The King of Masks (1997)
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Private eye Jake Gittes lives off the murky moral climate of sunbaked, pre-World War II Southern California. Hired by a beautiful socialite to investigate her husband's extra-marital affair, Gittes is swept into a maelstrom of double dealings and deadly deceits, uncovering a web of personal and political scandals that come crashing together.
Teenage lovers Tony (Richard Panebianco) and Tyan-Hwa (Sari Chang) tip the balance of power in New York's Little Italy and Chinatown.
As a corporate auditor who works in a number of different offices, Jonathan McQuarry wanders without an anchor among New York's power brokers. A chance meeting with charismatic lawyer Wyatt Bose leads to Jonathan's introduction to The List, an underground sex club. Jonathan begins an affair with a woman known only as S, who introduces Jonathan to a world of treachery and murder.
Scruffy is a puppy you'll definitely fall in love with. In the tradition of Bambi, Scruffy is an orphan, alone and frightened. Rather than the freedom of the forest, Scruffy must wander the streets of the big city before she makes friends. First there's Joe Tibbles, a street performer who adopts her. Then when Joe suddenly dies, she meets Butch, an unwanted stray with a heart of gold. Scruffy's tale will tug at your heartstrings as you experience with her the hardships of life as a stray.
Set in late 19th century Canton this martial arts film depicts the stance taken by the legendary martial arts hero Wong Fei-Hung (1847-1924) against foreign forces' (English, French and American) plundering of China.
A biplane pilot is saddled with a spoiled industrialist's daughter on a search for her missing father through Asia that eventually involves them in a struggle against a Chinese warlord.
Set in the late 15th century during the reign of King Yeonsan, two male street clowns and tightrope walkers, Jangsaeng (Gam Wu-seong) and Gong-gil (Lee Joon-gi), are part of an entertainer troupe. Their manager prostitutes the beautiful Gong-gil to rich customers, and Jangsaeng is sickened by this practice. After Gong-gil kills the manager in defense of Jangsaeng, the pair flee to Seoul, where they form a new group with three other street performers...
Benito González is a flamboyant engineer in Melilla, with a brash and pushy personality. His dream is to build the tallest building ever in the region. After his girlfriend leaves him, he devotes himself entirely to his ambitions, deciding to let nothing get in his way. He marries the daughter of a billionaire, intending to use her father's money to realise his project. Benito waltzes his way through a career of excess, fetishes and deceptions, but the personal conflicts he unleashes ultimately send his life spiraling down to disaster.
Set in 1930s China, the film details the trials of a group of athletes who desire to compete in the Olympic Games. Thereâs a snag, however. The full amount required to send them abroad for the games is 600,000 dollars, and the government is only sponsoring half. It falls to the athletes to raise the rest themselves, and they start by saving every last penny they earn. They also attempt to raise the money through a variety of fund-raising activities, including street performances, networking for donations, and probably a bake sale, too. After deciding to fund their own way to the games, the athletes take to the streets to perform all manner of athletic demonstrations and martial arts moves in an energetic and impromptu street fair.
Raj Mathur alias Raju lives in picturesque Darjeeling, is a devout Hindu, likes praying to Bhagwan Shri Shiv, studies Engineering, and wants to become rich - at warp speed. He does well in his studies, re-locates to Bombay, where he hopes to live temporarily with one Ram Mohan. Unfortunately, Raju is unable to locate Ram, but the friendly slum dwellers take care of him, feed him, and house him. He meets and falls in love with Renu, and it is she who gets him a job at Chhabria Builders where she works as a Receptionist. Thereafter there is no stopping Raju, as he climbs the ladder of success, and soon not only becomes the Chief Engineer but also finds a place in the heart of the Senior Partner's daughter, Sapna Chhabria.
A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.
Jimmy promises to return to Bombay and become a famous entertainer so that he can exact revenge on Mr. Oberoi for having insulted and imprisoned his mother on false charges. He falls in love with Oberoi's daughter and causes Sam Oberoi's nervous breakdown when he takes over as popular disco dancer. Oberoi, in an attempt to get rid of Jimmy, accidentally kills his mother, and Jimmy is devastated and unable to perform. Will he rise above the tragedy, sing again, and avenge his mother's death?
All her life Englishwoman Gladys Aylward knew that China was the place where she belonged. Not qualified to be sent there as a missionary, Gladys works as a domestic to earn the money to send herself to a poor, remote village. There she eventually lives a full and happy life: running the inn, acting as "foot inspector", advising the local Mandarin and even winning the heart of mixed race Captain Lin Nan. But Gladys discovers her real destiny when the country is invaded by Japan and the Chinese children need her to save their lives. Based on a true story.
