Author Archives: rarefilm

Il tempo si è fermato / Time Stood Still (1959) Ermanno Olmi, Natale Rossi, Roberto Seveso, Paolo Guadrubbi, Drama

Il tempo si e fermato (Ermanno Olmi, 1959)
Two middle-aged men work as caretakers on an isolated dam construction site high in the snow-capped Italian Alps. When one of them leaves for the valley to spend Christmas vacation with his family he is temporarily replaced with an adolescent boy. The other man is both annoyed and intrigued by the boy and his habits: he listens to loud music, sleeps too long in the mornings and doesn’t drink any alcohol. They barely speak to one another in the first couple of days. But when an avalanche cuts their small hut from electricity they slowly start growing more fond of each other.
Read More »

Sbatti il mostro in prima pagina / Slap the Monster on Page One (1972) Marco Bellocchio, Gian Maria Volontè, Fabio Garriba, Carla Tatò, Drama, Thriller

Sbatti il mostro in prima pagina (Marco Bellocchio, 1972)
1972, Milano. We are just a few days before the general elections. The daughter of a well-known professor is found dead. Mr Bizanti editor in chief of newspaper “Il Giornale”, in agreement with its owner Mr. Montelli, decides to charge of following the story the junior Roveda and the senior Lauri. At one point, some elements indicates senator Boni as a possible murderer. All the “old guard” within “Il Giornale” drives articles in order to underline responsibilities of senator Boni. But young Roveda doesn’t surrender and continues to search for the truth.
Read More »

Gothic (1986) Ken Russell, Gabriel Byrne, Julian Sands, Natasha Richardson, Horror

Gothic (Ken Russell, 1986)
Story of the night that Mary Shelley gave birth to the horror classic “Frankenstein.” Disturbed drug induced games are played and ghost stories are told one rainy night at the mad Lord Byron’s country estate. Personal horrors are revealed and the madness of the evening runs from sexual fantasy to fiercest nightmare. Mary finds herself drawn into the sick world of her lover Shelley and cousin Claire as Byron leads them all down the dark paths of their souls.
Read More »

Kameradschaft / Comradeship (1931) Georg Wilhelm Pabst, Alexander Granach, Fritz Kampers, Ernst Busch, Drama

Kameradschaft (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1931)
An old German mine was split in two after the end of WWI because of where the new border was located. In the French part a fire breaks out; the German miners send a rescue group in, helping their French comrades. Three old German miners, who were not treated friendly at a French inn the night before, start their own private rescue through an old tunnel that separated the two mines. Will the official rescue party realize there are others left behind in time to save them?
Read More »

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) Woody Allen, Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Comedy, Drama, Romance

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (Woody Allen, 2010)
Follows a pair of married couples, Alfie (Hopkins) and Helena (Jones), and their daughter Sally (Watts) and husband Roy (Brolin), as their passions, ambitions, and anxieties lead them into trouble and out of their minds. After Alfie leaves Helena to pursue his lost youth and a free-spirited call girl named Charmaine (Punch), Helena abandons rationality and surrenders her life to the loopy advice of a charlatan fortune teller. Unhappy in her marriage, Sally develops a crush on her handsome art gallery owner boss, Greg (Banderas), while Roy, a novelist nervously awaiting the response to his latest manuscript, becomes moonstruck over Dia (Pinto), a mystery woman who catches his gaze through a nearby window.
Read More »

Screaming Eagles (1956) Charles F. Haas, Tom Tryon, Jan Merlin, Alvy Moore, Drama, War

003c4761
The D-Day invasion of 1944 provides a backdrop for the Allied Artists actioner Screaming Eagles. Tom Tryon plays Private Mason, an ill-tempered member of the 101st Airborne Infantry division. Mason makes plenty of enemies with his negative attitude until good-guy lieutenant Pauling (Jan Merlin) straightens him out. The 101st’ s main objective (once all personal travails are swept away, that is) is to capture and hold a vital bridge in Normandy. Jacqueline Beer, later one of the costars of TV’s 77 Sunset Strip, provides the feminine interest as an attractive resistance fighter (were there ever any unattractive resistance fighters?) Featured in the cast are TV favorites Martin Milner and Alvy Moore and second-generation thespian Edward G. Robinson Jr.
Read More »

Cross Bearer (2012) [Uncut] Adam Ahlbrandt, Isaac Williams, Natalie Jean, J.D. Brown, Horror

002e2d7f
Heather is broke. She has a soul sucking job as a stripper. Her live-in girlfriend Victoria has a baby and a coke problem. Her boss Harry is an abusive maniac. Life cannot get much worse… or so she thought. Determined to get out of this living hell, Heather and her lover, Bunny, plan to rip off Harry, ditch Victoria, and leave town to live out their days on the Greek islands in peaceful bliss. One big score is all they need, and Harry gives them the opportunity when he asks them to take care of a drug deal with one of his clients at an old warehouse. As Heather and her friends arrive, everything seems to be going fine until they make a grizzly discovery and are trapped inside by a rambling, religious maniac hell-bent on purifying the Earth of its sins through murder and destruction. Armed with a carpenter’s hammer and a fanatic passion, the Cross Bearer hunts Heather and her friends down one-by-one in a sadistic crusade to burn clean the filth of the world. Heather’s dreams are shattered and if she survives nothing will ever be the same. Unflinchingly raw, primal, and horrifying, Cross Bearer is a trip to the darkest, most vile side of humanity.
Read More »

Pharaoh’s Curse (1957) Lee Sholem, Mark Dana, Ziva Rodann, Diane Brewster, Horror

003c4381
Producer Howard W. Koch’s impoverished Bel-Air company lensed this quasi-horror film somewhere in California’s Death Valley. Affecting a none-too-convincing British accent Mark Dana stars as Captain Storm, heading a colonial escort to a lonely archeological dig in Egypt in 1902. Along the way, the party, which includes the American wife (Diane Brewster) of the chief archeologist (George N. Neise), encounters a mysterious girl, Simira (Ziva Shapir aka Ziva Rodann, “Miss Israel of 1957), who warns them not to mess with the dead. They do anyway, of course, drawing the ire of the Gods. One by one, the scientists are decimated by Simira’s brother Numar (Alvaro Guillot), who is the reincarnation of the tomb keeper and grows older by the minute.
Read More »