Cinema of the World

Passages selected from Peter Cowie's book Finnish Cinema:

There is no doubt that Nyrki Tapiovaara has become a legendary figure in Finnish cinema - a Keats or a Vigo. And one uses the term "legendary" with deliberate emphasis, for Tapiovaara's achievement was to revolt against the stereotyped cinema of his time; in many respects his work appears today as coarse-cut, perfunctory, and even conventional. But the fact remains that this man, who directed a mere five feature films, has been re-discovered by the younger generation, and recognised as being far ahead of his time. He possessed two prime virtues: he was anxious to use the cinema as a means of commenting on his society, and he had sufficient cinematic talent to cut a swathe through the clichés of contemporary Finnish film. "I believe in the vitality of film," he wrote in Kirjallisuuslehti in 1936. "I believe that it is only waiting for young people, free from the chains of money and with no instructions to smear love on every reel, simply to speak the truth, to show the world as they see it. That will be beautiful."

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Soldiers on the Ground in California, Facing All the Conflicts of Iraqi Towns
NY-Times By A. O. SCOTT
Published: July 9, 2008

“Full Battle Rattle,” a new documentary by Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss, gives a remarkably thorough and detailed account of the difficult conditions facing American soldiers in Iraq. The filmmakers follow an Army battalion under the command of Lt. Col. Robert McLaughlin as it tries to bring a semblance of order and stability to a fractious Iraqi town menaced by violence. The soldiers must adjudicate disputes between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, prop up the local authorities and fight off insurgents, who are hidden in plain sight in the middle of town and carry out roadside bomb and rocket attacks at the worst possible moments.

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Still regarded as the best Serbian documentary film account of WW1 ever, it gathers all the available footage of Serbia's army, its battles on the home ground, its refuge on the island of Korfu, its victorious offensive on the Thessaloniki Front and the return to the homeland. The original documentary footage from 1915–1918 was somewhat supplemented in a small measure with some staged reenactments of Serbian army retreating over Albania, and later liberation of Belgrade.

PLOT DESCRIPTION After serving time in prison for an undisclosed crime, a woman keeps herself alive by resorting to robbery and prostitution. She often waits for her boyfriend, an ex-convict who is forbidden to spend any time in Paris according to his probation agreement. She escapes jail only to break her ankle bone, hiding out from the authorities until the unbearable pain forces her to return to the prison hospital for surgery. She takes temporary solace in a lesbian affair at the prison before once again following her no-good boyfriend into the gutter as the two use each other for sex to avoid their legal and moral responsibilities. The story is taken from the novel by the late Albertine Sarrazin. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide "

Solange and her husband lead a quiet life in a provincial town. Mylene, Solange's childhood friend, who is now a TV weather girl, is in town to sign her book. They spend and evening together : dinner, a drink in a nightclub and a few confidences. When Mylene has gone back to Paris, Solange realises that life is passing her by. She has dreams of being a singer, she is in fact a traffic warden. Her costume is a uniform and her audience the drivers who insult her. Her existence suddenly seems very dull, her husband is too normal and her job too degrading. Is it too late to change her life ?

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The captivating movie of Radoslaw Piwowarski which introduces us a story about generation of contemporary middle-aged people whose youthfulness went on in the late 60's. As teenagers they had to face-up to problems, which they didn't quite understand. In 1968 they figured out, that they were not equal. One of them was a good Pole, but another was not -- because of being a Zionist. (March Almonds)

In 1986 Paul Lacombe live out one's remaining days in Sainte-Eulalie-de-Cernon, Aveyron. During 3 last years he wrote his memoirs. Claudine Nougaret films the meeting with her grandfather.

