Promise at Dawn (1970)
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Two aging film actresses live as virtual recluses in an old Hollywood mansion. Jane Hudson, a successful child star, cares for her crippled sister Blanche, whose career in later years eclipsed that of Jane. Now the two live together, their relationship affected by simmering subconscious thoughts of mutual envy, hate and revenge.
Le Dernier tournant (aka The Last Turning) is a 1939 French drama film directed by Pierre Chenal, written by Charles Spaak and Henri Torrès, based on novel "The Postman Always Rings Twice" by James M. Cain.
A single mother in Madrid sees her only son die on his birthday as he runs to seek an actress' autograph. Beside herself with grief, she returns to Barcelona to tell the boy's father about the death of the son he never knew he had.
From his childhood in Poland to his adolescence in Nice to his years as a student in Paris and his tough training as a pilot during World War II, this tragi-comedy tells the romantic story of Romain Gary, one of the most famous French novelists and sole writer to have won the Goncourt Prize for French literature two times.
This lovely, 1991 adaptation of Elizabeth Von Arnim's novel has a superb cast and a tone so mellow you can feel your pulse get slower. Josie Lawrence and Miranda Richardson play a pair of unhappily married women who rent an Italian villa for a month, sharing the rent with a crusty Englishwoman (Joan Plowright) and a lonely aristocrat (Polly Walker). Sun, rest, sinking into the green grass for long naps--they all have a soulful effect on the quartet, and then on the men in their lives who make a surprise visit. Mike Newell (Into the West) directs with seeming effortlessness, and it is impossible not to be swayed by the promise of restoration for these burdened characters--or for anyone alive. Wonderful performances all around, including a particularly sensitive one by Alfred Molina and a very funny one by Jim Broadbent.
A female superstar struggles through the trials and tribulations of being a Bollywood actress.
Adapted from a 1964 novel of the same name, the film follows a day in the life of George Falconer (Colin Firth), a British college professor reeling with the recent and sudden loss of his longtime parter. This traumatic event makes George challenge his own will to live as he seeks the console of close friend Charley (Juliane Moore) who is struggling with her own questions about life.
Young writer Richard Collier is met on the opening night of his first play by an old lady who begs him to "Come back to me". Mystified, he tries to find out about her, and learns that she is a famous stage actress from the early 1900s, Elise McKenna. Becoming more and more obsessed with her, he manages, by self hypnosis, to travel back in time where he meets her. They fall in love, a matching that is not appreciated by her manager. Can their love outlast the immense problems caused by their "time" difference? And can Richard remain in a time that is not his?
Based on Michael Chabon's novel, the film chronicles the defining summer of a recent college graduate who crosses his gangster father and explores love, sexuality, and the enigmas surrounding his life and his city.
My Wife is an Actress is a French Romantic Comedy/Drama film starring real life couple Yvan Attal and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Attal plays a journalist who becomes obsessively jealous when his actress wife gets a part in a movie with an attractive co-star. Attal also wrote and directed the film.
Disgrace is the story of a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his good looks, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his cherished daughter. After having an affair with a student, he moves to the Eastern Cape, where he gets caught up in a mess of post-apartheid politics.
Director Alfred Hitchcock is revered as one of the greatest creative minds in the history of cinema. Known for his psychological thrillers, Hitchcockâs leading ladies were cool, beautiful and preferably blonde. One such actress was Tippi Hedren, an unknown fashion model given her big break when Hitchcockâs wife saw her on a TV commercial. Brought to Universal Studios, Hedren was shocked when the director, at the peak of his career, quickly cast her to star in his next feature, 1963âs The Birds. Little did Hedren know that as ambitious and terrifying as the production would be to shoot, the most daunting aspect of the film ended up coming from behind the camera.
A trainer attempts to retrain a vicious dog that's been raised to kill black people.
A production company begins casting for its next feature, and an up-and-coming actress named Rose tries to manipulate her filmmaker boyfriend, Alex, into giving her a screen test. Alex's wife, Emma, knows about the affair and is considering divorce, while Rose's girlfriend secretly spies on her and attempts to sabotage the relationship. The four storylines in the film were each shot in one take and are shown simultaneously, each taking up a quarter of the screen.