US Army Staff Sergeant Wesley Kent returns from the war abroad and must now fight the threat of corruption and deception in his hometown at all personal costs.
Based in Delhi's Chandni Chowk, orphaned Sidhu is adopted by the owner of Bajrang Bali Parathas, known simply as Dada. Years later Sidhu has grown up and is an expert at slicing vegetables.
Davis and Rains shine in a romantic melodrama set in the world of concert music. Davis is a pianist torn between her wealthy, jealous patron and her cellist husband.
An offbeat romantic comedy about a silver-painted street performer and the soft spoken zoo worker who falls for him.
A man in priestly robes, seemingly the long-awaited Father O'Shea, arrives at a little-frequented Catholic mission in 1947 China. Though the man seems curiously uncomfortable with his priestly duties, his tough tactics prove very successful in the Seven Villages, as around them China disintegrates in civil war and revolution. But he has a secret, and his friendship with mission nurse Anne (an attractive war widow) seems to be taking on an unpriestly tone.
A veteran grifter takes a young, attractive woman under his wing, but things get complicated when they become romantically involved.
In a hill city of war-torn China, the American mission hospital is run by Dr. Gray Thompson and Dr. Sara Durand, who secretly loves him. Then Gray comes back from the USA with new equipment ...and new wife Louise, who is jealous of Sara, shows herself a coward in the first Japanese air raid, and wants to take Gray back to the States. Others have similar troubles; and Japanese prisoner Colonel Yasuda manipulates them for his own ends.
Parole officer Jack Mabry (Robert De Niro) has only a few weeks left before retirement and wishes to finish out the cases he's been assigned. One such case is that of Gerald "Stone" Creeson (Edward Norton), a convicted arsonist who is up for parole. Jack is initially reluctant to indulge Stone in the coarse banter he wishes to pursue and feels little sympathy for the prisoner's pleads for an early release. Seeing little hope in convincing Jack himself, Stone arranges for his wife Lucetta (Milla Jovovich) to seduce the officer, but motives and intentions steadily blur amidst the passions and buried secrets of the corrupted players in this deadly game of deception.
Less tells the story of Finn Norman, a renegade artist who has severed all ties with his past to make his home on the streets. Living off what others throw away, Finnâs quest for a life free from attachment is threatened by his growing connections with a painfully shy cafe girl and a grizzled street performer.
Shortly before Pearl Harbor, American opportunist Jones and partner Johnny are in China to sell oil to the invading Japanese army. Cynical about the sufferings of the Chinese, Jones meets compassionate teacher Carolyn Grant while travelling cross-country to Shanghai. Sparks fly between these strong-willed characters, neither budging an inch. But when Jones witnesses a Japanese atrocity, his feelings toward his customers (and Carolyn) begin to change...
Bounty hunters seek shelter from a raging blizzard and get caught up in a plot of betrayal and deception.
Set against Paris' oldest bridge, the Pont Neuf, while it was closed for repairs, this film is a love story between two young vagrants: Alex, a would be circus performer addicted to alcohol and sedatives and Michele, a painter driven to a life on the streets because of a failed relationship and an affliction which is slowly turning her blind.
Keld is in a rut. His wife of 25 years has left him. For sustenance, he eats his way through the menu at the local Chinese takeaway. The owner talks him into a marriage of convenience with his sister from China and the unplanned-for happens. A delicate romance blossoms between these two damaged, fragile individuals, but a secret gives their relationship a fateful twist. A subtle and touching story of life's diversity.
A Nazi propaganda film based upon the life and death of Hitler Youth Heini Volker, killed while distributing flyers in a Communist neighborhood.
An unsuspecting wife of a power hungry husband, is driven to madness by his deception.
Unbeknownst to him, a soldier is sent on a doomed mission because of the high likelihood of him divulging secrets if captured and tortured.
Young Remi, a foundling, lives on the farm run by his impoverished foster parents. When their money runs out, unbeknown to his foster-mother, Rémi is sold by his hard-hearted foster father to an old street performer named Vitalis. Vitalis was once a famous opera singer, but became destitute after a tragic love affair.
Utaâs mother died when she was six years old; her father she never met. She was forced to adopt a travellerâs life when her grandmother died, and now she is a dancer and part of a family of actors who travel from town to town, setting up street performances. A way of escape from this marginal existence arises when she gets the chance to move to tea merchant Hiramatsuâs place, where she is asked to teach his daughter to dance.
