mervyn-verstellung's - Favourites List

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After a prolonged period of separation, world famous pianist Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman) decides to visit her daughter, Eva (Liv Ullman).

Once there, she is surprised to find that her other daughter, Helena (Lena Nyman), is no longer staying at the mental institution where Charlotte placed her, but is now living with Eva. As day moves into night, mother and daughter open up about their feelings and misgivings toward one another. Before long, Charlotte, who chose her musical career over fulfilling her role as a mother, is forced to reappraise her life and the choices she has made. By the time the night is over, the relationship between these two women undergoes a profound change. Winner of a host of international awards, this stunning and beautifully observed film features an historic union of two of Sweden's greatest international talents, Ingrid Bergman and Ingmar Bergman, working together for the first and only time.

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Exhilarating and astonishingly ambitious, "Victoria" is an adrenaline-fuelled heist thriller set on the streets of nighttime Berlin that features the staggering technical feat of being shot in a single, unbroken take.

Victoria, a young woman from Madrid, meets four local guys outside a nightclub in the early hours of the morning. Sonne and his friends are Berliners who promise to show her the real side of the city. But when the group are suddenly forced to repay a debt to a member of the city's criminal underworld, the night quickly spirals out of control.

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Sandrine Bonnaire won a Best Actress Cesar for her portrayal as Mona - a young and defiant drifter in this tragic story. Using a largely non-professional cast Varda recollects Mona's story through flashbacks of those who encountered her, producing a splintered portrait of an enigmatic woman.

She's not a kind girl but courageous while wandering in the winter. She announces in 1984 the collective conciousness of homeless people dying from the cold.

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Willem Dafoe stars in a career defining performance as a reluctant father figure to the residents of a motel set against the backdrop of a Disneyland resort.

From critically acclaimed director Sean Baker (Tangerine) 'The Florida Project' is a wonderful film about the innocence of childhood and the social divide that often touches all sides of humanity.

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When an argument between two young schoolboys results in one of the boys losing his teeth, the parents of both children decide to meet to discuss the matter.

Nancy Cowan, a neurotic investment broker, and her husband Alan, an ignorant high-flying corporate lawyer, join Penelope Longstreet, a politically correct campaigner and her husband Michael, a goofy wholesaler of sanitary goods, at their plush Brooklyn apartment. But what begins as a civilised chat soon spirals into a hilarious, alcohol induced night of violence, vomiting and verbal warfare as each couple sinks to the level of bickering children.

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In a tour de force of fearless vulnerability, Katharine Hepburn portrays the conflicting emotions that stir the heart of a lonely, middle-aged American tourist who is forced to confront her insecurities when she is drawn into a seemingly impossible affair with a charming Italian shopkeeper (Rossano

Brazzi) amid the ancient city's canals and piazzas. Lean's personal favorite among his own films, 'Summertime' is an exquisitely tender evocation of the magic and melancholy of a fleeting, not-quite-fairy-tale romance.

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Henry is a shy mechanic living in a slum who loves Beverly, his best friend's sister, and also baby-sits for his neighbour Rosie, a prostitute. Freddy, a driver for the gangster Mr. Paris, is slick and self-confident, married to the materialistic Sharon.

One day, Sonya, who works in a morgue, comes across a letter indicating that the twins are actually the offspring of European nobility and owed a large sum of inheritance money. She decides to track them down and as their two worlds collide, the twins lives will never be the same again.

A murdered girl's defiant mother (Frances McDormand) boldly paints three local billboards, each with a controversial message, igniting a furious battle with a volatile cop (Sam Rockwell) and the town's revered chief of police (Woody Harrelson).

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Rick Grimes and his group of survivors know how brutal their world can be. After feeling powerless under Negan's rules and demands, Rick rallied his allies to fight back against the Saviours.

Together with the Hilltop and the Kingdom, Rick and the Alexandrians bring "All Out War" to Negan and his forces. The Saviours are larger, better equipped, and ruthless, but Rick and the unified communities are fighting for the promise of a brighter future. The battle lines are drawn as they launch into a kinetic, action-packed offensive.

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When college nostalgia inspires a group of middle-aged businessmen to match-make for the widow - played with measured dignity by Setsuko Hara (Tokyo Story) - of one of their friends and her daughter, they have no idea of the strife their careless interference will cause.

Late Autumn's examination of familial upheaval moves effortlessly from comedy to pathos and is amongst the finest of legendary director Yasujiro Ozu's post-war films.

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On a small southern Louisiana island exists a forgotten ramshackle town known as The Bathtub, the proud home of six-year-old Hushpuppy and her father Wink.

When her defiant father becomes ill and an environmental disaster causes ferocious floods to engulf the area, Hushpuppy is forced to survive on her own. Now she must face the elements, her destiny and prehistoric beasts that have awoken from their frozen graves.

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Melodrama casts noirish shadows in this portrait of maternal sacrifice from Hollywood master Michael Curtiz.

Its iconic performance by Joan Crawford as Mildred, a single mother hell-bent on freeing her children from the stigma of economic hardship, solidified Crawford's career comeback and gave the actor her only Oscar. But as Mildred pulls herself up by the bootstraps, first as an unflappable waitress and eventually as the well-heeled owner of a successful restaurant chain, the ingratitude of her materialistic firstborn (a diabolical Ann Blyth) becomes a venomous serpent's tooth, setting in motion an endless cycle of desperate overtures and heartless recriminations. Recasting James M. Cain's rich psychological novel as a murder mystery, this bitter cocktail of blind parental love and all-American ambition is both unremittingly hard-boiled and sumptuously emotional.

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After he saves her from drowning in the bay, Scottie's (James Stewart) interest shifts from business to fascination with the icy, alluring blonde. When tragedy strikes and Madeleine (Kim Novak) dies, Scottie is devastated.

But when he finds another woman remarkably like his lost love, the now obsessed detective must unravel the secrets of the past to find the key to his future.

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Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) leads a group of Anglican nuns to a remote Himalayan range of mountains, there to set up a mission in an abandoned harem.

This is her first position of authority and she finds both her physical and her spiritual limits being taxed as she has to maintain order and discipline in a claustrophobically hostile environment. Slowly but surely, however, the privations and hardship they must endure, the extremes of climate and the peculiar amorality of the local natives all combine to slowly corrupt the women's faith, pushing them further into jealousy, anger and madness...

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Into Great Silence is the phenomenal box office smash hit about life inside the Grande Chartreuse that has opened to rapturous acclaim across the Western World.

The director, Philip Groning, made his request 19 years ago to film inside the monastery where the last photos taken were in 1960, only to be told that it was 'too early' that maybe in 10 or 15 years... Eventually, as a result of this long standing and trusted relationship between the Film Director and the General Prior, permission to film was granted. Into Great Silence is a very strict, next to silent documentary on monastic life with no music except the chants in the monastery, no interviews and no commentaries and is the first feature to document life inside the mother house of the legendary Carthusian Order in the French Alps. The viewer is invited to watch the films as part of a meditative experience where the film becomes the monastery rather than depicting one. A film for those who want to embrace awareness, absolute presence and to contemplate the life of men who have devoted themselves to God in the purest form.