mpb's - Favourites List
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Grave of the Fireflies (1988)Hotaru no haka
Set in Japan during World War II, the film focuses on Seita and his little sister Setsuko. After their mother is killed in an air raid, and with their father serving in the navy, they are forced to fight for survival in the devastated Japanese countryside. Food and shelter are scarce, and even their own relatives are too concerned with their own survival. All they have is each other and their belief that life must carry on. - Director:
- Isao Takahata
- Cast:
- Tsutomu Tatsumi, Ayano Shiraishi, Akemi Yamaguchi
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Secrets and Lies (1996)Secrets & Lies
Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is a young, black optometrist whose adoptive parents have recently died. Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn) is a sad, unmarried mother who works in a factory and lives in a shabby terraced house with her confrontational daughter, Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook). Cynthia's brother Maurice (Timothy Spall) is a successful wedding photographer who lives comfortably in suburbia with his snooty wife Monica (Phyllis Logan). In a misplaced effort to re-unite the family, Maurice and Monica throw a small barbecue party for Roxanne's 21st birthday. When Cynthia brings along her new friend Hortense, chaos ensues as some painful truths are revealed. - Director:
- Mike Leigh
- Cast:
- Timothy Spall, Brenda Blethyn, Phyllis Logan
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Karl Verloc (Oskar Homolka), manager of a London cinema, is secretly involved with a gang of European saboteurs who are plotting a massive bomb attack in Piccadilly Circus. With the police already suspicious of Verloc, they place an undercover detective on his trail - can he bring the saboteurs to justice before they perpetrate their outrage on London? - Director:
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Cast:
- Sylvia Sidney, Oskar Homolka, Desmond Tester
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Seven Samurai (1954)Shichinin no Samurai
In 16th century Japan a poor village is raided every year by a group of bandits until, driven to the brink of starvation, the villagers decide to hire professional warriors to protect them. With only three meager meals a day to offer as payment, their request seems an impossible one. A simple plot, flawlessly executed - 'Seven Samurai' combines comedy, pathos, memorable characters, gripping tension and some of the finest action scenes ever filmed. - Director:
- Akira Kurosawa
- Cast:
- Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima
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Bicycle Thieves (1948)Ladri di biciclette
'Bicycle Thieves' tells the story of Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani), a long unemployed man who finally finds employment putting up cinema posters for which he needs a bicycle. His wife pawns all the family linen to redeem their already pawned bicycle and for Antonio salvation has come, until it is stolen. Antonio and his son take to the streets in a desperate search to find the bicycle which is so crucial to his livelihood. - Director:
- Vittorio De Sica
- Cast:
- Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola, Lianella Carell
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Rope (1948)Alfred Hitchcock's Rope
James Stewart stars with Farley Granger and John Dall in a highly-charged thriller inspired by the real-life Leopold-Loeb murder case. Granger and Dall give riveting performances as two friends who strangle a classmate for intellectual thrills, then proceed to throw a party for the victim's family and friends - with the body stuffed inside the trunk they use for a buffet table. As the killers turn the conversation to committing the "perfect murder", their former teacher (Stewart) becomes increasingly suspicious. Before the night is over, the professor will discover how brutally his students have turned his academic theories into chilling reality in Hitchcock's spellbinding excursion into the macabre. - Director:
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Cast:
- James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger
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The Big Heat (1953)Los sobornados
Ruthless criminals, a dedicated honest cop, sultry women and a gripping plot - all the elements of a classic police action-drama are here in force. Police Sergeant Bannion (Glenn Ford) is investigating the apparent suicide of a corrupt cop, then is suddenly ordered to stop - and The Big Heat is on. Driven to unravel the mystery, Bannion continues probing until an explosion meant for him, kills his wife. He resigns from he force and soon learns that behind it all is the powerful underworld led by Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby) and his cold-blooded henchman, Vince Stone (Lee Marvin). When Stone's girl Debby (Gloria Grahame) makes a play for Bannion, Stone disfigures her face and in revenge, she tells all she knows. A life-or-death confrontation between Bannion and Stone brings this classic film noir thriller to a climatic unmissable finale! - Director:
- Fritz Lang
- Cast:
- Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando
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The Wages of Fear (1953)Le Salaire de la peur
