monsieurk's - Favourites List

Show moreShow less

Hong Kong, 1962. Chow (Tony Leung) is a junior newspaper editor with an elusive wife. His new neighbour Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) is a secretary whose husband seems to spend all his time on business trips. They become friends, making the lonely evenings more bearable.

As their relationship develops they make a discovery that changes their lives forever...

James Mason is Johnny McQueen, the idealistic leader of an illegal organisation in Northern Ireland. Shot during an armed raid he is badly wounded. Stumbling through the back streets of Belfast his friends, enemies and the police begin to close in as he tries to find a place to hide...

Show moreShow less

Welcome to the world's most notorious slum: Rio de Janeiro's 'City of God'. A place where combat photographers fear to tread, where police rarely go, and residents are lucky if they live to the age of 20.

This is the true story of a young man who grew up on these streets and whose ambition as a photographer is our window in and ultimately may be his only way out.

Show moreShow less

Penniless husband, Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) looks like he is losing his scatterbrained wife, Gerry (Claudette Colbert) to multi-millionaire John D. Hackensacker (Rudy Vallee) when she walks out on him and heads for fun and sun in Palm Beach, Florida.

They become involved with any number of outrageous characters, played by many of the Sturges regulars in hilarious cameos. The witty, sparkling dialogue, poking merciless fun at, amongst other targets, money and sex, is unforgettable.

Show moreShow less

Dekalog, from the acclaimed director of the 'Three Colours' trilogy, was premiered to unanimous glowing critical praise at the 1989 Venice Film Festival and its reputation as a cinematic masterpiece remains undiminished. The Ten Commandments, are equally captivating and powerful.

The storied are set around the same Warsaw apartment block and focus on the complexities of human relationships. The themes are the universal ones of love, marriage, infidelity, parenthood, guilt, faith and compassion. The result is a unique and life enhancing look at various moral dilemmas faced by ordinary people in their daily lives.

Show moreShow less

This, the last film Preston Sturges made for Paramount, is another great satire on the American penchant for hero worship. It stars Eddie Bracken as Woodrow Truesmith, a soldier who, due to an unfortunate misunderstanding, never actually went to war.

His attempts to keep his secret are scuppered when his home town has him repatriated for a civic celebration of his exploits. In this sentimental comedy, many of Sturge's regular repertory of character actors give the performances of their lives.

Show moreShow less

Set in the 1980s, in the former Etruscan landscape of rural Italy, Arthur (Josh O'Connor), a vagabond-type character, is mourning the loss of his love.

A local ragtag group of graverobbers make use of his archaeological skills to find ancient tombs filled with artefacts, but Arthur uses the digs to search for a door to the afterlife, of which myths speak, where he imagines reuniting with her.

Show moreShow less

After the French New Wave, the sexual revolution, and the upheavals of May 1968 came the near religiously revered magnum opus by Jean Eustache.

In his long-unavailable body of work, ranging from documentaries about his native village to closely autobiographical narrative films, Eustache pioneered a forthright and fearless brand of realism. The pinnacle of this innovative style, 'The Mother and the Whore' follows Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Leaud), a Parisian pseudo-intellectual who lives with his tempestuous girlfriend, Marie (Bernadette Lafont), even as he begins a dalliance with the sexually liberated Veronika (Frangoise Lebrun), leading the three into an emotionally turbulent love triangle. Through daringly sustained long takes and confessional dialogue, Eustache captures a generation navigating the disillusionment of the 1970s, and in the process achieves an intimacy so deep it cuts.

Show moreShow less

Onibaba is set during a brutal period in history, a Japan ravaged by civil war between rival shogunates.

Weary from combat, samurai are drawn towards the seven-foot-high susuku grass fields to hide and rest themselves, only to be ambushed and murdered by a ruthless team of mother (Nobuko Otowa) and daughter-in-law (Jitsuko Yoshimura). When Hachi (Kei Sato), a neighbour returning from the wars, brings bad news, he threatens the women's partnership.