griggs's - Moviedrome List

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Belgian enfant terrible Jan Bucquoy took time off from his job as curator of the Museum of Underpants to direct this wry autobiographical account of growing up in a Flemish working class family.

Sexual curiosity, failure and conquests follow one after the other as he escapes the confines of his small hometown to head for cosmopolitan Brussels, where his involvement in the political activism of the Sixties student movement is constantly threatened by his predeliction for less noble pursuits.

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The classic 'rock and roll' film of the 50's and the Jayne Mansfield movie. Legendary moments include her hot strut down the street to Little Richard's title song, leaving ice blocks melting and milk bottles bubbling over.

Around a simple comic plot - gangster hires alcoholic press agent to make a singing star out of his incredibly voluptuous but tone-deaf girlfriend - director Frank Tashlin creates a feast for eyes and ears in 'the grandeur of CinemaScope' and glorious De Luxe colour.

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Two classics from famous Finish director Aki Kaurismäki.

Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatiana (1994)

Valto (Mato Valtonen) discovers the coffee runs out. His mother (Irma Junnilainen) refuses to make him more right away. So he locks her in the cupboard, takes her money and sets off for nowhere in particular.
Juha (1999)
Marja (Kati Outinen) and Juha (Sakari Kuosmanen) are a happily married couple living a country life when a man asks for help fixing his car. As Juha works away at the broken convertible the man tries to persuade Marja to run away with him to the city.

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A battle of gigantic proportions is looming in the neon underground of New York City. The armies of the night number 100,000; they outnumber the police 5 to 1; and tonight they're after the Warriors - a street gang unfairly blamed for a rival gang leader's death.

This contemporary action-adventure story takes place at night, underground, in the sub-culture of gang warfare that rages from Coney Island to Manhattan to the Bronx. Members of the Warriors fight for their lives, seek to survive in the urban jungle and learn the meaning of loyalty.

Starkly shot in black and white, capturing a Paris not seen on any tourist map, the film deals with France's intolerance towards outsiders, following Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Kounde) and Said (Said Taghmaoui), three young men trapped in the Parisian economic, ethnic and social underclass.

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Looking forward to a prestigious summer internship in Washington, D.C., pre-med college student Raymond (Jeremy Davies) has his dreams put on hold when he's forced to stay at home caring for his invalid mother.

Constantly harassed by his domineering, traveling salesman father, Raymond struggles to deal with his mother's bed-ridden anxieties and his first, stumbling attempts to romance the naive girl next door.

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Live it up today, your time is up tomorrow. In the Year of the City 2274, humans forsake the ravaged outer environment by living in a vast, bubbled metropolis. There, computerized servo-mechanisms provide all needs and everyone can pursue endless hedonism. Endless, that is, until Lastday.

That's when anyone who's 30 must submit to Carrousel, a soaring, spinning trip to eternity and supposed rebirth. The screen's first use of laser holography provides some of the sci-fi kicks in this post-apocalyptic saga honored with a Special Achievement Academy Award for Visual Effects. Michael York plays Logan 5, a government Sandman authorized to terminate Runners fleeing Carrousel. Logan is almost 30. Catch him if you can.

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Montag (Oskar Werner), a regimented fireman in charge of burning the forbidden books, meets a revolutionary school teacher (Julie Christie) who dares to read.

Suddenly, he finds himself a hunted fugitive, forced to choose not only between his rebellious mistress and his pleasure-seeking conformist wife (also played by Julie Christie), but between personal safety and intellectual freedom.

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Antonio Bay, a quaint, small seaside town is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding. That night a heavy, mysterious fog rolls through the town and people begin to die in savage ways.

Rumours of a secret as old as the town begin to surface and the people of Antonio Bay realise they are victims of long dead sailors who have come to take revenge for their own murders at the hands of the town's founding fathers. The townspeople can only wait for the fog to roll in and pray that they are not the next to die.

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A heist film tinged with black comedy, the story begins in 1991, with Estonia having just declared its independence from the Soviet Union. A band of gangsters hatch a plan to hijack the small Baltic nation's $1 billion worth of bullion, about to return to the capital after years of hiding in Paris.

Toivo (Ivo Uukkivi), a naive electrician, is commissioned to perform the key element in the plan - plummeting the city to darkness on the appointed midnight hour. Not a hardened criminal, Toivo is encouraged by his very pregnant wife to take the job. What follows is an edge-of-your-seat story involving childbirth, blackout, politics, and above all, love.

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James Spader, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer and Jason Robards star in this seductive murder mystery from the co-creator of 'Twin Peaks'. The son of a powerful Louisiana family, Cray Fowler, is a rising political star for whom a moment's weakness threatens a lifetime ambition.

Videotaped having sex with a beautiful prostitute, Cray finds himself at the center of a spider's web of blackmail and murder. Forced to defend the woman who betrayed him against the woman he once loved, Cray comes face to face with the dangerous secret that created his family's power-and now threatens his own life. Unpredictable and erotic, Storyville is a modern-day Chinatown: suspenseful, shocking, and utterly seductive

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Often described as Director Edgar G Ulmer's 'Citizen Kane', alongside 'The Black Cat', 'Bluebeard' and 'Detour', 'Ruthless' is one of the Poverty Row king's very finest films.

The film follows the rise to power of Horace Woodruff Vendig (an admirably cast Zachary Scott) through flashbacks which both stress his destructive use of others and refuse to explain his ambitions through clear-cut motivations. 'Ruthless' is an indictment of the idea of success at any price...with first rate performances from Lucille Bremner, Martha Vickers and Sidney Greenstreet in his last great screen role.

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The Chase. The Desert. The Shack. The Girl. The Roadblock. The End. One man races against time, against destiny, against the road: the ultimate car chase movie. Kowalski (Barry Newman) is the last American hero.

He's the lone stranger - a modern cowboy in a white Dodge Challenger who bets that he can drive from Denver to San Francisco in fifteen hours. Loaded with amphetamines and a full tank, he takes to the open highway. In his supercharged Challenger he breaks through every speed trap, dragnet and roadblock in four states to become an instant cult hero...

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Soon after the huge success of 'Magnificent Obsession', Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson again teamed up with director Douglas Sirk for this heartwarming story of an attractive, wealthy New England widow who defies social constraints when she falls in love for a much younger man.

When Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) falls in love with her sexy gardener, Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson), she becomes the target of small town gossip, while at the time incurring the wrath of her own children Kay (Gloria Talbott) and Ned (William Reynolds). The children and the town want Cary to lead a more conventional lifestyle than that offered by Ron. They would prefer that she spend the rest of her life in front of her new TV set, wed to Harvey (Conrad Nagel), a highly respected, wealthy - and boring - bachelor. Will she choose love or "respectability"?

Following the accidental death of her daughter's lowlife boyfriend, respectable mother Lucia Harper instinctively hides the body to protect her family. Before long a stranger calls, sent by his partner to blackmail her. The comfort and security of Lucia's world appears to be in danger of collapsing.