João Canijo latest movie adapts a Greek tragedy “Ifigénia en Aulis” to a provincial Portuguese family that has to deal with the Russian Mafia after a deal went wrong. In a place where everything is bought and sold even the youngest daughter may have to be offered for prostitution to make up for a deal that went terribly wrong. “Noite Escura” deals with the emotions of a small family that runs a provincial whorehouse, having to sell their youngest in order to survive.
Read More »
The Gay Deception (1935) William Wyler, Francis Lederer, Frances Dee, Benita Hume, Comedy
Mirabel wins a $5,000 lottery which will enable her to live like a queen in New York. There she meets Sandro, a bellboy who is really a prince, so she does get to be a queen after all.
Read More »
Genova a mano armata / Merciless Man (1976) Mario Lanfranchi, Tony Lo Bianco, Maud Adams, Adolfo Celi, Crime, Thriller
The city suffers and succumbs unarmed, but an ex secret agent succeeds in winning the struggle against the gangsterism. Intrigue and violence grip a society victim of the crime.
Read More »
Edward, My Son (1949) George Cukor, Spencer Tracy, Deborah Kerr, Ian Hunter, Drama
Arnold Boult is determined to make his son a success at all costs. He commits arson, causes two suicides, and bribes people. His wife, unable to leave him, becomes alcoholic and dies. His son is killed. After doing time in prison he searches for his illegitimate grandson.
Read More »
L’insurgée / Restless (2009) Laurent Perreau, Michel Piccoli, Pauline Etienne, Éric Caravaca, Drama
Maurice (Michel Piccoli) is a composer, and a longtime member of the resistance. By chance, he shares a house with his teenager granddaughter. Claire, at 17, is eager to experience all sorts of things and the sooner the better, and rebels against anyone who wants to stop him. Between the swimming and the first encounters with the boys, she spends her life, hosted by his grandfather after being orphaned. But this interaction is difficult: both avoid themselves in their large house, escaping through the windows if necessary, living in mutual incomprehension. Yet, they have something in common: both are insurgents in their own way.
Read More »
Miss Grant Takes Richmond (1949) Lloyd Bacon, Lucille Ball, William Holden, Janis Carter, Comedy
A bookie uses a phony real estate business as a front for his betting parlor. To further keep up the sham, he hires dim-witted Ellen Grant as his secretary figuring she won’t suspect any criminal goings-on. When Ellen learns of some friends who are about to lose their homes, she unwittingly drafts her boss into developing a new low-cost housing development.
Read More »
Barber Yoshino / Yoshino’s Barber Shop (2004) Naoko Ogigami, Kazuyuki Asano, Hoshi Ishida, Shinnosuke Miyao, Comedy
In a small town on the countryside, every young boy is forced to have the same bowl-head haircut known as the “Yoshino-gari” hairstyle. Then one day, a drastic change occurs when a transfer student with bleached hair comes from Tokyo.
Read More »
Bite the Bullet (1975) Richard Brooks, Gene Hackman, Candice Bergen, James Coburn, Action, Adventure, Western
At the beginning of the 20th century, a newspaper organizes an endurance horse race : 700 miles to run in a few days. 9 adventurers are competing, among them a woman, Miss Jones, a Mexican, an Englishman, a young cow-boy, an old one and two friends, Sam Clayton and Luke Matthews. All those individualists will learn to respect each other.
Read More »
Hateshinaki yokubô / Endless Desire (1958) Shôhei Imamura, Reiji Akitsu, Shinsuke Ashida, Takeshi Katô, Comedy
On August 15, ten years after the Pacific War, five people meet at a station. Their purpose is to dig out a cache of morphine — now worth sixty million yen — that HASHIMOTO, an army medical officer, buried in an air-raid shelter in this city on the day the war ended. The five are: SHIMA, a beautiful woman who claims that she is HASHIMOTO’s younger sister and that her brother is dead; NAKADA, a pharmacist; ONUMA, who owns a Chinese restaurant; YAMAMOTO, a thug; and SAWAI, who says he is a junior high school teacher. But HASHIMOTO originally had only three accomplices — and hid the morphine late at night, so they did not know each other’s identities. There is one person too many in the group, but they do not know whom. A butcher shop now stands over the old air-raid shelter. The five decide to rent a vacant house across the street, and dig a tunnel to the butcher shop.
Read More »
Toto le héros / Toto the Hero (1991) Jaco Van Dormael, Michel Bouquet, Mireille Perrier, Jo De Backer, Comedy, Drama
Thomas and Alfred were born around the same time; a fire in the nursery had nurses scrambling to save the newborns. Because he felt that he deserved Alfred’s good fortune at being born into a wealthy family, Thomas conceives the idea that he and Alfred were switched at birth, and he can’t help seeing that his unhappiness should be Alfred’s, from the loss of his sister to his inability to have a relationship with the woman Evelyne. So, as his life is ending, he formulates a plan of revenge against his bitter enemy, his lifetime adversary, the man who stole his existence.
Read More »