover that there are three German vessels anchored in the area and the famous spy Trompeta is based in Goa. They kidnap Trompeta to interrogate him but Lewis accidentally kills the spy after fighting with him in the runaway car. Meanwhile Gavin has one night stand with the gorgeous and elegant Mrs. Cromwell, who is the partner of Trompeta. They fail in their mission, but Lewis and Gavin convince their chief to use the veterans from Calcutta Light Horse led by the retired Colonel W.H. Grice to travel to Goa on board of the old ship Phoebe, pretending to be drunken businessmen on holiday.
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