MovieRacks

A Dangerous Life

2013-10-05T02:43:00.000+08:00

A Dangerous Life is a 1988 English-language Australian film about the final years of the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos' rule, from the assassination of Benigno Aquino, Jr. in 1983 to the People Power EDSA Revolution in 1986 that ousted Marcos. The film focuses on American TV journalist
(Gary Busey), who finds himself in the middle of key events that lead to the downfall of the Marcos regime. Originally airing on television as a mini-series that ran for a total of six hours, the film was edited to 162 minutes for the home video release.[1]

The film was shot on location in Sri Lanka, mostly due to hostilities the producers experienced in Manila while filming The Year of Living Dangerously in 1982.

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNhVry_a7pQ

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

2011-07-11T09:04:00.002+08:00

Director: Rober Wiene
1919

The film tells the story of the deranged Doctor Caligari and his faithful somnambulist Cesare and their connection to a string of murders in a German mountain village, Holstenwall. Caligari presents one of the earliest examples of a motion picture "frame story" in which the body of the plot is presented as a flashback, as told by Francis. Friends Alan and Francis visit a carnival in the village where they see Dr. Caligari and Cesare, who Caligari is displaying as an attraction.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is the first modern Horror Film and it influence a number of contemporary productions.

A real classic!

Chimes at Midnight

2011-05-21T10:29:00.007+08:00

"Chimes at Midnight" is one of the great Shakespearean adaptations and a true 'lost classic'. It's also the last masterpiece that Orson Welles directed in his lifetime, and with 'Citizen Kane,' 'Magnificent Ambersons' and 'Touch of Evil' comprises a quartet of major cinematic works by Welles.

It's just a perfect movie, beautiful, deep, tragic and comic. A work of art.

Rashomon

2011-04-29T14:38:00.000+08:00

Movie Racks: Rashomon: "Directed by Akira Kurosawa Starring: Toshirô Mifune, Machiko Kyô, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki 1950 In ancient Japan, a wom..."

Sortie d'usine (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory)

2011-04-29T08:38:00.002+08:00

1895

Directred by Louis Lumière

Sortie d'usine is one of the first films every made. Filmed in 1895 by Louis Lumiere, a french film maker.

Enjoy a piece of the film history.

Life of Brian

2011-04-25T16:11:00.000+08:00

Life of Brian: "Directed by Terry Jones 1979 Casts: Graham Chapman, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam, John Cleese Life of Brian tells the stor..."

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

2011-04-25T16:06:00.000+08:00

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: "Director: Rober Wiene 1919 The film tells the story of the deranged Doctor Caligari and his faithful somnambulist Cesare and their..."

Movie Racks: Broken Blossoms (a.k.a. The Yellow Man and the Gir...

2011-04-25T16:03:00.000+08:00

Movie Racks: Broken Blossoms (a.k.a. The Yellow Man and the Gir...: "1919 Directed by D. W. Griffith Casts: Lillian Gish as Lucy Burrows Richard Barthelmess as Cheng Huan Donald Crisp as Battling Bur..."

Slumdog Millionaire

2010-12-04T17:05:00.002+08:00

2008
Directed by Danny Boyle
Stars: Dev Patel, Freida Pinto and Saurabh Shukla

This is one of the BEST movies I've ever seen. Believe it.

The story of Jamal Malik, an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, who is about to experience the biggest day of his life. With the whole nation watching, he is just one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India's "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" But when the show breaks for the night, police arrest him on suspicion of cheating; how could a street kid know so much? Desperate to prove his innocence, Jamal tells the story of his life in the slum where he and his brother grew up, of their adventures together on the road, of vicious encounters with local gangs, and of Latika, the girl he loved and lost. Each chapter of his story reveals the key to the answer to one of the game show's questions. Intrigued by Jamal's story, the jaded Police Inspector begins to wonder what a young man with no apparent desire for riches is really doing on this game show? When the new day dawns and Jamal returns to answer the final question, the Inspector and sixty million viewers are about to find out...

