humilityprim's - Favourites List

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Ireland 1920: workers from field and country untie to form volunteer guerrilla armies to face the ruthless "Black and Tan" squads that are being shipped from Britain to block Ireland's bid for independence.

Driven by a deep sense of duty and a love for his country, Damien abandons his burgeoning career as a doctor and joins his brother, Teddy, in a dangerous and violent fight for freedom. As the freedom fighters' bold tactics bring the British to breaking point, both sides finally agree to a treaty to end the bloodshed. But, despite the apparent victory, civil war erupts and families who fought side by side, find themselves pitted against one another as sworn enemies, putting their loyalties to the ultimate test.

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A satirical, subversive, surreal and irreverent story of rebellion, Vera Chytilova's classic film is arguably the most adventurous and anarchic Czech movie of the 1960's.

Two young women, both named Marie, revolt against a degenerate and decayed society by attacking symbols of wealth and bourgeois culture in hilarious and mind-warpingly innovative ways. Defiant feminist statement? Nihilistic, avant-garde comedy? Refreshingly uncompromising, Daisies is a riotous, punk-rock poem of a film that remains a cinematic enigma and continues to provoke, stimulate and entertain audiences and influence filmmakers even today.

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Forget James Bond...and step into the real, dour and chilling world of spies and counterspies.

Oscar nominee Richard Burton is the burnt-out British agent who refuses to "come in from the cold" to take a desk job - but instead launches into the most dangerous assignment of his career, stalking East German agent (and Golden Globe winner) Oskar Werner. John Le Carre's best-selling novel provides the basis for this breathtaking thriller of espionage, intrigue, crosses and double-crosses.

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December 30th, 1999, is it the end of the world or the beginning of a new one. Lenny Nero (Ralph Feinnes) stalks the streets of Los Angeles, a street hustler, an ex-cop, a seller of stolen dreams. Lenny deals in "clips", digital recordings of real-life experiences packaged for a vicious thrill.

He doesn't deal in "blackjacks" - recordings of death - but when a close associate is murdered by a ruthless killer, Lenny gets drawn into a sleazy and psychotic world of wealth, power and paranoia. Trying to protect his ex-love Faith (Juliette Lewis), Lenny is aided by the only two people he can trust, personal security expert Mace (Angela Bassett) and ex-cop and former colleague Max (Tom Sizemore), as he tries to stay alive to see the next millennium.

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Perhaps his most famous film, La Dolce Vita slices into the decadent amoral core of Roman society with Fellini's trademark attention to detail and spectacular photography.

Marcello Mastroianni plays a gossip columnist (the term 'paparazzi' derives from the in a film) who aspires to be a more serious writer but knows he never will be, because like society, he is fascinated by the decadent hedonist pursuits which are seemingly everywhere. The Vatican was appalled by the film, but the public adored it, relishing the images Fellini fed them, most notably the now infamous scene of Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg frolicking in the Trevi Fountain.

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Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) is a veteran film director, afflicted by multiple ailments, the worst of which is his inability to continue filming. His physical condition doesn't allow it and, if he can't film, his life has no meaning.

His mixture of medications, along with the occasional flirtation with heroin, means that Salvador spends most of his days prostrate and forlorn. This drowsy state transports him back to reflect on his childhood in the 60's, when his family emigrated to Paterna, a village in Valencia, in search of prosperity, through to the appearance of his first desire and his first adult love in the Madrid of the 80's. In recovering his past, Salvador finds the urgent need to recount it, and in that need he may also find his salvation.

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Overworked true crime magazine editor George Stroud (Ray Milland) has been planning a vacation for months.

However, when his boss, the tyrannical media tycoon Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton), insists he skips his hols, Stroud resigns in disgust before embarking on an impromptu drunken night out with his boss's mistress, Pauline York (Rita Johnson). When Janoth kills Pauline in a fit of rage, Stroud finds himself to have been the wrong man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time: his staff have been tasked with finding a suspect with an all too familiar description...Stroud's very own!

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Martin Scorsese, perhaps the most ardent cinephile of all the great film director, has produced a masterly account of the world's largest and most powerful film industry.

