popeyethetim's - Favourites List
-
Following the death of his mother, the young 'J' Cody (James Frecheville) goes to live with his estranged gangster relatives. With conflict escalating between his family of criminals and the police's armed robbery division, 'J' finds himself at the centre of a cold-blooded vengeance plot. As he naively navigates his way through the criminal underworld, he is forced to question where his loyalties lie as he tries to decipher who he can trust and who can protect him as he struggles for his own survival. - Director:
- David Michôd
- Cast:
- James Frecheville, Guy Pearce, Joel Edgerton
- Formats:
-
-
La Dolce Vita (1960)The Sweet Life
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. - Director:
- Federico Fellini
- Cast:
- Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimée
- Formats:
-
-
The Seventh Seal (1957)Det sjunde inseglet
As the Black Death continues to wipe out the population of Europe, knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) returns from the Crusades, disillusioned and worn. When suddenly Death (Bengt Ekerot) appears before him, he asks for the chance to live, proposing a game of chess to decide his fate. The knight takes his squire, a troupe of traveling players and a deaf and dumb girl under his protection as the game is played out. One by one Death exacts his toll, and it is up to Block to stall his opponent for as long as possible if he is to help save the lives of those he is trying to protect. All the while, the villages and towns about them fall further into ruin and religion takes a stranglehold on those desperate for a means of survival. - Director:
- Ingmar Bergman
- Cast:
- Max von Sydow, Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot
- Formats:
-
-
The White Ribbon (2009)Das Weisse Band
On the eve of World War I, the quiet order of a small protestant village in Northern Germany is disturbed by a series of mysterious and inexplicable accidents. To the mounting concern of the villagers, the events persist, becoming increasingly sinister and taking on the character of a perverse punishment ritual. But who is responsible. - Director:
- Michael Haneke
- Cast:
- Christian Friedel, Ernst Jacobi, Klaus Manchen
- Formats:
-
-
When ex-con Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) says he has a plan to make a killing, everybody want to be in on the action. Especially when the plan is to steal $2 million in a racetrack robbery scheme in which "no one will get hurt". But despite all their careful plotting, Clay and his men have overlooked on thing: Sherry Peatty (Marie Windsor), a money-hungry, double-crossing dame who's planning to make a financial killing of her own...even if she has to wipe out Clay's entire gang to do it! - Director:
- Stanley Kubrick
- Cast:
- Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards
- Formats:
-
-
With his eighth and most personal film, Alfonso Cuaron recreated the early-1970's Mexico City of his childhood, narrating a tumultuous period in the life of a middle-class family through the experiences of Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio, in a revelatory screen debut), the indigenous domestic worker who keeps the household running. Charged with the care of four small children abandoned by their father, Cleo tends to the family even as her own life is shaken by personal and political upheavals. Written, directed, shot, and coedited by Cuaron, 'Roma' is a labor of love with few parallels in the history of cinema, deploying monumental black-and-white cinematography, an immersive soundtrack, and a mixture of professional and nonprofessional performances to shape its author's memories into a world of enveloping texture, and to pay tribute to the woman who nurtured him. - Director:
- Alfonso Cuarón
- Cast:
- Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Diego Cortina Autrey
- Formats:
-
-
Honeyland (2019)Medena Zemja
In a deserted Macedonian village, Hatidze, a 50-something woman, trudges up a hillside to check her bee colonies nestled in the rocks. Serenading them with a secret chant, she gently manoeuvres the honeycomb without netting or gloves. Back at her homestead, Hatidze tends to her handmade hives and her bedridden mother, occasionally heading to the capital to market her wares. One day, an itinerant family installs itself next door, and Hatidze's peaceful kingdom gives way to roaring engines, seven shrieking children, and 150 cows. Yet Hatidze welcomes the camaraderie, and she holds nothing back - not her tried-and-true beekeeping advice, not her affection, not her special brandy. But soon Hussein, the itinerant family's patriarch, makes a series of decisions that could destroy Hatidze's way of life forever. - Director:
- Tamara Kotevska
- Cast:
- Hatidze Muratova, Nazife Muratova, Hussein Sam
- Formats:
-
-
La Ronde (1950)Roundabout
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... - Director:
- Max Ophüls
- Cast:
- Anton Walbrook, Simone Signoret, Serge Reggiani
- Formats:
-
-
