mervyn-verstellung's - Favourites List
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Winter 1968, and showbiz legend Judy Garland arrives in swinging London to perform in a sell-out run at The Talk of the Town. It is 30 years since she shot to global stardom in The Wizard of Oz, but if her voice has weakened, its dramatic intensity has only grown. As she prepares for the show, battles with management, charms musicians, and reminisces with friends and adoring fans, her wit and warmth shine through. Even her dreams of romance seem undimmed as she embarks on a courtship with Mickey Deans (Finn Wittrock), her soon-to-be fifth husband. And yet Judy (Renée Zellweger) is fragile. After working for 45 of her 47 years, she is exhausted: haunted by memories of a childhood lost to Hollywood, and gripped by a desire to be back home with her kids. Will she have the strength to go on? Featuring some of her best-known songs, the film celebrates the voice, the capacity for love and the sheer pizzazz of "the world's greatest entertainer". - Director:
- Rupert Goold
- Cast:
- Renée Zellweger, Jessie Buckley, Finn Wittrock
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At the end of the First World War, beloved children's author A. A. Milne (Domhnall Gleeson) creates the magical world of Winnie-the-Pooh - which brings him immediate acclaim. But the books' international success comes at a cost to the author, his young son Christopher Robin (Will Tilston) and his wife Daphne (Margot Robbie), in this beautifully filmed, poignant story about fame and family that also stars Kelly Macdonald. - Director:
- Simon Curtis
- Cast:
- Domhnall Gleeson, Margot Robbie, Kelly MacDonald
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Frances Austen (Sandy Dennis), a young, wealthy spinster, invites a mute teenager into her apartment after finding him freezing in the park next to where she lives. Despite her best efforts, their lack of communication only increases her sense of loneliness, as her possessiveness spirals into frightening new realms. - Director:
- Robert Altman
- Cast:
- Sandy Dennis, Michael Burns, Susanne Benton
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Drawn from his own family memories, 'Distant Voices, Still Lives' is a strikingly intimate portrait of working class life in 1940's and 1950's Liverpool. Focusing on the real-life experiences of his mother, sisters and brother whose lives are thwarted by their brutal, sadistic father (a chilling performance by Pete Postlethwaite), the film shows us beauty and terror in equal measure. Davies uses the traditional family gatherings of births, marriages and deaths to paint a lyrical portrait of family life - of love, grief, and the highs and lows of being human, a 'poetry of the everyday' that is at once deeply autobiographical and universally resonant. - Director:
- Terence Davies
- Cast:
- Kenneth Horne, Freda Dowie, Kenneth Williams
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Terence Davis' lyrical hymn to childhood revisits the same territory at his prize winning debut feature distant voices, still lives, this time focusing on his own memories of growing up in a working-class, catholic family in Liverpool. Eleven-year-old bud (a heartbreaking performance from Leigh McCormack) finds escape from the greyness of 50's Britain through trips to the cinema and in the warmth of family life. But as he gets older, the agonies of the adult world-the casual cruelty of bullying, the tyranny of school and the dread of religion-begin to invade his life. - Director:
- Terence Davies
- Cast:
- Leigh McCormack, Marjorie Yates, Anthony Watson
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Terence Davies’s ode to his native Liverpool has wowed audiences and critics alike after being hailed as the highlight of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where it received its premiere. This is a spectacular return to form by Davies, long-hailed as one of Britain’s greatest filmmakers. Of Time and the City is an illuminating and heartfelt work, powerfully evoking life in post-war Britain while exploring the nature of love, memory, and the toll that the passing years take on the cities and communities that we cherish. No simple documentary, it is an entrancing piece of autobiographical cinema that reaches far beyond the city in which it is set, weaving a rich tapestry from archive and contemporary footage, music, voice, literary quotation, personal reminiscence and wickedly funny observation. - Director:
- Terence Davies
- Cast:
- Terence Davies, Terence Davies
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Before distant voices, still lives and the long day closes confirmed his status as one of the cinematic masters of our day, these three short early films by Terrance Davies reveal a filmmaker of great early promise. In stark black and white, Davis excavates the life of his fictional alter ego, Robert Tucker, in a narrative that slips like a shuffled pack of cards between childhood, middle age and death, shaping the raw materials of his own life into a rich tapestry of experiences and impressions.
