monsieurk's - Favourites List
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il buco (2021)The Hole / Il Buco
During the economic boom of the 1960s, Europe's highest building is being built in Italy's prosperous North. At the other end of the country, young cavers explore Europe's deepest cave in the untouched Calabrian hinterland. The bottom of the Bifurto Abyss, 700 metres below Earth, is reached for the first time. The intruders' venture goes unnoticed by the inhabitants of a small neighbouring village, but not by the old shepherd of the Pollino plateau whose solitary life begins to interweave with the group's journey. 'il Buco' chronicles a visit to the depths of life and nature and parallels two great voyages to the interior. - Director:
- Michelangelo Frammartino
- Cast:
- Claudia Candusso, Paolo Cossi, Mila Costi
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Mikio Naruse Collection: When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960)Onna ga kaidan wo agaru toki
The widowed Keiko (Hideko Takamine) manages a hostess bar in Tokyo's Ginza district. She remains faithful to the memory of her husband and supports her mother, brother and his son. The smiling mask she wears allows her to make a living, but the pressure to sell herself is unrelenting. Her business is failing and she must decide whether to raise the money to buy her own bar or marry one of her admiring affluent patrons. A superb, heart-rending film. - Director:
- Mikio Naruse
- Cast:
- Hideko Takamine, Tatsuya Nakadai, Masayuki Mori
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Fellini: Satyricon (1969)Fellini - Satyricon
A truly literate and sophisticated film spectacle by perhaps the greatest of all film artists, this Oscar nominated masterpiece by Federico Fellini, the director of such world-renowned classics, as La Dolce Vita, La Strada and 8 ½, is a fabulous trip into a totally decadent civilization delivering a brilliant visual fantasy unlike anything you have seen. Step into the bawdy, erotic and titillating world of Rome during the days of Emperor Nero, Where two completing teachers play tricks on each other while vying for the same lover's charms, Paralleling the self-indulgence of modern society, these Roman citizens pursue their own gratification above all else, resulting in both intense pleasure and enormous despair, displayed in visually seductive scenes that are both shocking, unprecedented and brilliantly stunning. - Director:
- Federico Fellini
- Cast:
- Martin Potter, Hiram Keller, Max Born
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Flowing (1956)Nagareru / House of Geisha
Directed in 1956, the year that prostitution was outlawed in Japan, 'Flowing' explores the inner workings of a changing world, as traditional geishas faced the impending decline of their hidden way of life and the looming spectre of prostitution. It depicts the story of a widow, Rika (Kinuyo Tanaka), who is forced to work for a living and becomes a maid in a struggling Tokyo geisha house where its proud mistress (Isuzu Yamada) tries to save the house from becoming either a restaurant or a brothel. It is through Rika that we are introduced to the various geishas, who drink and fight, worry over the lack of clients, and attempt to stave off imminent extinction. - Director:
- Mikio Naruse
- Cast:
- Kinuyo Tanaka, Isuzu Yamada, Hideko Takamine
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Multi-award-winning and hailed as one of the finest films of recent years, Pedro Costa's exquisite 'Vitalina Varela' follows the titular Vitalina, a woman left behind in Cape Verde when her husband leaves to find work in Portugal. Years later, she finally makes the journey to Lisbon herself but arrives three days after his funeral. Alone and isolated in her late husband's home, Vitalina is determined to persevere and confront the ghosts of the past. Haunting, strikingly visualised and marked by a towering central performance, 'Vitalina Varela' is an unforgettable modern masterwork. - Director:
- Pedro Costa
- Cast:
- Vitalina Varela, Ventura, Manuel Tavares Almeida
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Cafe Lumiere (2003)Kôhî jikô
A small gem of a film from the director of Millennium Mambo and Flowers of Shanghai, Hou Hsiao-hsien's delightful Cafe Lumiere was made as a centenary tribute to one of the giants of cinema, Japanese auteur Yasujiro Ozu. The film echoes many of Ozu's recurring themes - the breakdown of communication between parents and children, the rhythmic patterning of everyday life. The film paints a compelling and insightful portrait of contemporary Japan, focusing on the travails of Yoko Inoue (Yo Hitoto), an independent young woman researching a project on Taiwanese composer Jian Wenye. Three months pregnant but with no intention of marrying the child's father, Yoko must deal with both the concerns of her parents and the pressures and contradictions of the pressures of her hectic modern life. Deftly drawing on the recurring Ozu theme of the relationship between aging parents and their growing, increasingly independent child, Hsiao-hsien reveals so much of the human heart through his quiet, unhurried style and his acute attention to the minutiae of life. - Director:
- Hsiao-hsien Hou
- Cast:
- Yo Hitoto, Tadanobu Asano, Masato Hagiwara
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The Assassin (2015)Nie yin niang
9th century China.? 10-year-old general's daughter Nie Yinniang is abducted by a nun who initiates her into the martial arts, transforming her into an exceptional assassin charged with eliminating cruel and corrupt local governors. One day, having failed in a task, she is sent back by her mistress to the land of her birth, with orders to kill the man to whom she was promised - a cousin who now leads the largest military region in North China. - Director:
- Hsiao-hsien Hou
- Cast:
- Chen Chang, Qi Shu, Yun Zhou
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Three Times (2005)Zui hao de shi guang
Three different time periods, 1966, 1911 & 2005. Three different Stories. Two amazing performances as Asia's brightest new stars, Shu Qi & Chang Chen, play out three enrapturing tales of unfinished love...
1966, a time for love.A young man enlisted for military service falls for a beautiful girl in a 1960's pool hall. But will she wait for him?
1911, a time for freedom.
A courtesan in a brothel falls in love with one of her clients, a political activist on the brink of joining the Chinese revolution.
