Author Archives: rarefilm

Panic in Year Zero! (1962) Ray Milland, Jean Hagen, Frankie Avalon, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Panic in Year Zero! (1962)
While on a fishing trip, Harry Baldwin (Ray Milland) and his family hear an explosion and realize that Los Angeles has been leveled by a nuclear attack. Looters and killers are everywhere. Escaping to the hills with his family, he sets about the business of surviving in a world where, he knows, the old ideals of humanity will be first casualties. Not one to give up, he holds up a store for supplies and hides the family in a cave.
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Lust och fägring stor / All Things Fair (1995) Bo Widerberg, Johan Widerberg, Marika Lagercrantz, Tomas von Brömssen, Drama, Romance, War

All Things Fair (1995)
Malmö, Sweden during the Second World War. Stig is a 15 year old pupil on the verge of adulthood. Viola is 37 years old and his teacher. He is attracted by her beauty and maturity. She is drawn to him by his youth and innocence, a god-sent relief from her drunk and miserable husband. They start a passionate and forbidden relationship – but it has consequences they never could have expected.
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Abbas Kiarostami: A Report (2013) Bahman Maghsoudlou, Kurosh Afsharpanah, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Godfrey Cheshire, Documentary, History

Abbas Kiarostami A Report (2013)
An analysis of the style and vision of Abbas Kiarostami, the world’s most iconic Iranian filmmaker, through the lens of his earliest work, including his first short film (Bread & Alley, 1970) and, particularly, his first feature, The Report. This early example of Kiarostami’s work gives insight into his poetic, humanistic tendencies, combining allegorical storytelling with a documentary, neo-realist sensibility, and often exploring the very nature of film as fiction, that have pervaded his work ever since, including such recent international sensations as A Taste of Cherry and Certified Copy. Exclusive interviews with film critics, historians and scholars (including the late great Andrew Sarris) and those directly involved in the making of The Report provide a look at how the career of this master independent auteur began and was shaped.
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Toto and Peppino Divided in Berlin / Totò e Peppino divisi a Berlino (1962) Giorgio Bianchi, Totò, Peppino De Filippo, Nadia Sanders, Comedy

Toto and Peppino Divided in Berlin (1962)
Who but Totò could come up with a send-up of the erection of the Berlin Wall mere months after its completion? Totò and Peppino are hired by some former Nazis to pretend to be Admiral Canarinis and his assistant — wanted war criminals — but the American authorities don’t believe them and deport them to East Berlin. There, they’re captured by the Russians, who do believe them, and demand they reveal the whereabouts of American spy planes. In the always politically charged atmosphere of Italy, the film sparked controversy among Totò’s admirers on both the Left and the Right.
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Joe Hill (1971) Bo Widerberg, Thommy Berggren, Anja Schmidt, Kelvin Malave, Biography, Drama, History

Joe Hill (1971)
In the early 1900’s, the legendary Joe Hill emigrates with his brother to the United States. But after a short time, he loses touch with his brother. Joe gets a few jobs but is struck by all the injustice and tragedy going on. He becomes active in the forbidden union IWW, a union for workers without trades. It is forbidden to demonstrate and to speak in public but Joe gets around that by singing his manifests with the Salvation Army. He manages to get more and more people to get on strike with him but he also makes powerful enemies doing that. Finally he gets connected with a murder and during the trial he fires his lawyer and takes upon himself to become his own defender.
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Django (1966) Sergio Corbucci, Franco Nero, José Canalejas, José Bódalo, Western, Action

Django (1966)
Sergio Corbucci crafted one of the most popular and widely imitated of the Italian “spaghetti westerns” of the 1960s with this violent but stylish action saga. A mysterious man named Django (Franco Nero) arrives in a Mexican border town dragging a small coffin behind him. When he attempts to save a woman who is being attacked by a group of bandits, he finds himself in the middle of a conflict between Mexican gangsters and racist Yankee thugs, with the innocent townspeople and a fortune in Mexican gold stuck somewhere in between. Django becomes a force to be reckoned with when it’s discovered his coffin actually contains a Gatling gun. Django proved so popular in Europe that over 30 sequels and follow-ups were produced, though Franco Nero would not return to the role until 1987’s Django 2: Il Grande Ritorno (the only sequel endorsed by Corbucci), which proved to be the last film in the series.
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