Medea

2010-11-10T00:30:00.001+08:00

Directed by Lars von Trier
1988
Starring: Henning Jensen, Udo Kier, Baard Owe

Cinematic genius Lars von Tier explores the dark passions of a woman scorned in this shocking and powerful film adapted from a screenplay by the great Carl-Theodore Dreyer.

The drama unfolds in shimmering marshlands and gloomy subterranean passageways. Medea is a foreign sorceress, abandoned by Jason, her lover. In a fit of mad, jealous rage, she plots a vicious revenge and murders her own children.

Medea is a revelation - the discovery of a rarely-seen, legendary film from the director of Dancer in the Dark, Breaking the Waves, and Dogville.

Arghh! I wanted to hate it but loved it anyway! For a family man like me, you will surely hate writer and director Lars von Trier for having a movie like this. But, ok.. for the sake of art, go ahead! watch this, people!

The Golem

2010-03-04T19:05:00.005+08:00

1920

The Golem: How He Came Into the World (original German title: Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam) is a 1920 silent horror film by Paul Wegener. It was directed by Carl Boese and Wegener, written by Wegener and Henrik Galeen, and starred Wegener as the golem. The film was the third of three films that Wegener made featuring the golem, the other two being The Golem (1915) and the short comedy The Golem and the Dancing Girl (1917), in which Wegener dons the Golem make-up in order to frighten a young lady he is infatuated with. It is a prequel to The Golem and is today the most widely known of the series.

This is a classic silent movie and a must-see for any serious student of film (or casual, for that matter). A rabbi in the oppressed Jewish community uses black magic to create a strong-man creature to defend his people. Romance, jealousy and betrayal also play a part in this movie

A German Expressionist masterpiece.

Broken Blossoms (a.k.a. The Yellow Man and the Girl)

2010-02-05T06:41:00.000+08:00

1919

Directed by D. W. Griffith

Casts:
Lillian Gish as Lucy Burrows
Richard Barthelmess as Cheng Huan
Donald Crisp as Battling Burrows
Arthur Howard as Burrows' manager
Edward Peil Sr. as Evil Eye
George Beranger as The Spying One
Norman Selby as A prizefighter

Director D. W. Griffith is considered as the first master of feature film directors. Broken Blossoms is his most tragic, serious, poetic, difficult, and melodramatic film.

Broken Blossoms shows the condemnation of child abuse and the violence of western society. It tells the story of young girl, Lucy Burrows, who is abused by her alcoholic prizefighting father, Battling Burrows, and meets Cheng Huan, a kind-hearted Chinese man who falls in love with her.

This is a silent movie that dealt with social problems; a love story that has a tragic end.

Rashomon

2008-10-26T01:06:00.000+08:00

Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Toshirô Mifune, Machiko Kyô, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki
1950

In ancient Japan, a woman is raped and her husband killed. RASHOMON is played out by giving us four stories with every story revealing different points of view. The question remains - just which version is the truth?

As each account is revealed, what seemed black and white turns to various hues of gray, leading to surprising--and confounding--relevations. A landmark of international cinema, Rashomon won the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1951, bringing both Kurosawa--and Japanese film in general--to the attention of Western audiences. From the rain-soaked opening sequence to its moving conclusion, the film is a stunning examination of truth and human nature. The entire cast is pitch-perfect, with regular Kurosawa lead actors Mifune and Shimura giving typically outstanding performances. While critics and cinephiles debate over exactly how many masterpieces Kurosawa directed, Rashomon stands as one of the revered filmmaker's indisputably brilliant motion pictures. In fact, the film's influence is so pervasive that it has inspired everything from a high profile Hollywood remake (The Outrage starring Paul Newman) to numerous tributes in movies such as Courage Under Fire and The Usual Suspects.

Rashomon is perhaps the finest film ever to investigate the philosophy of justice.
It remains one of the truly great films of the 20th century.

