The Five Pennies (1959)
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Aimless youth Rick Martin learns he has a gift for music and falls in love with the trumpet. Legendary trumpeter Art Hazzard takes Rick under his wing and teaches him all he knows about playing. To the exclusion of anything else in life, Rick becomes a star trumpeter, but his volatile personality and desire to play jazz rather than the restricted tunes of the bands he works for lands him in trouble.
Interrupted Melody is the inspirational filmed biography of world-renowned Australian soprano Marjorie Lawrence. Sheâs a foremost Wagnerian, equal to the vocal and physical demands of the composerâs oeuvre. And sheâs a beacon of triumph to anyone who fights back when personal tragedy strikes.
In the Swedish city of Lethe, people from different walks of life take part in a series of short, deadpan vignettes that rush past. Some are just seconds long, none longer than a couple of minutes. A young woman (Jessica Lundberg) remembers a fantasy honeymoon with a rock guitarist. A man awakes from a dream about bomber planes. A businessman boasts about success while being robbed by a pickpocket and so on. The absurdist collection is accompanied by Dixieland jazz and similar music.
The Benny Goodman Story is a biographical film starring Steve Allen and Donna Reed, directed by Valentine Davies and released by Universal Studios in 1956. The film is based on the life of famed clarinetist Benny Goodman, who recorded most of the clarinet solos used in the film. The film captures several major moments in Goodman's life but it has been described as less than accurate in details. Goodman's Jewish background is never explicitly mentioned, despite it playing a part in his artistic and personal endeavors for decades. In one scene, where his mother tries to talk him out of a romance with Alice Hammond, played by Donna Reed, whom Goodman eventually married, she says, "Bagels and caviar don't mix."
Marine bandmaster John Philip Sousa (Clifton Webb) becomes famous for his marches and inspires the sousaphone.
Chance Harris looks to find a balance between his school, work, relationships and opportunity to perform at the nationally televised step competition during homecoming weekend at Truth University.
After an accidental drug overdose, a talented teenage DJ goes to live with his estranged father in a small Army town, where he gets to the bottom of his own pain and learns empathy for others.
After serving time for manslaughter, young Vince Everett becomes a teenage rock star.
This send-up of ragtime song and dance begins in 1915 San Francisco when society boy Roger Grant decides to pursue popular rather than serious music.
Dragon Eye Congee tells the story of a second-generation Taiwanese American, Shaun Tam, who, since childhood, has repeatedly dreamt about the same woman in the same scenes, complete with a haunting melody and the fragrant smell of rice congee with dried longan.
After being involved in a car accident, Si-hyun is left with no memories of the accident or her past. The accident causes her to see sounds in color which is often disorientating, forcing Si-hyun to protect her ears. She encounters Ji-won in the hospital and moves in with her when she is later discharged. Upon hearing Si-hyun humming a strange melody in her sleep, Ji-won's brother, Woo-hyuk, writes it down as a score and gives it to her, hoping that it would help her remember something of her former life. Meanwhile, Jee-il, a failed songwriter stumbles upon this score and offers to find the melody. They embark on a healing journey as they collaborate to complete Si-hyunâs melody.
Ram Bowen and Eddie Cook are two expatriate jazz musicians living in Paris where, unlike America at the time, Jazz musicians are celebrated and racism is a non-issue. When they meet and fall in love with two young American girls, Lillian and Connie, who are vacationing in France, Ram and Eddie must decide whether they should move back to America with them, or stay in Paris for the freedom it allows them. Ram, who wants to be a serious composer, finds Paris more exciting than America and is reluctant to give up his music for a relationship, and Eddie wants to stay for the city's more tolerant racial atmosphere.
Robert Altman's story is a riff on race, class, and power cross-cuts between the two kidnappings and the background of corrupt politics and virtuoso jazz music. It all takes place in Kansas City in 1934.