Scorsese's love affair with the cinema began in his childhood, and his passion for the medium and its history makes him a compelling guide. At over three and a half hours, the programme is a treasury of movie moments, all lovingly presented in their original screen ratios. Classics of the silent era (Intolerance, The Crowd) are here, as are examples from the major American genres: Westerns (from The Searchers to Unforgiven), Musicals (Busby Berkeley to All That Jazz) and gangster films (Public Enemy to Point Break), along with such mold-breaking masterpieces as Sunrise, Citizen Kane, and 2001 - A Space Odyssey. Scorsese's personal journey will delight, inform and entertain not only film buffs, but anyone who has ever sat in a darkened cinema, spellbound by the silver screen before them.

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Kazuo Hara's infamous and audacious documentary follows Kenzo Okuzaki, an ageing Japanese WW2 veteran, on a mission to uncover the truth about atrocities committed as the war in the Pacific reached its bloody end.

Ultimately, Okuzaki blames The Emperor himself for these barbarities, and his obsessive pursuit of those he deems responsible soon escalates. Willing to confront the taboos of Japanese society in his fanatical quest for justice, Okuzaki is driven to unsettling acts of violence. Harrowing and extraordinarily powerful, Hara's film forces us to face the disturbing realities of war and, crucially, to question the complicity between filmmaker, subject and audience.

Strolling along 5th Avenue or going on the bum as 'A Couple of Swells', Judy Garland and Fred Astaire lead a parade of music and gotta-dance fun in this never-ending delight...

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Welcome to a bittersweet world of episodic adventures and strange encounters. Welcome to a sordid, nocturnal world of ruthless, callous boyfriends and stray movie stars looking for seedy kicks.

Welcome to the harsh, unforgiving streets of a crumbling Rome where hope can still prevail and dreams cradle the lost. Welcome to the world of Cabiria, a feisty, loud, outspoken and somewhat naïve prostitute waiting for a miracle, and one of the most unforgettable and endearing characters of European cinema. Eventually remade in Hollywood as 'Sweet Charity', 'Nights of Cabiria' is a often humorous, poignant, unflinching and vivid portrait of one woman's picaresque existence and her perseverance through adversity. Starring Fellini's wife, Giulietta Masina, as the irrepressible protagonist, 'Nights of Cabiria' marked Fellini's last foray into gritty neo-realism before venturing into the surreal satire and dream logic of 'La Dolce Vita' and 'Eight and a Half'.

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When shy, emotionally fragile Catherine Sloper (Olivia de Havilland), the daughter of a wealthy New York doctor, begins to receive calls from the handsome spendthrift Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), she becomes possessed by the promise of romance.

Are his smoldering professions of love sincere, as she believes they are? Or is Catherines calculating father (Ralph Richardson) correct in judging Morris a venal fortune seeker?

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Little Dieter Needs to Fly is a documentary about Dieter Dengler, a German who grew up with a passion for flight and emigrated to the U.S. to join the navy anf become a pilot during the Vietnam War.

Dieter was shot down, captured and tortured before becoming one of the few American prisoners to escape. Working with Herzog he recreates his incredible story. Little Dieter Needs to Fly also inspired Rescue Dawn starring Christian Bale and also directed by Werner Herzog. Werner Herzog is one of the most prolific and respected cotemporary film directors. Born in Munich in 1942 he grew up in a remote mountain village in Bavaria and never saw any films, television, or telephones as a child. During high school he worked the nightshift as a welder in a steel factory to produce his first films and made his first film in 1961 at the age of 19. SInce then he has gone on to direct more than forty feature films including the acclaimed documentary, Grizzly Man.

An 8 year old boy must return his friend's notebook he took by mistake, lest his friend be punished by expulsion from school.

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Inspired by an infamous true story that made headlines in Japan in 1988, this tough yet tender film from writer-director, Hirokazu Koreeda, follows the lives of four children left to fend for themselves by their wayward mother.

Having smuggled her family into a new apartment under the landlord's nose, Keiko (You) puts her 12 year old son Akira (Yûya Yagira) in charge of the youngsters and after a brief period of relative family harmony, disappears. Akira manages as best he can, but limited means and the cramped confines of the apartment force this unorthodox family unit to re-shape their narrow existence to suit their physical and emotional needs.