Adapted from Graham Greene's novel, Alec Guinness stars in this classic spy spoof as Jim Wormold, an English expatriate who sells vacuum cleaners in Havana. His life is irrevocably changed as he is recruited by Hawthorne (Noel Coward), and pressed into service as an operative of M.I.5, which he reluctantly agress to so he can earn extra money for his 17-year-old daughter. Wormold does not actually engage in any actual espionage. Instead, he invents facts on his reports and recruits fictitious agents. However thise reports are taken seriously in London and two additional agents, a radio operator and a secretary are despached to assist Wormold. He soon discovers that his imagination is going to take on life of its own...
Finally released in 1946, ten years after it was shot, Jean Renoir's Partie de campagne was hailed as an 'unfinished masterpiece'. Since then, his masterly adaptation on a Maupassant story has grown in reputation to the point where it has become Renoir's best-loved film. On an idyllic country picnic, a young girl leaves her family and fiancé for a while, and succumbs to an all-too-brief romance. Shot on location on the banks of two small tributaries of the Seine, Renoir's sensuous tribute to the countryside - and to the river - has seldom been surpassed. In its bitter-sweet lyricism, its tenderness and poetic feel for nature, its tolerant satire of bourgeois conventions and its poignant sense of the transience of innocence and love, 'Partie De Campagne' seems to distil the essence of all that is most personal of Renoir's art.
Two women, Janis (Penélope Cruz) and Ana (Milena Smit), meet in a hospital where they are about to give birth. Both are single and became pregnant by accident. Janis, middle-aged, has no regrets and is exultant. The other, Ana, an adolescent, is scared and repentant. Janis tries to encourage her as they move like sleepwalkers through the hospital corridors. The few words they exchange in these hours will create a very close link between them, which by chance will develop and complicate, changing their lives in a decisive way.
A social and political chameleon, James Penfield makes his money rearranging the facts, a talent he ruthlessly exploits in his professional relationships. But his penchants for storytelling leaks its way into his private life when he reinvents his past in the pursuit of Susie, the attractive and sophisticated daughter of upper class intellectuals. But as James twists himself tighter and tighter in his web of deceit, the stakes spin out of control and the sacrifice is more than just a printed story.
Peter Greenaway became a director of international status with this witty, stylised, erotic country house murder mystery. In an apparently idyllic 17th century Wiltshire, an ambitious draughtsman is commissioned by the wife of an aristocrat to produce twelve drawings of her husband's estate, in return for which he will receive payment, board and bed - hers. Extravagant costumes, a twisting plot, elegantly barbed dialogue and a score by Michael Nyman make the film a treat for ear, eye and mind.
A sixteen-year-old boy insinuates himself into the house of a fellow student from his literature class and writes about it in essays for his teacher. Faced with this gifted and unusual pupil, the teacher rediscovers his enthusiasm for his work, and finds himself strangely compelled as the boy becomes more dangerously involved with his class-mate's attractive mother. However, as the line between reality and fiction becomes blurred, the boy's intrusion unleashes a series of uncontrollable events.
An epic story, exotic locales and electrifying performances from Bai Ling, Tim Roth and Nick Nolte highlight this moving film that celebrates the power of the human spirit. Raised as an orphan, Binh (Damien Nguyen) is a young Vietnamese man with one impossible dream: to be reunited with his birth father, an American G.I. who left without a trace. In an incredible odyssey that stretches from Saigon to New York to Texas, Binh confronts unimaginable hardships as he finds danger, love and, finally, the key to unlocking the mysteries of his past. .
Devastated at having to leave the wondrous hills of Provence where his family had spent the summer, Marcel is elated when they return for Christmas and then Easter. Before long they are heading for their rural retreat every weekend and the long journey there soon brings its own adventure. As Marcel's affectionate reminiscences draw to a close, we are left with a wonderfully poignant conclusion to these classics of modern French cinema.
To escape from his overbearing parents, 14-year-old Lorenzo bunks off a school skiing trip and spends a week hiding out in his building's neglected basement, watching films, reading books and playing with his ant farm. But when his older half-sister unexpectedly turns up they are thrown into a new, intimate and deeply emotional relationship, forcing Lorenzo to see the world through new eyes.
This is the intention of the ambitious young Doctor Lydgate as he takes up his position at Middlemarch's new hospital. Elsewhere in the town, Dorothea Brooke, seeking a purpose to her young life, finds herself drawn to the elderly, but scholarly Edward Casaubon. Soon both find their cherished idealism tested by the demands of marriage and society... Set during the political upheavals of 19th Century England, Middlemarch is an epic story of love, politics and frustrated passion.
The Cote d'Azur, 1915. The great painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir is in his twilight years, tormented by the loss of his wife and the news that his son Jean has been wounded in WW1.
When a young girl enters his idyllic Mediterranean world, Pierre-Auguste rejuvenates and becomes newly inspired by her beauty and spirit.
But when Jean returns home to convalesce - and in the face of his father's fierce opposition - he falls in love with the muse, and within the battle-shaken Jean, a filmmaker begins to grow.
This delightful comedy is the debut film of director Ivan Passer and a signature work of the Czech New Wave. The film follows two old friends, both musicians, reunited when one returns to the small village where they grew up. Finding humour in every aspect of ordinary life, the film shows true affection and understanding for all its characters. Addressing the concerns of living in a totalitarian state with a beguiling lightness of touch, and enchantingly shot by Miroslav Ondricek, 'Intimate Lighting' is a subtle and beautifully observed drama of the everyday.
Stephane and Maxime run a renowned violin making and repair business. One day Maxime introduces his partner to Camille, the beautiful violinist he has being seeing. Camille is attracted to the enigmatic, introverted Stephane who it seems may share her feelings but is incapable of expressing emotion. Convinced that she can find love beyond his cold exterior, her attraction turns to obsession and culminates in a shattering climax
Every society that enforces the death penalty needs people to kill other people. Four men are faced with an unthinkable but simple choice. Whatever they decide, it will directly or indirectly corrode themselves, their relationships, and their entire lives. In four thematically connected episodes, Mohammad Rasoulof tells their stories, which inevitably are also the stories of the people who surround them.
On a warm spring day in 1924, house maid and foundling Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) finds herself alone on Mother's Day. Her employers, Mr and Mrs Niven (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman), are out and she has the rare chance to spend an afternoon of abandon with her secret lover, Paul (Josh O'Connor), the boy from the manor house nearby who is Jane's long-term love despite the fact that he's engaged to be married to another woman, a childhood friend and daughter of his parents' friends. But events that neither can foresee will change the course of Jane's life forever.
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