The daughter of jazz pianist Joe Albany witnesses her beloved father's struggle -- and failure -- to kick his heroin habit.
The Jazz Singer is the first full length feature film to use sound. Director Alan Crosland created the precursor of musical films.
Members of a traveling jazz band try to keep their talented leader from dying after he breaks from the band and begins drinking and taking drugs.
Under the direction of a ruthless instructor, a talented young drummer begins to pursue perfection at any cost, even his humanity.
A jazz legend finds love and redemption when he stars in a movie about his own troubled life to mount a comeback.
Traces the pilgrimage of John Anderson, an average guy with a passion for jazz, from his home in outback Western Australia to the jazz clubs of Paris...
Childhood friends Tracy Lord and C.K. Dexter Haven got married and quickly divorced. Now Tracy is about to marry again, this time to a shrewd social-climbing businessman. Bing still loves her. Spy magazine blackmails Grace's family by threatening to reveal her playboy father's exploits if not allowed to cover the wedding.
Saxophone player Charlie Parker comes to New York in 1940. He is quickly noticed for his remarkable way of playing. He becomes a drug addict but his loving wife Chan tries to help him.
Only a few songs as Elvis plays it straight as Dr John Carpenter. Mary Tyler Moore stars opposite as an incognito nun with a mission to help Dr Elvis clean up the ghetto he lives in. Can the King compete against God for Mary's heart?
An updated version of the 1980 musical, which centered on the students of the New York Academy of Performing Arts.
Hoda is a famous dancer who gives up the spotlight to marry and start a family with Mamdouh, a handsome young doctor who is just beginning his career. When Mamdouh's scheming Italian head nurse Yolanda sets her sights on Mamdouh, Hoda's jealousy drives her to drink, ultimately endangering everything she holds dear. An enchanting example of Egyptian melodrama at its finest.
Set against the background of the 1984 Miner's Strike, Billy Elliot is an 11 year old boy who stumbles out of the boxing ring and onto the ballet floor. He faces many trials and triumphs as he strives to conquer his family's set ways, inner conflict, and standing on his toes!
A week in the life of the exploited, child newspaper sellers in turn-of-the-century New York. When their publisher, Joseph Pulitzer, tries to squeeze a little more profit out of their labours, they organize a strike, only to be confronted with the Pulitzer's hard-ball tactics.
The war film that's not a war film. A film about the mental institution which backdrop is the Chechen war. A story about the patients living in an institution during the war on the border of Chechnia and Russia during the war. The patients have to continue living their day to day life after being invaded twice over, and they have to deal with their sicknesses.
Inside the Blue Note nightclub one night in 1959 Paris, an aged, ailing jazzman coaxes an eloquent wail from his tenor sax. Outside, a young Parisian too broke to buy a glass of wine strains to hear those notes. Soon they will form a friendship that sparks a final burst of genius in director Bertrand Tavernier
In this hit Russian musical, a group of friends flaunts Soviet authority in 1950s Moscow by embracing jazz. When Communist Mels falls for Polly, a free-spirited jazz fan, he risks losing his party membership by associating with her rebellious crew.
In the run-up to the 1972 elections, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward covers what seems to be a minor break-in at the Democratic Party National headquarters. He is surprised to find top lawyers already on the defense case, and the discovery of names and addresses of Republican fund organizers on the accused further arouses his suspicions. The editor of the Post is prepared to run with the story and assigns Woodward and Carl Bernstein to it. They find the trail leading higher and higher in the Republican Party, and eventually into the White House itself.
A charming and ambitious young man finds many ways to raise himself through the ranks in business and social standing - some honest, some not quite so. If he can just manage to avoid a certain very predatory woman...
Hobos encounter a sadistic railway conductor that will not let anyone "ride the rails" for free.