Featuring:
- Children
- Madonna and Child
- Death and Transfiguraton- Director:
- Terence Davies
- Cast:
- Phillip Mawdsley, Nick Stringer, Valerie Lilley
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From Robert Eggers, the visionary filmmaker behind the modern horror masterpiece 'The Witch', comes this hypnotic and hallucinatory tale of two lighthouse keepers (Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson) on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890's. As an approaching storm threatens to sweep them from the rock and strange apparitions emerge from the fog, each man begins to suspect that the other has become dangerously unmoored. - Director:
- Robert Eggers
- Cast:
- Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe, Valeriia Karaman
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Failed comedian Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) encounters violent thugs while wandering the streets of Gotham City dressed as a clown. Disregarded by society Fleck begins a slow descent into madness as he transforms into the criminal mastermind known as Joker in director Todd Phillips' thrilling origin story. - Director:
- Todd Phillips
- Cast:
- Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz
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An Angel at My Table (1990)Un ángel en mi mesa
"An Angel at My Table" is the internationally acclaimed second film by Oscar-winning director Jane Campion. It is an extraordinarily moving celebration of the life of Janet Frame, New Zealand's most distinguished author, based on her autobiographical trilogy. The film follows Janet through her poor childhood in the depression and her growing fascination with literature; her painfully shy student days and subsequent treatment for misdiagnosed schizophrenia; and finally on her travels to Europe where she samples Bohemian life and achieves international success as a writer. - Director:
- Jane Campion
- Cast:
- Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh, Karen Fergusson
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Ada (Holly Hunter) - mute since birth - her nine year old daughter and her piano arrive to an arranged marriage in the remote bush of nineteenth century New Zealand. Of all her belongings her husband refuses to transport the piano and it is left behind on the beach. Unable to bear its certain destruction, Ada strikes a bargain with an illiterate tattooed neighbour (Harvey Keitel). She may earn her piano back if she allows him to do certain things while she plays; one black key for every lesson. - Director:
- Jane Campion
- Cast:
- Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill
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Beautiful Catherine Holly (Elizabeth Taylor) is committed to a mental institution after witnessing the strange and horrible death of her cousin. Catherine's aunt, Violet Venable (Katharine Hepburn) tries to influence Dr. Cukrowicz (Montgomery Clift), a young neurosurgeon, to surgically end Catherine's haunting hallucinations. By utilising injections of Sodium Pentothal, Dr. Cukrowicz discovers that Catherine's delusions are in fact true. He then must confront Violet about her own involvement in her son's lurid death... - Director:
- Joseph L. Mankiewicz
- Cast:
- Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift
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The Truth (2019)La Vérité
Fabienne (Catherine Deneuve), an ageing movie star, is about to publish her long-awaited memoirs. Sparks immediately fly when her daughter Lumir (Juliette Binoche) returns to Paris from New York to confront this rose-tinted version of their family history. However, as the past is gradually addressed, their strained relationship takes a journey toward possible reconciliation. Also starring Ethan Hawke, 'The Truth' paints a moving portrait of family dynamics and human relationships. - Director:
- Hirokazu Koreeda
- Cast:
- Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, Ethan Hawke
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Parasite (2019)Gisaengchung
Kim Ki Taek's (Song Kang Ho) family are all unemployed and living in a squalid basement. When his son, Ki Woo, gets a tutoring job at the lavish home of the Park family, the Kim family's luck changes. One by one they gradually infiltrate the wealthy Park's home, attempting to take over their affluent lifestyle, but as their deception unravels events begin to get increasingly out of hand in ways you simply cannot imagine. - Director:
- Joon-Ho Bong
- Cast:
- Kang-ho Song, Sun-kyun Lee, Yeo-jeong Jo
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Based on one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century, 'The Crucible' takes place in Massachusetts in 1692. In the small Puritan town, where one's life is dedicated to the service of God, several teenage girls are discovered in the woods and are accused of engaging in 'The Devil's' work. As time goes by the village becomes consumed by cries of witchcraft. One by one, the blameless victims of this mass hysteria are torn from their homes and families. - Director:
- Nicholas Hytner
- Cast:
- Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder, Paul Scofield
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