Cinema of the World

A very good tv movie from the BBC
a must seen if you are into apocalyptic/post apocalyptic stuff



plot summaries from imdb :

*Documentary style account of a nuclear holocaust and it's affect on the working class city of Sheffield, England; and the eventual long run affects of nuclear war on civilization.



*It is the mid-1980's, during the Cold War. Ruth Beckett & Jimmy Kemp, residents of the town of Sheffield, England, are planning for their upcoming marriage and birth of their first child. Sheffield is home to a major R.A.F. base and has a major industrial base of steel, energy & chemical production. But the Soviet Union marches troops into Iran, in a plan to convert it to a Soviet satellite state. The United States, Great Britain, and other members of NATO and the U.N. angrily condemn the Soviet aggression and military activity in England starts to mount, especially at the nearby R.A.F.base.



The families of Ruth & Jimmy go about their daily business, paying little attention to what is going on in Iran. One spring day, without warning, the Soviet Union attacks England with ICBMs - two of which hit Sheffield, annihilating most of the city and its inhabitants. But what is even more horrifying is the aftermath that follows - a world without public order, clean food, water, electricity, or the ability to produce any of them. Ruth struggles for more than 10 years just to stay alive in this horrible, barren, radioactive homeland...



http://www.filesonic.com/file/2068027831/Threads (1984).avi

no pass

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SYNOPSIS
Both controversial and relentless in its depiction of suppression and brutality, Punishment Park was heavily attacked by the mainstream press and permitted only the barest of releases in 1971. However, like Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool (1969) and Robert Kramer’s Ice (1969), Peter Watkins’ film has established itself as one of the key, yet rarely seen, radical films of the late 1960s/early 1970s. Giving voice to the disaffected youth of America that had lived through the campus riots at Berkeley, the trial of the Chicago Seven and who were witnessing the escalation of the Vietnam War, Punishment Park was named by Rolling Stone as one of their top ten films of 1971 and has earned many admirers in the four decades since its release.

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Quote:

Plot Synopsis by Jason Buchanan
Writer/director Stefan Ruzowitzky explores the moral corrosion of Nazi complicity with this tightly wound adaptation of Adolph Burger's fact-based book The Devil's Workship. Solomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics may be a talented artist at heart, but his desire for wealth has driven him to use his creativity for more nefarious means. Arrested by the police inspector Herzog (David Striesow) at the onset of World War II, Sorowitsch is sent to the notorious Mauthausen concentration camp. It's not long before Solomon's thinly veiled opportunism earns him a relatively comfortable position as the camp's resident sketch artist, and five years later he is mysteriously swept away to Sachsenhausen.

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IMDB

Plot Synopsis from Allmovie:

Based on a popular British cult comic book, this film is the story of a futuristic feminist superhero and her fight to preserve the environment against an evil government bureaucracy. The action is set in the year 2033, after an ecological disaster of drought and pollution has ravaged the countryside, and water is scarce. Tank Girl (Lori Petty) is a sassy punker who has her own vintage tank in tow, along with other high-tech weapons. Her mutant friends join her in bizarre battles against the corporate-statist Department of Water and Power and its villainous chief, Kesslee (Malcolm McDowell). At stake is the world's water supply, which the Department is hoarding and which the rebels frequently raid. Rock star Iggy Pop has a cameo as Rat Face, one of the half-human, half-kangaroo Rippers. Courtney Love coordinated the post-punk soundtrack.

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After The Atomic War the world is divided into three states. London is the capital of Oceania, ruled by a party who has total control over all its citizens. Winston Smith is one of the bureaucrats, rewriting history in one of the departments. One day he commits the crime of falling in love with Julia. They try to escape Big Brother's listening and viewing devices, but, of course, nobody can really escape...
- Summary written by Mattias Thuresson {mattias.thuresson@mbox300.swipnet.se}

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IMDB

Synopsis
The animals of Manor Farm, led by the pigs Napoleon and Snowball, evict the cruel Farmer Jones and take over the farm. But Napoleon has greater ambitions...

About the film
First published at the end of the Second World War, George Orwell's savage satire Animal Farm (1945) expressed his profound disillusionment with Soviet Communism, whose principles he had spent much of his career defending. It's an allegorical tale of the animals overthrowing their hated oppressor Farmer Jones and forming a socialist utopia - only to discover the hard way that, as Orwell so memorably put it, "some animals are more equal than others".

