Happy Land (1943)
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George Bailey has spent his entire life giving of himself to the people of Bedford Falls. He has always longed to travel but never had the opportunity in order to prevent rich skinflint Mr. Potter from taking over the entire town. All that prevents him from doing so is George's modest building and loan company, which was founded by his generous father. But on Christmas Eve, George's Uncle Billy loses the business's $8,000 while intending to deposit it in the bank. Potter finds the misplaced money, hides it from Billy, and George's troubles begin.
Waking Life is about a young man in a persistent lucid dream-like state. The film follows its protagonist as he initially observes and later participates in philosophical discussions that weave together issues like reality, free will, our relationships with others, and the meaning of life.
Telly Paretta is a grieving mother struggling to cope with the loss of her 8-year-old son. She is stunned when her psychiatrist reveals that she has created eight years of memories about a son she never had. But when she meets a man who has had a similar experience, Telly embarks on a search to prove her son's existence, and her sanity.
The life story of the famous pianist and band-leader of the 1930s and 1940s.
Lt. Col. Kirby Yorke is posted on the Texas frontier to defend settlers against depredations of marauding Apaches. Col. Yorke is under considerable stress by a serious shortage of troops of his command. Tension is added when Yorke's son (whom he hasn't seen in fifteen years), Trooper Jeff Yorke, is one of 18 recruits sent to the regiment.
Eugene arrives in Bukidnon with only one intention: to forget his problems at work. But when he meets Raffy and as they travel and go on ridiculous and death-defying activities together, they start to form a friendship that goes beyond Eugeâs original plan. Raffy helps Euge appreciate himself more and to look at things in a positive way. With Raffy, Euge begins to believe in himself again. Soon, against his own expectations, he admits to himself that has fallen in love with this girl. But life is truly ironic. The moment Euge expresses his feelings for her, Raffy suddenly starts to push him away. She admits that he can never have her, and she doesnât want Eugene to hope for a happy ending with her, because she cannot be loved.
In November 1941, Major Caton takes command of the small Marine garrison on Wake Island. His tendency toward spit and polish upsets the men's tropical lassitude, but Pearl Harbor changes everything. Soon the island is attacked and the Marines pull together day by day; but how long can they hold out?
The film is a historical drama set during the reign of Elizabeth I (Flora Robson), focusing on the English defeat of the Spanish Armada, whence the title. In 1588, relations between Spain and England are at the breaking point. With the support of Queen Elizabeth I, British sea raiders such as Sir Francis Drake regularly capture Spanish merchantmen bringing gold from the New World.
When Sarah Cain, a self-involved big-city newspaper columnist, travels to Pennsylvania for the funeral of her Amish sister, she soon discovers that she is the legal guardian of her five Amish nieces and nephews. Rather than choose to move to Lancaster County to finish raising them there herself, or let them be separated by the foster care system, Sarah decides to take them with her back to Portland where she believes she can make a new life for them. However, she soon realizes that the modern world has forced them to compromise who they are, and that she has moved them there for all the wrong reasons - a motive which is soon exposed - because secrets can really never be kept secret. In order to find her own redemption, she knows she must make a choice to give them back their lives in Amish Country. And whether she remains part of their lives will have a lot to do with how much she has grown to love them.
In the winter of 1820, the New England whaling ship Essex was assaulted by something no one could believe: a whale of mammoth size and will, and an almost human sense of vengeance. The real-life maritime disaster would inspire Herman Melvilleâs Moby Dick. But that told only half the story. âHeart of the Seaâ reveals the encounterâs harrowing aftermath, as the shipâs surviving crew is pushed to their limits and forced to do the unthinkable to stay alive. Braving storms, starvation, panic and despair, the men will call into question their deepest beliefs, from the value of their lives to the morality of their trade, as their captain searches for direction on the open sea and his first mate still seeks to bring the great whale down.
