The Seventh Seal. The film is considered a major classic of world cinema. It established Bergman as a world-renowned director and contains scenes which have become iconic through parodies and homages. Synopsis[edit] Disillusioned knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) and his nihilistic squire Jöns (Gunnar Björnstrand) return after fighting in the Crusades and find Sweden being ravaged by the plague. On the beach immediately after their arrival, Block encounters Death (Bengt Ekerot), personified as a pale, black-cowled figure resembling a monk.
Block, in the middle of a chess game he has been playing alone, challenges Death to a chess match, believing that he can forestall his demise as long as the game continues. Death agrees, and they start a new game. The other characters in the story do not see Death, and when the chess board comes out at various times in the story, they believe Block is continuing his habit of playing alone. Block and Jöns head for Block's castle. Raval reappears. Cast[edit] Meshes of the Afternoon. Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) is a short experimental film directed by wife-and-husband team, Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid. The film's narrative is circular and repeats several motifs, including a flower on a long driveway, a key falling, a door unlocked, a knife in a loaf of bread, a mysterious Grim Reaper–like cloaked figure with a mirror for a face, a phone off the hook and an ocean. Through creative editing, distinct camera angles, and slow motion, the surrealist film depicts a world in which it is more and more difficult to catch reality.
In 1990, Meshes of the Afternoon was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", going into the registry in the second year of voting. Plot[edit] A woman sees someone on the street as she is walking back to her home. She goes to her room and sleeps on a chair. Background and production[edit] The original print had no score. La jetee movie. Boxing Helena. Boxing Helena is a 1993 romantic drama thriller film and the debut feature film by Jennifer Chambers Lynch, daughter of David Lynch.[3] The film stars Julian Sands and Sherilyn Fenn as Helena.[4] Plot[edit] Nick Cavanaugh (Julian Sands) is a lonely Atlanta surgeon obsessed with a woman named Helena (Sherilyn Fenn).
After she is injured in a grievous hit-and-run motor vehicle accident in front of his home, he kidnaps and treats her in his house surreptitiously, amputating both of her legs. Later, he amputates her healthy arms as well. Though Helena is the victim of Nick's kidnapping and mutilation, she dominates the dialogue with her constant ridiculing of him for all of his shortcomings. Eventually, Cavanaugh's actions are discovered by one of Helena's former co-workers. Cast[edit] Sherilyn Fenn as Helena[5]Julian Sands as Dr. Production[edit] Critical reception[edit] Boxing Helena currently holds a 19% "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 31 reviews.[15] Music[edit] See also[edit] Mean Streets. Mean Streets is a 1973 crime film directed by Martin Scorsese and co-written by Scorsese and Mardik Martin.
The film stars Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro. It was released by Warner Bros. on October 2, 1973. De Niro won the National Society of Film Critics award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as John "Johnny Boy" Civello. In 1997, Mean Streets was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot[edit] Charlie (Harvey Keitel) is a young Italian-American man who is trying to move up in the local New York Mafia but is hampered by his feeling of responsibility towards his reckless friend, Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro), a small-time gambler who owes money to many loan sharks. Charlie is torn between his devout Catholicism and his Mafia ambitions. Cast[edit] Production[edit] Once the financing was in place, Scorsese began to recruit his cast. Reception[edit] A Lizard in a Woman's Skin. A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (Italian: Una lucertola con la pelle di donna; released as Schizoid in the US) is a 1971 Italian giallo film directed by Lucio Fulci.
Set in London, the film follows Carol Hammond (Florinda Bolkan), the daughter of a respected politician, who experiences a series of vivid, psychedelic nightmares consisting of depraved sex orgies and LSD use. In the dream she commits a graphic murder and awakes to a real life criminal investigation into the murder of her neighbour. Plot[edit] Carol Hammond (Bolkan) is the daughter of a wealthy lawyer and politician named Edmund Brighton (Leo Genn). Her husband Frank (Jean Sorel) is a lawyer working for Brighton's practice.
They all live together in a large apartment with Joan (Edy Gall), Frank's teenage daughter from a previous marriage. Carol has been visiting a psychoanalyst (George Rigaud) because of a string of disturbing dreams she's been having featuring her decadent neighbor, Julia Durer (Anita Strindberg). Sunset Boulevard (film) Sunset Boulevard — stylized onscreen as SUNSET BLVD. — is a 1950 American film noir directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, and produced and co-written by Charles Brackett. It was named after the boulevard that runs through Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, California. The film stars William Holden as Joe Gillis, an unsuccessful screenwriter, and Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, a faded silent movie star who draws him into her fantasy world where she dreams of making a triumphant return to the screen, with Erich von Stroheim as Max Von Mayerling, her butler and first husband.
Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Lloyd Gough and Jack Webb play supporting roles. Director Cecil B. DeMille and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper play themselves, and the film includes cameo appearances by leading silent film actors Buster Keaton, H. Six months earlier, down-on-his-luck screenwriter Joe tries persuading Paramount Pictures producer Sheldrake to buy a script. Norma sends her script to close friend Cecil B. Blood Diner. Plot[edit] Two brothers, Michael Tutman (Rick Burks) and George Tutman (Carl Crew) are brainwashed by their serial killer uncle Anwar Namtut (Drew Godderis) into completing his task of resurrecting the Ancient Lumerian goddess Sheetar (Tanya Papanicolas). Their mission is given to them once they resurrect him from his grave. Anwar Namtut is from then on a brain in a mason jar that commands the brothers. In order to complete their mission, the brothers must collect different body parts from many immoral women, stitch them together, and then call forth the goddess at a "blood buffet" with a virgin to sacrifice ready for her to eat.
The brothers choose women for their "blood buffet" from those that enter into their wildly popular vegetarian restaurant. Meanwhile, two mismatched detectives (LaNette LaFrance and Roger Dauer) work together to try to track them down before more carnage can ensue. Cast[edit] Release[edit] References[edit] External links[edit] The Tenant. Plot summary[edit] Trelkovsky (Roman Polanski), a quiet and unassuming man, rents an apartment in Paris whose previous tenant, Egyptologist Simone Choule, attempted to commit suicide by throwing herself out the window and through a pane of glass below. He visits Choule in the hospital but finds her entirely in bandages and unable to talk. Whilst still at Choule's bedside, Trelkovsky meets Simone's friend, Stella (Isabelle Adjani), who has also come to visit.
Stella begins talking to Simone, who becomes aware of her visitors. Trelkovsky becomes severely agitated and enraged when his apartment is robbed, while his neighbors and the concierge (Shelley Winters) continue to berate him for making too much noise. At night he is hit by an elderly couple driving a car. The end of the movie is enigmatic. Cast[edit] Production notes[edit] Decoration was designed by Pierre Guffroy, the costumes by Jacques Schmidt. Reception[edit] References[edit] External links[edit] Dark City (1998 film) Dark City is a 1998 neo-noir science fiction film directed by Alex Proyas. It was adapted from a screenplay written by Proyas, David S. Goyer and Lem Dobbs. The film stars Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, and William Hurt. Sewell plays John Murdoch, a man suffering from amnesia who finds himself accused of murder. Murdoch attempts to discover his true identity to clear his name while on the run from the police and a mysterious group known only as the "Strangers".[3] The majority of the film was shot at Fox Studios Australia.
Following its screening in wide release, the film was nominated for the Hugo and Saturn Awards. John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) awakens in a hotel bathtub, suffering from amnesia. Eventually Murdoch learns his real name, and finds he has a wife named Emma (Jennifer Connelly). Murdoch explores the city, where it is perpetually night. The Strangers bring Murdoch to their home beneath the city and force Dr. After learning from Dr. Fantastic Planet. Plot[edit] In the future, human beings – called "Oms" (a homonym of the French-language word Hommes, meaning humans) – live on the Draags' home planet. The Draags are humanoid in shape but a hundred times larger than humans and have longer life spans. While Draags keep some Oms as pets, they see other Oms as pests to be exterminated. A group of Draag children accidentally kill an Om woman during play. Her orphaned infant is taken in by an adult Draag as a pet for his child, Tiva. Many Draag children have Om pets, but the bond created Tiva and the Om child named Terr (word play on the French word Terre, meaning Earth) deepens over time.
Terr eventually discovers a tribe of wild Oms and, after some tribulation, is accepted into it. The humans survive Draag attempts to de-Omize them by using organized shelters, but the Draags' updated technologies become ever more aggressive. Cast[edit] Themes[edit] It is considered one of the first examples of film which introduce the theme of speciesism. 8½ I Vitelloni. I Vitelloni (Italian pronunciation: [i vitelˈloni]) is a 1953 Italian comedy-drama directed by Federico Fellini from a screenplay by Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, and Tullio Pinelli.
