elasticpiriformis's - Favourites List

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South Dakota rodeo star Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau) awakens from a severe head injury after a horse stamped on his skull. The doctors tell him he must give up the sport - one that is his passion but also his lifeline - for fear it may kill him.

While his sister Lily is mentally disabled and his father drinks, gambles and womanises, Brady is the crutch that supports the family - but without the rodeo, he's facing a life of misery.

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Richard Widmark delivers an indelible performance as Harry Fabian, a small-time American nightclub tout and desperate dreamer who tries to worm his way into the wrestling rackets of post-war London.

In his path lie the formidable obstacles posed by a vengeful club owner (Francis Sullivan) and the racketeer Kristo (Herbert Lorn). The club owner's sultry wife (Googie Withers) schemes with him, and a long-suffering girlfriend (Gene Tierney) does her best to save him. Like many a noir hero before him, Harry thinks he can outrun his fate. He's wrong. Jules Dassin, under suspicion in Hollywood for his political beliefs, made the film at great speed, shooting night scenes in a London still shattered and skeletal from wartime bombings.

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Claudio is a middle-aged lawyer with a prosperous life in a placid provincial town in mid-70's Argentina, just before the military coup.

One night he enters a restaurant where he is verbally attacked by a mysterious stranger, their argument continues on the street outside, and then escalates even more with drastic consequences. A few months later a friend comes to see Claudio about an abandoned house that he is interested in buying. The two incidents come back to haunt Claudio later with the arrival of a Chilean private detective who is intent on locating the missing stranger, who, it turns out, is a relative of one of Claudio's friends. Claudio's life is possibly about to unravel.

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"Maiden" Maiden is the inspirational story of how Tracy Edwards, a 24-year-old cook on charter boats, became the skipper of the first ever all-female crew to enter the Whitbread Round the World Race in 1989.

Tracy's dream was opposed on all sides: her male competitors thought an all-women crew would never make it, the chauvinistic yachting press took bets on her failure, and potential sponsors rejected her, fearing they would die at sea and generate bad publicity. But Tracy refused to give up: she re-mortgaged her home and bought a second-hand boat, putting everything on the line to ensure the team made it to the start line. With the support of her remarkable crew she went on to shock the sport and prove that women are the equal of men.

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Barbara Stanwyck plays a nightclub singer whose snappy street slang attracts the attention of bookish encyclopaedia editor Gary Cooper and his aged bachelor colleagues who devote their lives to compiling the perfect encyclopeadia.

At first, their interest in her is strictly professional, but she soon charms the old men into letting her hide from the police (and her gangster boyfriend) in their mansion, Initially, she resents her forced stay, but after a while she falls for the charm of bookworm Cooper, and makes him realise there is more to life than books.

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Vegas, Baby. Where Nomi's (Elizabeth Berkley)'s dreams and desires to make it big are as sharp as a stiletto heel. When she catches the eye of Cristal (Gina Gershon), the Stardust's sexy headliner, Nomi is on the brink of realising her dreams.

But she soon realises that there is room for only one starlet on the marquee...and that either she or Cristal will have to take a fall!

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Humphrey Bogart stars as Dixon Steele, a screenwriter who is faced with the odious task of scripting a trashy best-seller. He enlists hat-check girl Mildred Atkinson to tell him the story in her own words.

Later that night, Mildred is murdered and Steele is a prime suspect; his record of belligerence when angry and his macabre sense of humour implicate him. Fortunately, lovely neighbour Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame) gives him an alibi. Laurel proves to be just what Steele needed. and their friendship ripens into love. m Will suspicion, doubt, and Steele's inner demons come between them?

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Backstabbing, Blackmail and Betrayal...it's all in the family when you're a Roy.

Blending high drama with dark humour, the acclaimed HBO series 'Succession' explores themes of power, politics and money played out within a filthy rich, dysfunctional dynasty led by aging media tycoon Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and his four grown children: Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Connor (Alan Ruck). In Season 2, Kendall deals with fallout from his hostile-takeover attempt, Shiv is poised to enter the upper echelons of the company, Roman reacquaints himself with the business from the bottom up, and Connor launches an unlikely bid for president. There's plenty of juicy intrigue as this scheming, emotionally challenged family navigates a rapidly changing media landscape and the looming question of who will take over in a post-Logan world.

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On a wintry day, a young man collapses and dies while jogging in the park. At that same moment, a baby is born.

Maverick filmmaker Jonathan Glazer affirms the promise of his brilliant debut, Sexy Beast, with his new film Birth, teaming with Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman for a metaphysical love story that explores the space between what we know and what we feel. Kidman stars as Anna, a delicate young widow who is on the verge of a new life when a solemn little boy appears, claiming to be the reincarnation of her dead husband.

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In a deserted Macedonian village, Hatidze, a 50-something woman, trudges up a hillside to check her bee colonies nestled in the rocks. Serenading them with a secret chant, she gently manoeuvres the honeycomb without netting or gloves.

Back at her homestead, Hatidze tends to her handmade hives and her bedridden mother, occasionally heading to the capital to market her wares. One day, an itinerant family installs itself next door, and Hatidze's peaceful kingdom gives way to roaring engines, seven shrieking children, and 150 cows. Yet Hatidze welcomes the camaraderie, and she holds nothing back - not her tried-and-true beekeeping advice, not her affection, not her special brandy. But soon Hussein, the itinerant family's patriarch, makes a series of decisions that could destroy Hatidze's way of life forever.

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1945, Leningrad. World War II has devastated the city, demolishing its buildings and leaving its citizens in tatters, physically and mentally. Although the siege - one of the worst in history - is finally over, life and death continue their battle in the wreckage that remains.

Two young women, lya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko) and Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), search for meaning and hope in the struggle to rebuild their lives amongst the ruins.

Thirteen-year-old Kayla (Elsie Fisher) endures the tidal wave of contemporary suburban adolescence as she makes her way through the last week of middle school-the end of her thus far disastrous eighth grade year-before she begins high school.

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In Disney and Pixar's Onward, teenage elf brothers Ian and Barley Lightfoot (voices of Tom Holland and Chris Pratt) get an unexpected opportunity to spend one more day with their late dad, so they embark on an extraordinary quest aboard Barley's epic van Guinevere.

Like any good quest, their journey is filled with magic spells, cryptic maps, impossible obstacles and unimaginable discoveries. But when the boys' fearless mum Laurel (voice of Julia Louis-Dreyfus) realises that her sons are missing, she teams up with a part-lion, part-bat, part-scorpion, former warrior - aka The Manticore (voice of Octavia Spencer) - and heads off to find them. Perilous curses aside, this one magical day could mean more than any of them ever dreamed. "It's pure, perfect Pixar"

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Tom Hanks portrays Mister Rogers in 'A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood', a timely story of kindness triumphing over cynicism, based on the true story of a real-life friendship between Fred Rogers and journalist Tom Junod.

After a jaded magazine writer (Emmy winner Matthew Rhys) is assigned a profile of Fred Rogers, he overcomes his skepticism, learning about kindness, love and forgiveness from America's most beloved neighbour.

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They double-crossed Walker, took his $93,000 cut of the heist and left him for dead, but they didn't finish the job. Big mistake. He - someday, somehow - is going to finish them.

Lee Marvin is in full antihero mode as remorseless Walker, talking the talk and walking the walk in John Boorman's (Deliverance) edgy neo-noir classic filled with imaginative New Wave style, blunt dialogue and Walker's relentless quest that, one by one, smashes into the corporate pecking order of a crime group called the Organisation. Angie Dickinson plays the accomplice who uses her seductive wiles to ensnare one of Walker's prey.