Behind Closed Shutters (1951)
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Never on Sunday is a 1960 Greek black-and-white film which tells the story of Ilya, a prostitute who lives in the port of Piraeus in Greece, and Homer, an American tourist from Middletown, Connecticut â a classical scholar enamored with all things Greek. Ilya is a character close to the "hooker with a heart of gold" cliché. Homer feels Ilya's life style typifies the degradation of Greek classical culture and attempts to steer her onto the path of morality. It constitutes a variation of the Pygmalion story. The film stars Melina Mercouri and Jules Dassin, and it gently submerges the viewer into Greek culture, including dance, music, and language (through the use of subtitles). The signature song and the bouzouki theme of the movie became hits of the 1960s and brought the composer, Manos Hadjidakis, an Academy Award.
After two students are caught doing âextra-curricularâ activities in an abandoned school classroom, they plead their case to the student council. To the headmasterâs surprise, the teen lovers expose whatâs really going on in their school behind closed doors....
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.
In a small island off the American coast, the Whateleys live in an old mill where a mysterious bloody being creates an atmosphere of horror. After her parents get killed by lightning, young Susannah is sent to New York by her aunt Agatha, who wants her to avoid the family curse. Years later Susannah, now married, persuades her husband to spend a holiday in the abandoned mill. Once on the island, Susannah and Mike soon find themselves exposed to the hostility of a gang of thugs led by Ethan, Susannah's brutal cousin.
Young lovers Billy and Sarah journey from L.A. to Texas with plans to make a false claim to the valuable assets left behind by a dead friend. But when their voyage brings them to Tremo, Texas, they find a bizarre and sinister world awaiting them.
The fate of a Hungarian Jewish family throughout the 20th century.
Objectively, Odette Toulemonde has nothing to be happy about, but is. Balthazar Balsan has everything to be happy about, but isnât. Odette, awkwardly forty, with a delightful hairdresser son and a daughter bogged down in adolescence, spends her days behind the cosmeticâs counter in a department store and her nights sewing feathers on costumes for Parisian variety shows. She dreams of thanking Balthazar Balsan, her favorite author, to whom â she believes â she owes her optimism. The rich and charming Parisian writer then turns up in her life in an unexpected way.
Dear Galileo is created by the director who was behind the runaway success of âSeasons Changeâ. Itâs the story of two friends, Tai and Toey. One wants to runs away from school and the other is running away from love. They decide to travel and work as waitresses in Europe. Their goal is to see the birthplace of Galileo.
In the rebellious northern frontier province of colonial India, British Army Captain Scott (Kenneth More), a young prince and the boy's governess (Lauren Bacall) escape by an obsolete train as they are relentlessly pursued by Muslim rebels intent on assassinating the prince.
A young Anatolian Greek, entrusted with his family's fortune, loses it en route to Istanbul and dreams of going to America
A mysteriously linked pair of young women find their daily lives pre-empted by a strange boudoir melodrama that plays itself out in a hallucinatory parallel reality.
Set in the not so distant future, in Any Town USA, sixteen year old Herman Howards makes a fateful decision. He enters his suburban school and kills thirty nine students, two teachers, and a police officer. Just before his arrest he emails his idol, famous journalist Lax Morales, sending him clips of the shootings captured with Herman's own digital camera. In the clips Herman tells Lax, "I want to tell my story on your show". Lax, haunted by his own past, is now face to face with Herman.
In this French tour-de-force a young student (Jacques Speisser) decides to have no more interaction with the world than is needed to minimally sustain life. His increasingly automaton-like behavior is coupled with a strange clarity of insight about the world around him. His inner musings as he wanders the luminous streets of Paris are narrated in the form of an unwritten diary by Ludmila Mikael.
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The last of Rohmer's Six Moral Tales. Frederic leads a bourgeois life; he is a partner in a small Paris office and is happily married to Helene, a teacher expecting her second child. In the afternoons, Frederic daydreams about other women, but has no intention of taking any action. One day, Chloe, who had been a mistress of an old friend, begins dropping by his office. They meet as friends, irregularly in the afternoons, till eventually Chloe decides to seduce Frederic, causing him a moral dilemma.
When beautiful Jade (Gabriella Wilde) meets charismatic David (Alex Pettyfer), her sheltered world of privilege is turned upside down as the pair's instant desire sparks a reckless summer love affair. While Jade leaves behind her inhibitions and innocence as she falls for David, he works to prove himself worthy of her love. But when David's mysterious past and Jade's overprotective father threaten to tear them apart, their romance will be put to the ultimate test.