The story of the fragile sentimentalism of a former prostitute who visits her sister only to be taunted mercilessly by her childish brother-in-law. A Streetcar Named Desire: The Original Director's Version is the Elia Kazan/ Tennessee Williams film moviegoers would have seen had not Legion of Decency censorship occurred at the last time. It features three minutes of previously unseen footage underscoring, among other things, the sexual tension between Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) and Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando), and Stella Kowalski's (Kim Hunter) passion for husband Stanley. - Director:
- Elia Kazan
- Cast:
- Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter
- Formats:
-
-
The Tin Drum (1979)Die Blechtrommel
When Oskar Matzerath (the extraordinary David Bennent, just twelve at the time) receives a tin drum for his third birthday, he vows to stop growing there and then - and woe betide anyone who tries to take his beloved drum away from him, as he has a banshee shriek that can shatter glass. As a result, he retains a permanent child's-eye perspective on the rise of Nazism as experienced through petit-bourgeois life in his native Danzig, the 'free city' claimed by both Germany and Poland whose invasion in 1939 helped kick-start World War II. With the help of Luis Bunuel's favourite screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere, director Volker Schlondorff turns Gunter Grass's magical-realist masterpiece into a carnivalesque frenzy of bizarre, grotesque yet unnervingly compelling images as Oskar turns his increasingly jaded eye and caustic tongue on the insane follies of the adult world that he refuses to join. - Director:
- Volker Schlöndorff
- Cast:
- David Bennent, Horst Gentzen, Mario Adorf
- Formats:
-
-
Perhaps the crowning achievement of Bunuel's career, the film centres on an idealistic young nun named Viridiana (Silvia Pinal). Before she is allowed to take her final vows, the Mother Superior requests that she visit her uncle Don Jaime (Fernando Rey), who has "selflessly" provided for the girl over the years. Having always considered him an unspeakable beast, she is surprised when he graciously welcomes her into his home. Just as graciously, he sets about to corrupt Viridiana beyond redemption - all because the girl resembles the wife that died on their wedding day. - Director:
- Luis Buñuel
- Cast:
- Silvia Pinal, Fernando Rey, Francisco Rabal
- Formats:
-
-
Parasite (2019)Gisaengchung
Kim Ki Taek's (Song Kang Ho) family are all unemployed and living in a squalid basement. When his son, Ki Woo, gets a tutoring job at the lavish home of the Park family, the Kim family's luck changes. One by one they gradually infiltrate the wealthy Park's home, attempting to take over their affluent lifestyle, but as their deception unravels events begin to get increasingly out of hand in ways you simply cannot imagine. - Director:
- Joon-Ho Bong
- Cast:
- Kang-ho Song, Sun-kyun Lee, Yeo-jeong Jo
- Formats:
-
-
Goodbye Lenin! (2003)Good Bye Lenin!
The year is 1989 and East and West Germany are still divided. Alex (Daniel Brhl) and his sister Ariane (Maria Simon) live in East Germany with their single mother, Christiane (Katrin Sass) who is a staunch Socialist. When Alex's mother witnesses his arrest on a protest march, she suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma for eight months, just enough time for the Berlin wall to come tumbling down along with all of East Germany's ideals. Eight months later, Christiane wakes up and things have changed. The doctors warn Alex that any shock could bring on a fatal heart attack. He then realises he must convince his mother that her beloved Communism has not been overthrown but is in fact triumphing over Capitalism. Alex then sets out to recreate every detail of the old East inside the four walls of their tiny council flat... what begins as a little white lie, soon turns into a major deception! - Director:
- Wolfgang Becker
- Cast:
- Daniel Brühl, Andreas Thieck, Katrin Sass
- Formats:
-
-
In Clark Duke's directorial debut, Kyle (Liam Hemsworth) and Swin (Clark Duke) live by the orders of an Arkansas-based drug kingpin named Frog (Vince Vaughn), whom they've never met. Posing as junior park rangers by day, they operate as low-level drug couriers by night under the watchful eye of Frog's proxies (John Malkovich and Vivica A. Fox). Swin settles into his day job by taking up a relationship with Johnna (Eden Brolin) against orders to blend in, while Kyle continues to question his night job by trying to figure out who Frog really is. Their world is then upended after one too many inept decisions, and Kyle, Swin, and Johnna find themselves directly in Frog's crosshairs, who mistakenly sees them as a threat to his empire. Based on John Brandon's best-selling novel of the same name, 'Arkansas' weaves together three decades of Deep South drug trafficking to explore the cycle of violence that turns young men into criminals, and old men into legends. - Director:
- Clark Duke
- Cast:
- Liam Hemsworth, Vince Vaughn, Clark Duke
- Formats:
-