
It’s the day before Christmas, the day before John’s 21st birthday. He’s a prostitute on Santa Monica Blvd in L.A., and he wants to spend that night and the next day at the posh Park Plaza Hotel. He’s ripped off a local drug dealer to pay the bill, but as he’s sleeping that morning, someone steals his shoes right off his feet, with the money in them. Meanwhile, Donner, a lad new to the streets, wants John to leave the city with him for Camelot, a theme park in Branson, MO, where they’ll work as lifeguards. John spends the day trying to hustle the money for the hotel, avoid Jimmy the Warlock, keep his girl friend placated, and figure out how to deal with Donner’s friendship.
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Author Archives: rarefilm
Afterschool (2008) Antonio Campos, Ezra Miller, Jeremy Allen White, Emory Cohen, Drama, Mystery

Having joined a recently created video club, a lowly prep-school sophomore – desensitized from reality by frequently viewed Internet imagery – accidentally captures on video the final moments of admired twin senior classmates dying from poisoned drugs. Rather than galvanize the school or this lad’s life in any profound or meaningful way, the tragedy causes barely a ripple in the already emotionally diminished and out-of-touch lives of everyone around.
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Yazgi / Fate (2001) Zeki Demirkubuz, Serdar Orçin, Zeynep Tokus, Engin Günaydin, Drama

Musa, who works as a bookkeeper in the customs office, believes in the emptiness and absurdity of life. He doesn’t struggle to change his life; he lets himself flow along with events because he thinks that it all leads to the same end. The death of his mother doesn’t affect him. Although he loves her, her death makes him joyful.
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Don’t Let It Kill You / Il ne faut pas mourir pour ça (1967) Jean Pierre Lefebvre, Lucille Bélanger, Monique Champagne, Suzanne Grossman, Comedy, Drama

Abel, an immature and eccentric man finds himself at a turning point. He sleepwalks through his life, which revolves around his dying mother and journalist girlfriend Madeleine, who is even more immature than he is. Abel is finally made to face up to reality when he has to say goodbye to his mother and then, by chance, he meets an old girlfriend who is about to move to Paris and be married.
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Dobra zena / A Good Wife (2016) Mirjana Karanovic, Boris Isakovic, Jasna Djuricic, Drama

Milena is a middle-aged wife and mother ensconced comfortably behind a gate in an upscale suburb of Belgrade. She quietly tends to her looks, dutifully cooks and entertains, and meets her friends for choir practice. She makes love with her husband and they socialize jauntily with a group of old friends. But unsettling realities are beginning to seep into Milena’s consciousness and disrupt her ordered world. One day while cleaning, she happens upon a videotape that incriminates her husband in horrific war crimes. A Good Wife is the story of how this secret reverberates in Milena’s life and eventually changes her.
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Clownhouse (1989) Victor Salva, Nathan Forrest Winters, Brian McHugh, Sam Rockwell, Horror

Just before Halloween, three kid brothers who are alone in a big house are menaced by three escaped mental patients who have murdered some traveling circus clowns and taken their identities.
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The Night of the Hunter (1955) Charles Laughton, Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

It’s the Great Depression. In the process of robbing a bank of $10,000, Ben Harper kills two people. Before he is captured, he is able to convince his adolescent son John and his daughter Pearl not to tell anyone, including their mother Willa, where he hid the money, namely in Pearl’s favorite toy, a doll that she carries everywhere with her. Ben, who is captured, tried and convicted, is sentenced to death.
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Ung flukt / Young Sinners (1959) Edith Carlmar, Liv Ullmann, Atle Merton, Rolf Søder, Drama

The story of a young Gerd, played by Liv Ullman in her first leading role, who falls in love with a young boy. She is considered a ‘loose’ woman, and the boy’s family does not accept their relationship. The young couple run away to a cabin in the woods where they meet a rogue man who tests their relationship.
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Kraftidioten / In Order of Disappearance (2014) Hans Petter Moland, Stellan Skarsgård, Bruno Ganz, Pål Sverre Hagen, Action, Crime, Thriller

Nils ploughs snow in the wild winter mountains of Norway, and is recently awarded a Citizen of the Year Award. When his son is murdered for something he did not do, Nils wants revenge. And justice. His actions ignite a war between the vegan gangster “the Count” and the Serbian mafia boss “Papa”. Winning a blood feud isn’t easy, especially not in a welfare state. But Nils has something going for him: Heavy machinery and beginners luck.
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Chichi ariki / There was a father (1942) Yasujirô Ozu, Chishû Ryû, Shûji Sano, Shin Saburi, Drama

A father and his son, a son and his father. Horikawa is a widower, a teacher, and a good father to Ryohei, who’s about 10. After a tragedy, Horikawa resigns from teaching and takes Ryohei from Tokyo to the town of Ueno, enrolling him in junior high; to the lad’s sorrow, he will be a boarder. Horikawa returns to work in Tokyo, their separation is complete. Jump ahead more than ten years: with dad’s help, Ryohei has finished college and has a teaching job in Akita. Horikawa considers living with his son, which Ryohei wants, but the elder’s notions of duty and hard work preclude it. Ryohei arranges a ten-day vacation with his father. Heartbreak comes quietly, nearly hidden by dignity.
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