Storyline

In the carnage and cruelty of Vietnam, Navy surgeon Don Jardian learned he had to move fast to deal with black marketeers who control vital supplies - and even faster to stitch together a shrapnel-riddled combatant. But he couldn't foresee the emotional crossfire he and nurse Deborah Solomon experience as their romance - and the war's dangers - heighten. Ken Wahl (Wiseguy) and Cheryl Ladd (Charlie's Angels) star in director Sidney J. Furie's vivid and moving Purple Hearts, a Vietnam War drama of love and courage showcasing fine performances and authentic Philippines-filmed recreations of the hell-on-earth that was Vietnam. In love and war, their story makes for an exciting powerful film about a conflict in which there were no easy answers.

Here's another episode of "Screen Directors Playhouse." It originally aired on April 25, 1956.

This is a weird one. It's a kind of remix of Hitchcock's "Rebecca." Angela Lansbury plays a newly-married woman who is haunted by her husband's former wife. The vehicle for this haunting? A malevolent cat, which more or less eventually drives Lansbury mad.

So if you don't like cats, or if you just think you might like watching a very pretty Angela Lansbury being driven mad by a house pet, by all means download this one. It's actually not bad.

TCM rip.

Storyline

Marjorie Turner is suffocating. Her younger sister Jeanine has no ambition, and her 8 year marriage to Harry puts her in constant competition with his family (all doctors), whom he is also competing for the affections of. One day, she snaps while food shopping, and beds a mysterious man, who die during the moment of passion. When she forgets her wallet, a vertical-blinds salesman finds it, and things get complicated from there...

Storyline

John H. Groberg, a middle class kid from Idaho Falls, crosses the Pacific to become a Mormon missionary in the remote and exotic Tongan island kingdom during the 1950's. He leaves behind a loving family and the true love of his life, Jean. Through letters and musings across the miles, John shares his humbling and sometimes hilarious adventures with "the girl back home", and her letters buoy up his spirits in difficult times. John must struggle to overcome language barriers, physical hardship and deep-rooted suspicion to earn the trust and love of the Tongan people he has come to serve. Throughout his adventure-filled three years on the islands, he discovers friends and wisdom in the most unlikely places. John H. Groberg's Tongan odyssey will change his life forever.

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An old woman's possessions are auctioned, and orchestral conductor Timothy Clare and his family move into her large, though rather gloomy and dilapidated, old house in Bristol. It soon becomes clear that it is a house full of secrets, and that Mrs. Betterton had good reason to leave with her young granddaughter, the ethereal, otherworldly Emily; after a series of frightening experiences and disturbing discoveries - including a walled-up room containing a skeleton - the Clares realize that they are not the only occupants. Unearthly presences inhabit the house, and the family must find a way to lay the ghosts to rest if they are ever to find peace there.

Plot Synopsis from Allmovie:

Richard Harris and Robert Duvall star in this low-key drama concerning a hard-drinking former sea captain (Richard Harris) who befriends a shy retired barber (Robert Duvall). Though their polar-opposite personalities find the relationship slow going at first, roguish Frank (Harris) and gentle Walter (Duvall) soon develop a close friendship as they pass the days with conversation. As death looms near and their pasts seem to evaporate into the air with the passing of each day, the lonely souls find comfort in each other's company until their fragile friendship is shattered. When Frank insults a waitress (Sandra Bullock) with whom Walter harbors a protective friendship, Walter makes the decision to cut his ties with loutish Frank. Forced to reevaluate their friendship, the two lonely souls attempt to find meaning in their lives as their chances for connecting with the outside world grows ever more dim.

Plot / Synopsis

Manchuria, 1619. Chinese and Joseon forces clash in a deadly winter battle, and three soldiers manage to survive. Taking refuge in an abandoned tavern, Heon Myung, Do Young, and Du Soo appear to be compatriots from the same side, but each man is harboring secrets of his own. As the hours wear on, loyalties wavers, tables turn, and friends turn into foes as each man's true nature is slowly revealed. The real battle for survival has only just begun.