2005, a time for youth.
Hidden passions arise when a beautiful bisexual singer becomes involved in a tangled affair with a photographer.- Director:
- Hsiao-hsien Hou
- Cast:
- Qi Shu, Chen Chang, Fang Mei
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A Brighter Summer Day (1991)Gu ling jie shao nian sha ren shi jian
Among the most highly praised titles in all contemporary film, this singular masterpiece of Taiwanese cinema, directed by Edward Yang, was unavailable for years and much sought after. Set in the early 1960s, 'A Brighter Summer Day' is based on the true story of a crime that rocked Taiwan. A film of both sprawling scope and tender intimacy, this novelistic, patiently observed epic centers on the gradual but inexorable fall of a young teenager (Chang Chen, in his first role) from innocence to delinquency, and is set against a simmering backdrop of restless youth, rock and roll, and political turmoil. - Director:
- Edward Yang
- Cast:
- Chen Chang, Lisa Yang, Kuo-Chu Chang
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Love in the Afternoon (1972)L' Amour l'après-midi
The last of Rohmer's Six Moral Tales. Frederic (Bernard Verley) leads a bourgeois life; he is a partner in a small Paris office and is happily married to Helene (Françoise Verley), a teacher expecting her second child. In the afternoons, Frederic daydreams about other women, but has no intention of taking any action. One day, Chloe (Zouzou), who had been a mistress of an old friend, begins dropping by his office. They meet as friends, irregularly in the afternoons, till eventually Chloe decides to seduce Frederic, causing him a moral dilemma. - Director:
- Eric Rohmer
- Cast:
- Bernard Verley, Zouzou, Françoise Verley
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In this Academy Award-nominated Best Picture, two widowed mothers - one white, Beatrice Pullman (Claudette Colbert), and one black, Delilah Johnson (Louise Beavers) - decide to pool their talents and go into business together, opening a waffle shop. A surprising financial success, their business is quickly franchised into a chain of coffee shops that market their unique product line - Delilah's waffle recipe and Bea's maple sugar-candy hearts. But their success is a mixed blessing because it complicates their relationships with their own daughters. Ashamed of her mother, Peola seeks a new life by passing for white. Bea's love for her daughter is tested when she and Jessie fall for the same man. - Director:
- John M. Stahl
- Cast:
- Claudette Colbert, Warren William, Rochelle Hudson
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From the legendary filmmaking duo Powell and Pressburger, The Small Back Room is the story of the troubled love affair between a tormented back room scientist and a beautiful secretary, told against a background of ministerial intrigue and empire building. Sammy Rice (David Farrar) was the army's finest bomb disposal officer until he was injured in the war and left with a false foot. Now part of a specialist 'back room' team, he dismantles the booby-trapped devices being dropped by Nazi bombers. He falls in love with Susan (Kathleen Byron), a colleague, and the two begin a secret affair. However, embittered by life, he feels inferior; inferior as a lover, inferior as a man unable to wear uniform; inferior in his work for, although a brilliant scientist, he allows himself to be exploited by his power-hungry boss. Haunted by his past, he drowns his sorrows in whiskey. Sammy's life is descending into disarray when the news comes; a bomb has exploded with catastrophic consequences, and another has been found. Faced with the biggest challenge of his career, Sammy must confront his demons and take his own life in his hands to solve the mystery of the bomb's lethal mechanism. - Director:
- Michael Powell
- Cast:
- David Farrar, Kathleen Byron, Jack Hawkins
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It's night over Europe, the night of 2nd of May 1945. A crippled Lancaster Bomber struggles home across the English Channel, all crew dead save for the young pilot desperately scanning the radio for signs of life. His prayers are answered, June (Kim Hunter), a young radio operator, picks up his signal, and in the final moments of the young flyer's life, a special bond is formed. The next morning washed up on an English beach, Squadron Leader Peter Carter (David Niven) is alive. He finds June, and the two fall in love. Somehow he survived. It's a miracle...or is it? Peter Carter should have died that night; a heavenly escort missed him in the fog above the Channel, and now he must face the celestial court of appeal for his right to live. - Director:
- Michael Powell
- Cast:
- David Niven, Howard Marshall, Kim Hunter
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One of the greatest American films of the 1950s and a high point in the careers of both the lead actor James Mason and director Nicholas Ray. Mason gives a towering performance as Ed Avery, a happily married schoolteacher who agrees to take a new 'miracle drug' when diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease. It is not long before the drug begins producing malevolent and murderous side-effects that bring to the fore all of Ed's long-repressed frustrations with his life. Mason's support is, exceptional: Barbara Rush as Ed's devoted wife, Christopher Olsen a s his cruelly punished son and Walter Matthau as his faithful colleague. One of cinema's most persuasive portraits of psychological turmoil, the film also succeeds magnificently as searing melodrama and subversive social critique, with Ray, his scriptwriters and cinematographer achieving a perfect balance between emotional realism and exprer;sionist allegory. - Director:
- Nicholas Ray
- Cast:
- James Mason, Barbara Rush, Walter Matthau
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Floating Clouds (1955)Ukigumo / Mikio Naruse Collection: Floating Clouds
Amour fou in Tokyo. Adapted from Fumiko Hayashi's best-selling novel, Naruse's undisputed masterpiece contrasts two characters: a strong woman who relentlessly pursues her desire while hoping her lover and society will understand what she has to do to survive, and her lover who craves a conventionally validated social identity. To him, she represents a blind spot that he cannot face. They love each other, but the times are out of kilter and they are hopelessly out of synch, trying to live as individuals in a newly democratised Japan. - Director:
- Mikio Naruse
- Cast:
- Hideko Takamine, Masayuki Mori, Mariko Okada
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