All seems lost. And then, in an old, lonely and icy park two shadowy figures meet: those of Deus and a Messenger from God. The Messenger gives the crook (the temporary state of poor João de Deus) a suitcase stuffed with money. His mission accomplished, the Messenger leaves. João counts the bank notes. The silent waters of a nearby lake are disturbed when a heavy object plunges in. João goes to see what is happening. A young girl (Joana) is drowning. João throws himself into the water and carries the unconscious Joana off to a convent (Capucines?). How Responsible! João de Deus returns to the park to recover the case and its precious contents: happily, nothing has been touched…
Read More »

After Michael Carter’s fiancée commits suicide, Michael vows to seek revenge on his wealthy family, who sabotaged their marriage. He drives across the country angrily, and lands up at a saloon, where he is shot by an Indian, Pete. Pete’s girlfriend, Tonita nurses Michael’s wound and falls in love with him. Michael realizes this, proposes marriage to Tonita – a perfect revenge for his prejudice family. They marry and he takes her to New York, in full Indian dress hoping to embarrass the family. The press and society mock the Carters – to Michael’s delight. Tonita’s confused as to why Michael doesn’t want to consummate their marriage. At a coming out party for Tonita, set up by Diana (Michael’s sister), Tonita’s a big hit. Michael becomes angry for his family has “won”. Tonita realizes the true reason for their marriage, and finds comfort with Bob, Diana’s lover. Diana catches Tonita and Bob together and kills Bob, but, Tonita takes the blame and is arrested, for this is the perfect …
Read More »

Angel Deverell comes of age in Edwardian Cheshire knowing she will be a great writer. Rising above her class (her widowed mother has a grocery shop), Angel finds a publisher and a wide audience for her frothy romances. With royalties, she buys an estate, then she’s smitten by Esme, a rake from local aristocracy and an artist of dark temperament. She hires Esme’s sister Nora, who dotes on her, as a personal assistant, and pursues Esme. Angel is grandly self-centered, coloring her world as if it were one of her novels. When the Great War breaks out and reality begins to trump her will, can Angel hold on to her man and her public?
Read More »

A ruthless real-estate tycoon sets his sights on a small fishing village, which he believes he can buy cheaply and turn into a profitable tourist destination. He hires a handsome young ladies’ man named Junpei to seduce the women of the village and persuade them to sign over their land to his boss. He succeeds, but when the ladies discover the mens’ real plans, things take a different turn.
Read More »

In 1999, Gregory Peck (1916-2003) visits the Barter Theatre, Abingdon, VA, where he had acted in 1940 and where this evening he tells stories and answers questions about his career. Interspersed are clips from Peck’s films and from interviews recorded over the years and vérité contemporary footage of visiting with his daughter Cecilia before and after the birth of her son, receiving the National Medal of Arts, chatting with Lauren Bacall and with Martin Scorsese, and dining with Jacques Chirac, always with his wife of forty-four years, Veronique Passani, beside him. Throughout, Peck is informal, candid, and wry.
Read More »

Jacques Demy followed up The Umbrellas of Cherbourg with another musical about missed connections and second chances, this one a more effervescent confection. Twins Delphine and Solange, a dance instructor and a music teacher (played by real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac), long for big-city life; when a fair comes through their quiet port town, so does the possibility of escape. With its jazzy Michel Legrand score, pastel paradise of costumes, and divine supporting cast (George Chakiris, Grover Dale, Danielle Darrieux, Michel Piccoli, and Gene Kelly), The Young Girls of Rochefort is a tribute to Hollywood optimism from sixties French cinema’s preeminent dreamer.
Read More »

After Flamenco (1995) and Tango (1998) – nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, in 2005 Carlos Saura completes his trilogy on modern urban song with Fados. After over two years of research into the subject, Carlos Saura takes an enormous step forward in his approximation to music. If, in his earlier musicals, Iberia, Flamenco, Tango…, he based his work on dancing, in Fados he makes a special effort with the plot and image to reflect the birth of a suburban, dockland music which is in itself a synthesis of all of the music born towards the end of the 19th century.
Read More »

Kalu is a taxi-driver in Bombay, India. He has two women who love him and would like to marry him. Kalu first wants to establish himself, and become rich, before he can even think of marriage. One of the women who loves him, has a father who is involved in gangster-type activities, and would like Kalu also to join him so that he can get rich soon. Kalu has now to decide to become rich quick or sleep better.
Read More »

The Kobayashi family finally get the chance to move out of their tiny, cramped Tokyo apartment in favour of the suburban house of their dreams. But all is not well: the house is infested by termites and the family starts cracking up: Son Masaki is studying so obsessively for his exams that he’s losing his mind; daughter Erika is oblivious of all but her forthcoming record company audition, grandfather Yasukuni starts getting World War II flashbacks and father Katsuhiko is so worried about his family’s “sickness” that he thinks can only be cured by group suicide…
Read More »

Étienne Ranson is the black sheep of his family. Having made his fortune in Tunisia, he returns to France and receives a cool reception from his uncle, Achille Guéroy, the owner of a glove factory in Grenoble. Guéroy is astounded when his nephew returns the money he had lent him and immediately looks at Étienne in a new light when it becomes apparent that he is now a very wealthy man. However, when Ranson is arrested for his involvement in a bloody riot in Tunisia, the family is quick to disown him again. When the charges against him are dropped, Ranson returns to Grenoble and intervenes to end a strike at the factory. Ranson then learns that his cousin Jacques has lost the company’s entire cash reserves through high-risk speculation. Aware that the Guéroys face ruin and dishonour, Ranson agrees to bail them out, on one condition: that he can marry his adopted cousin Geneviève. But she is already engaged to another man…
Read More »