Enron dives from the seventh largest US company to bankruptcy in less than a year in this tale told chronologically. The emphasis is on human drama, from suicide to 20,000 people sacked: the personalities of Ken Lay (with Falwellesque rectitude), Jeff Skilling (he of big ideas), Lou Pai (gone with $250 M), and Andy Fastow (the dark prince) dominate. Along the way, we watch Enron game California’s deregulated electricity market, get a free pass from Arthur Andersen (which okays the dubious mark-to-market accounting), use greed to manipulate banks and brokerages (Merrill Lynch fires the analyst who questions Enron’s rise), and hear from both Presidents Bush what great guys these are.
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The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday (1976) Don Taylor, Lee Marvin, Oliver Reed, Robert Culp, Comedy, Western
Sam Longwood, a frontiersman who has seen better days, spies the gold-mine partner, Jack Colby, who ran off with all the gold from a mine they were prospecting fifteen years earlier. He tells his other partners from that time, Joe Knox and Billy, and they confront Colby demanding not only the thousand dollars he took but an addition fifty-nine thousand for their trouble. After being thwarted in this attempt, they, and a would-be whore named Thursday, hatch a plan to kidnap Colby’s wife, Nancy Sue, who is coincidently Sam’s old flame, but find that Nancy Sue is not the sweet girl that Sam remembers.
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Within Our Gates (1920) Oscar Micheaux, Evelyn Preer, Flo Clements, James D. Ruffin, Drama, Romance
Southern negro Sylvia Landry visits her cousin Alma in the north, where there is less racial prejudice than in her home town of Piney Woods in the deep south, and is anxiously awaiting her fiancé, Conrad. But Alma has designs on Conrad and tricks Sylvia into a compromising situation when he arrives, and he abandons her. Disheartened, she returns to Piney Woods to help a reverend running a school for young negroes. Sylvia learns that the reverend hasn’t the heart to turn away poor students, and unless he can raise $5,000 to supplement the $1.49 per child per year that the state supplies, the school will be closed. She goes up north again to try to raise the money and has little success, but meets kindly negro, Dr. V. Vivian, who helps her regain her stolen purse. When she saves a child from being hit by an auto, she herself is slightly injured. But the owner of the car is philanthropist Mrs. Elena Warwick, who is sympathetic to her quest and promises to donate the $5,000 to the school…
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La vallée close / The Enclosed Valley (1995) Jean-Claude Rousseau, Documentary
My films are like that: in a room, but looking out onto an open sky. I can’t really say it except to repeat that Bresson note, ‘that without a thing changing, everything is different.’ The film exists. The fiction is set up, and we believe in it. The justness of the agreement leads us to believe it, because everything plays equally at being a sign.
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Rupa u dusi / Hole in the Soul (1994) Dusan Makavejev, Rambo Amadeus, Melodie Annis, Dennis Jakob, Documentary, Biography, Comedy
A self-portrait documentary of Dusan Makavejev who travels to former Yugoslavia, and charts the changes of the society which parallels to his own life.
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Viy / Viy or Spirit of Evil (1967) Konstantin Ershov, Georgiy Kropachyov, Leonid Kuravlyov, Natalya Varley, Aleksey Glazyrin, Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Getting lost, wandering home whilst on leave from his seminary, novice monk Khoma stays in the barn of an old woman. A scuffle breaks out. Later, he is summoned to stand and pray over a young dead woman, in the local church, for three nights. It is here that, while in the long, dark nights of the locked doors, the dead regain life, the souls of Hell taunt the young monk to near terrifying insanity, and the test of Faith will be as powerful as the witches, monsters and the mighty demon Viy who haunt his every step and bay for his very soul.
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Nøgle hus spejl / Key House Mirror (2015) Michael Noer, Ghita Nørby, Sven Wollter, Trine Pallesen, Drama, Romance
Lily and Max have been married for more than 50 years. Now they live together in a nursing home, where Max has been reliant on professional care since his stroke. Lily has been putting her own needs aside and is desperately longing for excitement and intimacy in her life. When a man known as “the Pilot” moves in next door, Lily is immediately charmed by him and his passion for life. But neither her family nor the other residents at the nursing home are fond of her new acquaintance. Misunderstood by her family and trapped in her life with Max, Lily decides to fight to escape the bars of her invisible prison and claim her freedom.
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Gruppo di famiglia in un interno / Conversation Piece (1974) Luchino Visconti, Burt Lancaster, Helmut Berger, Silvana Mangano, Drama, Romance
Retired professor of American origin lives solitary life in luxurious palazzo in Rome He is confronted by vulgar Italian marchesa and her companions: her lover, her daughter and daughter’s boyfriend and forced to rent to them an apartment on upper floor of his palazzo. From this point his quiet routine is turned into chaos by his tenants’ machinations, and everybody’s life is taking unexpected but inevitable turn.
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Frontier Gambler (1956) Sam Newfield, John Bromfield, Coleen Gray, Kent Taylor, Western
A marshal investigating the death of a woman who owned a gambling house finds that he’s developing an attraction to the image of the dead woman, and then she shows up very much alive.
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Home (2005) Matt Zoller Seitz, Jason Liebrecht, Nicol Zanzarella, Erin Stacey Visslailli, Drama, Comedy
On a hot summer night in Brooklyn, singles and couples converge in a brownstone apartment to flirt, fight, hook uo and break up. A dreamy comedy-drama about sex, love and freedom, “Home” packs a lot of stories into just two floors.
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