This is "one of the most philosophical and briliant film of all time" - Arts Movies Reviews

Dancer in the Dark

2008-08-31T06:48:00.003+08:00

Directed by Lars von Trier
2000

Cast: Bjork,Catherine Deneuve, David Morse, Peter Stormare, Cara Seymour, Joel Grey, Vincent Paterson, Vladica Kostic, Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier, Zeljko Ivanek

Masterpiece or masquerade? Lars von Trier's digicam musical split the critics in two when it debuted at Cannes in 2000. There were those who saw it as a cynical shock-opera from a manipulative charlatan, others wept openly at its scenes of raw emotion and heart-rending intensity. There is, however, no in-between. Dancer in the Dark is that rarest of creatures, a film that dares to push viewers to the limits of their feelings.

In her first and most probably last screen performance (she has foresworn acting after her bruising on-set rows with von Trier), brittle Icelandic chanteuse Björk plays Selma, a Czech immigrant living in a folksy American small town with her young son, Gene. Selma is going blind and so will Gene if she does not arrange an important operation for him. To cover the expense, Selma works every hour she can, cheating on her eye tests so she can keep working at the local factory long after her vision has become too unreliable to work safely. She sublets a house from a local cop, Bill (David Morse), and his wife, Linda (Cara Seymour). When nearly bankrupt Bill asks Selma for a loan, she refuses, but he later returns and steals the money, which she demands back in a furious confrontation. In the ensuing melee, Bill is fatally shot and Selma is arrested and put on trial. Will justice prevail?

Von Trier's passionate, provocative film runs all our emotional resources dry with suspense, giving us occasional flashes into Selma's gold heart and mind with superb song-and-dance numbers she conjures to banish the nightmare (Björk also wrote the score). At some two-and-a-half hours, it's not for lightweights, but anyone bored with today's smug, "ironic" cinema will relish this as an astonishing assault on the senses and a stark reminder of von Trier's uncompromising talent. --Damon Wise

Awards:
2000 Cannes Film Festival Best Actress
2000 Cannes International Film Festival Best Actress
2000 Cannes Film Festival Palme D'or
2000 Cannes International Film Festival Palme d'Or
2000 Cannes Film Festival Best Female Performance
2000 European Film Awards People's Choice Award: Best Actress
2000 European Film Academy Best European Actress
2000 European Film Awards Best European Actress
2000 European Film Awards People's Choice Award Best Director
2000 European Film Academy Best European Film
2000 European Film Awards Best European Film
2000 Jameson People's Choice Award Best European Director
2000 Jameson People's Choice Award Best European Actress
2000 Independent Spirit Award Best Foreign Film
2000 National Board of ReviewBest Musical Performance
2000 National Board of Review

8 1/2

2008-08-29T07:11:00.001+08:00

Directed by Federico Fellini
1963

Casts: Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée

Master director Federico Fellini moved into the realm of self-reflexive autobiography with what is widely believed to be his finest and most personal work. Marcello Mastroianni delivers a brilliant performance as Fellini's alter ego Guido Anselmi, a film director overwhelmed by the large-scale production he has undertaken. He finds himself harangued by producers, his wife, and his mistress while he struggles to find the inspiration to finish his film. The stress plunges Guido into an interior world where fantasy and memory impinge on reality. Fellini jumbles narrative logic by freely cutting from flashbacks to dream sequences to the present until it becomes impossible to pry them apart, creating both a psychological portrait of Guido's interior world and the surrealistic, circus-like exterior world that came to be known as "Felliniesque."

It isn't possible to place `8 ½' in any simple category. It is a comedy and a tragedy, a satire and a celebration, a movie about love and about the lack of it, a movie about making art and a movie about living, an autobiography and the most challenging kind of fiction, a masterpiece of style and a movie that's really about something. It's not for everyone, but it should be, and it's quite possibly the single greatest movie one would have ever seen.

`8 ½' won an Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, as well as the grand prize at the Moscow Film Festival, and was one of the most influential and commercially successful European art movies of the 1960s.

11 out of 10!