The theme of the delightful Hungarian fantasy film "A Very Moral Night," made in 1977 and now playing at the Public Theater, could well be innocence, even if the action does take place in a bordello. It is a good bordello, so sweet and wholesome that it seems a place of pure beauty and Eden-like charm.
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Set in a Mumbai ghetto in the mid '80's and based on true life accounts, Striker is a story of triumph of human spirit over indomitable odds.
Mo Aliâs futuristic knife-crime drama brings the dystopian environment of CHILDREN OF MEN and DISTRICT 13 to Londonâs East 17. SHANK delivers a ruthless vision of forthcoming urban life, where guns have been superseded by knives and are fiercely wielded by aimless youths. Amidst the chaos is the Paper Chazers gang, a rare morally conscious group who trade scavenged food for money. After Chazers gang member, Junior (Kedar Williams-Stirling), witnesses his brother, murder he must decide whether to get revenge of stick to the gangs moral code... In this superbly paced and artistic film, present-day social issues, and murky city streets, provide a perfect canvas for imagination and action.
In 1900, strong-willed widow Lucy Muir goes to live in Gull Cottage by the British seaside, even though it appears to be haunted. Sure enough, that very night she meets the ghost of crusty former owner Captain Gregg...and refuses to be scared off. Indeed, they become friends and allies, after Lucy gets used to the idea of a man's ghost haunting her bedroom. But when a charming live man comes courting, Lucy and the captain must deal with their feelings for each other.
A 1930's British summer Bank Holiday starts at midday on Saturday with a rush for the trains to the seaside. Doreen and Milly are off to a beauty contest, Geoffrey and Catherine are having an illicit weekend in the Grand Hotel and May and the kids are set for a more straightforward holiday of sea, sand, and pub. Meanwhile, the manager and performers on the pier are praying for rain.
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Middle-class Parisian suburbs: Blanche and Lea, office worker and student, meet and become friends. Lea is going out with Fabien, but is thinking of leaving him. Blanche falls for Lea's handsome and witty friend Alexandre, but is tongue-tied whenever she meets him. Lea goes on holiday and Blanche, still smitten with the dashing Alexandre, begins to get to get know Fabien. A classic Rohmer moral tale.
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Ignacio Carrillo (Marciano MartÃnez) is a vallenato singer from Majagual, Sucre, who decides, after his wife's sudden death, to stop playing and return his accordion, which is said to be cursed, to his master. He is joined by FermÃn Morales (Yull Núñez), a teenage boy who admires Ignacio and wishes to become a juglar like him. Carrillo reluctantly accepts, given his loneliness. On Ash Wednesday 1968, Carrillo, Morales and their donkey start a journey throughout several towns in the Caribbean region in Northern Colombia, until Taroa (a small caserÃo in Uribia jurisdiction), in La Guajira desert, where Carrillo's maestro supposedly lives. During their journey, Carrillo participates in the first version of the Vallenato Legend Festival in Valledupar.
Three women - no moral. Morality is the excuse for those who don't dare to live their truth.Michaela, Gabriela and Lucy are angels of vice. On their motorbikes they ride through the countryside to live their pleasure. They could see a lot, but only see themselves. They call themselves angels but they are angels with dirty wings. To be a full member in the exile paradise of angels, Lucy has to prove herself and stand the tests. The new film of Roland Reber and Mira Gittner is an anthem of immorality. A holy song of egoism and a painful study about our time and a generation who rent their feelings.
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Set in a seaside resort in the Caucasus, the story centers on n'er do well, Laevsky (Andrew Scott) and his illicit relationship with his mistress Nadya (Fiona Glascott). Laevsky has convinced Nadya to leave her husband for him, but now wants to abandon her.
The love story of Dan (a beautiful young woman) and Gu (a humpback), servants from two separate households in Ha Dong, Vietnam who have suffered most of their lives at the hands of their cruel masters. The couple flee south soon after Gu presents Dan with a wedding gift - the precious white silk dress his mother had owned (his one valuable possession), while he promises her a proper marriage someday in the future. The couple arrive in the seaside town of Hoi An and build a new life, with Dan ultimately giving birth to 4 daughters. Despite struggling through immense poverty and hardships, the family is happy and fulfilled as long as they have each other, but the horrors of the encroaching war brings tragedy and threatens to tear them apart.
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Paul, Matt, and Will (in their 30s) have been friends for years. They converge at the seaside for the weekend, each with a boyfriend in tow. Paul is with Ben, his companion of five years: their relationship is on the rocks after months of Paul's moodiness since his brother Mark died. Matt brings Owen, whom he's dated for three months and wants to live with; to everyone else, they seem singularly.