The first directorial effort from I Saw the Devil and The Unjust screenwriter Park Hoon Jung, The Showdown stages a good ol' Mexican standoff in Manchuria. The handsomely lensed period actioner launches a battle of both words and swords, as each soldier tries to kill the other first through strategy and ambush.

Synopsis

"Kungfucinema.com" wrote:
Two children whose parents were killed in an attempt to possess the martial world’s most powerful weapon, the Holy Flame, are raised by competing masters, trained in kung fu in preparation for a fateful duel.

Fake fortune teller Professor Bird (Robert Woolsey) and his assistant Sparrow (Bert Wheeler) are in a Mexican resort near a gambling casino. Sparrow has fallen for Anita (Dorothy Lee), an American girl who has lived with gypsies since she was four. But the gypsy leader Julius also wants her, and is willing to get her at any cost. Also at the casino are Miss Furst and her niece Ruth, who loves aviator Billy.

Amazon editorial review:
Barbara Stanwyck mesmerizes as a woman with a past, bound by a crime to a husband she despises. Kirk Douglas quickens our collective pulses in his film debut as her disappointing, dipsomaniac spouse, while Van Heflin and Lizabeth Scott bring texture to supporting roles. Everything about this 1946 film noir is intriguing, from Lewis Milestone's direction to Edith Head's costumes to the edgy and troubled characters. It takes a long, hard look at guilt and the consequences of poorly planned actions. Well worth checking out, despite a wretched title. --Rochelle O'Gorman

Directed by Arthur Hiller from the second of three Academy Award-winning screenplays by Paddy Chayefsky, The Hospital is a black comedy centering on Dr. Herbert Bock (George C. Scott), a bitter, suicidal surgeon. While patients at the hospital die left and right due to the extreme carelessness and ineptness of the staff that surrounds him, the lonely Bock finds himself falling for Barbara (Diana Rigg), the daughter of Edmund (Barnard Hughes), a patient. Meanwhile, a mysterious killer has begun stalking the hospital, taking out the patients who don't die from poor treatment first. In addition to Chayefsky's Oscar win, The Hospital garnered a Best Actor nomination for Scott, who lost to Gene Hackman for The French Connection.- allmovie.com

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This is the first movie, and the only silent movie (in the 20th century), to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Two young men, one rich, one middle class, who are in love with the same woman, become fighter pilots in World War I.

In IMDb user comment that 'Wings is a fantastic film with some of the best airplane effects I've ever seen. And the effects rightfully won an oscar.

Clara Bow plays a woman who has both of her sweethearts go off to fight in World War One. Charles "Buddy" Rogers and Richard Arlen are the two men.

They're both pilots and begin at a camp with fellow pilot Gary Cooper. The two men become friends and don't know that they're trying to go after the same girl.

It has an interesting story and it's one of the best films ever made. The ending will leave you crying.

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One of Raul Ruiz's most obscure and enigmatic films, very loosely based on a novella by Sadeq Hedayat, "The Blind Owl"

In French and other languages. (Roughly halfway through the movie, the spoken language shifts from French (with snatches of German and Italian) to Old Spanish and Arabic---both of which are subtitled in fake Old French, but, not in a manner that corresponds to anything remotely resembling a correct translation. )

Jonathan Rosenbaum has said that this films "defies synopsis".

Recorded almost 20 years ago from a cable broadcast, and obviously poor quality.
Much of the film is very dark, but what we see is Ruiz at his most visually imaginative. Transferred from a Betamax recording.

Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey play a couple of broke, hungry vaudevillians who are holed up in a hotel room with a few (tame) lions. They are hired by a movie producer who wishes to send them and their lions to Africa with a great naturalist, in order to make a jungle picture. An earlier expedition by this same naturalist was a failure, because she is afraid of animals. They all head to Africa and the lions are not mentioned again. Once in the jungle they have to fend off the amorous advances of the naturalist, of a vine-swinging native girl, and of a gorilla. They then run into the fearsome Amazon tribe, made up entirely of nubile females. Eventually they disguise themselves as Amazons to avoid being "loved to death." But these disguises lead to further difficulties when the all-male tribe of Tarzans show up for their annual mating ritual with the Amazons. Written by Cameron

In As You See, Farocki searches for those instances and facts in the history of technology that have been overlooked or ignored, also exploring the ambivalent relationship between technologies developed for civil use and those designed for military purposes.

