A man calling himself Jin-young walks into a police station to report a missing person: himself. Starting at the end of the story, Jin-young is revealed to be be Suk-won, a lawyer suffering severe memory loss and a total change of character. Formerly ruthless and calculating, the amnesiac Suk-won is kind and gentle; completely unlike the man his colleagues want for the important trial of their highest billing client, Mrs. Kim. In order to appease his firm, Suk-won goes to see a psychiatrist. At the hospital he meets Jin-young, a skittish woman he is inexplicably drawn to even as she does her best to steer clear him. As Suk-won investigates both his own past and Mrs. Kim’s case the tragic truth of his and Jin-young’s enduring connection to each other is revealed, bringing Suk-won full circle in a story of loss and the pain of remembrance.
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Author Archives: rarefilm
Les ambitieux / Ambitious (2006) Catherine Corsini, Karin Viard, Éric Caravaca, Jacques Weber, Comedy, Romance
On the one hand you have Judith Zahn, an arrogant, snobbish, bitchy Parisian editor. On the other hand meet Julien Demarsay: an insecure, timid, young bookseller from the East of France who has just written his first autobiographic novel, with what it takes of navel-contemplating and soul-searching. What do they have in common? Nothing much, except that sex will unite them, ambition part them before true love is born between them at last.
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Cry for Happy (1961) George Marshall, Glenn Ford, Donald O’Connor, Miiko Taka, Comedy, Romance
U.S. Navy combat cameraman Andy Cyphers (Ford) & his team – Murray Prince (O’Connor), George Washing Suzuki and Lank, billet themselves in an “off-limits’ Kyoto, Japan, heisha house while on leave. Cyphers quickly becomes attracted to the beautiful Chiyoko, while Murray falls in love with the pixie-like Harue. A tongue-in-cheek story told by Murray to newspapermen, that he is fighting the Korean War to help Japanese orphans, becomes big news in America and lands them in trouble.
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Yu Ta-fu chuan ji / Cherry Blossoms (1988) Eddie Ling-Ching Fong, Yat Sun Chan, Yun-Fat Chow, Tat Wah Fok, Drama, Romance
In 1913, Yu Dafu goes from China to Japan to study. At that time, Japan is the nascent superpower of East Asia, while China, the “sick man of Asia”, is in turmoil. Dafu is forced to confront the formidable combination of challenging schoolwork, foreign culture, and a racist populace during his time in Japan, and, along the way, struggles with becoming a man, emotionally and sexually. Towards the beginning of the film, he meets, while bathing nude in a hot spring, Lung-erh, and falls in love instantly. Although Yu Dafu is unable to locate her after their brief encounter, he eventually runs into her again after having taken up his studies in Nagoya.
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The Flying Ace (1926) Richard E. Norman, Laurence Criner, Kathryn Boyd, Boise De Legge, Adventure, Crime, War
A veteran World War I fighter pilot returns home a war hero and immediately regains his former job as a railroad company detective. His first case: recover a stolen satchel filled with $25,000 of company payroll, locate a missing employee, and capture a gang of railroad thieves.
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Raising a Riot (1955) Wendy Toye, Kenneth More, Shelagh Fraser, Mandy Miller, Comedy
Commander Peter Kent of the Royal Navy and his wife Mary have three children aged from five to eleven. Kent comes home after three years abroad with no idea how to handle the children. When Mary has to fly to Canada, Peter takes his children to his father’s new country home, which turns out to be a windmill. They clash with an American family in the neighbourhood.
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Hellbound Train (1930) James Gist, Drama
Hellbound Train comprises a series of vignettes of “sinful” acts, any of which could book you a spot on that locomotive to perdition: Women deceiving their husbands; gamblers and tipplers; crooked men conducting illicit business; and insolent children disrespecting their parents make up the 20-minute silent film. At the end of each scene a character dies, and a round man in a form-fitting devil suit hops off a train and does a little jig as he accepts a new passenger.
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Les doigts croches / Sticky Fingers (2009) Ken Scott, Roy Dupuis, Patrice Robitaille, Aure Atika, Adventure, Comedy, Crime
In this sly comedy, six of the world’s worst gangsters managed to heist $2 million, but only one got away. Now after four years in the clink, five bumbling thieves from Montreal are forced to walk the famous Camino pilgrimage in Spain to prove they’ve changed their ways and deserve their cut of the loot.
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Torch Song (1953) Charles Walters, Joan Crawford, Michael Wilding, Gig Young, Drama, Music, Romance
Jenny Stewart is a tough Broadway musical star who doesn’t take criticism from anyone. Yet there is one individual, Tye Graham, a blind pianist who may be able to break through her tough exterior.
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Tômei ningen to hae otoko / The Invisible Man vs. The Human Fly (1957) Mitsuo Murayama, Ryûji Shinagawa, Yoshirô Kitahara, Junko Kanô, Crime, Fantasy, Sci-Fi
A series of ghastly murders is being committed. The one similarity in each of the murders is that a weird buzzing sound is always heard right before the murder occurs. Is the killer invisible or possibly some other incredible creature?
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