monsieurk's - Favourites List

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Hong Kong, 1962. Chow (Tony Leung) is a junior newspaper editor with an elusive wife. His new neighbour Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) is a secretary whose husband seems to spend all his time on business trips. They become friends, making the lonely evenings more bearable.

As their relationship develops they make a discovery that changes their lives forever...

James Mason is Johnny McQueen, the idealistic leader of an illegal organisation in Northern Ireland. Shot during an armed raid he is badly wounded. Stumbling through the back streets of Belfast his friends, enemies and the police begin to close in as he tries to find a place to hide...

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Welcome to the world's most notorious slum: Rio de Janeiro's 'City of God'. A place where combat photographers fear to tread, where police rarely go, and residents are lucky if they live to the age of 20.

This is the true story of a young man who grew up on these streets and whose ambition as a photographer is our window in and ultimately may be his only way out.

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Penniless husband, Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) looks like he is losing his scatterbrained wife, Gerry (Claudette Colbert) to multi-millionaire John D. Hackensacker (Rudy Vallee) when she walks out on him and heads for fun and sun in Palm Beach, Florida.

They become involved with any number of outrageous characters, played by many of the Sturges regulars in hilarious cameos. The witty, sparkling dialogue, poking merciless fun at, amongst other targets, money and sex, is unforgettable.

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Dekalog, from the acclaimed director of the 'Three Colours' trilogy, was premiered to unanimous glowing critical praise at the 1989 Venice Film Festival and its reputation as a cinematic masterpiece remains undiminished. The Ten Commandments, are equally captivating and powerful.

The storied are set around the same Warsaw apartment block and focus on the complexities of human relationships. The themes are the universal ones of love, marriage, infidelity, parenthood, guilt, faith and compassion. The result is a unique and life enhancing look at various moral dilemmas faced by ordinary people in their daily lives.

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This, the last film Preston Sturges made for Paramount, is another great satire on the American penchant for hero worship. It stars Eddie Bracken as Woodrow Truesmith, a soldier who, due to an unfortunate misunderstanding, never actually went to war.

His attempts to keep his secret are scuppered when his home town has him repatriated for a civic celebration of his exploits. In this sentimental comedy, many of Sturge's regular repertory of character actors give the performances of their lives.

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Set in the 1980s, in the former Etruscan landscape of rural Italy, Arthur (Josh O'Connor), a vagabond-type character, is mourning the loss of his love.

A local ragtag group of graverobbers make use of his archaeological skills to find ancient tombs filled with artefacts, but Arthur uses the digs to search for a door to the afterlife, of which myths speak, where he imagines reuniting with her.

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After the French New Wave, the sexual revolution, and the upheavals of May 1968 came the near religiously revered magnum opus by Jean Eustache.

In his long-unavailable body of work, ranging from documentaries about his native village to closely autobiographical narrative films, Eustache pioneered a forthright and fearless brand of realism. The pinnacle of this innovative style, 'The Mother and the Whore' follows Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Leaud), a Parisian pseudo-intellectual who lives with his tempestuous girlfriend, Marie (Bernadette Lafont), even as he begins a dalliance with the sexually liberated Veronika (Frangoise Lebrun), leading the three into an emotionally turbulent love triangle. Through daringly sustained long takes and confessional dialogue, Eustache captures a generation navigating the disillusionment of the 1970s, and in the process achieves an intimacy so deep it cuts.

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Onibaba is set during a brutal period in history, a Japan ravaged by civil war between rival shogunates.

Weary from combat, samurai are drawn towards the seven-foot-high susuku grass fields to hide and rest themselves, only to be ambushed and murdered by a ruthless team of mother (Nobuko Otowa) and daughter-in-law (Jitsuko Yoshimura). When Hachi (Kei Sato), a neighbour returning from the wars, brings bad news, he threatens the women's partnership.

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Filmed on the virtually deserved Setonaikai archipelago in south-west Japan. The Naked Island tells the story of a small family unit and their subsistence as the only inhabitants of an arid, sun-baked island.

Daily chores, captured as a series of cyclical events, result in a hypnotizing, moving, and beautiful film harkening back to the silent era.

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In the acclaimed new film by Abderrahmane Sissako (Bamako) the people of the Malian city, Timbuktu, struggle against an oppressive regime of terror inflicted upon them by invading Jihadists who prohibit every enjoyable indulgence of life.

Meanwhile, Kidane lives a peaceful life in the nearby dunes, but when he has an altercation with a neighbour the extremists take it upon themselves to deliver their brand of draconian justice.

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Tell bickering Budapest gift-shop workers Alfred (James Stewart) and Klara (Margaret Sullavan) that they love each other and they might call you crazy. No lover can compare to the romantic, secret pen pal each knows only as Dear Friend.

What Alfred and Klara don't know, of course, is that they are each other's Dear Friend.

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In this cool, seductive jewel of the Japanese New Wave, a yakuza, fresh out of prison, becomes entangled with a beautiful yet enigmatic gambling addict; what at first seems a redemptive relationship ends up leading him further down the criminal path.

Bewitchingly shot and edited, and laced with a fever-dream-like score by Toru Takemitsu, this gangster romance from Masahiro Shinoda (Samurai Spy, Double Suicide) announced an idiosyncratic major filmmaking talent. The pitch-black 'Pale Flower' is an unforgettable excursion into the underworld.

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When her father threatens to annul her marriage to a fortune-hunting playboy, spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) hops on a cross-country bus to New York, where she plans to live happily ever after with her handsome new hubby.

Romantic complications however, when she's befriended by fellow passenger Peter Warne (Clark Gable), a brash and breezy reporter who offers his help in exchange for her exclusive story.

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Rohmer's light-hearted comedy, set amongst the vineyards of the Rhone Valley, concludes his film cycle 'The Tales Of The Four Seasons'. Best friends Magali, a widow, and Isabelle, a happily married bookshop owner, have known each other since childhood.

Although Magali enjoys her life as a winegrower, she admits she would relish some male companionship: a confession that prompts Isabelle to secretly find her a man. After placing a lonely hearts ad, Isabelle chooses a suitor, but finds that things don't quite go according to plan...