Man Alive is an inventive and consistently amusing farce dominated by stars Pat O’Brien and Adolphe Menjou. The former plays Speed, a moderately successful garage owner. Suspecting that his wife Connie (Ellen Drew) has fallen in love with old college buddy Gordon (Rudy Vallee), Speed goes off on a bender. During a long and drunken night, he gives his clothes and his car to an old tramp named Willie the Wino (Jack Norton). With Speed as his passenger, Willie piles the car into a river. Willie drowns, but Speed is rescued by showboat entrepreneur Kismet (Menjou). When the car is recovered, it is assumed that the body inside is Speed’s. Speed wakes up thinking he’s dead because Kismet is wearing a devil’s costume (for a stage show) while stoking coal into the ship’s furnace! When he tries to get back to his wife, O’Brien is urged by kibitzer Menjou to act as a ghost to find out if her love for him is real or if she’s actually in love with Gordy, leading to a series of increasingly zany consequences.
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Sirens (1993) John Duigan, Hugh Grant, Tara Fitzgerald, Sam Neill, Comedy, Drama, Romance
A young reverend and his wife are on the way from England to Australia to minister to their flock. The bishop asks him to visit an eccentric artist prone to sexual depictions and requests that he voluntarily withdraw a controversial work call “Crucified Venus” from his show. The minister, who considers himself a progressive, is shocked at the amoral atmosphere surrounding the painter, his wife, and the three models living at his estate. The minister’s wife is troubled also, and has to deal with latent sexual urges while trying to remain loyal to her husband.
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Romper Stomper (1992) Geoffrey Wright, Russell Crowe, Daniel Pollock, Jacqueline McKenzie, Crime, Drama
Nazi skinheads in Melbourne take out their anger on local Vietnamese, who are seen as threatening racial purity. Finally the Vietnamese have had enough and confront the skinheads in an all-out confrontation, sending the skinheads running. A woman who is prone to epileptic seizures joins the skins’ merry band, and helps them on their run from justice, but is her affliction also a sign of impurity?
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The Avengers (1998) Jeremiah S. Chechik, Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, Sean Connery, Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller
British Ministry agent John Steed, under direction from “Mother”, investigates a diabolical plot by arch-villain Sir August de Wynter to rule the world with his weather control machine. Steed investigates the beautiful Doctor Mrs. Emma Peel, the only suspect, but simultaneously falls for her and joins forces with her to combat Sir August.
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The Anderson Tapes (1971) Sidney Lumet, Sean Connery, Dyan Cannon, Martin Balsam, Crime, Thriller
A thief (Duke Anderson) just released from ten years in jail, takes up with his old girlfriend (Ingrid) in her posh apartment. He makes plans to rob the entire building. What he doesn’t know is that his every move is recorded on audio and video tape, although he is not the subject of any surveillance.
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The Stunt Man (1980) Richard Rush, Peter O’Toole, Steve Railsback, Barbara Hershey, Action, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Thriller
While on the run from the police, Steve Railsback hides in a group of moviemakers where he pretends to be a stunt man. Both aided and endangered by the director (Peter O’Toole) he avoids both the police and sudden death as a stuntman. The mixture of real danger and fantasy of the movie is an interesting twist for the viewer as the two blend in individual scenes.
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Topsy-Turvy (1999) Mike Leigh, Jim Broadbent, Allan Corduner, Dexter Fletcher, Biography, Comedy, Drama, Musical
After their production “Princess Ida” meets with less-than-stunning reviews, the relationship between Gilbert and Sullivan is strained to breaking. Their friends and associates attempt to get the two to work together again, which opens the way to “The Mikado,” one of the duo’s greatest successes.
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Emanuelle In The Country / Messo comunale praticamente spione (1978) Mario Bianchi, Laura Gemser, Gabriele Tinti, Cándida López, Comedy, Erotic
When Emanuelle (Gemser) arrives in the small Italian village heads start turning and eyes start popping. All males in the town are falling all over themselves trying to get a look (or a feel) of the new doctor. One in particular is the fiancee of the mayor’s daughter. A kind of “Hatfield’s and McCoy’s” feud with a political twist has been going on and the young lovers’ families are, unfortunately, on opposite sides. Emanuelle’s shower becomes the target of a gang of voyeurs, including the pillars of the community. She uses it as a stage to taunt the watchers to charge into her apartment on the notion that she is showering with the mayor’s daughter’s fiancee. Instead of what they expected, they find the two young lovers in bed. Can Emanuelle shame them into allowing the marriage that they had been preventing?
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Dirty Love (1988) Joe D’Amato, Valentine Demy, Cully Holland, Lisa Lowenstein, Drama, Erotic
Valentine Demy and Susan Little star in this erotic tale of a young girl who sets off from the suburbs of New York City to seek fame as a dancer on Broadway. She finds that her exuberant body brings her into contact with many different facets of the Broadway nightlife, with sex as the dominant factor.
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A Brighter Summer Day / Gu ling jie shao nian sha ren shi jian (1991) Edward Yang, Chen Chang, Lisa Yang, Kuo-Chu Chang, Crime, Drama, Romance
Among the most praised and sought-after titles in all contemporary film, this singular masterpiece of Taiwanese cinema, directed by Edward Yang, finally comes to home video in the United States. Set in the early sixties in Taiwan, A Brighter Summer Day is based on the true story of a crime that rocked the nation. A film of both sprawling scope and tender intimacy, this novelistic, patiently observed epic centers on the gradual, inexorable fall of a young teenager (Chen Chang, in his first role) from innocence to juvenile delinquency, and is set against a simmering backdrop of restless youth, rock and roll, and political turmoil.
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