jill-from-london's - Favourites List

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Written and Directed by John Sayles this 1920's set drama based on real events, details the brutal battle between miners, strikebreakers and a corrupt coal mining company in a tense and emotional story of small-town poverty, bitterness and exploitation.

When union man Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper) arrives in the backwater town of Matewan, West Virginia to organise a workforce to stand up against the Stone Mountain Coal company, he finds that instead of the men presenting a united force against their real enemy, they are embroiled in disputes between themselves as tensions rise between white miners and black workers. Despite all good intentions, the situation spirals out of all control and a bloody fight for livelihoods and dignity ensues.

When attorney Frank Calvin (Paul Newman) is given an open-and-shut medical malpractice case that no one thinks he can win, he courageously decides to refuse a settlement from the hospital. Instead he takes the case and the entire legal system as well, to court.

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The film that took last year's Cannes by surprise. Le Quattro Volte explores the cycles of life in a wordless portrait of a Calabrian village that progresses through life-forms from man to animals (goats and a star turn from a dog) to a tree.

It works both as a simple celebration of nature and as an exploration of our place in the world, and an extraordinary piece of pure and often very funny cinema.