Underground U.S.A. (1980)

Director
Eric Mitchell

Main cast
Patti Astor; Rene Ricard; Tom Wright; Eric Mitchell; Jackie Curtis

Genres
Drama

Description
The Sunset Blvd. of underground cinema, and a suitably ambivalent retrospect on the star-game casualties of New York's upper depths, with Patti Astor statuesquely hysterical as a 20-year-old Norma Desmond, made up to recall Edie Sedgwick and surrounded by Warhol's lost children. We've been here before, but without the hindsight: a camera cruise along a hustler's meat-rack, kitchen-talk over cold canned spaghetti, Taylor Mead grimacing in a spastic dance, the silent stud a sullenly passive observer. Mitchell's ear for campy native wit and eye for figures in a loft-scape happily keep at bay the otherwise contagious NY ennui.


Similar movies

This pseudo-biographical movie depicts 5 years from 1885 on in the life of the Viennan psychologist Freud (1856-1939). At this time, most of his colleagues refuse to cure hysteric patients, because they believe they're just simulating to gain attention. But Freud learns to use hypnosis to find out the reasons for the psychosis. His main patient is a young woman who refuses to drink water and is plagued by a recurring nightmare.
The star of Ken Loach's MY NAME IS JOE, Mullan proves that his talent isn't relegated to acting. As a writer/director, he has crafted a supremely entertaining motion picture. ORPHANS tells the grittily realistic, hysterical, and deeply moving tale of a group of siblings who reunite in Glasgow on the eve of their mother's funeral. The four children mourn their mother's passing in a variety of ways, some of which are heartfelt and some of which are bizarre. As a potential thunderstorm threatens to damage the city, the situation compounds itself even further.
Martine offers Terry a lead on a foolproof bank hit on London's Baker Street. She targets a roomful of safe deposit boxes worth millions in cash and jewelry. But Terry and his crew don't realize the boxes also contain a treasure trove of dirty secrets - secrets that will thrust them into a deadly web of corruption and illicit scandal.
For centuries, a secret Order of priests has existed within the Church. A renegade priest, Father Alex Bernier, is sent to Rome to investigate the mysterious death of one of the Order's most revered members. Following a series of strangely similar killings, Bernier launches an investigation that forces him to confront unimaginable evil.
Alabama; 1969: The death of a clan's estranged wife and mother brings together two very different families. Do the scars of the past hide differences that will tear them apart, or expose truths that could lead to unexpected collisions?
A seasoned team of bank robbers, including Gordon Jennings (Idris Elba), John Rahway (Paul Walker), A.J. (Hayden Christensen), and brothers Jake (Michael Ealy) and Jesse Attica (Chris Brown) successfully complete their latest heist and lead a life of luxury while planning their next job. When Ghost (Tip T.I. Harris), a former member of their team, is released from prison he convinces the group to strike an armored car carrying $20 million. As the "Takers" carefully plot out their strategy and draw nearer to exacting the grand heist, a reckless police officer (Matt Dillon) inches closer to apprehending the criminals.
The only hope for humanity to survive a natural disaster is to detonate a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles.
Benjamin is a 16 year old half-side spastic with lousy grades in math, who switches to a boarding school to reach grammar school. Acclimatization to the new environment is difficult in the first place and he has to struggle with the various problems of coming of age, when he falls in love to the school's dream girl Malen.
A Moscow charity concert turns bloody when armed extortionists take the headlining American pop-star, Venus, and the Russian President with his family, hostage. The drummer of a heavy metal warm-up band, an ex-bad ass biker played by Lundgren, and a young Russian F.S.B. agent team up to fight back. Our two heroes are seriously outnumbered, and things aren't as simple as they appear, when old ghosts from the Soviet Union appear to haunt the present in this fast paced action piece.
A doctor returned from the Korean War must choose between setting up a glamorous practice and helping the poor.
Thomas is turning 16. His dad's in the army and they've just moved to a town in New South Wales; his mom is pregnant; his older brother, Charlie, who's autistic, has his own adolescent sexual issues. Thomas finds Charlie an embarrassment in public, so when Thomas is attracted to Jackie, a girl in his swim class, Charlie presents any number of obstacles when she drops by their house, when the three of them go for a walk, and during a family birthday dinner. Can Thomas find a way to enter the world of teen romance and still be his brother's keeper, or is Charlie's disability going to prove more than Thomas can handle?
The story of a young ex-con Jack, newly released from serving a prison sentence for a murder he committed as a child.
