
Zaza is a 31-year old Israeli bachelor, handsome and intelligent, and his family wants to see him married. But tradition dictates that Zaza has to choose a young virgin. She must be beautiful and from a good family, preferably rich. Zaza’s parents, Yasha and Lily drag Zaza to meet potential brides and their families. Zaza has no choice. He plays along with his family, advocates of the suffocating traditions of their Georgian Jewish heritage. But Zaza always manages to somehow get out of being engaged. What his parents don’t know is that Zaza is already in love. Judith is sensuous, strong and intriguing. She’s also a divorcée with a 6-year-old daughter. So Zaza has kept Judith a secret from his family. He will have to choose between respect of the strict confines of family and tradition, or the love of his life.
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Author Archives: rarefilm
L’héritier / The Inheritor (1973) Philippe Labro, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Carla Gravina, Jean Rochefort, Action, Drama, Thriller

When his father, a wealthy industrialist, is killed in aeroplane crash, Bart Cordell returns to France to take up the reins of the empire he has inherited. When a prostitute attempts to frame him for drug smuggling, he begins to suspect is father may have been murdered. Bart’s investigation uncovers a complex web of political intrigue, in which his own family and his stepfather are heavily implicated…
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Amida-do dayori / Letter from the Mountain (2002) Takashi Koizumi, Akira Terao, Kanako Higuchi, Shoji Arano, Drama

As the film begins, Takao (Akira Terao) and Michiko (Kanako Higuchi) have already pulled up their Tokyo roots and moved to a village that is Takao’s ancestral home. They visit a thatched cottage that serves as a memorial shrine (amidado) for the village dead and chat with the attendant, the spry 96-year-old Oume (Tanie Kitabayashi). Together they admire the view — from an inspiring distance. Oume, it turns out, is a kind of sage, whose thoughts and observations are a popular feature in a column in a local newsletter. Her amanuensis is a mute, sweetly smiling young woman named Sayuri (Manami Konishi), who is as devoted to Oume as Oume is to the souls of her beloved dead.
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The Inner Circle (1991) Andrey Konchalovskiy, Tom Hulce, Lolita Davidovich, Bob Hoskins, Drama

The true story of Ivan Sanchin, the KGB officer who was Stalin’s private film projectionist from 1939 until the dictator’s death. Told from Sanchin’s view, the sympathetic but tragically flawed hero maintains unwavering faith in his “Master” despite the arrest of his neighbors and his involvement with their daughter, his wife’s affair with the chilling State Security chief Lavrentii Beria and her tragic decline, and the deadly political machinations within the Kremlin he witnesses firsthand.
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The Iron Curtain (1948) William A. Wellman, Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, June Havoc, Biography, Crime, History

Soviet soldier turned bureaucrat Igor Gouzenko is assigned to his first overseas posting in 1943 to Ottawa, Canada, as a cipher clerk for the military attaché, their offices in a secret wing of the Soviet embassy. Igor is not to tell anyone what he does for a living, he given a cover story which he is to recite even when questioned by his own people. He and his wife Anna Gouzenko are supposed to be cordial to their Canadian neighbors and associates, but not fraternize or befriend them, as they are still considered the enemy, despite both countries being on the same side in the war. Igor follows his instructions to a T, but it is more difficult for Anna, who does not have the distraction of work during the day, and who can see that their neighbors are not their enemies but good people much like themselves. Over the next few years, Igor sees that what is happening around him and the work in which he is involved will not result in a world in which he wants to raise his newborn son, …
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Musashino fujin / The Lady of Musashino (1951) Kenji Mizoguchi, Kinuyo Tanaka, Yukiko Todoroki, Masayuki Mori, Drama

Set in post-war Japan, The Lady of Musashino tells the story of Michiko, a disillusioned young woman trapped in a loveless marriage. She confides in her younger cousin, Tsutomo, and the two become close, but decide not to consummate their affair. He instead becomes involved with the flirtatious Tomiko, who is also conducting an affair with Michiko’s husband. When Michiko finds that her husband has abandoned her, she decides to take her fate into her own hands.
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The Battle of the River Plate (1956) Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, John Gregson, Anthony Quayle, Ian Hunter

In the fall of 1939, the German heavy cruiser (referred to as a pocket battleship) Graf Spee seems to have command of the Atlantic. Read More »
Die Unberührbare / No Place to Go (2000) Oskar Roehler, Hannelore Elsner, Vadim Glowna, Jasmin Tabatabai, Drama

Flanders, a famous female author, travels 1989 after the fall of the Berlin wall into the German capitol. She is deeply depressed of the events because she saw the communistic states as a very good thing that has now ended. In the joy of these days she finds no person to understand her, so she has to travel back to Munich. After meeting several people, known and unknown, it seems as if there will be no way to go.
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Werewolf Woman / La lupa mannara (1976) Rino Di Silvestro, Annik Borel, Howard Ross, Dagmar Lassander, Horror

A woman has dreams that she is a werewolf so she goes out and finds men. She proceeds to have sex with them and then rip their throats out with her teeth. She eventually falls in love but then she is raped and her lover is murdered so she goes out for revenge.
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Freakonomics (2010) Heidi Ewing, Alex Gibney, James Ransone, Tempestt Bledsoe, Bill Gates, Documentary

The field of economics can study more than the workings of economies or businesses, it can also help explore human behavior in how it reacts to incentives. Economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner host an anthology of documentaries that examines how people react to opportunities to gain, wittingly or otherwise. The subjects include the possible role a person’s name has for their success in life, why there is so much cheating in an honor bound sport like sumo wrestling, what helped reduce crime in the USA in the 1990s onward and we follow an school experiment to see if cash prizes can encourage struggling students to improve academically.
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