Private detective Alfredo Pereira is hired by eccentric couple Raden and Eve to find their missing sister, Adriana. Despite his limitations, Pereira soon finds the woman, but foreplay between characters complicates things.
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Author Archives: rarefilm
Ayneh / The Mirror (1997) Jafar Panahi, Mina Mohammad Khani, Aida Mohammadkhani, Kazem Mojdehi, Drama
A girl in traditional female clothing, with her arm in plaster, comes out of school one day and doesn’t find her mother meeting her. She decides to travel home herself though she doesn’t know her address and remembers the road only visually.
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Fuck me! / Baise-moi (2000) Virginie Despentes, Coralie, Raffaëla Anderson, Karen Lancaume, Céline Beugnot, Crime, Drama, Thriller
Manu and Nadine lose their last tenuous relationship with main-stream society when Manu gets raped and Nadine sees her only friend being shot. After a chance encounter, they embark on an explosive journey of sex and murder. Perhaps as a revenge against men, perhaps as a revolt against bourgeois society, but certainly in a negation – almost joyful in its senseless violence – of all the codes of a society which has excluded, raped and humiliated them. Controversial for its violence and real sex scenes: a vividly nihilist road movie set in France.
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Anna Karenina (1948) Julien Duvivier, Vivien Leigh, Ralph Richardson, Kieron Moore, Drama, Romance
Stefan and Dolly Oblonsky have had a little spat and Stefan has asked his sister, Anna Karenina, to come down to Moscow to help mend the rift. Anna’s companion on the train from St. Petersburg is Countess Vronsky who is met at the Moscow station by her son. Col. Vronsky looks very dashing in his uniform and it’s love at first sight when he looks at Anna and their eyes meet. Back in St. Petersburg they keep running into each other at parties. Since she has a husband and small son, they must be very discreet if they are going to see each other alone.
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Der Himmel über Berlin / Wings of Desire (1987) Wim Wenders, Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Otto Sander, Drama, Fantasy, Romance
Visible only to those like them and to human children, Damiel and Cassiel are two angels, who have existed even before humankind. Along with several other angels, they currently wander around West Berlin, generally on their own, observing and preserving life, sometimes trying to provide comfort to the troubled, although those efforts are not always successful. Among those they are currently observing are: the cast and crew of a movie – a detective story set in WWII Nazi Germany – which include a sensitive and perceptive Peter Falk; an elderly man named Homer looking for eternal peace; and the troupe of a financially failing circus, which has closed early for the season because of those financial problems. One day, Damiel tells Cassiel that he wants to become human, to feel not only the sensory aspects of physical beings, but also emotional aspects. He embarks on this thought with the full realization that there is no turning back if he decides to do so. His thoughts are largely …
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Dracula (1958) Terence Fisher, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Michael Gough, Fantasy, Horror
On a search for his missing friend Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen), vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) is led to Count Dracula’s (Christopher Lee) castle. Upon arriving, Van Helsing finds an undead Harker in Dracula’s crypt and discovers that the count’s next target is Harker’s ailing fiancée, Lucy Holmwood (Carol Marsh). With the help of her brother, Arthur (Michael Gough), Van Helsing struggles to protect Lucy and put an end to Count Dracula’s parasitic reign of terror.
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Full Circle / The Haunting of Julia (1977) Richard Loncraine, Mia Farrow, Keir Dullea, Tom Conti, Drama, Horror, Mystery
After the sudden accidental death of her small daughter, Julia Lofting, a wealthy American woman living in London, bolts her unhappy marriage and buys a house in Kensington which is haunted by the ghost of a quite obscenely nasty little girl who died in the 1950s and plans to use Julia as her pawn in a terrible revenge.
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Embrace of the Serpent / El abrazo de la serpiente (2016) Ciro Guerra, Nilbio Torres, Jan Bijvoet, Antonio Bolivar, Adventure, Biography, Drama
The epic story of the first contact, encounter, approach, betrayal and, eventually, life-transcending friendship, between Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman, last survivor of his people, and two scientists that, over the course of 40 years, travel through the Amazon in search of a sacred plant that can heal them. Inspired by the journals of the first explorers of the Colombian Amazon, Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes.
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Elvis! Elvis! (1976) Kay Pollak, Lele Dorazio, Lena-Pia Bernhardsson, Fred Gunnarsson, Drama
Tale of a boy, roughly eight, who experiences a number of problems due to his estranged relationship with his mother. Mom wants her little boy to be someone other than who he is; junior is stubborn, fights back. Can these two find a common ground before the ending credits roll?
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After the Wedding / Efter brylluppet (2006) Susanne Bier, Mads Mikkelsen, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Rolf Lassgård, Art-house, Drama
Jacob Petersen has dedicated his life to helping street children in India. When the orphanage he heads is threatened by closure, he receives an unusual offer. A Danish businessman, Jørgen, offers him a donation of $4 million dollars. There are, however, certain conditions… Not only must Jacob return to Denmark, he must also take part in the wedding of Jørgen’s daughter. The wedding proves to be a critical juncture between past and future and catapults Jacob into the most intense dilemma of his life.
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