Psycho

2008-08-09T06:23:00.006+08:00

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
1960
Casts:
Anthony Perkins .... Norman Bates
Janet Leigh .... Marion Crane
Vera Miles .... Lila Crane
John Gavin .... Sam Loomis
Martin Balsam .... Detective Milton Arbogast
John McIntire .... Sheriff Al Chambers
Simon Oakland .... Dr. Fred Richmond
Vaughn Taylor .... George Lowery
Frank Albertson .... Tom Cassidy
Lurene Tuttle .... Eliza Chambers

Psycho is a suspense/horror film directed by auteur Alfred Hitchcock, from the screenplay by Joseph Stefano about a psychotic killer. The film shows the encounter between a secretary, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), who is in hiding at a motel after embezzling from her employer, and the motel's owner, the lonely Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins).

It initially received mixed reviews but outstanding box-office returns, prompting a re-review which was overwhelmingly positive and led to four Academy Award nominations. Regarded today as one of Hitchcock's best films and highly praised as a work of cinematic art by international critics, Psycho is also acclaimed as one of the most effective horror films. It was a genre defining film, and almost every scene is legendary, and many have been copied or parodied. The film spawned several sequels and a remake, which are generally seen as works of lesser quality.

"The Shower Scene" has been studied, discussed, and cited countless times in print and in film courses much with debate focusing on why it is so terrifying and how it was produced, including how it passed the censors and debate over who actually directed it.

Olympia

2008-08-08T20:08:00.002+08:00

Directed by: Leni Riefenstahl
1938

Olympia is a 1938 film by Leni Riefenstahl documenting the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. The movie was produced in two parts: Olympia 1. Teil - Fest der Völker (Festival of Peoples) and Olympia 2. Teil - Fest der Schönheit (Festival of Beauty). It was the first documentary film on the Olympic Games ever made. Many advanced motion picture techniques, which later became industry standards but which were groundbreaking at the time, were employed, including unusual camera angles, smash-cut editing techniques, extreme close-ups, setting the railway tracks on the stadium to shoot the crowd and the like. The techniques employed are almost universally admired, but the film is controversial due to its political content.

There has been much discussion of whether this film should be classified as a Nazi propaganda film, unlike her earlier Triumph of the Will, which is widely thought of as such. While the entire 1936 Olympics has been derided as the "Hitler Olympics" and was unquestionably designed primarily to showcase the alleged accomplishments of the Third Reich, and to this extent any film accurately documenting the proceedings would come off as something of a propaganda film, Riefenstahl's defenders have pointed to her close-up shot of the expression on Hitler's face when Jesse Owens, an African-American, won a gold medal, as showing a tacit dissent from Nazi racial supremacy doctrines. Other non-Aryan winners are featured as well.

Olympia set the precedent for future films documenting and glorifying the Olympic Games, particularly the Summer Games. The "Olympic Torch Run", now revered as a seemingly-ancient tradition, was devised by Riefenstahl for these games and this film in conjunction with the German sports official Dr. Carl Diem. In 2005, Time.com named it one of the 100 best films of the last 80 years.

MOTHER AND SON (Mat i syn)

2008-07-17T14:44:00.005+08:00

Directed by Aleksandr Sokurov
Starring Aleksei Ananishnov, Gudrun Geyer
1997

This film is about the relationship between a sick mother and her son. Surely, this isn't for the average viewer: narrative is slow, events nonexistent; the film consists mostly of painting-like "still-lives" with very little dialogue. The mother and son walk along the beautiful sceneries (the film is done on the island of Rügen, by the coast of Germany), approach each other, take contact by embracing and hugging.

Nick Cave, the rock singer, said somewhere that this film is the most beautiful he has ever seen. I agree that it is maybe Sokurov's best: the twisted images of the landscapes, great camera work and almost meditative feeling are something I love to see in the cinema - if nothing else, just as an attempt this is a great film, instead of all the run-of-the-mill "narratives" we come across.