Brick, an alcoholic ex-football player, drinks his days away and resists the affections of his wife, Maggie. His reunion with his father, Big Daddy, who is dying of cancer, jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.
A neo-nazi sentenced to community service at a church clashes with the blindly devotional priest.
A group of friends plan out a detailed heist that turns deadly when one betrays the other by taking off with the goods. Taking matters into his own hands, Sonny seeks out his revenge teaming up with the most dangerous mob boss in town to get back what is rightfully his. When he finally comes face to face with his longtime friend he will be forced to make a life changing choice.
Sam Montgomery is a tomboyish, unpopular girl at school. She has been text messaging a somebody named Nomad for a few months and he asks her to meet him at the Halloween dance at 11:00 in the middle of the dance floor. The only problem is, she must get back to the diner, ran by her wicked Stepmom Fiona by 12 sharp because she is not supposed to be there. Before Nomad can found out who she is, she must leave with her best friend, Carter driving her back to the diner. After that night, everything in Sam's life goes wacko!
Shaun and Daz are vibrant kids, wasted by their experience of education. All they have is friendship and Shaun's first love Katy. From the moment Shaun steps into our world he is bound to lose. Labeled as a violent bully he destroys himself and Daz with him. Shaun has twelve years to reflect on an intense summer of love, sex and loyalty. But Daz's imminent death forces Shaun to confront his past.
Mifune's Last Song is a humorous story about a yuppie from Copenhagen who is inconveniently confronted with his represses his past. This film from Kragh-Jacobsen is the third film to be filmed in the Dogma 95 style of filmmaking.
Dutch patriots, a U.S. officer (Jeffrey Hunter) and a British spy (Nigel Patrick) fool the Nazis with a fake Soho film company.
During a fictional series of Big Brother, a zombie outbreak occurs, but the house-mates are unaware of the impending doom outside of the Big Brother House.
The lives of the residents of a small French town are changed when thousands of the recently dead inexplicably come back to life and try to integrate themselves into society that has changed for them.
A political thriller steeped in illegal oil trading, the Russian Mafia, and governmental cover-ups.
Swedish efficiency researchers come to Norway for a study of Norwegian men, to optimize their use of their kitchen. Folke Nilsson (Tomas Norström) is assigned to study the habits of Isak Bjørvik (Joachim Calmeyer). By the rules of the research institute, Folke has to sit on an umpire's chair in Isak's kitchen and observe him from there, but never talk to him. Isak stops using his kitchen and observes Folke through a hole in the ceiling instead. However, the two lonely men slowly overcome the initial post-war Norwegian-Swede distrust and become friends.
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.
Hazel suffers from a crippling case of agoraphobia. So much so that it causes a rift between her and her mother, Dee. Hazel and her mother decide to go on a road trip to a desert facility to help Hazel deal with her fear but when gunmen and brothers Jesse and Pru attack them, Hazel has to battle her fears so she and her mother can survive.
During the campaign for reelection, the crooked politician Paul Madvig decides to clean up his past, refusing the support of the gangster Nick Varna and associating to the respectable reformist politician Ralph Henry. When Ralph's son, Taylor Henry, a gambler and the lover of Paul's sister Opal, is murdered, Paul's right arm, Ed Beaumont, finds his body on the street. Nick uses the financial situation of The Observer to force the publisher Clyde Matthews to use the newspaper to raise the suspicion that Paul Madvig might have killed Taylor.
A test pilot and his weather observer develop a "robot" control so airplanes can be flown without pilots, but enemy agents get wind of it and try to steal it or destroy it.
About a filmmaker not only revisiting, but also recreating (not in a conventional sense) one of his first films, The Perfect Human / Det perfekte menneske (1967)
A man wakes up deep inside a cave. Suffering amnesia, he has no recollection of how he came to be here or of what happened to the man whose body he finds beside him. Tailed by a mysterious creature, he must continue through this strange and fantastic world. Enclosed, Tolbiac has no other option to reach the surface than to use REZO ZERO, secret observing cells in this cemetery-like abandoned mine.
The gruesome death of a prostitute brings suspicion on one of her clients, James Wayland, a brilliant, self-destructive and epileptic heir to a textile fortune. So detectives Braxton and Kennesaw take Wayland in for questioning, thinking they can break the man. But despite his troubles, Wayland is a master of manipulation, and during the interrogation, he begins to turn the tables on the investigators, forcing them to reveal their own sinister sides.