Part road movie, part suspense thriller, the plot is high-tension simplicity itself. In the South American jungle, supplies of nitro-glycerine are urgently needed at a remote oil field. The unscrupulous American oil company pays four out-of-work men (Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Folco Lulli and Peter Van Eyck) to deliver the supplies in two sets of drivers: a tension magnified thousand fold by the unforgiving heat, the lure of filthy lucre and the rough and rocky roads where the slightest jolt can result in agonising death. Which of the disparate, desperate desperadoes will survive the white-knuckle journey and claim the loot and the glory? - Director:
- Henri-Georges Clouzot
- Cast:
- Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Peter Van Eyck
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Ikiru (1952)Living
Opening with a shot of an x-ray, showing the main character's stomach, 'Ikiru' tells the tale of a dedicated, downtrodden civil servant who, diagnosed with a fatal cancer, learns to change his dull, unfulfilled existence, and suddenly discovers a zest for life. Plunging first into self-pity, then a bout of hedonistic pleasure-seeking on the frenetic streets of post-war Tokyo, Watanable (Takashi Shimura) - the film's hero - finally finds satisfaction through building a children's playground. - Director:
- Akira Kurosawa
- Cast:
- Takashi Shimura, Nobuo Kaneko, Shin'ichi Himori
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Bonnie and Clyde (1967)Bonnie y Clyde
Adrift in the Depression-era Southwest, Clyde Barrow(Warren Beatty) and Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) embark on a life of crime. They mean no harm. They crave adventure - and each other. Soon we start to love them too. But nothing in film history has prepared us for the cascading violence to follow. Bonnie And Clyde turns brutal. We learn they can be hurt - and dread they can be killed. - Director:
- Arthur Penn
- Cast:
- Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Michael J. Pollard
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Hutch (Bob Odenkirk) is a nobody. As an overlooked and underestimated father and husband, he takes life's indignities on the chin and never rocks the boat. But when his daughter (Connie Nielsen) loses her beloved kitty-cat bracelet in a robbery, Hutch hits a boiling point no one knew he had. What happens when a pushover finally pushes back? Hutch flips from regular dad to fearless fighter by taking his enemies on a wild ride of explosive revenge. - Director:
- Ilya Naishuller
- Cast:
- Bob Odenkirk, Aleksey Serebryakov, Connie Nielsen
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Featuring Marilyn Monroe's legendary rendition of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend", this fun musical comedy is a knockout. Marilyn and Jane Russell star as two showgirls who set sail on a luxury liner bound for France. Hijinks on the high seas ensue as Lorelei (Monroe) and Dorothy (Russell) discover they're being tailed by a private detective hired by the father of Lorelei's landlocked boyfriend. By the time the ship reaches Paris, a missing diamond tiara lands the girls in hot water, but by following their hearts, they'll get out of trouble and on to the altar. - Director:
- Howard Hawks
- Cast:
- Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe, Charles Coburn
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To the enigmatic question "Who are Seconds?", the film's original poster responded: "The answer is almost too terrifying for words.... The story of a man who buys for himself a totally new life. A man who lives the age-old dream - If only I could live my life all over again. " John Frankenheimer directs Rock Hudson as a "second": that is, the newly plastic-surgery altered "reboot" of, in this instance, a listless banker named Arthur Hamilton. Such procedures are carried out by a secret organization known only as "The Company," with the promise of giving an individual a chance at making a fresh start at life... but at what cost? Master lighting cameraman James Wong Howe provides the paranoiac atmosphere to the skewed reality of what came to be widely considered one of Frankenheimer's very best films. - Director:
- John Frankenheimer
- Cast:
- Rock Hudson, Salome Jens, John Randolph
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42nd Street (1933)La calle 42
Meet a dewy-eyed ingenue, a gee-whiz tenor, stuck-up stars, hard-up producers, brassy blondes and "shady ladies from the 80s". They're all denizens of '42nd Street', belting out ageless Harry Warren/Al Dubin songs and tapping out Busby Berkeley's sensational Depression - lifting production numbers. The put-on-a-show plot spins merrily, full of snappy banter and new faces Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell and Ginger Rogers. The show-stopping numbers (Shuffle off to Buffalo, You're Getting to Be a Habit with Me and the title tune) still dazzle. Looking and sounding its best in years via this new digital transfer from the restored original camera negative and optical audio tracks, '42nd Street' shows good times never go out of style. - Director:
- Lloyd Bacon
- Cast:
- Warner Baxter, Bebe Daniels, George Brent
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You're invited to one of the most celebrated and audaciously funny hit comedies of the year - Muriel's Wedding! Follow frumpy, misguided Muriel Heslop on her lifelong quest for a glitzy fairy-tale wedding. With visions of nuptials dancing in her head, this ABBA-obsessed misfit ditches her pathetic life and plastic friends in a small Australian suburb for big-city dreams in Sydney. But the road to the altar takes surprising twists and turns - and Muriel is about to learn the lesson of a lifetime. Wry, witty and hailed by critics everywhere, Muriel's Wedding is one affair you don't want to miss. - Director:
- PJ Hogan
- Cast:
- Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths, Bill Hunter
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