After 25 years, François, a modest businessman, is reunited with his childhood friend Léo, a film double. It’s a reunion which affects both men profoundly, and immediately they discover their adolescent sense of fun. François proposes that they meet up with the third member of their childhood band, Kuntchinski. But when they break into the latter’s house, they are surprised by his wife, Hélène. Unsure what to do, François and Léo make a snap decision to fake an abduction. Hélène hasn’t any other plans, so she plays along with the kidnap…
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Drama
Flashdance (1983) Adrian Lyne, Jennifer Beals, Michael Nouri, Lilia Skala, Drama, Music, Romance
Alex Owens is a female dynamo: steel worker by day, exotic dancer by night. Her dream is to get into a real dance company, though, and with encouragement from her boss/boyfriend, she may get her chance. The city of Pittsburgh co-stars. What a feeling!
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King of the Hill (1993) Steven Soderbergh, Jesse Bradford, Jeroen Krabbé, Lisa Eichhorn, Drama, History
A boy whose mother is forced into a sanitarium and father gets a job as a traveling salesman. The boy fends for himself in a seedy SRO hotel.
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The Woman Disputed (1928) Henry King, Sam Taylor, Norma Talmadge, Gilbert Roland, Arnold Kent, Drama, History
In 1914 a girl of the streets is befriended by two dashing young officers, an Austrian and a Russian. Both fall in love with her, but she picks the Austrian. When the war begins, Her town is overrun by Russians, lead by the once charming, now vengeful officer, who takes her prisoner and threatens death if she won’t marry him.
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Headline (1943) John Harlow, David Farrar, Anne Crawford, John Stuart, Crime, Drama, Thriller
Headline serves as a vehicle for handsome David Farrar, who in 1943 was Britain’s fastest-rising leading man. Farrar is cast as Broogle, a crime reporter who’ll do anything-ANYTHING-for a story. When the wife of the publisher disappears after witnessing a murder, Broogle ignores Scotland Yard’s warnings to “lay off” and endeavors to solve the mystery himself. The film’s best performance is rendered by BBC radio favorite Richard Goolden, cast as a self-styled “psychological” detective. While genuine journalists howled at the innacuracies in Headline, audiences ate it up.
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Ladies of Leisure (1930) Frank Capra, Barbara Stanwyck, Ralph Graves, Lowell Sherman, Drama, Romance
An upper-crust artist hires a ‘party girl’ as a model; romance follows.
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Série noire (1979) Alain Corneau, Patrick Dewaere, Myriam Boyer, Marie Trintignant, Bernard Blier, Crime, Drama
Franck Poupart is a slightly neurotic door-to-door salesman in a sinister part of Paris’ suburbs. He meets Mona, a teenager, who’s been made a prostitute by her own aunt. Franck would like to change his life and also save Mona from her aunt. Murder is the only solution he finds to achieve his goal… A very gloomy movie, exuding dispair and uneasiness, with pathetic characters.
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Hangmen Also Die! (1943) Fritz Lang, Brian Donlevy, Walter Brennan, Anna Lee, Drama, Film-Noir, Thriller
On May 27, 1942 the Nazi Reichsprotector of Bohemia/Moravia, the “Hangman” Reinhard Heydrich, died from the bullets of unidentified resistance fighters. Hangmen Also Die is the story of Heydrich’s assassination in fictionalized form. It was Bertolt Brecht’s only comparatively successful Hollywood project; the money he received allowed him to write “The Visions of Simone Marchand”, “Schwyk in the Second World War” and his adaptation of Webster’s “The Duchess of Malfi”. Hanns Eisler won an Academy Award for his musical score.
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The Tenant / Le locataire (1976) Roman Polanski, Isabelle Adjani, Melvyn Douglas, Thriller, Drama
In Paris, the shy bureaucrat Trelkovsky rents an old apartment without bathroom where the previous tenant, the Egyptologist Simone Choule, committed suicide. The unfriendly concierge (Shelley Winters) and the tough landlord Mr. Zy establish stringent rules of behavior and Trelkovsky feels ridden by his neighbors. Meanwhile he visits Simone in the hospital and befriends her girlfriend Stella. After the death of Simone, Trelkovsky feels obsessed for her and believes his landlord and neighbors are plotting a scheme to force him to also commit suicide.
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Tomorrow (1972) Joseph Anthony, Robert Duvall, Olga Bellin, Sudie Bond, Drama
In 1930s Mississippi, lonely Jackson Fentry (Robert Duvall) lives by himself as the sole caretaker of a sawmill. One day, close to the property, he discovers a young woman, Sarah Eubanks (Olga Bellin), who is three months pregnant. Since she was abandoned by both her husband and her family, Jackson takes her in. The two fall in love and get married just before her death. Jackson raises the child as his own, until the boy’s uncles arrive to demand he be returned to the family.
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