Awards:
1997 Moscow International Film Festival
Andrei Tarkovsky Award
Russian Film Critics Award
Special Jury Prize

Lost Horizon

2008-06-25T15:53:00.005+08:00

Directed by Frank Capra
Starring Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, John Howard
1937

Lost Horizon (1937) is a timeless, widely-acclaimed classic - a romantic fantasy and science-fiction adventure film, produced and directed by Frank Capra for Columbia Pictures. The film was faithfully adapted by screenwriter Robert Riskin from James Hilton's best-selling 1933 novel of the same name. The story was inspired by real-life mountaineer George Leigh-Mallory, who was lost during a fatal climb of Mount Everest in 1924.

Lost Horizon is Frank Capra's greatest production! Mightiest of all motion pictures!

The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won two Oscars: Best Interior Decoration (Stephen Goosson) and Best Film Editing (Gene Havlick and Gene Milford). Its other nominations included: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (H. B. Warner), Best Sound Recording (John Livadary), Best Assistant Director (C. C. Coleman, Jr.) - a category that was discontinued after this year, and Best Score (Dimitri Tiomkin). The film was remade as a colorful, big-budget musical - Lost Horizon (1973), with Charles Boyer as the High Lama, Peter Finch as Robert Conway, John Gielgud as Chang, Olivia Hussey as Maria, and Michael York as George Conway, with music by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

Character (Karakter)

2008-06-25T15:50:00.007+08:00

Director: Mike van Diem
Main Cast: Jonathan Maxwell Reeves, Fedja van Huêt, Jan Decleir, Betty Schuurman, Hans Kesting, Victor Löw
1997

This dark drama from the Netherlands won the 1998 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Dreverhaven (Jan Decleir), the most ruthless and intimidating bailiff in Rotterdam, is brutally murdered, and a young attorney, Katadreuffe (Fedja Van Huet), is arrested in connection with the crime. Under questioning, the angry young lawyer reveals a hidden motive for the killing -- he is Dreverhaven's illegitimate son.

The complicated relationship between Katadreuffe and Dreverhaven lies at the center of this film. Viewers are left wondering whether Dreverhaven was really acting in his son's best interest, by being harsh with him, or taking revenge, either on an unwanted child or the boy's mother, who refused to marry him.

Scandal

2008-04-22T01:12:00.002+08:00

Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Toshirō Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Noriko Sengoku and Shirley Yamaguchi
1950

Akira Kurosawa's Scandal - as relevant now as it was made - is a pointed attackon the rising power of the press and their practices in the newly Americanized postwar Japan of 1950. Kurosawa was outraged by the actions of the gutter press, where "personal privacy is never respected", and at the encouragement of this disrespect by the public's voyeuristic tendency to delve even deeper into the lives of celebrities. Stirred to broaden his film's scope, kurosawa made the film a study of personal honour, one which highlights the need for ordinary individuals to speak out against injustice and corruption.

Scandal, 醜聞 (Shubun), aka スキャンダル (Sukyandaru) stars many great Japanese actors of the period.including Noriko Sengoku (Drunken Angel, Seven Samurai) and Takashi Shimura (Ikiru, Seven Samurai), who delivers one of his finest performances as the emotionally torn defence lawyer. Kurosawa's film stands as his own one-man blast against press intrussion.

The Crime of Padre Amaro

2008-04-18T01:02:00.002+08:00

Directed by Carlos Carrera
Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Ana Claudia Talancon, Sancho Gracia, Angelica Aragon, Luisa Huertas;
2002

Gael Garcia Bernal (Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN, AMORES PERROS) stars in EL CRIMEN DEL PADRE AMARO, a controversial drama that was a box office smash in its native Mexico. Directed by Carlos Carrera, the film tells the story of a young priest who succumbs to temptation and corruption. Father Amaro (Bernal) is a handsome 24-year-old who has recently been assigned to a new church in Los Reyes. Upon arrival, he discovers that his mentor, Father Benito (Sancho Garcia), is having an affair with a local restaurant owner, Sanjuanera (Angelica Aragon). At first shocked, Father Amaro soon finds himself in a moral predicament of his own. Amelia (Ana Claudia Talancon), Sanjuanera's 16-year-old daughter, is a gorgeous teenager who falls deeply in love with the tempted priest. Before long, Father Amaro and Amelia are entangled in a steamy relationship, further testing the young priest's moral fiber. Based on the classic Portuguese novel by Eca de Quieroz, Carrera's film is a scathing indictment of the hypocrisy and corruption that has plagued the Catholic church from its inception. As the confused and conflicted priest, Bernal delivers another magnetic performance, cementing his status as one of Mexico's hottest superstars.