Chuck, a top international manager for FedEx, and Kelly, a Ph.D. student, are in love and heading towards marriage. Then Chuck's plane to Malaysia ditches at sea during a terrible storm. He's the only survivor, and he washes up on a tiny island with nothing but some flotsam and jetsam from the aircraft's cargo. Can he survive in this tropical wasteland? Will he ever return to woman he loves?
The Happy Lands tracks the lives of the Brogan, Guthrie and Baxter families as they overcome the economic challenges brought about by the 1926 General Strike.
World War II soldier-turned-U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels investigates the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane, but his efforts are compromised by his own troubling visions and by Dr. Cawley.
After a long voyage from Scotland, pianist Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter) and her young daughter, Flora (Anna Paquin), are left with all their belongings, including a piano, on a New Zealand beach. Ada, who has been mute since childhood, has been sold into marriage to a local man named Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neill). Making little attempt to warm up to Alisdair, Ada soon becomes intrigued by his Maori-friendly acquaintance, George Baines (Harvey Keitel), leading to tense, life-altering conflicts.
An intimate story set during the 1860s in which a young Irish woman Sarah and her family find themselves on both sides of the turbulent wars between British and Maori during the British colonization of New Zealand.
A story about a troubled boy growing up in England, set in 1983. He comes across a few skinheads on his way home from school, after a fight. They become his new best friends even like family. Based on experiences of director Shane Meadows.
A modern take on the classic fairytale, Alice in Wonderland, set in South East England.An American law student in London. Knocked down by a black cab, she wakes with amnesia in a world that's a million miles from home - Wonderland. We follow her adventures as she's dragged through an underworld filled with twisted individuals and the lowest low-lifers, by the enigmatic cab driver, Whitey. She needs to find out who she is, where she's from and use what wits she has left to get back home in one piece. As her journey progresses she discovers nothing is what it seems, realizes that fate and life are terminally entwined, and finds true love lurking in the unlikeliest place.
The story of Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane's successful attempt to put together a baseball team on a budget, by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players.
Tells the story of one day in the lives of the various people who populate a police detective squad. An embittered cop, Det. Jim McLeod (Douglas), leads a precinct of characters in their grim daily battle with the city's lowlife. The characters who pass through the precinct over the course of the day include a young petty embezzler, a pair of burglars, and a naive shoplifter.
Embittered after serving time for a burglary he did not commit, Joe Bell is soon back in jail, on a prison farm. His love for the foreman's daughter leads to a fight between them, leading to the older man's death due to a weak heart. Joe and Mabel go on the run as he thinks no-one would believe a nobody like him.
10-year-old Fiona is sent to live with her grandparents in a small fishing village in Donegal, Ireland. She soon learns the local legend that an ancestor of hers married a Selkie - a seal who can turn into a human. Years earlier, her baby brother was washed out to sea and never seen again, so when Fiona spies a naked little boy on the abandoned Isle of Roan Inish, she is compelled to investigate..
Melodrama set in Victorian Brighton. Scheming pub landlady uses the timorous son of a domineering pharmacist to assist in the poisoning of her drunkard husband. (The title is from the way pharmacists used to wrap parcels containing poison).
In 1944, in South Pacific, the castaway Marine Corporal Allison drifts in a raft to the Tuasiva Island, where he meets Sister Angela. She tells him that she is the only person in the island and was left behind by the runaway boat to Fiji Island while seeking the local priest. Stranded in the island, but with water, fish and fruits, their paradisiacal life ends when the Japanese arrive to build a base, forcing Allison and the nun to hide in a cave. The crude marine provides the necessary supply for their survival and falls in love for the nun.
John Logan leaves his parents and sweetheart in bucolic Happy Valley to make his fortune in the city. Those he left behind become miserable and beleaguered in his absence, but after several years he returns, a wealthy man. But his embittered father, not recognizing him for who he is, plans to murder the newly- arrived "stranger" for his money.
In the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II, a Jewish singer infiltrates the regional Gestapo headquarters for the Dutch resistance.
