Friday, April 29, 2011

Vertigo (1958)


Director: Alfred Hitchcock

John "Scottie" Ferguson is a retired San Francisco police detective who suffers from acrophobia and Madeleine is the lady who leads him to high places. A wealthy shipbuilder who is an acquaintance from college days approaches Scottie and asks him to follow his beautiful wife, Madeleine. He fears she is going insane, maybe even contemplating suicide, because she believes she is possessed by a dead ancestor. Scottie is skeptical, but agrees after he sees the beautiful Madeleine.



Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Rocky (1976)


Director: John G. Avildsen

Rocky Balboa is a struggling boxer trying to make the big time. Working in a meat factory in Philadelphia for a pittance, he also earns extra cash as a debt collector. When heavyweight champion Apollo Creed visits Philadelphia, his managers want to set up an exhibition match between Creed and a struggling boxer, touting the fight as a chance for a "nobody" to become a "somebody". The match is supposed to be easily won by Creed, but someone forgot to tell Rocky, who sees this as his only shot at the big time.


Moolaadé (2004)


Director: Ousmane Sembene

In an African village this is the day when six 4-9-year-old girls are to be circumcised. All children know that the operation is horrible torture and sometimes lethal, and all adults know that some circumcised women can only give birth by Caesarean section. Two of the girls have drowned themselves in the well to escape the operation. The four other girls seek "magical protection" (moolaadé) by a woman (Colle) who seven years before refused to have her daughter circumcised. Moolaadé is indicated by a coloured rope. But no one would dare step over and fetch the children. Moolaadé can only be revoked by Colle herself. Her husband's relatives persuade him to whip her in public into revoking. Opposite groups of women shout to her to revoke or to be steadfast, but no woman interferes. When Colle is at the wedge of fainting, the merchant takes action and stops the maltreatment. Therefore he is hunted out of the village and, when out of sight, murdered.



Bagdad Cafe (1987)


Director: Percy Adlon

Out of Rosenheim (Bagdad Café) is a look into the minds and lives of some people most of us have met but few of us know much about. This movie exemplifies how one person in the right place can affect a community of lives. The Adlons seem to express the view that all change and "magic" comes from hard work and mutual acceptance. A well-crafted view of the lives of tourists everywhere and the difficulties they can face. A Whimsical and lovingly Photographed look at the vast wasteland that is too often ignored by much of humanity.


Thursday, April 14, 2011

48 Shades (2006)


Director: Daniel Lapaine

Based on the award winning novel by Nick Earls, 48 Shades of Brown, this coming of age comedy is about a 16 year old, Dan, who must choose between going to Geneva with his parents for a year or move into a house with his young Aunt, Jacq, and her roommate, Naomi. He chooses the latter and now, in his final year of school has to come to terms with survival in an adult world and falling in love for the first time.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

American Beauty (1999)


Director: Sam Mendes

Lester and Carolyn Burnham are on the outside, a perfect husband and wife, in a perfect house, in a perfect neighborhood. But inside, Lester is slipping deeper and deeper into a hopeless depression. He finally snaps when he becomes infatuated with one of his daughter's friends. Meanwhile, his daughter Jane is developing a happy friendship with a shy boy-next-door named Ricky, who lives with a homophobic father.


Monday, April 11, 2011

Clerks (1994)


Director: Kevin Smith

Dante Hicks is a clerk at a local convenience store in New Jersey. On one particular Saturday morning, he gets called in on his day off. Once there, he must deal with multiple problems. The shutters outside won't open. His ex-girlfriend, whom he is still in love with, is getting married. His girlfriend, who bugs him about starting college, has revealed certain, uh...stuff about her past. His boss hasn't come in to take his place. He has a hockey game at 2 o'clock. Another ex has died, and today's the last day he can go to her wake. He must deal with customers that aren't so intelligent. His friend, Randal, a clerk at the video store next door, is even less dedicated to his job than Dante, and is always bothering Dante's customers. And the biggest problem of them all: HE'S NOT EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE THERE TODAY!! Can Dante manage it all?