When Waring Hudsucker, head of hugely successful Hudsucker Industries, commits suicide, his board of directors, led by Sidney Mussberger, comes up with a brilliant plan to make a lot of money: appoint a moron to run the company. When the stock falls low enough, Sidney and friends can buy it up for pennies on the dollar, take over the company, and restore its fortunes. They choose idealistic Norville Barnes, who just started in the mail room. Norville is whacky enough to drive any company to ruin, but soon, tough reporter Amy Archer smells a rat and begins an undercover investigation of Hudsucker Industries.
Good natured Reverend Henry Biggs finds that his marriage to choir mistress Julia is flagging, due to his constant absence caring for the deprived neighborhood they live in. On top of all this, his church is coming under threat from property developer Joe Hamilton. In desperation, Rev. Biggs prays to God for help - and help arrives in the form of an angel named Dudley.
The young businessman Thomas Crown is bored and decides to plan a robbery and assigns a professional agent with the right information to the job. However Crown is soon betrayed yet cannot blow his cover because heâs in love.
Framed in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.
A police officer adopts the son and sole survivor of a family he has massacred while pursuing a terrorist. After some time the foster son finds out what the stepfather did.
The Grand Budapest Hotel tells of a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars and his friendship with a young employee who becomes his trusted protégé. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting, the battle for an enormous family fortune and the slow and then sudden upheavals that transformed Europe during the first half of the 20th century.
Silent as a painting, the movie shows us day-dreamer Hermie and his friends Oscy and Benjie spending the summer of '42 on an US island with their parents - rather unaffected by WWII. While Oscy's main worries are the when and how of getting laid, Hermie honestly falls in love with the older Dorothy, who's married to an army pilot. When her husband returns to the front, Hermie shyly approaches her. Written by Bob Dawson
The epic tale of the development of the American West from the 1830s through the Civil War to the end of the century, as seen through the eyes of one pioneer family.
Ustad Hotel is a quaint place run by a foodie named Kareem, who is fondly called Ustad, on a beach in Kozhikode. He sells biriyani â not to make money but to ensure that his biriyani has his customers Faizie's stay in Kozhikode continues for a bit longer than what he had anticipated and during his stay with his grandfather, Faizie unearths a real world that exists beyond the sea and its shores. The film is about the bonding between Faizi and his grandfather and how a few days with his grandfather and Ustad Hotel changes his life for ever.
An adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Long Island-set novel, where Midwesterner Nick Carraway is lured into the lavish world of his neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Soon enough, however, Carraway will see through the cracks of Gatsby's nouveau riche existence, where obsession, madness, and tragedy await.
Small-town sisters Dottie and Kit join an all-female baseball league formed after World War II brings pro baseball to a standstill. When their team hits the road with its drunken coach, the siblings find troubles and triumphs on and off the field.
With the help of a German bounty hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner.
A young woman, Tara Maguire (Robin Wright) scandalizes her provincial Irish village in the 1950s by having a baby out of a wedlock, and refusing to name the father. She has a rare beauty and every man in town desires her, especially Sergeant Hegarty (Albert Finney). The arrival of a dramatic troupe stirs things up even more, especially when she falls in love with one f the "Playboys", Tom Casey (Aidan Quinn).
The film begins in 1857, when India was ruled by the British East India Company. Mangal Pandey (Aamir Khan) is a sepoy, a soldier of Indian origin, in the army of the East India Company. Pandey is fighting in the Anglo-Afghan Wars and saves the life of his British commanding officer, William Gordon (portrayed by Toby Stephens). Gordon is indebted to Pandey and a strong friendship develops between them, transcending both rank and race.
Sammy 'The Bull' Gravano was mafiosi. He started out as a soldier, but his talent for murder, including the slayings of his best friends, his wife's brother and his own boss, Paul Castellano, saw him rise to under-boss in the Gambino crime family. However, betrayals within the family saw him break the code of silence and became the highest ranking member of the mob to turn into a rat - 'a rat in a suit,- assisting the government to finally put away the Teflon Don, John Gotti.