The Lost Tomb of Jesus

2008-04-07T01:29:00.006+08:00

Directed by Simcha Jacobovici

The Lost Tomb of Jesus is a documentary which makes a case that the 2,000-year-old "Tomb of the Ten Ossuaries" belonged to the family of Jesus of Nazareth.

An incredible archaeological discovery in Israel, this changes history and shocks the world. Tombs with the names Maria, Jesus son of Joseph, Mariamne e Mara, and Judah, their son, are found and an investigation begins.

Miracle in Milan (Miracolo A Milan)

2008-04-04T23:20:00.006+08:00

Directed by Vittorio de Sica
Cast: Emma Gramatica, Francesco Golisano, Paolo Stoppa, Guglielmo Barnabò
1951

This fantasy tale tells of Totò, who is found in a cabbage patch and adopted by an old women named Lolotta. He later moves to an orphanage because Lolotta passes away.

The film moves forward to when he's eighteen years of age and Totò (Francesco Golisano) leaves the orphanage and begins to live in a shantytown in Milan.

Totò's organizational skills, learned at the orphanage and from Lolotta, brings structure to the colony and brings a sense of small happiness and well being among the depressed folk.

When Totò is given a magic dove by the ghost of his adoptive mother, he uses its powers to grant wishes to those who ask. The dove, however, is taken back by two angels who object to a mortal having possession of it.

The land where Totò's and his friends live is taken over by capitalists after oil is found there and they're all taken away to prison in horse-drawn paddy wagons. On the way to prison, however, a dove is returned to Totò and his wish for the freedom of his friends is granted. In a historical cinematic scene they escape into the sky, arguably to heaven, on brooms pinched from street sweepers in a town square.

Awards:

1951 Cannes Film Festival: Grand Prize of the Festival, Vittorio De Sica;
1951 Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists: Silver Ribbon; Best Production Design, Guido Fiorini
1951 New York Film Critics Circle Awards: NYFCC Award; Best Foreign Language Film, Italy;
1951 National Board of Review: National Board of Review Awards 1951, Best Foreign Films

Wooden Crosses (Les Croix de Bois)

2008-04-04T17:02:00.007+08:00

Directed by Raymond Bernard
Casts: Pierre Blanchard, Gabriel Gabrio, Charles Vanel
1932

Les Croix de Bois (Wooden Crosses) may well be the most powerful anti-war film ever made; certainly it is the grimmest and most uncompromising. Starting with an impressionistic shot of a gloomy hillside studded with white grave markings, the film delineates the hopelessness and horror of war in such explicit terms that at times it's nearly impossible to watch. Set during WWI, the story concentrates on a handful of French draftees, including an idealistic student named Demachy (Pierre Blanchard). Marching off to war with joyful patriotic fervor, the men are quickly disillusioned by the appalling realities of total warfare. When they aren't enduring ten nonstop days of enemy bombardment, the soldiers must sweat out the horrible realization that their trenches are being mined from underground. Nor are they given any relief during those rare lulls in fighting. At one point, the men are yanked away from a much-needed furlough to march in a victory parade for the entertainment of their callous, fat-cat superior officers. One by one, the men are killed off, until only Demachy remains — but, tragically, not for long. Such was the impact of Les Croix de Bois, that, when it was shown on French television in the 1970s, a WWI survivor who watched the film for the first time was so overwhelmed by despair that he committed suicide. Generous portions of the film's battle sequences were later incorporated in the 1934 John Ford film The World Moves On and the 1936 Howard Hawks production - The Road to Glory.