Iron and Silk is a 1990 movie based on the eponymous book by American writer Mark Salzman. It details his journey to China after college to study Chinese wu shu, better known in the west as kung fu, and to teach English. Though not trained as an actor, Salzman starred as himself, as did Pan Qingfu, who claimed no one else could portray him on film. Salzman's experiences occurred in Changsha, Hunan, though the film was shot in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. (Wikipedia)
The Soong family was a political dynasty in China that reached the highest levels of power. This film follows the lives of the three Soong daughters, who were educated in America and returned to China. Ai-ling (the oldest) married a wealthy and powerful businessman. Ching-ling married Sun Yat-sen, the revolutionary founder of modern China. Mei-ling (the youngest) married Chiang Kai-shek, China's l
Yale University, 1961. Stanley Milgram designs a psychology experiment that still resonates to this day, in which people think theyâre delivering painful electric shocks to an affable stranger strapped into a chair in another room. Despite his pleads for mercy, the majority of subjects donât stop the experiment, administering what they think is a near-fatal electric shock, simply because theyâve been told to do so. With Nazi Adolf Eichmannâs trial airing in living rooms across America, Milgram strikes a nerve in popular culture and the scientific community with his exploration into peopleâs tendency to comply with authority. Celebrated in some circles, he is also accused of being a deceptive, manipulative monster, but his wife Sasha stands by him through it all.
Francesca, a seventeen-year-old Roman, is finally sure she has found love. Almost sure. She spends the day observing other lovers' behaviors and considering whether she is ready to jump. Her age notwithstanding, this movie is more about coming of age than about improper or illegal romantic relationships.
Two Korean ex-pats in Paris are recruited by a French mobster. The duo find themselves at war with their mobster recruiters and each other.
An American attorney on business in China, ends up wrongfully on trial for murder and his only key to innocence is a female defense lawyer from the country.
Two amiable samurai wind up on opposite sides of the vendetta between Lord Asano's retainers and the family of Lord Kira that led to the famous revenge of the 47 Ronin.
A young priest, Father Chisholm is sent to China to establish a Catholic parish among the non-Christian Chinese. While his boyhood friend, also a priest, flourishes in his calling as a priest in a more Christian area of the world, Father Chisholm struggles. He encounters hostility, isolation, disease, poverty and a variety of set backs which humble him, but make him more determined than ever to succeed.
The story of an orphan girl, brought up in naive, rustic innocence by an elderly relative, who is suddenly exposed to the brutality, greed and deceptiveness of the outside world when her grandmother dies. Notwithstanding her healthy distrust of all strangers, which her upbringing instilled in her, it is not long before a cunning racketeer finds her weak point, that temptation which she cannot resist, that weakness, different as it may be, that each of us has, and brings her into his power. What follows is a depiction of her cruel descent into the depths of moral decay, as she becomes a collaborator in a system of exploitation, unbridled lust, vanity, and greed, in which she and other victims are always the losers.
Emily Lindstrom, 14, is an aspiring concert violinist; she's spending the summer practicing for a big audition while her girlfriends are at camp. She's also got a thriving neighborhood business: for 50 cents, she'll keep your secret. Her mother is very pregnant, and her parents seem more concerned about the new baby than anything Emily cares about. A new family moves in next door; their son, Philip, 12, becomes Emily's friend. Eventually, the weight of Emily's secrets - her own, the ones she's keeping professionally, and a secret Philip tells her, send her life temporarily crashing down.
The Annunciation (in Hungarian: Angyali üdvözlet) is a Hungarian film directed by András Jeles in 1984, based on The Tragedy of Man (1861) by Imre Madách. When Adam (Péter Bocsor) and Eve (Júlia MérÅ), having succumbed to Lucifer's temptation, are cast out of the Garden of Eden, Adam holds Lucifer (Eszter Gyalog) to his promise, reminding him that "You said I would know everything!". So Lucifer grants Adam a dream of the world to come. And what a bizarre dream: Adam becomes Miltiades in Athens; a knight called Tancred in Byzantium; Kepler in Prague; Danton in revolutionary Paris; and a nameless suitor in Victorian London. Guided by a deceptively sweet but ultimately contemptuous Lucifer, Adam confronts an endless procession of the horror of the human story ... rapists and concubines, betrayal and savagery, mindless cruelty and fanaticism.
An aviator ignores skeptics to make the first commercial flight from San Francisco to China.
A street performer, is chased by a rich and young film star coming to his home in her Mercedes SL. Her name is Ple and she likes older men. Getting interest from Ple is like a dream for Dang as he has been single since his wife died 10 years ago but he tries to abuse the situation. Meanwhile the reality is mixed with his own dreams. In his dreams, he is a film star. He is navigating between dream and reality not knowing which one is true. Dang behaves badly in his dreams when he is a film star.