An unknown middle-aged batter named Roy Hobbs with a mysterious past appears out of nowhere to take a losing 1930s baseball team to the top of the league in this magical sports fantasy. With the aid of a bat cut from a lightning struck tree, Hobbs lives the fame he should have had earlier when, as a rising pitcher, he is inexplicably shot by a young woman.
In Brooklyn circa 1900, the Nolans manage to enjoy life on pennies despite great poverty and Papa's alcoholism. We come to know these people well through big and little troubles: Aunt Sissy's scandalous succession of "husbands"; the removal of the one tree visible from their tenement; and young Francie's desire to transfer to a better school...if irresponsible Papa can get his act together.
Brigitte has escaped the confines of Bailey Downs but she's not alone. Another werewolf is tailing her closely and her sister's specter haunts her. An overdose of Monkshood - the poison that is keeping her transformation at bay - leads to her being incarcerated in a rehabilitation clinic for drug addicts where her only friend is an eccentric young girl by the name of Ghost.
Bullied prep school loner Robert (Ezra Miller) captures his classmates' various escapades on video, but when he winds up filming two girls fatally overdosing on cocaine, his footage plays a role in the emotional fallout within the school community. As the students and faculty at the sheltered academy try to cope with the tragedy, many spiral into despair. Antonio Campos directs this film, which explores the ethics of voyeurism.
After a friend overdoses, Spoon and Stretch decide to kick their drug habits and attempt to enroll in a government detox program. Their efforts are hampered by seemingly endless red tape, as they are shuffled from one office to another while being chased by drug dealers and the police.
After losing her husband to a heroin overdose, Emily Wang fights to overcome her own addictions and to be reconciled with her estranged son.
There are times when it's right and proper to simply bury the dead. This is not one of those times... Gram Parsons was one of the most influential musicians of his time; a bitter, brilliant, genius who knew Elvis, tripped with the Stones and fatally overdosed on morphine and tequila in 1973. And from his dying came a story. A story from deep within folklore; a story of friendship, honour and adventure; a story so extraordinary that if it didn't really happen, no one would believe it. Two men, a hearse, a dead rock star, five gallons of petrol, and a promise. And the most extraordinary chase of modern times.
Mousse and Louis are young, beautiful, rich and in love. But drugs have invaded their lives. One day, they overdose and Louis dies. Mousse survives, but soon learns she's pregnant. Feeling lost, Mousse runs away to a house far from Paris. Several months later, Louis' brother joins her in her refuge.
A worker at a Russian nuclear facility gets exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. In order to provide for his family, he steals some plutonium and sets out to sell it on Moscow's black market with the help of an incompetent criminal.
A former child star buys her grandmother's house to rescue it from ruin but her hope for serenity is soon eclipsed by haunting dreams of her famous grandmother, who died of a supposed overdose in the house more than 30 years ago.
Jealous of her vapidly "good" sister's popularity, poisonous Viktoria doses pretty Klara's tea with a slow-acting fatal substance. As the latter grows hysterically weak, the former finds success increasingly compromised by guilt, blackmail, and the pesky need to kill others lest she be exposed.
A sexy young hospice nurse (Natasha Henstridge), is hired by a wealthy man (James Brolin) to care for his sick wife who eventually dies. When the nurse becomes the widower's new bride and then he dies suspiciously leaving his vast fortune to the new Mrs., his daughter becomes convinced that her gold-digging stepmother is up to no good and could be a murderess. An autopsy of the widower reveals an overdose of morphine, and the nurse is arrested. Ultimately, she is acquitted of her husband's murder, although she is still awaiting the outcome of a $15 million civil suit brought against her by her stepdaughters.
Renton is living the dream and that dream is Heroin. As Renton struggles with the agony and ecstasy of his life we follow him and his increasingly unstable mates. Drinking, fighting, drugs, sex and the most disgusting toilet in Scotland. Choose Trainspotting.
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