marco's - Favourites List

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She's an ex-gun moll and showgirl suddenly forced to protect a kid whose parents have been rubbed out by the mob. Now the mob wants the kid dead too - but first they'll have to deal with Gloria.

Director John Cassavetes, known for his unique approach to filmmaking, creates a powerful, tension-filled story. An accountant (Buck Henry) is in possession of a ledger which could put a number of mob bosses behind bars for a long time. Before he is killed, however, he manages to entrust the ledger and his son to a neighbour, Gloria (Gena Rowlands in an Oscar nominated performance, Best Actress, 1980), for protection. Gloria reluctantly takes the kid on the run while keeping the mob at bay, sometimes at gunpoint. Finally, tired of running, she decides to confront them head on!

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Maria and Hermann Braun marry in Germany close to the end of World War II but are shortly separated.

Just after being sent to the Russian Front, Hermann is reported missing and, although Maria believes he is still alive, her brother in law, just returned from a POW camp in Russia, confirms his death. Alone, Maria uses her beauty and ambition to prosper in Germany's "economic miracle" of the 1950s. 'The Marriage of Maria Braun' is heartbreaking study of a woman picking herself up from the ruins of her own life, as well as a pointed metaphorical attack on a society determined to forget its past.

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Set in a small West German town in 1957, where, with the help of the Economic Miracle, a booming economy is generating a new sense of optimism. In the town brothel, "Villa Fink", Lola (Barbara Sukowa), a young high-class prostitute with a zest for life, is the star of the show.

Her favorite client is the influential developer Schuckert (Mario Adorf), who enjoys spending time at Villa Fink with city officials important to his construction business. When Von Bohm (Armin Mueller-Stahl), an upright, energetic building commissioner with a liberal, social-democratic outlook, arrives in the town, he falls in love with Lola without being aware where she works by night. Although he is shocked when he learns of her true identity, he nevertheless marries her to the satisfaction of all concerned. Ultimately neither Lola, Von Bohm nor Schuckert are really concerned with what has happened in the past or the morality of their decisions - the main thing is that they get what they want.

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Venice. 1866. After a night walking the empty streets of the ancient city together, a countess (Alida Valli) falls in love with an Austrian officer (Farley Granger) and becomes his mistress.

War breaks out and separates them until she eventually finds him again in the throes of battle against the Italians. Betraying both her principles and her cause, she tries to reform him with cruel and tragic consequences for them both.

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The film focuses on Okin, the ex-geisha who has embraced the new post-war economy most successfully and single-mindedly. Former colleagues Tamae, whose son threatens to become a gigolo, and Tomi, who has a decidedly 'modem' daughter, live together and try to make ends meet.

With his customary emphasis on the material circumstances that shape our lives, Naruse nevertheless manages to transform the film into a moving celebration of friendship.

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When Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) is sent on a mission to the Solaris Space Station, he is confronted with a skeleton crew who are psychologically unstable due to the presence of what they call "visitors". Kris soon begins to encounter his own visitor - his late wife.

Taunting him with illusory compassion, Kris must choose whether to cling to reality or submit to the planet's gift of a lost love regained.

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Shot in the summer of 1975 as General Franco lay dying, Saura's masterpiece takes its title from a sinister Spanish proverb: 'Raise ravens and they'll pluck out your eyes'.

A subtle yet unmistakable indictment of the family as a repressive force in Spanish society, 'Cria cuervos' centres on an eight-year-old orphan (the spellbinding Ana Torrent) who believes herself to have poisoned her cold, authoritarian father (Hector Alterio), a high-ranking military man whom she blames for the death of her adored mother (Geraldine Chaplin).

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Edward Yang's multi-award-winning film looks at several turbulent weeks in the life of the Jian family. Husband and father NJ (Nien-Jen Wu) is a partner in a failing software company, which might just save itself by teaming up with an innovative Japanese games designer.