Events generally parallel those in early Soviet history, with Farmer Jones as Tsar Nicholas II, Old Major as Lenin (or possibly Marx), Snowball as Trotsky and Napoleon as Stalin, though they're sufficiently generalised to be applicable to almost any other totalitarian (not necessarily Communist) state with its five-year plans, forced industrialisation/collectivisation, show trials and revisionist speeches.

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After losing both her parents, Failan (Cecilia Cheung) emmigrates to Korea to seek her only remaining relatives. Once she reaches Korea, she finds out that her relatives have moved to Canada well over a year ago. Desperate to stay and make a living in Korea, Failan is forced to have an arranged marriage through a match-making agency. Kang Jae (Choi Min Shik) is an old and outdated gangster who has no respect from his peers. Short on money, Kang Jae decides to take on the arranged marriage. Having nothing more than a picture of Kang Jae, Failan spends her days dreaming and wishing that Kang Jae would come to visit her. Failan often writes to Kang Jae in sorrow about how much she misses and thinks about him, but never has the nerve to give the letters to Kang Jae. Things take a turn when Kang Jae is asked by his boss to take the fall for a murder in exchange for some money. The only hope in his worthless life is the wife he never met. Written by Basia & Moj...

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IMDB

Winner of (Mar del Plata Film Festival) and (Toronto International Film Festival

Quote:

Comment from IMDB for description:
A low budget tale of a terrifying little brat sent to live temporarily with his ancient grandmother in the country while his single mother looks for work in Seoul. Hollywood would turn a movie like this into pure sap, but director Lee Jeong-hyang doesn't offer any easy solutions to the ever growing disconnection of modernized, urban Korean young people from their traditional ancestry. The film often feels like some big catharsis is just around the corner, but wisely never delivers one. The boy changes a bit by the time his mother returns, but he only, suddenly, becomes aware of it when it's too late. And thankfully, NO ONE DIES in this movie, which is usually the case with dramas dealing with the elderly. Definitely leaves you thinking about things, though.

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Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide: Fourteen scriptwriters spent five years toiling over a movie adaptation of war correspondent Vincent Sheehan's Personal History before producer Walter Wanger brought the property to the screen as Foreign Correspondent. What emerged was approximately 2 parts Sheehan and 8 parts director Alfred Hitchcock--and what's wrong with that? Joel McCrea stars as an American journalist sent by his newspaper to cover the volatile war scene in Europe in the years 1938 to 1940. He has barely arrived in Holland before he witnesses the assassination of Dutch diplomat Albert Basserman: at least, that's what he thinks he sees. McCrea makes the acquaintance of peace-activist Herbert Marshall, his like-minded daughter Laraine Day, and cheeky British secret agent George Sanders. A wild chase through the streets of Amsterdam, with McCrea dodging bullets, leads to the classic "alternating windmills" scene, which tips Our Hero to the existence of a formidable subversive organization. McCrea returns to England, where he nearly falls victim to the machinations of jovial hired-killer Edmund Gwenn. The leader of the spy ring is revealed during the climactic plane-crash sequence--which, like the aforementioned windmill scene, is a cinematic tour de force for director Hitchcock and cinematographer Rudolph Mate.

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Satyajit Ray's first film, Pather Panchali, is one among the finest films ever made. The film won about a dozen awards at various film festivals world-over. Pather Panchali, eventually, became the first film of a trilogy.

After the critical and commercial success of Pather Panchali, Ray made Aparajito. The novel itself was a sequel to Pather Panchali. Ray recounts in "My Years with Apu" on what finally led him to do another film about Apu was, "One single attitude of Apu in the second novel Aparajita ... After Sarbajaya's (mother) death Apu feels relief... he felt happy to be free of a bondage. ... The idea of Apu growing up and away from his mother... and much stress is laid on Sarbajaya's slow realization of the fact."After a special screening for Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India and Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the President of India, Nehru is said to have asked Ray, "what happens to Apu now?" Ray replied that he did not have a third Apu film in mind.

