The rise of John Dillinger from petty criminal (including, unforgivably, holding up a cinema) via prison and bank robbery with his new convict associates to the accolade of Public Enemy Number One.
Read More »
I magliari / The Magliari (1959) Francesco Rosi, Alberto Sordi, Belinda Lee, Renato Salvatori, Drama, Romance
Mario is in Hannover to work as a miner but after loosing his job he decides to go back to Italy. When Totonno steals his passport to avoid the police and later on he offers him a new job as “magliaro” (cloth seller), Mario changes his mind and decides to follow Totonno to Hamburg. In Hamburg, Totonno and his friends have to sell Mayer’s cloth but they meet with the hostility of a Polish gang and Mario falls in love with Paula Mayer.
Read More »
Gli sbandati / Abandoned / The Disbanded (1955) Francesco Maselli, Lucia Bosé, Isa Miranda, Jean-Pierre Mocky, Drama
Set during WWII, the film is a drama of the Italian resistance, with all the usual clichéd characters in attendance. The central character, a bombed-out gamine who falls in love with an Italian partisan, is played by Lucia Bose, who earned a great deal of praise for her performance. Most of the film deals with the culture-clash between the citified resistance fighters and their rural hosts.
Read More »
Fräulein (1958) Henry Koster, Dana Wynter, Mel Ferrer, Dolores Michaels, Romance, War, Drama
In melodramatic fashion, the film tells the tale of a young German woman who finds herself alone in the world when the rest of her family is killed in a WWII air raid. Helping an American military man escape the Gestapo, she finds herself on the run from the Russian Army. Escaping to the American (and safe) side of Berlin, she registers herself as a prostitute (unknowingly) and finds herself caught between the German officer who thinks she is for sale and the American officer who she saved and is now in love with her.
Read More »
Force of Arms (1951) Michael Curtiz, William Holden, Nancy Olson, Frank Lovejoy, Romance, War, Drama
Winter, 1943. The German army has halted the American advance in the mountains of Italy; back-and-forth combat decimates Joe Peterson’s platoon. On leave in Naples, Joe meets WAC lieutenant Eleanor MacKay; initially cool, she begins to melt during a bombing raid. Their romance develops despite Joe’s periodic returns to the front. But whether he’ll come back in the end becomes more than doubtful…
Read More »
Amor eterno / Everlasting Love (2014) Marçal Forés, Joan Bentallé, Aimar Vega, Sonny Smith, Drama, Mystery
This film from the director who made Animals (2012), replicates the same quietly brooding atmosphere as aforementioned film. A shy introvert teenage boy accidentally crosses paths with his teacher in a cruising area in the local woods, and thereafter attempts to strike up a love affair with him. The romance that ensues is of a tenebrous kind. Moreover, strange secondary characters and bizarre incidents foreshadow something gloomy to occur.
Read More »
Family Plot (1976) Alfred Hitchcock, Karen Black, Bruce Dern, Barbara Harris, Comedy, Thriller
The trickster Madam Blanche Tyler lures the elder millionaire Julia Rainbird that believes she is a spiritualist. After a séance, she discovers that Julia is tormented by her past, when she forced her sister and single mother Harriet to deliver her baby for adoption to avoid a family scandal. Julia promises the small fortune of ten thousand-dollar to Blanche if she finds her nephew and heir of her fortune using her phony powers. Blanche asks her boyfriend George Lumley, who is an unemployed actor working as cab driver, to investigate the whereabouts of Julia’s nephew. Meanwhile, the greedy jeweler and collector Arthur Adamson kidnaps wealthy people with his girlfriend Fran to increase his collection of diamonds with the ransom. When George concludes that Arthur Adamson might be the heir of Julia Rainbird, the reckless Blanche gets in trouble with the kidnappers.
Read More »
Dracula (1931) Tod Browning, Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Fantasy, Horror
After a harrowing ride through the Carpathian mountains in eastern Europe, Renfield enters castle Dracula to finalize the transferral of Carfax Abbey in London to Count Dracula, who is in actuality a vampire. Renfield is drugged by the eerily hypnotic count, and turned into one of his thralls, protecting him during his sea voyage to London. After sucking the blood and turning the young Lucy Weston into a vampire, Dracula turns his attention to her friend Mina Seward, daughter of Dr. Seward who then calls in a specialist, Dr. Van Helsing, to diagnose the sudden deterioration of Mina’s health. Van Helsing, realizing that Dracula is indeed a vampire, tries to prepare Mina’s fiance, John Harker, and Dr. Seward for what is to come and the measures that will have to be taken to prevent Mina from becoming one of the undead.
Read More »
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse / Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (1933) Fritz Lang, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Otto Wernicke, Gustav Diessl, Crime
After a detective is assaulted by thugs and placed in an asylum run by Professor Baum (Oscar Beregi), he observes the professor’s preoccupation with another patient, the criminal genius Dr. Mabuse the hypnotist (Rudolf Klein-Rogge). When Mabuse’s notes are found to be connected with a rash of recent crimes, Commissioner Lohmann (Otto Wernicke) must determine how Mabuse is communicating with the criminals, despite conflicting reports on the doctor’s whereabouts, and capture him for good.
Read More »
Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924) Fritz Lang, Paul Richter, Margarete Schön, Theodor Loos, Fantasy, Drama, Adventure
Siegfried, son of King Sigmund, hears of the beautiful sister of Gunter, King of Worms, Kriemhild. On his way to Worms, he kills a dragon and finds a treasure, the Hort. He helps Gunther to win Krimhild, a mask that makes him invisible proves to be very useful. But because Brunhild is cursing Kriemhild, she tells her what really happened. Now Brunhild wants Siegfried’s head. Is Gunther going to do her that favor?
Read More »