Meanwhile his wife Min-Min (Elaine Jin) has gone off to a mountain retreat with a dubious guru, his teenage daughter Ting Ting (Kelly Lee) is getting her first, rough lessons in love, his young son Yang-Yang (Jonathan Chang) is asking difficult questions and getting into trouble at school - and his mother-in-law has suffered a stroke and lies in a coma. In the middle of all the confusion NJ runs into his childhood sweetheart Sherry, the girl he jilted twenty years earlier, and starts to wonder about starting over.

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Giulietta Masina gives a superb performance as the bored, timid, frumpy and ultimately unfilled housewife who suspects her husband is being unfaithful.

In an effort to escape the hurtful reality of her situation she enters a surreal fantasy world of her own by conjuring up spirits who lead her into a world a world of sensual pleasure. The images that Fellini creates become more and more dazzling and hypnotic in their effect. Much of the fantasy involves Juliet's fabulously outgoing and sexually liberated neighbour Suzy, but are they part of plot or is Fellini exploring his own desires?

The story of a maniacal Broadway director Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore) who transforms shop girl (Carole Lombard) from a talented amateur to a smashing Great White Way success adored by public and press.

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Since her teenage years, Ah Tao has worked as a servant for the Leung family. Now, after 60 years of service, she is looking after Roger, the only member of the family still resident in Hong Kong. One day Roger comes home from work to find that Ah Tao has suffered a stroke.

He rushes her to hospital, where she announces that she wants to move permanently into a nursing home. Increasingly giving more and more time and attention to Ah Tao's needs, Roger comes to realise how much she means to him.

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Prohibition era gangster Roy Earle (Humphrey Bogart) walks out of prison...and into two unfamiliar worlds: the jitterbugging 1940s and the towering majesty of 'High Sierra'. This fast-paced, heist-gone-wrong manhunt movie is also a fascinating study of a man time has passed by.

Earle identifies more with the era's homeless Okies than the callow punks he leads on a disastrous hotel robbery. Then the teenager he loves (Joan Leslie) rejects him and only Marie (Ida Lupino), a weary '30s survivor like himself, remains loyal when cops close in.

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An ambitious but unscrupulous lawyer (John Garfield) works for the mob, and scents the prospect of a personal fortune when he helps concoct a plan that will merge all of New York City's numbers rackets into a single powerful and unbreakable operation.

But one of them is run by his own brother (Thomas Gomez), who is much happier as an independent, mainly because it allows him to apply his own ethical standards to prevent innocent people from being corrupted by his shady activities. And it's the Cain-and-Abel clash between them that gives the film its tragic dimension.

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Canadian filmmaker, Guy Maddin presents My Winnipeg, an irreverent, witty, personal and sometimes hilarious homage to the hometown he loves and loathes in equal measure.

Described as a docu-fantasia, My Winnipeg merges re-enactments, archive, still photos and animation to recreate the filmmaker’s early years living with the dominant and fearsome Mrs Maddin , here played by the original femme fatale, Ann Savage, to his later attempts to leave the town that has cast its icy spell over him for his entire life. Commissioned by the Documentary channel in Canada the only stipulation he was given for making the film was that it had to be ‘enchanting’. Taking this as his starting point Guy started out on an odyssey that would lead him to the true meaning of home and locates for the viewer the magic spots that exist in Winnipeg; where pedestrians would rather use back lanes than front streets, where the homeless hide en masse on the rooftops of abandoned skyscrapers and where a strange civic law requires you to offer a room for a bight to any former owner or resident of tour current home.

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Charting the turbulent relationship between a train-driver and a married woman as they plot to kill her husband, Renoir's adaptation of Emile Zola's classic novel is often cited by critics as one of the director's greatest films.

Made at the height of Renoir's 1930s poetic realism period, the film also has shades of film-noir with its sexually charged story and self-destructive, hard-boiled anti-hero. Featuring a truly unforgettable performance by Jean Gabin as Lantier, the tormented train-driver, 'La Bete Humaine' was one of Renoir's biggest successes and is just as compelling today as when it was first released.