The film was not very successful with the Bengali audience at the time of its first release. Ray read many Bengali stories and novels, looking for a future film. He wrote a screenplay based on a short story by Tarasankar Bannerji, Jalsaghar (The Music Room) . However, he had to postpone the project as the actor he had in mind for the lead role was going to be abroad for a few months. Meanwhile, he made a comedy fantasy, Parash Pather (The Philosopher's Stone). Just before the film's release, Ray and Aparajito were invited to the Venice Film Festival. Aparajito was hailed as a masterpiece. Despite the bad subtitling, the film won the Golden Lion for the best feature film at the Venice Film Festival. Ray was asked if he had a trilogy in mind at a press conference during the festival. And to his surprise, Ray found himself saying yes.

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IMDB

Nicolas Roeg’s mystical masterpiece chronicles the physical, spiritual, and emotional journey of a sister and brother abandoned in the harsh Australian outback. Joining an Aborigine boy on his walkabout—a tribal initiation into manhood—these modern children pass from innocence into experience as they are thrust from the comforts of civilization into the savagery of the natural world. --Criterion Collection

Is ``Walkabout'' only about what it seems to be about? Is it a parable about noble savages and the crushed spirits of city dwellers? That's what the film's surface seems to suggest, but I think it's also about something deeper and more elusive: The mystery of communication. It ends with lives that are destroyed, in one way or another, because two people could not invent a way to make their needs and dreams clear.

Nicolas Roeg's film, released in 1971, was hailed as a masterpiece. Then it disappeared into oblivion, apparently because of quarrels over ownership, and was not seen for years; Premiere magazine put it first on its list of films that should be available on video but were not. In 1996 a new theatrical version restored five minutes of nudity that had been trimmed from the original release; that director's cut is now available on video.

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After five years in prison, Tony le Stéphanois meets his dearest friends Jo and the Italian Mario Ferrati and they invite Tony to steal a couple of jewels from the show-window of the famous jewelry Mappin & Webb Ltd, but he declines. Tony finds his former girlfriend Mado, who became the lover of the gangster owner of the night-club L' Âge d' Or Louis Grutter, and he humiliates her, beating on her back and taking her jewels. Then he calls Jo and Mario and proposes a burglary of the safe of the jewelry. They invite the Italian specialist in safes and elegant wolf Cesar to join their team and they plot a perfect heist. They are successful in their plan, but the D. Juan Cesar makes things go wrong when he gives a valuable ring to his mistress.

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"Young Oskar Matzerath, who grows up witnessing the rise of Nazism at the eve of World War II, decides at age 3 to stop growing - effectively shutting out the world and communicating only by banging on his tin drum."

Criterion Co: link

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From criterionco.com:

Master thief Corey (Alain Delon) is fresh out of prison. But instead of toeing the line of law-abiding freedom, he finds his steps leading back to the shadowy world of crime, crossing those of a notorious escapee (Gian Maria Volonté) and alcoholic ex-cop (Yves Montand). As the unlikely trio plots a heist against impossible odds, their trail is pursued by a relentless inspector (Bourvil), and fate seals their destinies. Jean-Pierre Melville's Le cercle rouge combines honorable anti-heroes, coolly atmospheric cinematography, and breathtaking set pieces to create a masterpiece of crime cinema.

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On the heels of Annie Hall, the Oscar-winning romantic comedy that rocketed Woody Allen to the front ranks of American filmmakers, Manhattan continued Allen's romantic obsessions in a darker, more pessimistic vein.

Allen stars as Isaac Davis, a TV writer sick of the pap he is forced to churn out and harboring dreams of being the great American novelist. His love life is in barbed-wire territory: he is tormented by his ex-wife Jill (Meryl Streep in one of her first screen roles), a lesbian who has written a tell-all book about their marriage, and he is dating teenager Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), who is disenchanted with his snobbish putdowns and refusal to commit himself.

Woody's disillusioned best friend Yale (Michael Murphy) has begun an affair with Isaac's friend Mary (Diane Keaton). Like Isaac, who can never get past the first sentence of his novel, Yale is crippled by his lack of resolve, as indicated by his inability to leave his wife Emily (Anne Byrne).

On the verge of leaving the country, Tracy tells Isaac the basic truth that none of his hung-up friends and past lovers fully realizes: "You have to have a little more faith in people."

Manhattan is both a grim dissection of perpetually dissatisfied New Yorkers and an ode to the city itself, filmed in glorious black-and-white by Gordon Willis, who also shot The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), and set to a score of rhapsodic George Gershwin music.

