In 1929, F. W. Mufnau, one of the greatest of all film directors, invited leading documentarist Robert Flaherty to collaborate on a film to be shot on location in Tahiti, a Polynesian idyll in which Murnau imagined a cast of island actors would provide a new form of authentic drama and offer rare insight into their "primitive" culture. The result of their collaboration was Tabu, a film that depicts the details of indigenous island life to tell a mythical tale that is rich in the universal themes of desire and loss. Subtitled "A Story of the South Seas", Tabu concerns a Tahitian fisherman and his love for a young woman whose body has been consecrated to the gods, rendering her tabu as far as mortal men are concerned. The lovers flee their island and its restrictive traditions, but will their love prevail in the "civilised" world?
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.
As a psychotic thug devoted to his hard-boiled ma, James Cagney - older, scarier and just as electrifying - gives a performance to match his work in 'The Public Enemy' as 'White Heat's's' cold-blooded Cody Jarrett. Bracingly directed by Raoul Walsh, this fast-paced thriller tracing Jarrett's violent life in and out of jail is also a harrowing character study. Jarrett is a psychological time bomb ruled by impulse. He murders a wounded accomplice and revels in the act. He neglects his sultry wife (Virginia Mayo) and adores his doting mother. It is among the most vivid screen performances of Cagney's career, and the excitement it generates will put you on top of the world!
'Frank' is the hilarious, offbeat comedy about a young wannabe musician, Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), who finds himself out of his depth when he joins an avant-garde pop band led by Frank (Michael Fassbender), a mysterious musical genius who hides himself inside a large fake head, and the terrifying Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal).
13-year-old Antoine (Jean-Pierre Leaud) can't seem to do anything right. His dysfunctional parents yell at him, his spiteful schoolteacher picks on him and luck just never goes his way. Despite his efforts at patience, one day it all becomes too much and Antoine throws in the towel, choosing to take his chances on the Paris streets. At times joyous and at others bitterly hard, his new life brings a newfound freedom - one that Antoine will follow up to its painful, poignant and beautiful conclusion...
Mr. Pink makes a movie! Steve Buscemi writes, directs and stars as Tommy Basilio, a thirtysomething dreamer who has made himself at home amongst the regulars of the Trees Lounge Bar. It is summertime in the suburbs and Tommy is out of work. Worse still, the course of true love isn't running at all smoothly. Life gets particularly sticky when he inherits his uncle's ice-cream van and gorgeous teenager Debbie (Chloe Sevigny) offers her assistance...
Ranked at No. 30 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 all-time greatest American films, 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre' is a genuine masterpiece that went on to win 3 Academy Awards. Bogart gives a tremendous performance as a vicious down-and-out wage worker who stakes his meagre earnings on a gold-prospecting expedition.
In an absorbing performance Ben Gazzara plays small-time Sunset Strip entrepreneur Cosmo Vittelli, owner of the Crazy Horse West night spot. An obsessive showman, Cosmo navigates a murky world of loan sharks and crooks to keep his club afloat, but when a gambling debt spirals out of control he is blackmailed into accepting a murderous commission.
Featuring stand-out turns by Seymour Cassel and Timothy Carey as the underworld racketeers out to fleece Cosmo, John Cassavetes' portrayal of one man's hubristic descent subverts the conventions of its genre to explore the darker side of the American dream.
Nine races. One champion. James Garner, Yves Montand, Brian Bedford and Antonio Sabato portray Formula I drivers competing to be the best in this slam-you-into-the-driver's seat tale of speed, spectacle and intertwined personal lives.
F. W. Murnau, Germany's finest director, was imported to Hollywood in July 1926. William Fox of the Fox Film Corporation promised and gave him complete artistic freedom. Fox told Murnau to take his time, spend whatever he had to, and make any film he wished to make. The film that resulted was Sunrise, made entirely without studio interference. Sunrise, a psychological thriller from the silent movie era, begins when the pleasant and peaceful life of a naive country Man (George O'Brien) is turned upside down when he falls for a cold-blooded yet seductive Woman from the City (Margaret Livingston). She persuades him to drown his virtuous Wife (Janet Gaynor) in order to be with her. This is one of the most moving stories ever told on screen - a tale of temptation, reconciliation, reconsecration, and redemption, told with a lyrical simplicity that gives it the timeless universality of a fable.
As World War II splits Europe, sixteen-year-old German Jew Salomon (Marco Hofschneider) is separated from his family after fleeing with them to Poland, and finds himself reluctantly assuming various ideological identities in order to hide the deadly secret of his Jewishness. He is bounced from a Soviet orphanage, where he plays a dutiful Stalinist, to the Russian front, where he hides in plain sight as an interpreter for the German army, and back to his home country, where he takes on his most dangerous role: a member of the Hitler Youth. Based on the real-life experiences of Salomon Perel, Agnieszka Holland's wartime tour de force 'Europa Europa' is a breathless survival story told with the verve of a comic adventure, an ironic refutation of the Nazi idea of racial purity, and a complex portrait of a young man caught up in shifting historical calamities and struggling to stay alive.
A small but perfectly-formed comedy-drama about Broadway legend Danny Rose (Woody Allen) - not a star but perhaps the most hapless agent ever to work in the profession, whose no-hope clients include piano-playing parrots, blind jugglers, one-legged tap dancers and stuttering ventriloquists. Things change dramatically when an unexpected lounge-music craze threatens to make cheesy crooner Lou Canova (Nick Apollo Forte) both famous and successful, a situation that natural loser Danny is helplessly ill-equipped to deal with. Fie proves similarly hapless when Lou turns out to have a mistress (an unrecognisable Mia Farrow) whose mobster ex-boyfriend is none too impressed with the company that she's currently keeping and decides to advertise this fact at the worst possible moment. Both laugh-out-loud funny and warmly nostalgic, 'Broadway Danny Rose' is Allen's heartfelt tribute to the days of New York vaudeville that he himself experienced first-hand when starting out as a comedian two decades earlier - underscored by the fact that the Greek chorus of Broadway veterans chuckling over Danny's various mishaps and misfortunes are the real thing.
Lon Chaney, the man of a thousand faces, stars in this, the original adaptation of Gaston Leroux's celebrated novel. When the Phantom falls in love with the voice of a young opera singer (Mary Philbin) he drags her to the catacombs beneath the Paris Opera House and forces her to sing only for him.
In 1946, Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford), owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, took a stand against Major League Baseball's infamous colour line when he signed Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) to the team. The deal put both men in the crosshairs of the public, the press and even other players. Facing unabashed racism from every side, Robinson was forced to demonstrate tremendous courage and let his talent on the field win over fans and his teammates - silencing his critics and forever changing the world by changing the game of baseball.
The tension is unmistakable, the excitement is mounting and the heady scent of competition is in the air at the prestigious Mayflower Dog Show. Director Christopher Guest takes a hilarious look at dog show participants (and the pooches who love them). Meet the contestants - a fly-fishing bloodhound owner (Guest), Shih-Tzu-doting partners, squabbling yuppie lawyers, a bimbo trophy wife and her poodle handler and a married couple who dream up little ditties about terriers - all fighting for the ‘Best in Show’ prize.
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