
A Dutch woman escapes her family life in search for happiness in the Portuguese Algarve.
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Author Archives: rarefilm
Brozer / Frailer (2014) Mijke de Jong, Marnie Blok, Lieneke le Roux, Leonoor Pauw, Drama

Frailer tells the story of an actress playing a part that reflects her real life story. Whilst playing a woman dying of cancer, Muis her doctor tells her she has not much more time left. She will die soon. The film follows the transition of her and her film sisters, shifting from their characters to who they really are, actresses dealing with their friend upcoming death. We watch Leonoor become physically frailer but mentally stronger as she is slowly accepting her faith. Whilst ending the film, she leaves her film sisters, her real life husband and children but also the viewer, behind forever.
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The Star (1952) Stuart Heisler, Bette Davis, Sterling Hayden, Natalie Wood, Drama, Romance

Middle-aged Oscar winning actress Margaret Elliot – Maggie to those that know her – is a Hollywood has-been. Her life is in shambles. She clings to the hope of resurrecting her past movie stardom as a leading ingénue. No one will hire her, she’s penniless with creditors selling off anything that she owns that is of monetary value, and she has no one to turn to that can see her through financially. She has in the past supported her sister and brother-in-law, who still want to use her as their meal ticket. Divorced from her actor husband, she shares joint custody of their teen-aged daughter Gretchen, from who Maggie tries to hide her problems. When it looks as if Maggie has hit rock bottom, Jim Johannsen re-enters her life. Jim, who once had the stage name Barry Lester, got his big break in Hollywood movies by Maggie. He came to the quick realization that he was neither good as an actor or that he wanted to do it as a profession. He now works as a boat parts supplier and mechanic.
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Un marito per Anna Zaccheo / A Husband for Anna (1953) Giuseppe De Santis, Silvana Pampanini, Amedeo Nazzari, Massimo Girotti, Drama

Anna Zaccheo is a beautiful young woman from a working class Neapolitan family. Her main concern is to find herself a suitable husband. She meets a young sailor Andrea one day and gets engaged to him. But while she is waiting for Andrea to return from the navy she gets raped by her boss. Her life suddenly takes a downward spiral.
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Zulu (1964) Cy Endfield, Stanley Baker, Jack Hawkins, Ulla Jacobsson, Drama, History, War

Two Lieutenants, Chard of Engineers and Bromhead find that their 140 man contingent in Natal has been isolated by the destruction of the main British Army column and that 4,000 Zulu warriors will descend on them in hours. Each has a different military background in tactics and they are immediatly in conflict on how to prepare for the attack. Nearly a third of the men are in the infirmary, as the welsh company tries to somehow survive with no help in sight. Based on a true story.
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Little Red Monkey / The Case of the Red Monkey (1955) Ken Hughes, Richard Conte, Rona Anderson, Russell Napier, Action, Adventure, Crime

Several murders of nuclear scientists, that baffles Scotland Yard, occur in London about the same time that Bill Locklin, a special officer from the United States State Department, arrives to oversee the transfer of Professor Leon Dushenko, a Russian scientist who as fled the U.S.S.R. An attempt is made on Dushenko’s life with a monkey’s paw-print found at the scene. Newspaperman reporter Harry Martin is covering the story. Duskenko is moved secretly to a nursing home, while Locklin stumbles onto the hideout of the gang behind the killings. He is captured along with Julia Jackson, niece of Superintendent John Harrington. Locklin is tortured to reveal Dushenko’s hiding place but escapes in time to avert Duskenko’s murder at the hands of the gang’s hired-killer–-a midget who is aided by a monkey.
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The Flight That Disappeared (1961) Reginald Le Borg, Craig Hill, Paula Raymond, Dayton Lummis, Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

A transcontinental flight from Los Angeles to Washington DC, carrying three top scientists, unexplainedly begins a climb to 10 miles up. With all other passengers unconscious, the scientists find themselves in a dimension where time does not exist. There they are put on trial by denizens of the future for their potential involvement in the creation of “the ultimate weapon”.
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Ichimei / Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (2011) Takashi Miike, Kôji Yakusho, Munetaka Aoki, Naoto Takenaka, Drama

An tale of revenge, honor and disgrace, centering on a poverty-stricken samurai who discovers the fate of his ronin son-in-law, setting in motion a tense showdown of vengeance against the house of a feudal lord.
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The Last Voyage (1960) Andrew L. Stone, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, George Sanders, Drama

Cliff Henderson and his family are traveling aboard the SS Claridon en route to Japan. The Claridon is an old ship, on its last voyage before heading to the scrap heap. An explosion in the engine room weakens the hull and the ship is now taking on more water that the bilge pumps can deal with. The Captain seems to have difficulty accepting that his ship will sink. Henderson’s wife Laurie is severely injured and trapped under a fallen beam. While the men in the engine room work frantically to shore up the hull, Henderson tries to free his wife from the wreckage with the help of one of the crew, Hank Lawson.
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The Road to Guantanamo (2006) Mat Whitecross, Michael Winterbottom, Riz Ahmed, Farhad Harun, Waqar Siddiqui, Documentary, Drama, War

In 2001, four Pakistani Britons, Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul and another friend, Monir, travel to Pakistan for a wedding and in a urge of idealism, decide to see the situation of war torn Afganistan which is being bombed by the American forces in retaliation for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Once there, with the loss of Monir in the wartime chaos, they are captured by Northern Alliance fighters. They are then handed them over the American forces who transport them to the prison camps at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba. What follows is three years of relentless imprisonment, interrogations and torture to make them submit to blatantly wrong confessions to being terrorists. In the midst of this abuse, the three struggle to keep their spirits up in that face of this grave injustice.
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