Comedy

Jacques Demy followed up The Umbrellas of Cherbourg with another musical about missed connections and second chances, this one a more effervescent confection. Twins Delphine and Solange, a dance instructor and a music teacher (played by real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac), long for big-city life; when a fair comes through their quiet port town, so does the possibility of escape. With its jazzy Michel Legrand score, pastel paradise of costumes, and divine supporting cast (George Chakiris, Grover Dale, Danielle Darrieux, Michel Piccoli, and Gene Kelly), The Young Girls of Rochefort is a tribute to Hollywood optimism from sixties French cinema’s preeminent dreamer.
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The Kobayashi family finally get the chance to move out of their tiny, cramped Tokyo apartment in favour of the suburban house of their dreams. But all is not well: the house is infested by termites and the family starts cracking up: Son Masaki is studying so obsessively for his exams that he’s losing his mind; daughter Erika is oblivious of all but her forthcoming record company audition, grandfather Yasukuni starts getting World War II flashbacks and father Katsuhiko is so worried about his family’s “sickness” that he thinks can only be cured by group suicide…
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Daro un Milione was another felicitous collaboration between director Mario Camerini and his favorite star Vittorio de Sica. Read More »

The coach of a college tennis team is given an ultimatum: put together a winning team, or else.
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Take a walk into the weird world of filmmaker Raul Ruiz as he takes us to Paris for a twisted ride. A man which shares four names and four personalities (which is the real one?) is the link between four different, yet similar, stories involving love, lust, crime, and time.
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Being a teenage virgin in Bangalore, India, during the 1980s was not for the faint-hearted. If you were a quiz nerd on top of that, forget about it. Naman, a young quizard who is determined not to sleep alone, leads his hopelessly nerdy high school friends on a trip to Calcutta with their eyes on a major college quiz prize. Young, smart, and full of heart, the trio are determined to win, but they’re just as determined to lose their virginity in the process.
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Gymnastics school teacher Caroline Trewella inherits a house on the Cornwall coast. In the basement/smuggler’s cave, she discovers mermaid Miranda. The young women share a common ancestor and are remarkably alike in looks. While Caroline is away on a bicycling tour, Miranda has fun taking her place on land. With the help of her friend Nurse Carey, Miranda feigns an injury that keeps her wheelchair-bound… or more often needing to be carried by a man. And the ever flirtatious Miranda certainly knows how to attract all the men of the village!
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Like in many other Monicelli movies, the main theme of Amici miei is friendship, seen from a rather bitter point of view. It tells the story of four middle-aged friends in Florence who organize together idle pranks (called zingarate, “gypsy shenanigans”) in a continuous attempt to prolong childhood during their adult life…
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The film starts in the rural town of Shinshu in 1923. A widow, Tsune (O-Tsune) Nonomiya (Choko Iida), works hard at a silk production factory to provide for her only son, Ryosuke. When Ryosuke’s teacher Okubo (Chishu Ryu) persuades her to let her son continue to study beyond elementary school, she decides to support her son’s education even until college. Her son promises to become a great man…
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A demon bestows on a self-righteous working photographer’s camera the power to smite from the Earth “evil-doers”. Naturally, the indignant photographer turns his new weapon on, one by one, his entire village, beginning with the wealthy or illustrious. Soon, the poor he is so supposedly so enamored of become his victims too, so rife with impatience and contempt is he, that the slightest flaw is cause for smiting. Inevitably, he embarks on a task to destroy everyone.
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