After serving jail time for a mysterious crime, Bill and Karl get out of jail and become preoccupied with figuring out who turned them in to the police. On top of that, the "family business" is on the rocks, and the motley crew of criminals who operate out of Down Terrace aren't feeling terribly trusting of one another. It might look like an ordinary house, but at Down Terrace, the walls are closing in..
An old gangster is advised that Freddie Mays would leave jail after thirty years in prison. His mood changes and he recalls when he was a young punk, who joined Freddie Mays' gang, a man he both envied and ultimately betrayed.
The film opens with the angel Cassiel (Otto Sander) standing on the statue of the Angel of Victory overlooking post-Cold War Berlin. Growing ever more despondent over his fate as a mere observer of human life, rather than a vital part of it, Cassiel dreams of "crossing over" to the human world.And he does, as Karl Engel, a man who perhaps knows too much, perhaps like in many of Hitchcock's films, some harmless citizen who gets involved in an affair to which he is not up to. In fact, there is no one as kind and harmless as this newborn citizen of the Earth.We will follow Cassiels's adventures into a "thriller." This story which gets mangled with his own life is about weapons, more precisely about a weapon deal where the weapons - or INSTRUMENTS of violence -- are traded for IMAGES of violence.(Text from Wim Wenders site)
A sergeant must deal with his desires to save the lives of young soldiers being sent to Vietnam. Continuously denied the chance to teach the soldiers about his experiences, he settles for trying to help the son of an old army buddy.
Four 1950's cultural icons (Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio and Senator Joseph MacCarthy) who conceivably could have met and probably didn't, fictionally do in this modern fable of post-WWII America. Visually intriguing, the film has a fluid progression of flash-backs and flash-forwards centering on the fictional Einstein's current observations, childhood memories and apprehensions for the future.
Ample teen Tracy Turnblad wants nothing more than to be on the hip local TV dance program, "The Corny Collins Show" -- and when her dream comes true, her lively moves and bubbly personality meet with unexpected popularity. But after witnessing firsthand the terrible state of race relations in 1960s Baltimore, Turnblad becomes an outspoken advocate for desegregation.
The pilots of a Royal Air Force squadron in World War I face not only physical but mental dangers in their struggle to survive while fighting the enemy.
After a freak accident, an invisible yuppie runs for his life from a treacherous CIA official while trying to cope with his new life.
While escaping from Nazis during the WWII, a Jewish man dug suitcases full of things dear to his heart in the ground two. The war deprived him of his family, and afterwards he endlessly turns over the soil of Antwerp to find the suitcases, which makes him look obsessed. He keeps checking old maps and keeps digging, trying to find, in fact, those he lost. His daughter Chaya is a beautiful modern girl looking for a part-time job. She finds a place as a nanny in the strictly observant Chassidic family with many children, although her secular manners clearly fly in the face of many commandments. One of the reasons she is accepted is that mother of the family is absolutely overburdened by the household, so she stays despite the resistance of the father, normally - an indisputable authority in the family. She develops a special bond with the youngest of the boys, four-year old Simcha, so far incapable of speaking.
A young Chinese boy and girl are sent on a mission to retrieve the 'Glorious 100' - agents who were sent to this planet millennia ago to study and observe.
A movie-theater employee adjusts to a new life after the cinema he worked at for over 25 years is forced to shut down.
Bi-polar mall security guard Ronnie Barnhardt is called into action to stop a flasher from turning shopper's paradise into his personal peep show. But when Barnhardt can't bring the culprit to justice, a surly police detective, is recruited to close the case.
A biopic based on the life story of J.C. Daniel, the pioneer of Malayalam cinema. It is a detailed account on Daniel's life, making of his film Vigathakumaran and the tragic story of Vigathakumaran's heroine P. K. Rosie. The film is particularly based on the novel Nashta Naayika by Vinu Abraham (which details the story of Rosie) and the biography of J. C. Daniel by Chelangatt Gopalakrishnan.
Tunis, 1943. Battle-weary troops of Company C have orders to occupy a derelict Tunisian farmhouse. They are to establish an artillery observation post, reporting on enemy movements before the imminent offensive to liberate Tunis. However German infantrymen discover their operations. The ensuing battle for control of this small piece of land will decide who controls Tunis but more critically, the victors in the battle of democracy versus fascism.