Gerald is a smart, young, high-flying American banker. Everything is great until his wife finds another woman's underwear in their bedroom and subsequently throws him out. He finds lodgings with Monica, a recently divorced 50-year old housewife, who is smitten with Gerald. But after their first night of love, Gerald avoids her. Monica feels used and betrayed until Gerald confesses he likes to dress up as a woman. Monica learns to accept and eventually support Geraldine, Gerald's alter ego. Based on the novel by Monica Jay.
Ebeneezer Scrooge (Alastair Sim) contentedly meanders through his life as a cruel miser until one fateful Christmas Eve when he is visited by three ghosts. The spirits show him how his behavior over the years has made him a lonely, bitter old man, and how his heart has grown colder. Using events from Scrooge's idealistic past, dreary present and dismal future, the apparitions try their best to melt his steely soul. Tightfisted Ebeneezer Scrooge learns the error of his ways through the intervention of the ghost of his former partner and of the three spirits and, just in time for the holidays, manages to make everyone's lives a little brighter, his included!
An aspiring actress from Australia, Ellie Parker (Naomi Watts), lives a hectic Hollywood lifestyle, perpetually trying to land the role that will elevate her career. Living with her lothario musician boyfriend, Justin (Mark Pelligrino), Ellie is far from happy, finding support primarily from her friend Sam (Rebecca Rigg). When Ellie meets Chris (Scott Coffey) after a minor traffic accident, she sees new potential for both romance and her life in general.
Story of the love between a struggling American artist and a beautiful Chinese prostitute in Hong Kong.
An uptight English writer traveling to Crete on a matter of business finds his life changed forever when he meets the gregarious Alexis Zorba.
Agnès Jaoui co-writes and directs this romantic comedy of manners set in France's rustic Provence. Unpolished and ultra-pragmatic industrialist Jean-Jacques Castella (co-scripter Jean-Pierre Bacri) reluctantly attends Racine's tragedy "Berenice" in order to see his niece play a bit part. He is taken with the play's strangely familiar-looking leading lady Clara Devaux (Anne Alvaro). During the course of the show, Castella soon remembers that he once hired and then promptly fired the actress as an English language tutor. He immediately goes out and signs up for language lessons. Thinking that he is nothing but an ill-tempered philistine with bad taste, Clara rejects him until Castella charms her off her feet.
In this Depression-era tale, Calef is traveling from Michigan to California and stops in Spooner, Missouri, where Lute hires him for odd jobs. Calef gets involved with Lute's niece, Hannah. But she is married to Sidney, a wife-beating drunk who hopes to inherit his uncle-in-law's money. Sidney and an eccentric preacher plot against Calef, who finds it difficult to conceal his mysterious past and his growing affection for Sidney's wife.
A veteran actress comes face-to-face with an uncomfortable reflection of herself when she agrees to take part in a revival of the play that launched her career 20 years earlier.
While touring abroad in Europe, beautiful American skydiver Fathom Harvill gets wrapped up in international intrigue when Scottish spy Douglas Campbell recruits her to help him on a secret mission. Before long, Fathom realizes that no one around her, including the mysterious Peter Merriweather, can easily be trusted, leading to various adventures that involve bull fighting, beaches and, of course, romance.
A boozy Broadway actress comes out of a 12-week cure to face the problems of her best friends as well as her needy daughter. She tries to balance the terrors of returning to work with the demands of all around her with humor and insight, while staying off the booze.
Emilia is a Harvard law school graduate and a newlywed, having just married Jack, a high-powered New York lawyer, who was her boss -- and married -- when she began working at his law firm. Unfortunately, her life takes an unexpected turn when Jack and Emilia lose their newborn daughter. Emilia struggles through her grief to connect with her new stepson William, but is finding it hard to connect with this precocious child. Perhaps the most difficult obstacle of all for Emilia is trying to cope with the constant interferences of her husband's angry, jealous ex-wife, Carolyn.
Based upon the life of actress Parveen Babi, this film describes the life of a schizophrenic actress Sana Azim, and the love of her life - Aditya Garewal.
A young Italian actress embarks on a self-destructive spree of sex, drugs and other excess while doing some soul searching to find the path for redemption.
