frank-talker's - FAVOURITES List

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The unforgettable friendship of two unforgettable men.

The tension and terror that is present-day South Africa is powerfully portrayed in director Richard Attenborough's sweeping story of black activist Stephen Biko (Denzel Washington) and a liberal white newspaper editor who risks his own life to bring Biko's message to the world. After learning of apartheid's true horrors through Biko's eyes, editor Donald Woods (Kevin Kline) discovers that his friend has been silenced by the police. Determined not to let Biko's message go unheard, Woods undertakes a perilous quest to escape South Africa and bring Biko's remarkable tale of courage to the world. The riveting, true story offers a stirring account of man at his most evil and most heroic.

The courageous story of the Battle of the Atlantic: a story of an ocean, a ship and a handful of men. The brave crew are the heroes. The heroine is the ship. The only villain is the sea that man, and war, have made even more brutal...

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In 17th-century England, ambitious country gentleman Oliver Cromwell (Richard Harris) dared to challenge the political oppression and corruption which besieged his nation. Watching his power being usurped by a commoner, King Charles (Alec Guinness) springs to challenge his adversary.

One man will become absolute ruler; the other will be executed.

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Being a teenage girl in the valley is never easy. Peer pressure, social awkwardness, alienation, boyfriend trouble, ignorant parents and the apocalypse. Yes, the apocalypse.

When squabbling teenage sisters Reggie and Sam wake up one morning to find the human race has been thrown into extinction, they decide to track down a radio signal and hopefully other survivors. It's a journey fraught with flesh eating zombies, demented scientists and 1980s teenage girls brandishing machine guns. Who the hell said Armageddon couldn't be fun?

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A good man intent on making the world a better place, Father James (Brendan Gleeson) is continually shocked and saddened by the spiteful and confrontational inhabitants of his small country town. One day his life is threatened during confession.

He shrugs off the altercation and continues to perform his pastoral duties, trying as best he can to help his parishioners. Soon, however, the sinister and troubling undercurrents he has tried to ignore start to make their presence felt more keenly, and as the forces of darkness close in around him he begins to wonder if he will have the courage to face his own personal Calvary.

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Sergeant Gerry Boyle is a small-town cop with a confrontational personality, a rebellious sense of humour, a dying mother, a fondness for prostitutes, and absolutely no interest whatsoever in international cocaine smuggling ring that has brought FBI agent Wendell Everett to his door.

However, when his enthusiastic new partner disappears, his favourite hooker attempts to blackmail him and the drug-traffickers themselves try to buy him off, sergeant Boyle finally realises that he needs to take matters into his own hands.

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Albuquerque, New Mexico, Terry Monroe (Alexander Skarsgard) and Bob Bolano (Michael Pena) are two crooked cops who frame and blackmail criminals.

Things take a sinister turn, however, when they tangle with a strip club manager and his eccentric boss, a British ex-pat and gentleman-junkie called James Mangan (Theo James). Trying to intimidate someone who is more dangerous than they are might not be the best career move this pair have made.

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Robert Duvall gives yet another Academy Award winning performance as Mac Sledge, a self-destructive alcoholic and country singer who finds redemption in a deserted motel in Texas.

Mac discovers a new meaning to life through his burgeoning relationship with motel owner, Rosa Lee (Tess Harper), and her son Sonny (Allan Hubbard); which he is forced to question when his ex-wife, Dixie (Betty Buckley) and daughter, Sue Anne (Ellen Barkin), come to town.

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Sold by her impoverished mother to Zampano (Anthony Quinn), a brutish fairground wrestler, waif-like Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina) lives a life of drudgery as his assistant.

After taking to the road with a travelling circus, a budding relationship with II Matto/The Fool (Richard Basehart), a gentle-natured, tightrope walking clown, offers a potential refuge from her master's clutches. Trapped by her own servile nature, Gelsomina waivers, and Zampano's volcanic temper erupts with tragic consequences. Characteristically mingling elements of biography with metaphor and symbolism, 'La Strada' also combines an easygoing charm with a far harder edged realism in the form of domestic violence and decaying, desolate towns. Masina - Fellini's wife - is astonishing in the central role and what with the evocative Nino Rota score and Otello Martelli's ravishing photography, it's little wonder that 'La Strada' was the winner of the first official Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Big oil means big money. Very big money. And that fact unleashes corruption that stretches from Houston to Washington to the Mideast - and ensnares industrialists, princes, spies, politicians, oilfield workers and terrorists in a deadly, deceptive web of move and countermove.

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John Clasky is a devoted dad whose skills as a chef have afforded his family a very upscale life, including a summer home is Malibu and a breathtaking new housekeeper, Flor. She and her daughter have recently immigrated to L.A. from Mexico and are trying to find a better life.

When they move in with the Claskys for the summer, Flor has to fight for her daughter's soul as she discovers that life in a new country is perilous...especially when you're being embraced by an affluent, eccentric American family!

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An ex-nun (Isabelle Huppert), trying to turn her hand to writing pornography, meets Thomas (Martin Donovan), a recovering amnesiac in search of his estranged wife.

The two set out in search of Thomas' past but soon discover a trail of secrets leading to the dark, violent heart of his previous life and the pain that forced him to forget...

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On the Greek isle of Crete, Basil (Alan Bates), a shy, inhibited writer from England is befriended by Zorba (Anthony Quinn), a boisterous, gregarious peasant with an astonishing love for life.

When Zorba agrees to work at Basil's abandoned mine, it is the beginning of a lesson for the young man as he gradually moves from an observer of the world to a participant.

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Combining the hilarious satire of This is Spinal Tap and Napoleon Dynamite, Adventures Of Power is a Sundance Film Festival & audience favourite starring the real Ari Gold, Jane Lynch (Glee), Adrian Grenier (Entourage), Michael McKean (Spinal Tap), Shoshannah Stern (Jericho), and Chi Chiu Ling

(Kung Fu Hustle), about a air-drummer who saves his hometown by listening to his heartbeat. With a totally awesome soundtrack of 80's hits & hilarious originals, Adventures of Power is an epic comedy about a mine-worker named Power whose love of drums and lack of musical skill has turned him into the ridiculed air drummer; of his small town. But when Power's union-leader father calls a strike at the mine, Power discovers an underground subculture of air-drummers who just might hold the key to changing the world. Power's journey across America brings him face-to-face with his town's greatest enemy, and allows him to discover the beat within his own heart.

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After a job ends more violently than expected, Jack (George Clooney) retreats to the Italian countryside and accepts one last assignment to construct a deadly weapon for a mysterious contact.

But when he pursues a relationship with a beautiful local woman, he may be tempting fate by stepping out of the shadows. Jack soon finds himself in an escalating battle to escape from his secretive past.