Written on the Wind (1956)


Director: Douglas Sirk

Mitch Wayne and Kyle Hadley, the playboy son of an oil tycoon, have been best friends since childhood. Kyle's wild sister, Marylee, hopes to marry Mitch, but he thinks of her as a sister. Marylee says that Mitch finishes everything Kyle starts. Mitch and Kyle both fall in love with Lucy, but she marries Kyle before Mitch can express his feelings. For a year after his marriage, Kyle stops drinking and behaves more responsibly, until he discovers that he may be sterile. Slyly, a jealous Marylee suggests to Kyle that Lucy and Mitch are lovers, and when Lucy finds that she is pregnant, a drunken Kyle accuses Mitch of being the father.



Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Cold Souls (2009)


Director: Sophie Barthes

Civilization and its discontents. Paul, an actor preparing for "Uncle Vanya" on Broadway, is mired in ennui. His agent tells him about an office where he can put his soul in storage. He does so then discovers that being soulless helps neither his acting nor his marriage; he returns to the office and rents, for two weeks, the soul of a Russian poet. His acting improves, but his wife finds him different, he sees bits of the borrowed soul's life, and he's now deep in sorrow. He wants his own soul back, but there are complications: it's in St. Petersburg. With the help of Nina, a Russian who transports souls to the U.S., he determines to get it back. Who has he become?


Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)


Director: Chris Columbus

Kevin McCallister is back. But this time he's in New York City with enough cash and credit cards to turn the Big Apple into his very own playground. But Kevin won't be alone for long. The notorious Wet Bandits, Harry and Marv, still smarting from their last encounter with Kevin, are bound for New York too, plotting a huge holiday heist! Kevin's ready to welcome them with more battery of booby traps the bumbling bandits will never forget!

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Rango (2011)


Director: Gore Verbinski

Rango is an ordinary chameleon who accidentally winds up in the town of Dirt, a lawless outpost in the Wild West in desperate need of a new sheriff.



Howl (2010)


Director: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman

It's San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society's reaction (the obscenity trial), and animation that echoes the poem's surreal style. All three coalesce in hybrid that dramatizes the birth of a counterculture.



North By Northwest (1959)


Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Middle-aged Madison Avenue advertising executive Roger O. Thornhill is mistaken for a government agent by a gang of spies. He gets involved in a series of misadventures and is pursued across the States by both the spies and the government whilst being helped by a beautiful blonde.




Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Get Him to the Greek (2010)


Director: Nicholas Stoller

English rock star Aldous Snow relapses into drugs and booze after a break up and a disastrous record. In L.A., Aaron Green works for a record company stuck in recession. Aaron's boss gives him a career making task - to bring Aldous from London to L.A. for a concert in 72 hours. That day, Aaron's girlfriend Daphne tells him she wants to finish her medical residency in Seattle. Aaron's sure this ends their relationship. In London, things aren't much better: Aldous delays their departure several times, plies Aaron with vices, and alternates between bad behavior and trenchant observations. Can Aaron moderate Aldous's substance abuse and get him to the Greek? What about Daphne?



Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)


Director: Nicholas Stoller

Peter is a composer and a likable sad sack who's devastated when his girlfriend of five years, Sarah Marshall, the star of a cheesy CSI-style crime show, dumps him. He weeps, he rails, he mopes. Finally, his step-brother Brian suggests Hawaii, so Peter heads for a resort on Oahu where, as he's checking in, he sees Sarah and her new beau, Aldous, a polymorphously perverse English rocker. The weeping and moping start again, until Peter is rescued by Rachel, a thoughtful hotel clerk who invites him to a luau and to hang out. Although he constantly runs into Sarah and Aldous, Peter starts to come alive again. Will Sarah realize what she's lost, and what about Rachel?