The film launched the career of Alberto Sordi, one of post-war Italy's most significant and popular comedians, who stars with Franco Fabrizi and Franco Interlenghi in a story of five young Italian men at crucial turning points in their small town lives.[1] Recognized as a pivotal work in the director's artistic evolution, the film has distinct autobiographical elements that mirror important societal changes in 1950s Italy.[2] Recipient of both the Venice Film Festival Silver Lion in 1953, and an Academy Award nomination for Best Writing in 1958,[3] the film's success restored Fellini's reputation after the commercial failure of The White Sheik (1952). Plot[edit] As summer draws to a close, a violent downpour interrupts a beach-side beauty pageant in a provincial town on the Adriatic coast. Cast[edit] Writing[edit] Carnival of Souls. Harvey was a director and producer of industrial and educational films based in Lawrence, Kansas, where he worked for the Centron Corporation.
While returning to Kansas after shooting a Centron film in California, Harvey developed the idea for Carnival of Souls after driving past the abandoned Saltair Pavilion in Salt Lake City, Utah. Hiring an unknown actress, Lee Strasberg-trained Candace Hilligoss, and otherwise employing mostly local talent, he shot Carnival of Souls in three weeks on location in Lawrence and Salt Lake City. Plot[edit] Mary emerges from the river after the accident. Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) is riding in a car with two other young women when some men challenge them to a drag race. As they speed across a bridge, the women's car plunges over the side into the river. Mary then drives to Utah, where she has been hired as a church organist. The Man appears in the car window. In town, Mary rents a room from Mrs. The Man approaches Mary while she is in a trance. Lost Highway (film) Lynch conceived Lost Highway after the critical and commercial disappointment of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), a film adaptation and follow-up to the widely successful cult television series Twin Peaks.
Despite receiving mixed reviews upon release, the film has developed a cult following. Fred Madison, a Los Angeles saxophonist, receives a message from an unknown man on the intercom of the front door of his house saying, "Dick Laurent is dead. " When he looks out his window the streets outside his house are empty and faint police sirens are heard in the distance. Fred then plays his saxophone at a nightclub that night, but his wife Renee does not join him. That evening, Fred and Renee go to a party held by Andy, a friend of Renee. One morning, during a routine cell check, the prison guards are shocked to find that the man in Fred's cell is not Fred. The next day, Mr. Lost Highway incorporates the last film performances of Blake, Jack Nance and Richard Pryor. Inland Empire (film) Inland Empire was named the second-best film of 2007 (tied with two others) by Cahiers du cinéma,[4] and listed among Sight & Sound's "thirty best films of the 2000s", as well as The Guardian 's "10 most underrated movies of the decade".[5] The main plot follows an actress named Nikki Grace (Dern), who has applied for a comeback role as Sue in a film entitled On High in Blue Tomorrows.
The day before the audition, Nikki is visited by an enigmatic old woman from Poland (Zabriskie) who says she is her neighbor; she predicts that Nikki will get the role, and recounts two Polish folk tales. One tells of a boy who, sparking a reflection after passing through a doorway, "caused evil to be born. " The other tells of a girl who, wandering through an alleyway behind a marketplace, "discovers a palace. " Some time later, Nikki and her co-star Devon Berk (Theroux) receive an interview on a talk show. At this point, the film takes a drastic stylistic turn.
Zoran Samardzija, 2010[17] Mulholland drive. Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. Death Bed: The Bed That Eats is a 1977 low-budget American horror film written, produced, and directed by George Barry; it was his only feature. Plot[edit] A large, black, four-poster bed, possessed by a demon, is passed from owner to owner. Long ago, a demon in the form of a tree became a breeze and seemingly fell in love with a woman he blew past. The demon then took human form and conjured up a bed. Breakfast[edit] A young couple trespass into the building where the bed is located and try to make love to each other only for the bed to devour them.
Lunch[edit] Three women come visit the house only to find that it is all gone without a trace except for the part containing the bed. Dinner[edit] Just Desserts[edit] The man suggests attempting to rescue the last woman to be swallowed by the bed and tries to cut into it with a knife only to get his hands digested, leaving him with only bones for hands. Release[edit] In popular culture[edit] External links[edit]