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Synopsis:
Ethan Edwards (Wayne) returns to the farm of his brother Aaron (Walter Coy) and his wife Martha (Dorothy Jordan), unsure if he has a place there. Comanche War Chief Scar (Henry Brandon) draws out Ethan and the Texas Rangers led by the Reverend Captain Samuel Johnson Clayton (Ward Bond), and then massacres Ethan's family save for young Debbie (Lana Wood), who is kidnapped. Ethan and the young Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter) begin an extended search for Debbie all across the west. Martin's girlfriend Laurie Jorgensen (Vera Miles) waits for him to return ... until she reads that he's married an Indian squaw.

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from amazon:
Ermanno Olmi's masterful second feature is the tender story of a young Milanese couple whose strained relationship is tested when the man accepts a new job in Sicily. With the separation come loneliness, nostalgia, and, perhaps, some new perspectives to rejuvenate their love. Olmi's deep humanism charges this moving depiction of ordinary men and women, and the pitfalls of the human heart

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Criterion Synopsis:
Poetic realism reaches sublime heights with Children of Paradise (Les enfants du paradis), the ineffably witty tale of a woman loved by four different men. Deftly entwining theater, literature, music, and design, director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert resurrect the tumultuous world of 19th-century Paris, teeming with hucksters and aristocrats, thieves and courtesans, pimps and seers. The Criterion Collection is proud to present this milestone of cinema in a new high-definition film transfer made from the restored negative.

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Quote:
by Gary Morris
The first time I went to see Mizoguchi's The Life of Oharu, I asked a friend who was familiar with the film to come with me. Although a self-proclaimed "Mizoguchi freak," he demurred, saying somewhat ominously, "Nobody suffers like Oharu!" After watching the film, I could see why he didn't want to go. Oharu (1952) is a tragedy with few peers in or out of the cinema; it's 137 minutes of almost unrelieved grimness, made unsettlingly real by the director's ravishing pictorialism and above all by the performance of Kinuyo Tanaka as a woman who falls from a respected member of the Imperial Japanese Court to a broken-down whore and beggar ravaged by disease.

According to his longtime screenwriter Yoshikata Yoda, Mizoguchi made Oharu as a reaction to Kurosawa's triumph with Rashomon at the Venice Film Festival a year earlier. But the production must have been inevitable given Mizoguchi's fascination with Japanese history, his obsession with the plight of women, and the neat dovetailing of these two elements in the popular 17th-century novel on which the film is based. (In fact, the director had the project in mind at least two years earlier, when he left Shochiku studios after they refused to finance it.)

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IMDB

Plot Summary
A small-town crime boss accepts delivery of a stolen car, only to find there's a baby in the back-seat. He and his transvestite "wife" cut out the boy's tongue and raise him as a mute accomplice in their crimes. When the grown "Sonny Boy" escapes and tries to make contact with the outside world, the attention he draws to his warped family results in darkly-humored mayhem.

IMDB Review
Once in a while you see a movie that demands attention for its sheer in-your-face, off-the-wall nature. Sonny Boy doesn't have a wonderful pedigree, being made on a low budget by mostly Italian producers better known for routine action and horror flicks, but the cast and scriptwriter give it distinction. The chronicle of a jaw-droppingly dysfunctional 'family' consisting of a mountainously overweight blackmarketeer-cum avant-garde artist, his transvestite partner (played by David Carradine, yet, who also sings in the film), their much-abused 'adopted son', and various other almost equally unhinged individuals is spiced with striking cinematography and an excellent score, but most of all by an attitude towards its contoversial material that's an almost precise combination of David Lynch and John Waters. The bleakest of films despite its uncomfortable black humour, it never shirks from confronting the viewer's morals, expectations, and attitude to what is usually considered 'entertainment'. I commend it to anyone seeking the offbeat, but most especially to those in a depressed state of mind: watch it and you come away with the feeling that, no matter how bad your life might seem, there's always someone worse off than you.

