Film Reviews
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Stingaree |
A young lady named Hilda who works as a servant for the wealthy Clarksons, sheep farmers, and dreams of being a great singer. An upcoming visit by Sir Julian, a famous composer arriving from London, drives jealous Mrs. Clarkson (an interfering biddy who fancies she can sing - but can't) to send away Hilda, so he doesn't hear Hilda has a good voice. Meanwhile, an infamous outlaw named Stingaree has just arrived in town and kidnaps Sir Julian, then poses as him at the Clarksons, where he meets Hilda a few hours before she is to leave. |
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Beyond Gay: The Politics of Pride |
Over the course of a year, film follows Vancouver Pride Society president Ken Coolen to various international Pride events, including Poland, Hungary, Russia, Sri Lanka and others where there is great opposition to pride parades. In North America, Pride is complicated by commercialization and a sense that the festivals are turning away from their political roots toward tourism, party promotion and entertainment. Christie documents the ways larger, more mainstream Pride events have supported the global Pride movement and how human rights components are being added to more established events. In the New York sequence, leaders organize an alternative Pride parade, the Drag March, set up to protest the corporatization of New York Pride. A parade in São Paulo, the world's largest Pride festival, itself includes a completely empty float, meant to symbolize all those lost to HIV and to anti-gay violence. |
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The Circle |
Zürich in the mid 50‘s: The young shy teacher Ernst Ostertag becomes a member of the gay organisation Der Kreis. There he gets to know the transvestite star Röbi Rapp – and immediately falls head over heels in love with him. Röbi and Ernst live through the high point and the eventual decline of the organization, which in the whole of Europe is seen as the pioneer of gay emancipation. Ernst finds himself torn between his bourgeois existence and his commitment to homosexuality, for Röbi it is about his first serious love relationship. A relationship which will last a lifetime. The film looks back from the present to the time when the "Mother" of all European homosexual organizations had its high point to the time it slowly fell apart. While the repression against homosexuals became increasingly more intense in Zurich, two young and very different men fight for their love and – together with their friends – for the rights of gays. |
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She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum |
Now an old man, Masao returns to his childhood home and begins to recall his upbringing in this abandoned sector of Japan. |
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Ghoulies II |
Ghoulies II picks up a short time after the first movie, a few of the little nasties stow away on an amusement park ride and bring big bucks to a dying fair. The creatures are mad after an attempt to kill them, so the creatures go on a rampage through the fairgrounds, ultimately leading to an explosive conclusion! |
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Special Agent |
Newspaperman Bill Bradford becomes a special agent for the tax service trying to end the career of racketeer Nick Carston. Julie Gardner is Carston's bookkeeper. Bradford enters Carston's organization and Julie cooperates with him to land Carston in jail. An informer squeals on them. Julie is kidnapped by Carston's henchmen as she is about to testify |
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Blue Jasmine |
Jasmine French used to be on the top of the heap as a New York socialite, but now is returning to her estranged sister in San Francisco utterly ruined. As Jasmine struggles with her haunting memories of a privileged past bearing dark realities she ignored, she tries to recover in her present. Unfortunately, it all proves a losing battle as Jasmine's narcissistic hangups and their consequences begin to overwhelm her. In doing so, her old pretensions and new deceits begin to foul up everyone's lives, especially her own. |
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In the Cut |
Following the gruesome murder of a young woman in her neighborhood, a self-determined woman living in New York City--as if to test the limits of her own safety--propels herself into an impossibly risky sexual liaison. Soon she grows increasingly wary about the motives of every man with whom she has contact--and about her own. |
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A Place in the World |
Mario and Ana, in voluntary exile from Buenos Aires, live in a remote Argentine valley with their 12-year-old son Ernesto. Mario runs a school and a wool cooperative; Ana, a doctor, heads a clinic with Nelda, a progressive nun. Into this idealistic family comes Hans, a jaded Spanish geological engineer -- surveying the land for the local patron, to see if it can be dammed for hydro-electric power, which would drive the peasants from the land into the cities. |
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The Conversation |
Surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is hired by a mysterious client's brusque aide (Harrison Ford) to tail a young couple, Mark (Frederic Forrest) and Ann (Cindy Williams). Tracking the pair through San Francisco's Union Square, Caul and his associate Stan (John Cazale) manage to record a cryptic conversation between them. Tormented by memories of a previous case that ended badly, Caul becomes obsessed with the resulting tape, trying to determine if the couple are in danger. |
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Jealousy |
The professional and emotional cross-currents between two romantically entwined theater actors played by the director’s son Louis and Anna Mouglalis. |
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The John Garfield Story |
This documentary, aired on the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) cable network, looks at the life and career of John Garfield, whose career was cut short when he died at age 39. His difficult childhood in the rough neighborhoods of New York City provided the perfect background for the tough-guy roles he would play on both stage and screen. |
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The Target Shoots First |
An NYU philosophy grad struggles to maintain artistic and personal integrity as a production manager for Columbia House. |
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Oranges |
Two boys are talking after a bicycle accident. The older is bragging about his experience with girls, but is that just a boast? |
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Sayonara |
Air Force Major Lloyd Gruver (Marlon Brando) is reassigned to a Japanese air base, and is confronted with US racial prejudice against the Japanese people. The issue is compounded because a number of the soldiers become romantically involved with Japanese women, in defiance of US military policy. Ordinarily an officer who is by-the-book, Gruver must take a position when a buddy of his, an enlisted man Joe Kelly (Red Buttons) falls in love with a Japanese woman Katsumi (Miyoshi Umeki) and marries her. Gruver risks his position by serving as best man at the wedding ceremony. |