When boredom, pride and a mad second of misjudgement leaves a hunter shot dead by one of five combat veterans also hunting in the Canadian hills, it is expected a police investigation will follow, but when the veterans discover the incident has not been reported, the leader of the team, Major Rex (Cliff Robertson) suspects the other party maybe plotting revenge. Convinced that he, his party, and their families will be targets themselves he decides to beat his suspected assailants at their own game, grouping together more army comrades and stocking up an arsenal of weapons for the forthcoming battle.
The love story between an actress and a director. Inspired by the life of the late south Indian actress Silk Smitha.
Stay Hungry is a 1976 dramatic comedy film by director Bob Rafelson from a screenplay by Charles Gaines. The story centers on a young Birmingham, Alabama, scion, played by Jeff Bridges, who gets involved in a shady real-estate deal. In order to close the deal, he needs to buy a gym building to complete a multi-parcel lot. When he visits the gym, however, he finds himself romantically interested in the receptionist (Sally Field) and drawn to the carefree lifestyle of the Austrian body builder "Joe Santo" (Arnold Schwarzenegger) who is training there for the Mr. Universe competition.
A psychotic man opens fire in a diner, murdering numerous people before killing himself. The survivors struggle in different ways following this horrendous event: a doctor doubts his own instincts and elects to use an experimental medical procedure on his wife, while a gambler believes he's on a lucky streak. A waitress begins engaging in promiscuous sex, and a young girl whose father is among the dead gains unexpected fame.
A romantic drama film about a love triangle between a stage actress, her financial backer, and his friend.
An aspiring actress, whose sugar-coated appearance belies her ruthless drive, worms herself into the life of an aging star and schemes to replace her on the stage as the star of a new play.
When their father passes away, four grown, world-weary siblings return to their childhood home and are requested -- with an admonition -- to stay there together for a week, along with their free-speaking mother (Jane Fonda) and a collection of spouses, exes and might-have-beens. As the brothers and sisters re-examine their shared history and the status of each tattered relationship among those who know and love them best, they reconnect in hysterically funny and emotionally significant ways.
In occupied Paris, an actress married to a Jewish theater owner must keep him hidden from the Nazis while doing both of their jobs.
A dwarf and his poor, but loving, family who are forced out of their house by a real estate agent.
Film about moral decay of Trieste elite during 1890s based on novel by Slovenian writer Janko Kersnik.
Soap actress May-Alice Culhane is paralyzed from the waist down in an accident. She returns to her old home in Louisiana, where she proceeds to drink quite steadily and to drive away five personal attendants in the first twenty minutes of the movie. Then she meets with Chantelle, whose stubbornness matches her own -- if only because Chantelle, herself a recovering cocaine addict, cannot afford to lose this job. Their mutual dislike gradually develops into an armed truce as the two women deal with their own problems and with each others'.
In this story-within-a-story, Anna is an actress starring opposite Mike in a period piece about the forbidden love between their respective characters, Sarah and Charles. Both actors are involved in serious relationships, but the passionate nature of the script leads to an off-camera love affair as well. While attempting to maintain their composure and professionalism, Anna and Mike struggle to come to terms with their infidelity.
True story of the lifelong romance between novelist Iris Murdoch and her husband John Bayley, from their student days through her battle with Alzheimer's disease.
When his young son is killed in a hit and run accident, Charles Thenier resolves to hunt down and murder the killer. By chance, Thenier makes the acquaintance of an actress, Helène Lanson, who was in the car at the time of the accident. He then meets Helèneâs brother-in-law, Paul Decourt, a truly horrible individual.
Jep Gambardella has seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades, but after his 65th birthday and a shock from the past, Jep looks past the nightclubs and parties to find a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.
During the French Revolution, a mysterious English nobleman known only as The Scarlet Pimpernel (a humble wayside flower), snatches French aristos from the jaws of the guillotine, while posing as the foppish Sir Percy Blakeney in society. Percy falls for and marries the beautiful actress Marguerite St. Just, but she is involved with Chauvelin and Robespierre, and Percy's marriage to her may endanger the Pimpernel's plans to save the little Dauphin
Edwardian England. A precocious girl from a poor background with aspirations to being a novelist finds herself swept to fame and fortune when her tasteless romances hit the best seller lists. Her life changes in unexpected ways when she encounters an aristocratic brother and sister, both of whom have cultural ambitions, and both of whom fall in love with her.
