
A young girl who lives on a tropical island loses her parents to a voodoo sacrifice, but although she manages to escape the island, a curse is put on her. Years later, as an adult, she feels a strong compulsion to return to the island to confront her past. Her husband, her daughter and her nanny go with her, but once back on the island, the woman finds herself elevated by the locals to the stature of a voodoo goddess, and she begins her inevitable descent into madness, with disastrous results for her family.
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Monthly Archives: January 2016
American Me (1992) Edward James Olmos, William Forsythe, Sal Lopez, Biography, Crime, Drama

This epic depiction of thirty years of Chicano gang life in Los Angeles focuses on a teen named Santana who, with his friends Mundo and the Caucasian-but-acting-Hispanic J.D., form their own gang and are soon arrested for a break-in. Santana gets into trouble again and goes straight from reform school to prison, spending eighteen years there, and becoming leader of a powerful gang, both inside and outside the prison, while there. When he is finally released, he tries to make sense of the violence in his life, in a world much changed from when last he was in it.
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The Story of Temple Drake (1933) Stephen Roberts, Miriam Hopkins, William Gargan, Jack La Rue, Drama

Temple Drake is a Southern belle who leads men on with her sexuality but usually leaves them wanting. She’s loved by lawyer Stephen Benbow, whom she likes but doesn’t love. While out carousing with one of her beaux, she finds herself stranded with a gang of bootleggers, one of whom, Trigger, rapes her and makes her his sex slave. When another man is accused of a murder Trigger committed, Stephen defends him and sets out to find Trigger. But he isn’t prepared for whom he finds with Trigger, or what she’s become.
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Starbuck (2011) Ken Scott, Patrick Huard, Julie LeBreton, Antoine Bertrand, Comedy, Drama

At 42, David lives the life of an irresponsible adolescent. He coasts through life with minimal effort and maintains a complicated relationship with Valerie, a young policewoman. Just as she tells him she’s pregnant, David’s past resurfaces. Twenty years earlier, he began providing sperm to a fertility clinic in exchange for money. He discovers he’s the father of 533 children, 142 of whom have filed a class action lawsuit to determine the identity of their biological father, known only by the pseudonym Starbuck.
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Une femme française / A French Woman (1995) Régis Wargnier, Emmanuelle Béart, Daniel Auteuil, Gabriel Barylli, Drama

Wed just as war breaks out, Jeanne hardly gets to know her military husband, Louis, before the debacle of 1940. While waiting for his return from a POW camp, Jeanne journeys through countless affairs with Louis’ comrades- in-arms. Hopiing to forget these wartime betrayls, Louis takes his wife and the infant twins he didn’t father to Berlin, where she falls for Matthais, a sensitive German industrialist. When the Indochinese war sends Louis to Vietnam, Matthais follows Jeanne back to France. A subsequent move to Damascus where Louis is posted as military attache, fails to break their bond.
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Attack! (1956) Robert Aldrich, Jack Palance, Lee Marvin, Eddie Albert, Drama, War, Action

During the closing days of WWII, a National Guard Infantry Company is assigned the task of setting up artillery observation posts in a strategic area. Lieutenant Costa knows that Cooney is in command only because of ‘connections’ he had made state-side. Costa has serious doubts concerning Cooneys’ ability to lead the group. When Cooney sends Costa and his men out, and refuses to re-enforce them, Costa swears revenge.
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Il grande silenzio / The Great Silence (1968) Sergio Corbucci, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Klaus Kinski, Frank Wolff, Western

Bounty killers led by Loco prey on outlaws hiding out in the snowbound Utahn mountains. After Pauline’s husband becomes Loco’s latest victim, she hires a gunman for revenge; Silence, mute since his throat was cut when he was a boy.
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Petrolejové lampy / Oil Lamps (1971) Juraj Herz, Iva Janzurová, Petr Cepek, Marie Rosulková, Drama

In 1900, Stepha, the vivacious 30 year old daughter of a wealthy couple, agrees to marry her cousin Paul, who has accumulated large debts as an Austrian army officer. Paul refuses to work or to consummate the marriage, and then his health steadily declines.
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Anita – ur en tonårsflickas dagbok / Anita: Swedish Nymphet (1973) Torgny Wickman, Christina Lindberg, Stellan Skarsgård, Danièle Vlaminck, Drama, Erotic

Anita is a girl of only 16 years, and while she has developed early physically, to a mature woman, she is psychologically completly ruthless. Her relationship the her parents and her friends is very poor and she is regarded with contempt by the people around her, even by the men who so ruthlessly use her. During her troubles she meets Erik, a young psychology student. Gently and carefully he begins to dispell her psychological blocks. In the course of this treatment she reveals to him some of the shocking espisodes of her previous experience and how an inner compulsion forces her into humiliating debauchery in dangerous environments. Erik believes he has the solution to Anita’s problems: to let her move into an artist’s communal experiment, of which he is already a member. The common interest of this collective is largely the performing of classical music. Anita’s prosence in the collective, however, is regarded by some of the other girls as highly provocative.
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Arranged (2007) Diane Crespo, Stefan C. Schaefer, Zoe Lister-Jones, Francis Benhamou, Mimi Lieber, Comedy, Drama, Romance

ARRANGED centers on the friendship between an Orthodox Jewish woman and a Muslim woman who meet as first-year teachers at a public school in Brooklyn. Over the course of the year they learn they share much in common – not least of which is that they are both going through the process of arranged marriages.
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