Hector is a quirky psychiatrist who has become increasingly tired of his humdrum life. As he tells his girlfriend, Clara, he feels like a fraud: he hasnât really tasted life, and yet heâs offering advice to patients who are just not getting any happier. So Hector decides to break out of his deluded and routine driven life. Armed with buckets of courage and child-like curiosity, he embarks on a global quest in hopes of uncovering the elusive secret formula for true happiness. And so begins a larger than life adventure with riotously funny results.
An embittered husband, paralyzed and in a wheelchair, buttonholes a complete stranger and begins to tell him the story of his marriage. The stranger would like to escape, but cannot. For one thing he grows fascinated by the story. For another he is mesmerized by the man's wife, who has perfected that trick of looking a man boldly in the eye until, by looking away, he concedes sexual supremacy.
During a weekend, two shady businessmen flee to the Cayman Islands to avoid federal prosecution. But their escape ignites a chain reaction that leads a British native to commit a crime that changes the nation.
A prison trustee rescues a despondent executioner from a bar-room brawl, and is blamed for the fight by a tabloid reporter who actually started it, and loses parole, becomes embittered, and gets blamed for murder of guard.
An embittered woman seeks escape in marriage, only to fall for her husband's best friend.
Maisie gets lost in a jungle in Africa and the jungle of romance. The African jungle has snakes, crocodiles and witch doctors. The romantic jungle has a dedicated doctor with an un-dedicated wife and an embittered doctor who is dedicated to no one.
Floating is the story of a young man's struggle to come of age during a violent period of emotional and financial bankruptcy. The film stars Norman Reedus as Van, a son shouldering the responsibility of his embittered father, with no one to nurture him through his own pain. Van's father is so engrossed in his own troubles that he fails to emotionally support his son. As Doug, Chad Lowe provides Van with friendship, but more importantly, with the knowledge that a "perfect life" isn't always what it seems. After Van and Doug engage in a crime spree that ends in tragedy, father and son finally come together for the first time to transcend mourning.
Already branded an acting school drop-out, Oliver courts further indignation by serving as his aunt's live-in dog sitter and pool boy. Having reduced his (anti)social circle to his paranoid drug dealer and embittered best friend, Oliver is shaken from his stupor by the arrival of an alluring houseguest dealing with her own issues.
The life story of New Zealander Burt Munro, who spent years building a 1920 Indian motorcycle -- a bike which helped him set the land-speed world record at Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats in 1967.
In the 15th century Richard Duke of Gloucester, aided by his club-footed executioner Mord, eliminates those ahead of him in succession to the throne, then occupied by his brother King Edward IV of England. As each murder is accomplished he takes particular delight in removing small figurines, each resembling one of the successors, from a throne-room dollhouse, until he alone remains. After the death of Edward he becomes Richard III, King of England, and need only defeat the exiled Henry Tudor to retain power.
Michael Worthington, an elderly owner of an apiary, befriends an embittered artist, Jamie McFarlaine, who is seeking a divorce from his wife. Jamie falls in love with Alice, but the romance is almost doomed by the gossip-spreading of a meddlesome neighbor.
A sobering mid-life crisis fuels dissatisfaction in Philip Dimitrius, to the extent where the successful architect trades his marriage and career in for a spiritual exile on a remote Greek island where he hopes to conjure meaning into his life - trying the patience of his new girlfriend and angst-ridden teenage daughter.
Against formidable odds -- and an old-school diving instructor embittered by the U.S. Navy's new, less prejudicial policies -- Carl Brashear sets his sights on becoming the Navy's first African-American master diver in this uplifting true story. Their relationship starts out on the rocks, but fate ultimately conspires to bring the men together into a setting of mutual respect, triumph and honor.
Jon, a middle-aged professor is going to get married tomorrow, for the second time, to one of his ex-students half his age. But it's not all roses. First, there's his cranky mother-in-law-to-be who violently opposes the marriage and who demands repayment of Jon's loan before the wedding night. Second, his plans to build a golf course on the little island of Flatey where they live aren't going at all to plan. Third, his extremely drunk best man is on the loose without any shoes and lastly, the continual presence of his emotional first wife is haunting his every move. When the guests start flocking to the island, Jon starts getting cold feet. After a very long night of drinking and thinking, will Jon be able to make it to the church on time?
