Film Reviews
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Ambush |
A Westerner searches for a white woman held by the Apaches. |
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Open City |
Jo Dae-yeong is a police officer investigating a pickpocket ring with ties to the Yakuza. One day he rescues Baek Jang-mi from danger, only to discover that she is the boss of the gang he has been tracking. |
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Forever |
Two people, alone in a desolate city. Costas and Anna in Athens. Costas is an engine driver. The trains he drives travel from one end of the city to the other, following the traces of the ancient rivers that were paved over and made into roads. Anna sells ferry boat tickets at Piraeus, the city’s main harbour, the place where the rivers once flowed into the sea. Costas knows Anna. He sees her every morning, waiting on the platform for his train to take her from Thiseion to Piraeus; and he sees her every afternoon, when his train takes her from Piraeus back to Thiseion. Anna doesn’t know Costas. From the window of the train car she looks out at the same desolate city every day, without knowing who’s driving the train. When something happens to turn Costas’s life upside down, he decides to reach out from inside his solitude and talk to Anna. |
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The Sea of Grass |
Elia Kazan directs Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in an epic western melodrama. |
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Penny Serenade |
A light-hearted romantic drama starring Cary Grant & Irene Dunne as a couple who meet, fall in love, quarrel and reunite. While listening to a recording of "Penny Serenade", Julie Gardiner Adams (Irene Dunne) begins reflecting on her past. She recalls her impulsive marriage to newspaper reporter Roger Adams (Carey Grant), which begins on a deliriously happy note but turns out to be fraught with tragedy. Other songs remind her of their courtship, their marriage, their desire for a child, and the joys and sorrows they have shared. A flood of memories come back to her as she ponders on their present problems and how they arose. |
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My Name Is Ki |
Ki is a young woman who no longer wants to live with the father of her child. She moves into a house in which lives Miko, a serious man who does not care for distractions. The responsibility of raising a child on her own comes up against the need to work and the wish to live a carefree life. |
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Manny & Lo |
A pregnant teen and her younger sister run away from foster homes and kidnap a woman whom they believe can help with the pregnancy. |
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Chasing Sleep |
A college professor wakes up to find his wife has not returned home, then struggles to understand her disappearance. |
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The Bridge on the River Kwai: An Appreciation by Filmmaker John Milius |
John Milius talks about The Bridge on the River Kwai |
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Must Love Dogs |
Sarah Nolan is a newly divorced woman cautiously rediscovering romance with the enthusiastic but often misguided help of her well-meaning family. As she braves a series of hilarious disastrous mismatches and first dates, Sarah begins to trust her own instincts again and learns that, no matter what, it's never a good idea to give up on love. |
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The Knot |
The Dialogues with Solzhenitsyn is a two-part Russian television documentary by Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The documentary shot in Solzhenitsyn’s home shows his everyday life and covers his reflections on Russian history and literature. |
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Parsifal |
Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's Parsifal film is a psychological interpretation of the opera mixing in references to the history of Germany, Wagner's life, German literature and philosophy. The action is centered around Wagner's death mask. Kundry (played by the German actress Edith Clever and sung by Yvonne Minton) is the main character - one might read the film as the story of her redemption rather than that of Amfortas. Made entirely in a studio (in 1981 and released in 1983), it is characterized by long takes, slowly moving camera that breaths with the music and varies between close-ups and long shots to emphasize the drama. |
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Maudie |
An unlikely romance in which the reclusive Everett Lewis hires a fragile yet determined woman named Maudie to be his housekeeper. Maudie, bright-eyed but hunched with crippled hands, yearns to be independent, to live away from her protective family and she also yearns, passionately, to create art. Unexpectedly, Everett finds himself falling in love. Based on a true story, |
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If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front |
Filmmaker Marshall Curry explores the inner workings of the Earth Liberation Front, a revolutionary movement devoted to crippling facilities involved in deforestation, while simultaneously offering a profile of Oregon ELF member Daniel McGowan, who was brought up on terrorism charges for his involvement with the radical group. |
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In the Pope's Eye |
The Pope is disturbed by the fact that today's youth are not as spiritually inclined as they should be, and so he decides to set up a Vatican television station and entice them back into the religion of their ancestors. In order to particularly grab the wandering flock, a priest invites the comedians from "The Other Sunday," an actual comedy program on Italian television, to perform on this new channel. He sets up a show that parodies an over-the-hill transvestite group, the Flagg Sisters, played by themselves. This understandably upsets one of the more eminent Cardinals who tries every means he can to stop the show. Nothing succeeds, and he can only assemble with all the other devout men of God to view the first live broadcast. Worked into the plot are several outrageously incongruous scenes that casually juxtapose the secular and sacred, including God at the wheel of a Fiat - what else would He drive? |