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Charlotte Hollis, wealthy southern spinster, is shunned by her community for the grisly murder some 40 years prior of her intended, John Mayhew. Even though her guilt in the matter was never proven, the townspeople liken her to a modern-day Lizzie Borden. The murders are similar in nature and the children even taunt her with cruel rhymes. For this reason she lives a life secluded from the mainstream of society. Her needs are cared for by her faithful servant, Velma. Now, progress in the guise of new highway construction threatens the Hollis plantation, her home and the family domicile since Civil War times. She refuses to leave when she is issued an eviction notice by the Sheriff and even takes pot shots at the highwaymen when they encroach upon her property line. Charlotte summons "Cousin Miriam" to fight the public battle to save her home. To her chagrin, Miriam has come with the intention of assisting with the packing -- not to save the mansion from the bulldozers. After Charlotte, Miriam is the sole heir to the Hollis estate. This is motive enough for Miriam to have Charlotte committed for her strange and reclusive behavior. But, is Charlotte insane? Doctor Drew seems to feel she may need some help across the threshold of insanity.

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Director Robert Aldrich's story: a thriller about an aging ex-vaudeville child star waging a psychotic reign of terror over her crippled ex-movie star sister. His stars: Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. His battle to make the movie: an uphill one. But the eerie, shock-laden result was a deserved smash. Davis won her 10th Academy Award nomination for her acid portrayal of the grotesque Baby Jane. Nominated for five Academy Awards and an Oscar winner for Best Costume Design, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is mirthful masterpiece of the macabre.

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Synopsis
Set on the family farm, the movie opens as Lucy Harbin (played by Crawford), wearing a long black wig, garish floral dress and jangling bracelets, returns home and discovers her husband, Frank (played by Majors), in bed with another woman. She becomes enraged and murders them with an axe, while, unbeknownst to Lucy, her three-year-old daughter, Carol (played by Cos), watches the whole grisly spectacle. The movie, however, does not show any gruesome or disgusting blood and gore.

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Based on the book about Joan Crawford, one of the great Hollywood actresses of our time, written by her adopted daughter Christina Crawford. Joan decides to adopt children of her own to fill a void in her life. Yet, her problems with alcohol, men, and the pressures of show business get in the way of her personal life, turning her into a mentally abusive wreck seen through the eyes of Christina and her brother Christopher, who unwillingly bare the burden of life that was unseen behind the closed doors of "The Most Beautiful House in Brentwood."

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Adapted from the controversial novel by J.G. Ballard, Crash will either repel or amaze you, with little or no room for a neutral reaction. The film is perfectly matched to the artistic and intellectual proclivities of director David Cronenberg, who has used the inspiration of Ballard's novel to create what critic Roger Ebert has described as "a dissection of the mechanics of pornography." Filmed with a metallic color scheme and a dominant tone of emotional detachment, the story focuses on a close-knit group of people who have developed a sexual fetish around the collision of automobiles. They use cars as a tool of arousal, in which orgasm is directly connected to death-defying temptations of fate at high speeds. Ballard wrote his book to illustrate the connections between sex and technology--the ultimate postmodern melding of flesh and machine--and Cronenberg takes this theme to the final frontier of sexual expression. Holly Hunter, James Spader, and Deborah Unger are utterly fearless in roles that few actors would dare to play, and their surrender to Cronenberg's vision makes Crash an utterly unique and challenging film experience.

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synopsis - AMG:
Based on the best-selling novel by Laura Esquival, this internationally popular romantic fable from Mexico centers on a young woman who discovers that her cooking has magical effects. The tale's heroine, Tita, is the youngest of three daughters in a traditional Mexican family. Bound by tradition to remain unmarried while caring for her aging mother, Tita nevertheless falls in love with a handsome young man named Pedro. Pedro returns her affection, but he cannot overcome her family's disapproval, and he instead marries Tita's elder sister. The lovestruck young woman is brutally disappointed, and her sadness has such force that it infects her cooking: all who eat it her feel her heartbreak with the same intensity. This newly discovered power continues to manifest itself after the wedding, as Tita and Pedro, overcome by their denied love, embark on a secret affair. Director Alfonso Arau, Esquival's husband at the time, presents the acts of love and cooking with the same glossy, sensual sheen. Indeed, despite occasional digressions into a magical realist tone, the film often takes on the gloss of Hollywood romance. This combination of traditional melodrama and exotic fairy tale proved extremely popular with audiences, particularly in the United States, where it became one of the highest grossing foreign language films at the time. -- Judd Blaise

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