A handsome young master at a boys school incurs the jealousy of an embittered colleague. From the novel by Hugh Walpole.
A young girl comes to an embittered town and confronts its attitude with her determination to see the best in life.
Kerekes (Antal Pager) believes he is wanted by the police when his friends play a practical joke in this unusual comedy drama. He returns to his hometown where he was accused of turning a Jewish druggist and the druggist's wife over to the Nazis. With his friends following him, Kerekes tries to find out what became of the couple after they were deported. After being subjected to a mock trial by his friends -- and found guilty -- Kerekes becomes despondent and attempts to kill himself. Flashbacks and hallucinations are employed to tell this story that occurs during the Eichmann trial. Both the film and Antal Pager gained some unwanted publicity when a Variety article from April 23rd, 1967 accused Pager of being a Nazi collaborator for his role in an anti-Semitic film during World War II.
Embittered widower, Ludvik, spends his nights transporting illegal refugees in his van from Croatia, across Slovenia, and into Italy. The young and inexperienced Rudi acts as his helpmate. Together they become a well-trained duo who almost every night convey "spare parts" to Italy. Of course the story of their illegitimate exports into Europe ends tragically, for everyone. The whole idea of this account is that everyone - including ourselves - is looking for happiness: the "spare parts" because of the misery they are plunged into without, and our characters because they can't find it inside
Former bootlegger Nick Barnes pressures neighborhood druggist Jimmy Morrell into making cut-rate drugs. The money makes it possible for Jimmy to marry Norma Frank, a pharmacy clerk. Expecting a baby, she wants Jimmy to quit the racket. Beaten by the mob, Jimmy works on, diluting the medications still further. Norma is rushed to the hospital for a premature delivery and given bogus medication. .
In 2004, Hope Ann Greggory became an American hero after winning the bronze medal for the women's gymnastics team. Today, she's still living in her small hometown, washed-up and embittered. Stuck in the past, Hope must reassess her life when a promising young gymnast threatens her local celebrity status.
Andrew Crocker-Harris is an embittered and disliked teacher of Greek and Latin at a British prep school. After nearly 20 years of service, he is being forced to retire on the pretext of his health, and perhaps may not even be given a pension. The boys regard him as a Hitler, with some justification. His wife Laura is unfaithful, and lives to wound him any way she can. Andrew must come to terms with his failed life and regain at least his own self-respect.
An embittered Louie Peronni (Edward Norris) returns from prison to find that his sister, Juli Peronni (Amanda Duff), is engaged to policeman Eddie Farrell (Kane Richmond), and also finds that his secret wife Annie Qualen (June Gale) has placed their baby girl in a foundling home. With his old gang again, Louie plans a robbery of a fur warehouse. Louie shoots down the night watchman and is trailed home where his father Guiseppe Peronni (Henry Armetta) persuades him not to fight it out with the police. Determined to let Louie take the full rap, the gang kidnaps the district attorney's daughter. Annie informs Louie that the kidnapped child is really their own and was adopted from the foundling home.
A hard-drinking reporter tries to help the embittered widow of the soldier who had saved his life during the war.
Based on a theatrical text by Romanian writer Ion Luca Caragiale (1852-1912), who was a bitter and funny witness of the turn-of-the-20th-century Romanian bourgeois mores, Carnival Scenes manages to preserve and further enhance the slightly hysteric atmosphere of his plays. Pintilie creates a strange combination of carnival scenes which is brought to the screen as a burlesque, fast-paced, screwball comedy with a meditative undertone. This film was banned in Romania for a decade until the death of Ceausescu in 1989 and was only released after the 1989 revolution.