In 1973, the Loud family became a television sensation of a new kind. It was long before a metal rock star showed his eccentric family on the small screen and decades before housewives had screaming matches with each other on camera in public. CINEMA VERITE tells the behind-the-scenes story of the groundbreaking documentary "An American Family," which chronicled the lives of the Louds in the early 1970s and catapulted the Santa Barbara family to notoriety while creating a new television genre: the reality TV series.
"My Father My Lord" is an intimate and deeply disturbing story of the conflict between a father's love and his deep devotion to religion. A respected Orthodox Rabbi dotes on his only son but his religious strictures leave an emotional gap between the impish child and the stern father. When the father's all-consuming obsession with observing religious ritual inadvertently leads to tragedy, his previously subservient wife rages against both her husband and God. A dramatic retelling of the story of Abraham.
Henri Chatelard is well in his forties, owns a restaurant and a cinema in the city, and appreciate women. When he meets Marie, a 18ish stronghead who just lost her father in a small fishermen village, it is not clear who is the hunter and who is the prey.
A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village's theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater's projectionist.
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.
A collective film of 33 shorts directed by different directors about their feeling about cinema.
The story is set in 1962 Louisiana. The big Batiste family is headed by charming doctor Louis. Though he is married to beautiful Roz, he has a weakness for attractive women patients. One day Louis is flirting with married and sexy Metty Mereaux, not knowing that he is observed by his youngest idealistic daughter Eve, who is there by accident. Eve can not forget the incident which is traumatic for her naivete and shares a secret with older sister Cisely. Lies start to roll...
The owner of a failing cinema and his mysterious boarder are caught up in the political intrigue of Argentina.
A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the U.S.-Vietnam War has on his fellow recruits from their brutal boot camp training to the bloody street fighting in Hue.
A rare gem of cinematic storytelling that weaves docudrama, fictional reenactment, and experimental photography into a powerful, reflective work on the early days of German cinema.
Aaranya Kaandam (Tamil: ஆரண்ய காண்டம்; English: Jungle chapter; English title: Anima and Persona) is a 2011 Indian Tamil action film, written and directed by newcomer Thiagarajan Kumararaja. It is supposedly the first neo-noir film in Tamil cinema. The story takes place in a day in the lives of the six protagonists, played by Jackie Shroff, Ravi Krishna, Sampath Raj and newcomers [Yasmin Ponnappa], Somasundaram and Master Vasanth. Produced by S. P. B. Charan's Capital Film Works, the film features musical score by Yuvan Shankar Raja and cinematography by P. S. Vinod and editing handled by the duo Praveen K. L. and N. B. Srikanth.
It's 1945, Burma, the day the war is over! For many this means they've survived and will be going home. But not for everyone. A Scottish soldier, Corporal Lachlan "Lachie" MacLachlan is the victim of a wound to the lower back on this day. He's moved to a M.A.S.H. unit and undergoes surgery. As time goes by he begins to recover and watches, in dismay as soldiers pack up and head for home. The doctors have told him he needs to remain "for observation".
A fictionalized account of the lives of 1980s Tamil Nadu political icons M. G. Ramachandran and M. Karunanidhi, continuing the tryst between Tamil cinema and Dravidian politics.
After being brutally murdered, 14-year-old Susie Salmon watches from heaven over her grief-stricken family -- and her killer. As she observes their daily lives, she must balance her thirst for revenge with her desire for her family to heal.
2015 Malayalam thriller film written and directed by Ranjith. It features Mohanlal as Raju and Andrea Jeremiah as Jayanthi in lead roles along with Ajmal Ameer, Siddique, Mythili, Tini Tom, Vijayaraghavan, Renji Panicker and V. K. Prakash in significant roles. The film is produced by Antony Perumbavoor under the banner Aashirvad Cinemas.
While giving a private performance for a visiting monarch, concert pianist Montgomery Royale is deafened when a bomb is detonated in an attempt to assassinate the foreign ruler. With his career over as a result of his injury, Royale returns to New York City with his sister Florence, close friend Mildred Miller, and considerably younger fiancée Grace Blair. After abandoning thoughts of suicide, Montgomery discovers he can lip read, and he spends his days observing people in Central Park from his apartment window. As he learns of people's problems, he tries to help them anonymously. He becomes absorbed in his game of "playing God" but his actions are without sincerity.

© Valossa 2015–2024