mcg's - Favourites List
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In the sublime new film from Jim Jarmusch, Adam Driver gives a career-best performance as Paterson, a bus driver in the New Jersey city of the same name. He's also a poet, recording his daily observations and thoughts into a notebook. Paterson thrives on routine: he drives his bus route, he goes home for dinner with his wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), he walks his dog, he visits his local bar for one beer. By contrast Laura's world is ever-changing, with new projects and ideas striking her daily. The film quietly observes the triumphs and defeats of daily life, along with the poetry evident in its smallest details. - Director:
- Jim Jarmusch
- Cast:
- Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani, Nellie
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Set among Brooklyn tenements circa 1912, 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn' is a portrait of the Nolans, an Irish-American family living in financially challenging circumstances, often made worse by father Johnny's (James Dunn)'s drinking and employment problems. But matriarch Katie (Dorothy McGuire) keeps the family together during all of the obstacles, caring for son Neeley (Ted Donaldson) and daughter Francie (Peggy Ann Garner), as well as Katie's outspoken, oft-married sister Sissy (Joan Blondell). But just as Francie's gift for writing opens up new avenues, more tragic developments test the family's resolve. - Director:
- Elia Kazan
- Cast:
- Dorothy McGuire, Joan Blondell, James Dunn
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John Gavin plays Ernst Graber, a soldier on the Russian-German Front in 1944 venturing home to Hamburg on a rare furlough. He falls in love with Elisabeth (Liselotte Pulver) activating a magnetism that compels both individuals toward one another in love, even as it hurtles them headlong into epochal death. - Director:
- Douglas Sirk
- Cast:
- John Gavin, Paul Frees, Liselotte Pulver
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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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Leslie Caron (Gigi) was Oscar-nominated for her portrayal of Jane, a young pregnant French girl who moves to a seedy boarding house in London for a new start. Beautiful and withdrawn, Jane slowly gets to know the other residents of the house who, like her, are social outsiders in their own way. As she falls into a relationship with Toby (Tom Bell) a struggling young writer who lives on the first floor, and befriends Johnny (Brock Peters) a black jazz musician, Jane finds a new reason to five. She considers getting an abortion, but is unhappy with this solution. Eventually she comes to like her odd L-Shaped room, but still faces two problems: what to do with her baby, and what to do with Toby. - Director:
- Bryan Forbes
- Cast:
- Leslie Caron, Anthony Booth, Avis Bunnage
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Barbara Stanwyck sizzles, Henry Fonda bumbles, and Preston Sturges runs riot in one of the all-time great screwballs, a pitch-perfect blend of comic zing and swoonworthy romance. Aboard a cruise liner sailing up the coast of South America, Stanwyck's conniving card sharp sets her sights on Fonda's nerdy snake researcher, who happens to be the heir to a brewery fortune. But when the con artist falls for her mark, her grift becomes a game of hearts - and she is determined to win it all. One in a string of matchless comedic marvels that Sturges wrote and directed as part of a dazzling 1940s run, this gender-flipped battle-of-wits farce is perhaps his most emotionally satisfying work, tempering its sparkling humor with a streak of tender poignancy supplied by the sensational Stanwyck at her peak. - Director:
- Preston Sturges
- Cast:
- Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn
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Army of Shadows (1969)L'armée Des Ombres
Melville's most personal film, rooted in his wartime experiences in the French Resistance, Army Of Shadows is a hard, tense drama, depicting man's capacity for both bravery and evil. In the winter of 1942-1943, as France exist s under German occupation, an underground cell operates in the shadows. In the clandestine world of the Resistance, the freedom fighters work against their enemies under the constant risk of betrayal, ordinary men and women in an extraordinary situation. Suffused throughout with a mood of foreboding, the suspense, heightened with directorial mastery, reaches its peak as the Resistance attempt to free a prisoner from the Gestapo headquarters, in one of Melville's trademark set-pieces of iconic action. - Director:
- Jean-Pierre Melville
- Cast:
- Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel
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Synecdoche, New York tells the incredible story of one man’s seemingly insane mission to create a miniature version of New York – all under the roof of an enormous rented warehouse. In this hilarious tale, where nothing is what it seems, will our hero Caden realise this creative ambition or be lost forever in the surreal world of his own making? - Director:
- Charlie Kaufman
- Cast:
- Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams
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The multiple Independent Spirit Award and Sundance Film Festival winning film follows the true story of Oscar Grant (Michael B. Jordan), a 22-year-old Oakland, CA resident who wakes up on the morning of December 31, 2008 and feels something in the air. Not sure what it is, he takes it as a sign to get a head start on his resolutions: being a better son to his mother (Octavia Spencer), whose birthday falls on New Year's Eve, being a better partner to his girlfriend Sophina (Melonie Diaz), who he hasn't been completely honest with, and being a better father to Tatiana (Ariana Neal), their beautiful four year-old daughter. Crossing paths with friends, family, and strangers, Oscar starts out well, but as the day goes on he realises that change is not going to come easily and that he'll have to work hard to make it. As he and Sophina celebrate the New Year and a fresh start, one truly shocking, tragedy shakes his community - and the entire United States - to its very core. - Director:
- Ryan Coogler
- Cast:
- Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Octavia Spencer
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A Heart in Winter (1992)Un Coeur En Hiver
Stephane and Maxime run a renowned violin making and repair business. One day Maxime introduces his partner to Camille, the beautiful violinist he has being seeing. Camille is attracted to the enigmatic, introverted Stephane who it seems may share her feelings but is incapable of expressing emotion. Convinced that she can find love beyond his cold exterior, her attraction turns to obsession and culminates in a shattering climax - Director:
- Claude Sautet
- Cast:
- Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Béart, André Dussollier
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Through Joshua Oppenheimer's work filming perpetrators of the Indonesian genocide, a family of survivors discovers how their son was murdered and the identity of the men who killed him. The youngest brother is determined to break the spell of silence and fear under which the survivors live, and so confronts the men responsible for his brother's murder - something unimaginable in a country where killers remain in power. - Director:
- Joshua Oppenheimer
- Cast:
- Anonymous
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Academy Award winner Frances McDormand and Academy Award nominee Richard Jenkins star in the HBO miniseries drama Olive Kitteridge, a film by Academy Award-nominated director Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right). Based on Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name and written by Emmy winner Jane Anderson, this four-part drama tells the story of a seemingly placid New England town wrought with illicit affairs, crime and tragedy, told through the lens of Olive (McDormand), whose wicked wit and harsh demeanor mask a warm but troubled heart and a staunch moral center. Executive produced by the multiple Emmy-winning team of Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman along with McDormand and Anderson. - Director:
- Lisa Cholodenko
- Cast:
- Frances McDormand, Richard Jenkins, Ken Cheeseman
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His Girl Friday (1940)Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday
Chicago Morning Post editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant) is about to lose his ace reporter and former wife Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) to Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy). Then a late breaking story involving the impending execution of an anarchist who escapes and is hidden from the police by the former husband and wife throws the pair together once again. - Director:
- Howard Hawks
- Cast:
- Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy
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Spirit of the Beehive (1973)El Espiritu De La Colmena
Made under the Franco regime, Victor Erice's astonishing 1973 feature debut is quite simply one of the most remarkable, influential and purely poignant films to emerge from the 1970's. A bona-fide classic of European cinema, the film brought Erice instant and widespread acclaim. An audacious critique of the disastrous legacy of the Spanish Civil War, The Spirit of the Beehive is set in a rural 1940's Spanish village haunted by betrayal and regret. Following a travelling cinema's screening of James Whale's Frankenstein, seven year-old Ana (the mesmerising Ana Torrent, later to grow into an international star of some standing) becomes fascinated with Boris Karloff's monster. Obsessed with meeting the initially gentle creation, she transfers her entrancement to tending a wounded army deserter. Atmospherically rendered by legendary Director of Photography Luis Cuadrado, it's impeccably performed by both Torrent and veteran actor Fernando Fernan Gomez in the role of her emotionally scarred, bee-keeping father. Existing in a highly evocative dreamlike state, it's a powerfully symbolic, richly allegorical tale that is as unique as it is beautiful. - Director:
- Víctor Erice
- Cast:
- Fernando Fernán Gómez, Teresa Gimpera, Ana Torrent
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The Shop Around the Corner (1940)Shopworn Angel
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. - Director:
- Ernst Lubitsch
- Cast:
- Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan
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