monsieurk's - Favourites List

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Albert Serra's new film is an adaptation of the Due de Saint-Simon's memoirs, starring Jean-Pierre as the Sun King in his last days. The dying king can barely move from his bed in Versailles. His relatives and his closest counsellors come in turns at his bedside, but he can barely rule his kingdom.

His secret wife Madame de Maintenon, and his doctor Fagon dread his last breath and try to hide it from the public, to preserve the future of France. Jean-Pierre Leaud, in his costume, hair and poses, fully embodies the last few days of the longest serving king of France, who, with his seventy-two years reign, changed the face of the monarchy and of France.

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Celine (Juliet Berto), a magician, and Julie (Dominique Labourier), a librarian, meet in Montmartre and wind up sharing the same flat, bed, finance, clothes, identity and imagination.

Soon, thanks to a magic sweet, they find themselves spectators, then participants, in a Henry James-inspired 'film-within-the-film' - a melodrama unfolding in a mysterious suburban house with the 'Phantom Ladies Over Paris' (Bulle Ogier and Marie-France Pisier), a sinister man (Barbet Schroeder) and his child.

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Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) leads a group of Anglican nuns to a remote Himalayan range of mountains, there to set up a mission in an abandoned harem.

This is her first position of authority and she finds both her physical and her spiritual limits being taxed as she has to maintain order and discipline in a claustrophobically hostile environment. Slowly but surely, however, the privations and hardship they must endure, the extremes of climate and the peculiar amorality of the local natives all combine to slowly corrupt the women's faith, pushing them further into jealousy, anger and madness...

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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...

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A constant fixture in critics' polls, Yasujiro Ozu's most enduring masterpiece, 'Tokyo Story', is a beautifully nuanced exploration of filial duty, expectation and regret.

From the simple tale of an elderly husband and wife's visit to Tokyo to see their grown-up children, Ozu draws a compelling contrast between the measured dignity of age and the hurried insensitivity of a younger generation.

Agnes Varda's classic 'Cleo from 5 to 7' from 1962 manages to successfully capture Paris at the height of the sixties in this intriguing tale expertly presented in real time about a singer (Corinne Marchand) whose life is in turmoil as she awaits a biopsy test result.

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Starring Simone Signoret, Simone Simon and Anton Walbrook as the enigmatic master of ceremonies who guides us through a series of amorous encounters in 1900's Vienna.

A soldier (Serge Reggiani) meets an eager young lady of the night and later has an affair with a young lady, who becomes a maid who then has an affair with the young master of the house. The young man then seduces a married woman and on and on spins on the gay carousel of romantic life...

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How does an Irish lad without prospects become part of 18th-century nobility? For Barry Lyndon (Ryan O'Neal) the answer is: any way he can! His climb to wealth and privilege is the enthralling focus of this sumptuous Stanley Kubrick version of William Makepeace Thackeray's novel.

For this ravishing, slyly satiric winner of four Academy Awards, Kubrick found inspiration in the works of the era's painters. Costumes and sets were crafted in the era's designs and pioneering lenses were developed to shoot interiors and exteriors in natural light. The result? Barry Lyndon endures as a cutting-edge movie that brings a historical period to vivid screen life like no other film before or since.

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Haunted by his past, WWII veteran and drifter Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) crosses paths with a mysterious movement called The Cause, led by Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) aka The Master and his wife Peggy (Amy Adams). Their twisted relationship is the core of this film.

Will Freddie be able to outrun his past? Will The Cause help or hurt him? Can this tortured, violent creature be civilized? Or is man, after all, just a dirty animal?

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Unanimous winner of all three main prizes at the 1973 Locarno International Film Festival, Zanussi's landmark film is a dazzling kaleidoscope of ideas and images. Illumination explores the life of a self-absorbed young physicist trying to understand his place in the universe.

He thinks science will provide the answers, but ultimately learns far more about himself through experiencing love, betrayal, loss, and facing his own mortality. As much a philosophical essay as a narrative feature, Illumination is a cinematic mosaic combining art and science, intellect and emotion. Innovatively structured, this unflinching examination of one man's life became an iconic cultural marker for a whole generation.

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Luchino Visconti's masterpiece, The Leopard, is now available on DVD for the first time.

Featuring the complete and uncut version of the film, with fully restored picture and sound, this stunning high definition digital transfer from the film's original 70mm negative materials, overseen by the film's director of photography Giuseppe Rotunno, is presented here in its original widescreen aspect ratio..

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Marcello Mastroianni is (Fellini's alter ego) Guido, a successful filmmaker who, embarking on his next film, discovers he has a complete "director's block": he has no story to tell! Harassed by his producers, his mistress (Sandra Milo) and his wife (Anouk Aimee), while struggling to find the

inspiration for his film, he increasingly retreats in dreamy recollections of his life and lovers, until fantasy, memories and reality merge in the director's mind - and on screen, in an astonishing, masterful spectacle, culminating in an electrifying triumph of optimism. As Guido-Federico says at the end of 8 1/2: "Life is a party, let's live it together!"

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'Gertrud' is the story of a woman's search for a romantic ideal of total and perfect love. A once famous singer now in her early forties, Gertrud makes the decision to leave her lawyer husband for her lover, a young composer.

Discovering the next day that her lover has betrayed her, and is unable to give her his total love, Gertrud rejects both husband and lover, choosing a life of solitude and study over the compromise of love that is merely half-measure.

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A tall, handsome 'preacher' - his knuckles eerily tattooed with 'love' and 'hate' - roams the countryside, spreading the gospel...and leaving a trail of murdered women in his wake.

To Reverend Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), the work of the Lord has more to do with condemning souls than saving them, especially when his own interests are involved. Now his sights are set on $10,000 - and two little children are the only ones who know where it is. 'Chill...dren!' the preacher croons to the terrified boy and girl hiding in the cold, dark cellar...innocent young lambs who refuse to be led astray.

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A band of Spanish conquistadors, led by Aquirre, self-styled 'Wrath of God' go up the Amazon in search of gold, but Aquirre's megalomania turns the expedition into a death trip.

Eleven hundred men, two women, horses, Ilamas, pigs and rifles descend from the Andes highlands down into the steaming primeval forest where the waters of the Amazon begin, in quest of El Dorado, the fabled city of gold. Aquirre has with him his beautiful 14-year old daughter who he intends to marry and found a new 'pure' race to rule over a golden empire.