Amid a revolution in a South American mining outpost, a band of fugitives - a roguish adventurer, a local hooker, a priest, an aging diamond miner and his deaf-mute daughter - are forced to flee for their lives into the jungle. Starving, exhausted and stripped of their old identities, they wander desperately lured by one deceptive promise of salvation after another.
Cléo is a pop singer who wanders around Paris while she awaits her biopsy results in fear she may have cancer. As Cléo readies herself to meet with her doctor at 7 o'clock, she meets with several friends and strangers while trying to grapple with mortality. Sensing indifference from those nearest to her, she finds herself questioning the doll-like image people have of her and is overcome by a feeling of solitude and helplessness. She finally finds some comfort in the company of stranger she meets in a park and with whom she is able to have a sincere conversation.
A young man is plunged into a life of subterfuge, deceit and mistaken identity in pursuit of a femme fatale whose heart is never quite within his grasp
The Journey is a cross-continental story that explores the idea of culture, not just as tradition but as an expression of love. When Bee (Yew) returns to Malaysia for the first time in a decade - she introduces her conservative father Uncle Chuan (Lee) to her happy-go-lucky British fiancé, Benji (Pfeiffer). With Benji's lack of cultural understanding and comprehension of Chinese traditions, Chuan opposes their marriage. Unexpected circumstances ensue, and Chuan reluctantly submits to their union, on the condition that their wedding adheres to Chinese tradition. Part of that tradition is that Chuan must invite all of his childhood friends personally. So the quintessential odd couple, Benji and Chuan, embark on a cross country adventure to deliver the invitations. Despite language barriers and initial hesitation from both parties, the two men come to realize that their priorities are essentially one and the same.
Bruno Stroszek is released from prison and warned to stop drinking. He has few skills and fewer expectations: with a glockenspiel and an accordion, he ekes out a living as a street musician. He befriends Eva, a prostitute down on her luck and they join his neighbor, Scheitz, an elderly eccentric, when he leaves Germany to live in Wisconsin.
Based loosely on the real-life story of the World War I spy. The exotic dancer uses her contacts in European high society, along with her seductive charm, to collect military secrets during the war. She successfully plays both sides against each other until at last her deceptions catch up with her.
This melodrama investigates the life of a prostitute in a pseudo-documentary style.
Far from home in the lush bamboo forests of China, ten-year-old Ryan Tyler, with the help of a young girl, goes on a wonderful journey to rescue a baby panda taken by poachers.
In a daring robbery, some $300,000 is taken from the Italian mob. Several mafiosi are killed, as are two policemen. Lt. Pope and Mattelli are two New York City cops trying to break the case. Three small-time criminals are on the run with the money. Will the mafia catch them first, or will the police? Written by Ken Miller
A woman married to the brutal and infertile owner of a dye mill in rural China conceives a boy with her husband's nephew but is forced to raise her son as her husband's heir without revealing his parentage in this circular tragedy. Filmed in glowing technicolour, this tale of romantic and familial love in the face of unbreakable tradition is more universal than its setting.
A traveling strongman, Zampano, repays the death of Rosa, his assistant, by offering the same job to little sister Gelsomina, whose mother receives compensation in return.
The wife of a doctor in China falls in love with a diplomat.
The adventures and deceptions of a photographer who travels through the small villages of Sicily pretending that he is working for the big film studios in Rome.
This takes place several years before Cruel Intentions, back to when Kathryn first meets Sebastian, their sexual attraction to each other and their enjoyment in destroying the lives of their peers.
Dennis Carson has lived in Indochina all his life, only leaving his rubber plantation for an occasional fling in Saigon. His new surveyor, Gary Willis, and his wife Barbara arrive just as Vantine, a prostitute who has been lying low at the plantation is leaving. Vantine is in love with Dennis, whom she calls "Fred," but he only thinks of her as a pleasant diversion. Dennis is annoyed that Gary has brought his wife. Barbara is shocked and contemptuous of Dennis until he nurses Gary back to health after an attack of malaria.
Rags follows the story of Charlie Prince, an orphan living with his acerbic and unloving stepfather and spoiled, simple-minded stepbrothers. Charlie's dream is to be a singer, and while he is vocally talented and can write music, he can't seem to catch a break. Kadee Worth, on the other hand, is the daughter of music mogul Reginald Worth and is an international pop phenomenon. While the world knows her as a glamorous superstar, she is secretly frustrated with singing other people's songs and wearing clothes other people choose for her. Kadee wants the world to hear and see her true talent. Despite every obstacle that gets thrown in their way, once Charlie and Kadee find one another, they each finally get what they have been looking for â a voice, a stage, an audience and each other.
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