Thus the film for instance describes how in the 1970's workers at the British arms factory Lucas Aerospace attempted to develop socially useful products to replace the company's military output.

Rather than following a linear argument, this essay-film juxtaposes disparate images and weaves them into a mosaic-like structure which makes it possible for the viewers to make their own connections between the different images as well as between the images and the commentary.

Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide

Wonderfully bizarre fantasy, based on a John Collier short story, about a world-weary jazz musician (King) obsessed with the dream of innocence incarnated by a carnival sleeping beauty (Farrow) whom he buys, takes back to his baroque Californian mansion (already inhabited by two ambivalently voluptuous women), and awakens for a haunting game of death and love betrayed. Conceived by Harris after working with Kubrick on the script of Lolita, it works as a kind of free jazz improvisation (there is a marvellous score by Richard Hazard), and might be described as a further exploration of what Nabokov's Humbert Humbert called his 'petrified paroxysm of desire'. Unmissable for anyone with an open mind and a sense of cinematic adventure.

Second feature film by German-Turkish director Thomas Arslan (Ferien, Aus der Ferne), and a rough diamond of the first generation of the so-called ‘Berlin School’. Can is a young and smart upstart; he dreams of a small family but the money that fuels this dream comes from the streets. Can is a dealer, he works for Hakan who is supplying the kids in his neighbourhood with drugs. And while Can struggles to get control over his life he sees his girl friend, the mother of his kid, leaving and himself increasingly surrounded by false friends. On top of it, a cop (Birol Ünel, the male lead from Fatih Akin’s “Gegen die Wand) is on his back trying to persuade Can to work undercover for the police. The more Can attempts to free himself, the deeper he sinks into a life he never aspired to.

The host of an investigative news show is convinced by the CIA that the friends he has invited to a weekend in the country are engaged in a conspiracy that threatens national security in this adaptation of the Robert Ludlum novel.

Sam Peckinpah's last film and one that i personally feel is underrated, as taken on its own terms it`s a great cold war thriller that deserves a wider audience.

For most casual movie viewers, character actor Timothy Carey was probably best known for his bit roles in a number of classic films. He was the sharpshooter that gunned down a race horse in Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956), the sobbing solider sentenced to death in Paths of Glory (1957), a beer-throwing biker in The Wild One (1953). It’s only upon closer inspection that one gets a true sense of the fascinating imprint Carey left on film. Carey may have spent most of his life playing small parts in big movies, but his insistence on taking those moments and making them stand out from the other supporting parts is awe-inspiring. He was larger-than-life, both in appearance and in personality, and once you noticed him in a film he would quickly become hard to forget. He was such a notorious scene-stealer that he often clashed with some of his more famous co-stars.

"Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus is a thought-provoking road trip through the American south - a world of churches; prison; coalmines; truck stops; juke joints; swamps; and mountains. Along the way the viewer encounters various musicians, including the Handsome Family, Johnny Dowd, David Eugene Edwards and David Johansen; rockabilly and mountain Gospel churches and novelist Harry Crews telling grisly stories down a dirt track. The film is a collage of stories and testimonies, almost invariably of sudden death, sin or redemption: heaven or hell, with no middle ground. And all the while, a strange southern Jesus looms in the background.
Alt Country singer Jim White reflects upon exactly what it is about this baffling place that inspires muscicians and writers, whilst at the same time working through his own preoccupations with his muse - or, as he puts it, 'trying to find the gold tooth in God's crooked smile'."