Daily Archives: September 24, 2016

Il deserto rosso / Red Desert (1964) Michelangelo Antonioni, Monica Vitti, Richard Harris, Carlo Chionetti, Drama

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In a bleak rundown industrial area a young woman, Giuliana, tries to cope with life. She’s married to Ugo the manager of a local plant but is soon having an affair with one of his co-workers, Corrado Zeller, who is visiting. Giuliana is unstable, not quite knowing anymore just what her role is, whether that be a wife, a mother or just another person. Her escape from life is short-lived however as Zeller is simply using her to satisfy his own needs and desires.
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Kyrkoherden / The Lustful Vicar (1970) Torgny Wickman, Jarl Borssén, Margit Carlqvist, Magali Noël, Comedy, Erotic

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During a witch trial in the seventeenth century a woman is accused of being a witch and burned at the stake. The witch curse the village priest who pushed through the accusations and promises that her offspring will avenge her. During the Caroline the priest’s son take over as vicar of the congregation, and the daughter of the witch bewitches him so that he suffers constant erection. This is off course very embarrassing for the vicar. The local women has to step in and try to set things right.
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Calling Bulldog Drummond (1951) Victor Saville, Walter Pidgeon, Margaret Leighton, Robert Beatty, Crime, Mystery

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All the various Bulldog Drummond movie series had run their courses by 1951; nonetheless, MGM decided to revive the property (and simultaneously liquidate some “frozen funds”) with the British-filmed Calling Bulldog Drummond. Walter Pidgeon stars as novelist Sapper’s soldier-of-fortune, here retooled as a respectable retired military officer. Summoned to London by Scotland Yard, Drummond is assigned to break up a dangerous criminal gang. He is aided by female undercover officer Helen Smith (Margaret Leighton), who turns out to be not much help at all. Trapped in a bombed-out building and surrounded by hulking henchmen, Drummond seems to have run out of luck. Some of the film’s brightest moments are provided by David Tomlinson as a traditional “silly ass” type who is lot smarter than he seems. Bernard Lee, the future “M” in the James Bond films of the 1960s, appears as a secondary villain.
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A Night to Remember (1958) Roy Ward Baker, Kenneth More, Ronald Allen, Robert Ayres, Action, Drama, History

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On April 14, 1912, just before midnight, the “unsinkable” Titanic struck an iceberg. In less than three hours, it had plunged to the bottom of the sea, taking with it more than 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers. In his unforgettable render­ing of Walter Lord’s book of the same name, the acclaimed British director Roy Ward Baker depicts with sensitivity, awe, and a fine sense of tragedy the ship’s last hours. Featuring remarkably restrained performances, A Night to Remember is cinema’s subtlest and best dramatization of this monumental twentieth-century catastrophe.
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