
Given the usual pedestal upon which mothers were placed by MGM head Louis Mayer, it’s all the more amazing that Mayer gave the go-ahead for Another Language. Louise Closser Hale plays a domineering matriarch who controls the lives of her grown, married sons, using a fabricated heart condition to keep them in line. Helen Hayes marries youngest son Robert Montgomery, only to sit by in mute horror as Mother exerts her authority over her timorous offspring at a weekly family get-together. At the end, only Hayes and Montgomery’s nephew John Beal have the courage to break the apron strings, but not without the formidable opposition of Monster Mom. Based on the Broadway play by Rose Franken, Another Language represented the screen debut of Margaret Hamilton, recreating the supporting role she’d played on stage.
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Drama
Congorama (2006) Philippe Falardeau, Olivier Gourmet, Paul Ahmarani, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Comedy, Drama

Michel is a Belgian inventor. He cares for his father, a paralysed writer, is married to a Congolese woman and is the father of an interracial child whom he reassures as to his parentage. He discovers at the age of 41 that he was adopted, actually having been born in Sainte-Cécile, Quebec. In the summer of 2000, he travels to Quebec, supposedly to sell some of his inventions. While on a near-impossible quest to find his birth family in the town where he was born, he crosses paths with Louis Legros, son of another inventor, in a meeting which will change their lives…
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Les Biches / Bad Girls (1968) Claude Chabrol, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jacqueline Sassard, Stéphane Audran, Drama

Frédérique is a rich and beautiful woman who picks up a female street artist called “Why”. It is December and they go to her villa in Saint Tropez, which is inhabited by a couple of odd gay men. Both women fall for the local architect Paul Thomas. However Why says that she is not interested in him, so Frédérique invites him to move into the villa.
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Un singe en hiver (1962) Henri Verneuil, Jean Gabin, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Suzanne Flon, Comedy, Drama

A young man, Gabriel Fouquet, arrives in a coastal town in Normandy to visit his daughter, who is staying in a boarding school. He ends up lodging in a guesthouse run by the aged Albert Quentin and his wife Suzanne. To forget his troubles, Gabriel hits the bottle, not realising that the teetotal Albert was once a heavy drinker. Twenty years ago, the latter pledged never to touch alcohol again if he and his wife survived the war. Through his friendship with Gabriel, Albert becomes nostalgic about his past, recalling his time as a sailor on an expedition to China. To drown their sorrows, the two men embark on a drinking binge which quickly gets out of hand…
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Loving You (1957) Hal Kanter, Elvis Presley, Lizabeth Scott, Wendell Corey

Deke Rivers is a delivery man who is discovered by publicist Glenda Markle and country-western musician Tex Warner Read More »
Era notte a Roma / It Was Night in Rome (1960) Roberto Rossellini, Leo Genn, Giovanna Ralli, Sergey Bondarchuk, Drama, War

During WW2, in Rome , a trio of escaped Allied POWs find themselves in limbo as they try to avoid re-capture and reach their dispersed units. Michael Pemberton is a British Major, Fyodor Aleksandrovic Nazukov is a Soviet Sergeant and Peter Bradley is an American Lieutenant. A beautiful young Italian woman, Esperia Belli, agrees to give them shelter. She knows that despite Italy’s efforts to break with Nazi Germany and join the Allies there are some Italians who are Fascist sympathizers and would gladly denounce Esperia to the German authorities. Hiding enemy soldiers or escaped POWs is punishable by death. Esperia hopes to get in contact with the Italian anti-Fascist resistance which could help the three escaped Allied POWs rejoin their respective armies. Until then, the fugitives are stuck in Esperia’s attic.
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Angel Town (1990) Eric Karson, Olivier Gruner, Peter Kwong, Theresa Saldana, Action, Drama

A graduate student and martial-arts expert rents a room in a house owned by a single mother who lives there with her son. A local street gang is trying to recruit the son, but the new tenant tries to help the boy’s mother keep him out of the gang. When they learn of this, they target both the mother and her new tenant.
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A Clockwork Orange (1971) Stanley Kubrick, Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates, Crime, Drama, Sci-Fi

In future Britain, charismatic delinquent Alex DeLarge is jailed and volunteers for an experimental aversion therapy developed by the government in an effort to solve society’s crime problem – but not all goes according to plan.
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Terms Of Endearment / Tendres Passions (1983) James L. Brooks, Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger, Jack Nicholson, Comedy, Drama

Based off of the novel by Larry McMurtry, the film’s plot focuses on the capricious relationship between a mother and her daughter. Their lives are constantly changing and the daughter fighting about of terminal cancer, every day is filled with drama…
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L’Enfant Sauvage (1970) François Truffaut, Jean-Pierre Cargol, Françoise Seigner, Drama

France, 1798. In a forest, hunters discover and capture a 12 year old boy who appears to have spent his life living like a wild animal. He is taken to a school for deaf and dumb children in Paris, where is maltreated and used as an object of scientific curiosity. An eminent doctor, Jean Itard, takes an interest in the strange child and resolves to educate him. Little by little, the feral child, whom Itard christens Victor, responds to his benefactor’s patient attempts to civilise him.
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