After losing his bride in a Luftwaffe air raid, bomber pilot Forrester becomes a solitary killing machine, who doesn't care whether he dies. The reckless Canadian pilot is both admired and feared by the rest of his squadron in World War II Burma. The squadron physician is assigned to determine the embittered Bill Forrester's fitness for duty. To break through the nightmare-haunted man's wall of silence, the physician drives Forrester to visit an outpost of English-speaking refugees, which includes an alluring young Burmese woman.
Guo Jing and Huang Rong return to Peach Blossom Island and are shocked to see that Guo's first martial arts teachers, the "Seven Freaks of Jiangnan", have all been murdered except for Ke Zhen'e. Guo Jing is tricked into believing that Huang Rong's father, Huang Yaoshi, is responsible for the murders and he attempts to avenge his teachers by fighting Huang Yaoshi. The intelligent Huang Rong eventually uncovers the truth and reveals that the murders are actually part of a plot masterminded by Ouyang Feng and Yang Kang. Ouyang and Yang want to make Guo Jing and Huang Yaoshi kill each other and Yang can learn Ouyang's newly mastered skills from the fake copy of the Nine Yin Manual.
A blind traveling musician is abused and oppressed wherever she goes, even as the modern world imposes change around her.
The year is 1933. Ruby Rose (Melita Jurisic) is an Australian woman living with her Welsh immigrant husband Henry (Chris Haywood) in the Tasmanian highlands. Cut off from her superjudgmental family, for whom Henry had once worked as a humble farm hand, Ruby remains isolated in her tiny house. Superstitiously terrified of the dark, she begins developing her own folklore about the inky blackness that surrounds her each night; this folklore eventually develops into Ruby's own personal religion, created to ward off the evils that she imagines lurk in every corner. Only by venturing out of her house and rekindling her relationship with her embittered father is Ruby able to exorcise her fears. Almost hypnotic in its stark beauty, Tale of Ruby Rose is proof enough that writer/director Roger Scholes deserves to be far better known.
Charley Davis, against the wishes of his mother, becomes a boxer. As he becomes more successful the fighter becomes surrounded by shady characters, including an unethical promoter named Roberts, who tempt the man with a number of vices. Charley finds himself faced with increasingly difficult choices.
Anson Page, a lawyer with Southern roots leaves New York, his wife and his kids for Georgia. His assignment is to investigate the case of Garvin Wales, a famous writer, now nearly blind and embittered, whose royalties have apparently never reached him. Back in his native South, Page finds himself immediately exposed to what he had fled : racial and class prejudices. But he also meets his former love, Dinah, now married to go-getter uncouth businessman Mickey Higgins. Will he find out whatever happened to 2,000 dollars in rights Wales did not cash? Will Dinah and Anson renew their love story?
Five O' Henry stories, each separate. The primary one from the critic's acclaim was "The Cop and the Anthem". Soapy tells fellow bum Horace that he is going to get arrested so he can spend the winter in a nice jail cell. He fails. He can't even accost a woman; she turns out to be a streetwalker. The other stories are "The Clarion Call", "The Last Leaf", "The Ransom of Red Chief", and "The Gift of the Magi".
The Naked City portrays the police investigation that follows the murder of a young model. A veteran cop is placed in charge of the case and he sets about, with the help of other beat cops and detectives, finding the girl's killer.
An updated 21st century version of the Emily Bronte novel set in modern day Malibu, California where the wealthy Earnshaw family adopts Heath, a troubled teenager. The Earnshaws teenage daughter, Cathy, falls madly in love with him, embittering her rich boyfriend, Eddie, and the rest of their exclusive, upscale community. Wrapped up in her exciting fling, Cathy is blind to the dangerous side of Heath until it's too late.
Three bachelors find themselves forced to take care of a baby left by one of the guy's girlfriends.
In the aftermath of a family tragedy, an aspiring author is torn between love for her childhood friend and the temptation of a mysterious outsider. Trying to escape the ghosts of her past, she is swept away to a house that breathes, bleeds⦠and remembers.
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