This sometimes confusing erotic drama about the incestuous relationship of a mother and daughter is based on the autobiography of Italian theater actress Piera Degli Esposti though it focuses more on her mother Eugenia (Hanna Schygulla).
Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a patient named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.
The film spans from Hepburn's early childhood to the 1950s which details her life as a Dutch ballerina, coming to grips with her parents' divorce, and enduring life in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II. She then settles in the U.S. where she succeeds in making it big as a movie actress, in such movies as Breakfast at Tiffany's.
An undercover cop in a not-too-distant future becomes involved with a dangerous new drug and begins to lose his own identity as a result.
A coming of age story about a shy teenage boy trying to escape from the influence of his domineering mother. His world changes when he begins to work for a retired actress.
Leonard Schiller once counted among New York's Literary lions, but illness and ten years of writers block have lowered his profile, almost to the point of obscurity. When Heather Wolfe, an ambitious literature major, asks to interview him for her theses on his work, her interest forces hims to address the issues that have been he has avoided all these years, and stirs in him feelings he has long forgotten, much to his daughter's consternation
A career woman reassesses her parents' lives after she is forced to care for her cancer-stricken mother.
Although she is known as a patron of the arts, a graceful duchess nevertheless refuses her nephew to marry an enterprising actress in this German melodrama starring Kathe Dorsch and silent screen legend Henny Porten. When Philine (Hilde Krahl), the troupe's ingénue, is rejected as proper marital material by the Duchess of Weissenfels (Porten), Karoline Neuber (Dorsch) creates such a furor that she is banished from the country. A performance at the court at St. Petersburg also ends in disaster for the unhappy actress and abandoned by all, Karoline dies a suicide.
Grady (Michael Douglas) is a 50-ish English professor who hasn't had a thing published in years -- not since he wrote his award winning "Great American Novel" 7 years ago. This weekend proves even worse than he could imagine as he finds himself reeling from one misadventure to another in the company of a new wonder boy author.
Germany in the early 1930s. Against the backdrop of the Nazis' rise, Hermann Hermann, a Russian émigré and chocolate magnate, goes slowly mad. It begins with his seating himself in a chair to observe himself making love to his wife, Lydia, a zaftig empty-headed siren who is also sleeping with her cousin. Hermann is soon given to intemperate outbursts at his workers, other businessmen, and strangers. Then, he meets Felix, an itinerant laborer, whom he delusionally believes looks exactly like himself. Armed with a new life insurance policy, he hatches an elaborate plot in the belief it will free him of all his worries.
An inexperienced young actress is invited to play a role in a film based on Dostoyevsky's 'The Possessed'. The film director, a Czech immigrant in Paris, takes over her life, and in a short time she is unable to draw the line between acting and reality. She winds up playing a real-life role posing as the dead wife of another Czech immigrant, who is manipulated by the filmmaker into commiting a political assasination.
The true story of Ruth Gordon's early struggles on the road to stage stardom.
A poor French teenage girl engages in an illicit affair with a wealthy Chinese heir in 1920s Saigon. For the first time in her young life she has control, and she wields it deftly over her besotted lover throughout a series of clandestine meetings and torrid encounters.
Based on the John Irving novel, this film chronicles the life of T S Garp, and his mother, Jenny. Whilst Garp sees himself as a "serious" writer, Jenny writes a feminist manifesto at an opportune time, and finds herself as a magnet for all manner of distressed women.
Based on the novel of the same name by Edith Wharton, it is about a husband and wife (Ethan and Zeena), who need an extra hand around the house due to Zeena's debilitated body and constant illness. The young woman who joins them is a beautiful, spirited person. She and Ethan fall in love much to the dismay of Zeena. Written by Jason Ihle
After a car wreck on the winding Mulholland Drive renders a woman amnesic, she and a perky Hollywood-hopeful search for clues and answers across Los Angeles in a twisting venture beyond dreams and reality.
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