Details the catastrophic effects globalization has wrought on the ship, truck and train industries. We visit displaced farmers and villagers in Holland and Belgium, underpaid truck drivers in Los Angeles, seafarers aboard mega-ships shuttling between Asia and Europe, and factory workers in China, whose low wages are the fragile key to the whole puzzle. At a moment when collective bargaining rights are under attack in the United States, and China continues to bow to foreign pressures to prevent such rights from being granted at all, this film asks: Is capitalism the Trojan horse that turns on its inventors?
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Il Segreto del Bosco Vecchio / The Secret of the Old Woods (1993) Ermanno Olmi, Paolo Villaggio, Giulio Brogi, Pietro Berton, Family, Fantasy
It tells the story of a general who is about to cut down an old forest for the sake of financial gain, but discovers that the forest is inhabited by invisible spirits.
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Unagi / The Eel (1997) Shôhei Imamura, Kôji Yakusho, Misa Shimizu, Mitsuko Baishô, Drama
White-collar worker Yamashita finds out that his wife has a lover visiting her when he’s away, suddenly returns home and kills her. After eight years in prison, he returns to live in a small village, opens a barber shop (he was trained as a barber in prison) and talks almost to no-one except for the eel he “befriended” in prison. One day he finds the unconscious body of Keiko, who attempted suicide and reminds him of his wife. She starts to work at his shop, but he doesn’t let her become close to him.
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Samar (1962) George Montgomery, Gilbert Roland, Ziva Rodann, Adventure
George Montgomery plays a cynical doctor that is taken to prison at Samar island because his political opinions. The commander (Gilbert Roland) is waiting for his own doctor, that is supposed to work with him in moving the population to the interior.
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Scacco alla regina / Check to the Queen (1969) Pasquale Festa Campanile, Rosanna Schiaffino, Haydée Politoff, Romolo Valli, Drama
26 year old Silvia has it all, but is still discontent, and daydreams about BDSM sex. When her husband is away on a business trip, she goes to a castle outside Rome to work as a secretary. Here she is turned into a slave.
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Star 80 (1983) Bob Fosse, Mariel Hemingway, Eric Roberts, Cliff Robertson, Biography, Drama
Paul Snider is a narcissistic, small time hustler who fancies himself a ladies man. His life changes when he meets Dorothy Stratten working behind the counter of a Dairy Queen. Dorothy is a pretty but naive high school senior. Paul immediately falls for Dorothy, who sees in Paul a wise, worldly person unlike herself. Paul believes Dorothy is Playboy material, the magazine he sees as only a springboard to bigger and better things. Paul’s dream does become a reality: not only does Dorothy eventually marry him, she becomes the August 1979 Playboy Playmate and ultimately Playboy Playmate of 1979, which does indeed lead to the start of an acting career. As Dorothy’s star rises, Paul’s life is one of a hanger-on as those in Dorothy’s new circle, including Playboy publisher Hugh M. Hefner and movie director Aram Nicholas, don’t much like Paul. Paul is unable to eke out a life of his own without using Dorothy’s name, which she increasingly is reluctant to provide to her husband.
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Muri shinjû: Nihon no natsu / Japanese Summer: Double Suicide (1967) Nagisa Ôshima, Keiko Sakurai, Kei Satô, Tetsuo Ashida, Crime, Drama
Over the course of a night, a sex-obsessed young woman, a suicidal man, and a gun-crazy wannabe gangster are taken prisoner of a gang awaiting a shootout between a rival gang at dawn.
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Rendez-vous (1985) André Téchiné, Lambert Wilson, Juliette Binoche, Wadeck Stanczak, Drama, Romance
A woman and three men. Nina, who’s come to Paris to act and sleeps with any man at hand, meets Paulot, a young estate agent; he’s smitten. She also meets Paulot’s flatmate Quentin, a compulsive who stalks her. To Paulot’s jealous dismay, she’s willing to sleep with Quentin, and wants Paulot’s friendship. After a desperate act by Quentin, Nina and Paulot share a flat, but she still won’t take him as a lover; instead, her energy goes into a production of “Romeo and Juliet” directed by a detached, intense man who becomes her father figure. Quentin’s ghost taunts her, Paulot wants to end all contact, and the director plans to return to London. The art of the theater may be her only refuge.
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Dressage (1986) Pierre B. Reinhard, Véronique Catanzaro, Patrick Guillemin, Marc Henry, Comedy, Erotic
At a decadent 1930’s party, two very sexy and utterly shameless young women, Nathalie (Veronique Catansaro) and Eiliane (Cornelia Wilms) make a bet with a rich and handsome young Baron to corrupt two innocent teenagers in order to ruin their families’ reputations. The prize on offer is marriage to the wealthy Baron.
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Last Cannibal World / Ultimo mondo cannibale (1977) Ruggero Deodato, Massimo Foschi, Me Me Lai, Ivan Rassimov, Adventure, Horror
A plane crashes in the jungle. One of the survivors gets lost and while trying to find a way out of the jungle he gets captured by cannibals. He is humiliated, stripped naked, and thrown in a hole with a bird for a while. Eventually, he escapes with the help of a cannibal girl and tries to find his plane so he can go home.
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