Thappu Thalangal is a saga of emotional and selfish world of human feelings. Devu, a local thug whose weapon of choice is a bicycle chain he sports casually around the neck. On one of his nightly rounds, Devu is pursued by a cop and seeks refuge at a whorehouse run by a hooker Sarasu. Despite her vehement protests, he stays put and leaves only at daybreak, but her persistent cough stays with him. At a theatre, Devu watches an advertisement for Glycodin Cough Syrup and proceeds to buy her a bottle. Devu and Sarasu bond over the cough syrup and philosophize late into the night, exchanging notes on their immoral lifestyles. Devu's assault on a trade union leader delivering medicine to a critically ill worker leads to a mishap. In an inspired moment, he suggests they remap their lives and chart a moral course. The couple's plans for normality never attain fruition. The inevitable return to lives of vice is especially tragic and heartbreaking.
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Eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner lives his last 25 years with gusto and secretly becomes involved with a seaside landlady, while his faithful housekeeper bears an unrequited love for him.
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Ordinary people find extraordinary courage in the face of madness. On 13-14 November 1990 that madness came to Aramoana, a small New Zealand seaside village. It came in the form of a lone gunman with a high-powered semi-automatic rifle. As he stalked his victims the terrified and confused residents were trapped in the village for 24 hours while a handful of under-resourced and underarmed local policeman risked their lives trying to find him and save the survivors. By dawn 13 people lay dead. This is a true story.
Strip Search follows several parallel stories examining personal freedoms vs. national security in the aftermath of 9/11; two main subplots involve an American woman detained in China and an Arab man detained in New York City.
I Origins follows a molecular biologist studying the evolution of the human eye. He finds his work permeating his life after a brief encounter with an exotic young woman who slips away from him. As his research continues years later with his lab partner, they make a stunning scientific discovery that has far reaching implications and complicates both his scientific and and spiritual beliefs. Traveling half way around the world, he risks everything he has ever known to validate his theory.
The stories of several people are told as they stay at a seaside hotel in Bournemouth which features dining at "Separate Tables."
Science researcher Hyun-Chul (Lee Beom-Soo) demonstrates with co-workers against the company president, who stole an important semiconductor chip and is attempting to flee to the United States. Meanwhile, the company president makes his escape from the protesters in an ambulance. During his escape, the executive cuts a wound in his arm and implants the chip there. While, Hyun-Chul and co-worker Han Jin-Soo (Jeong In-Gi) head for home, Han Jin-Soo is hit by a speeding car. Hyun-Chul thinks it isn't an accident. He contacts Han Jin-Soo's daughter Dong-Hwa (Kim Ok-Vin) and they meet at the police station. After visting her father at the hospital, Dong-Hwa becomes worried about how to pay for her father's hospital bills. On a TV at the hospital, they learn that the company president died from a heart attack. Hyun-Chul and Dong-Hwa then come up with the idea to steal the body of the company president for ransom.
Based on Harold Pinter's enigmatic play about a border in a British seaside dwelling who is visited by two strangers. They torment him verbally, ask him idiotic unanswerable questions, force him to sit down and stand up, and give him a "party." Then, eventually, they take him away, a tongue-tied idiot. The trivial becomes the terrible, and with it a certain wonder, a certain pity.
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.
A brother and sister move into an old seaside house they find abandoned for many years on the English coast. Their original enchantment with the house diminishes as they hear stories of the previous owners and meet their daughter (now a young woman) who now lives as a neighbor with her grandfather. Also heard are unexplained sounds during the night. It becomes obvious that the house is haunted.
In a staid English seaside town after the Second World War, young Lynda grows up with her widowed father and younger sister. Rebellious Lynda has been swearing constantly from an early age. At sixteen, she becomes more exhibitionist and seeks out sexual encounters challenging the prevailing lower-middle class attitudes to sex. She eventually becomes pregnant by an acquaintance of her father.
The story of vampire Barnabas Collins, the possible cure offered by Dr. Julia Hoffman, and his search for love amidst the horror.
Une si jolie petite plage (English titles: Such a Pretty Little Beach and Riptide) is a French film shot in black-and-white, directed by Yves Allégret and released in 1949. The film stars Gérard Philipe, Madeleine Robinson and Jane Marken. The film is set on the Channel coast of northern France, in a drab and depressing small seaside town being deluged by incessant rain. The film noir-influenced style emphasises the relentlessly downbeat, oppressive and claustrophobic atmosphere of the milieu. Location filming for Une si jolie petite plage took place in Barneville-Carteret in Lower Normandy.
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