Bitter Sugar (1996)
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A British mercenary arrives in pre-Revolution Cuba to help train the corrupt General Batista's army against Castro's guerrillas while he also romances a former lover now married to an unscrupulous plantation owner.
An American professional gambler named Jack Weil (Redford) decides to visit Havana, Cuba to gamble. On the boat to Havana, he meets Roberta Duran (Olin), the wife of a revolutionary, Arturo (Julia). Shortly after their arrival, Arturo is taken away by the secret police, and Roberta is captured and tortured. Jack frees her, but she continues to support the revolution.
This Sequel to Dirty Dancing stars a hot young cast and has a sizzling style and rhythm all of its own. In pre-revolution Cuba, Katey Miller (Romola Garai - Vanity Fair) is about to defy everyone`s expectations. Instead of a parent-approved suitor (Jonathan Jackson - Tuck Everlasting), Katey is drawn to the sexy Javier, a waiter who spends his nights dancing in Havana`s nightclubs. And as Katey secretly learns to dance with Javier, she learns the meanings of love, sensuality and independence. Also starring January Jones (American Wedding), Mika Boorem (Sleepover) and Grammy Award-winning singer Mya.
China Valdes joins the Cuban underground after her brother is killed by the chief of the secret police, Ariete. She meets and falls in love with American expatriate Tony Fenner. Tony develops a plan to tunnel under the city's cemetery to a plot owned by a high official, assassinate him, and blow up the whole Cuban hierarchy at the ensuing state funeral. Together with a band of dedicated revolutionaries, they begin digging.
The movie narrates the story of David Carr, an unemployed worker and member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. In 1936 he decides to fight for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, an anti-fascist coalition of liberals, communists and anarchists. Similar to George Orwell's experiences documented in Homage to Catalonia, he joins the POUM worker militia and witnesses first hand the betrayal of the Spanish revolution by the Stalinists, loyal only to the dictat of Moscow.
This movie tells the true story of John Reed, a radical American journalist around the time of World War I. He soon meets Louise Bryant, a respectable married woman, who dumps her husband for Reed and becomes an important feminist and radical in her own right. After involvement with labor and political disputes in the US, they go to Russia in time for the October Revolution in 1917, when the Communists siezed power. Inspired, they return to the US, hoping to lead a similar revolution. A particularly fascinating aspect of the movie is the inclusion of interviews with "witnesses", the real-life surviving participants in the events of the movie.
In America it frequently shows under the title Hey Babu Riba. In 1985, four middle-aged Yugoslav emigres return to Belgrade for the funeral of Mariana, their beautiful compatriot. They called her Esther, for Esther Williams, she was the coxswain for their four-man rowing team, and they each loved her. They'd last seen her in 1953, when they rowed her across the Adriatic, pregnant, to join her exiled father in Italy. In flashbacks we learn the story of their youthful baptism into sex, smoking, rock and roll (Hey Ba-ba-re-bop), Hollywood and Swedish films, blue jeans on the black market, and their rivalry with Ristic, the Communist Party youth leader for whom they had instant antipathy.
A New York writer on sex and love is finally getting married to her Mr. Big. But her three best girlfriends must console her after one of them inadvertently leads Mr. Big to jilt her.
Two young couples using anonymous sex as a catalyst to fix their troubled relationships must rethink what makes a connection work.
The friendship between two children is threatened by their parentsâ differences. Malú is from a family that was upper-class before the Revolution and remains well-to-do through remittances from relatives overseas, and her single mother (Larisa Vega Alamar) does not want her to play with Jorgito, as she thinks his background coarse and commonplace. Jorgitoâs mother (Luisa MarÃa Jiménez RodrÃguez),
Maggie, an alluring free spirit who won't let anyone - or anything - tie her down. But she meets her match in Jamie, whose relentless and nearly infallible charm serve him well with the ladies and in the cutthroat world of pharmaceutical sales. Maggie and Jamie's evolving relationship takes them both by surprise, as they find themselves under the influence of the ultimate drug: love.
Alaipayuthey (Tamil: à®
லà¯à®ªà®¾à®¯à¯à®¤à¯) (Jumping Waves / compared to tempting or fickle mind in Tamil) is an 2000 Indian, Tamil language film directed by Mani Ratnam. Starring R. Madhavan and Shalini, the film explores the tensions of married life and the maturing of love. The film's score and soundtrack are composed by film composer A. R. Rahman. Alaipayuthey's story is mostly recollected in flashbacks by the character Karthik. Karthik and Shakti fall in love against the backdrop of Madras and its suburban trains, against the wishes of their parents. The movie was well received by critics and did well at the Tamil and Telugu box-offices primarily for its music and realistic portrayal of romance and married life.
A Muslim fundamentalist in New York kidnaps a liberal Muslim scholar with intent to kill. A closeted lesbian in New Delhi kidnaps her activist bisexual lover with intent to marry. The resulting torture and violence evokes a brutal struggle of identities against unfreedom.
A guy's life is turned around by an email, which includes the names of everyone he's had sex with and ever will have sex with. His situation gets worse when he encounters a femme fatale (Ryder) who targets men guilty of sex crime.
A young woman is on trial for murder. In flashback, we learn of her struggles to overcome poverty as a teenager -- a mistaken arrest and prison term for shoplifting and lack of employment lead to involvement with gangsters. In a brothel, she meets a young lawyer, scion of a wealthy and prestigious family, who falls for her and helps her turn around her life. But her past catches up with her, and she must face the music rather than cause him scandal.
Ben Stiller plays comedy writer Jerry Stahl, whose $6000-a-week heroin habit had him taking his infant daughter along on his drug runs and doing smack during TV script conferences. Departing detox, Stahl explores memories with survivor Kitty, who listens patiently to Stahl's flashback. Other women in Stahl's life are his British wife Sandra and his agent Vola.
While searching for his fiancee Ritsuko, Sakutarou rediscovers through flashbacks the void deep within him caused by the events from his high school days.
Young Park Seol-Hee is eagerly planning her wedding to a young anti-Communist activist when the North Koreans invade. Her fiancé is forced to flee, leaving her behind with her family in their tiny, rural South Korean village. Rather than resist the North Korean regiment that comes to occupy the area, the townspeople (to Seol-Hee's dismay) decide to cooperate with them in order to ensure their own survival. The North Koreans, however, turn out not to be all that Seol-Hee expected. She soon realizes that there is a history between her family and that of the regiment's leader, Lieutenant Kim Jeong-woong. In between the hilarious day to day antics of Seol-Hee's eccentric family and the hard realities of war, the attachment between Seol-Hee and Jeong-woong grows. As the occupation continues, Jeong-woong becomes torn between trying to follow the increasingly harsh orders from his general and protecting the people that he has come to love and care for so much.
In this family saga, Mrs. Parkington recounts the story of her life, beginning as a hotel maid in frontier Nevada where she is swept off her feet by mine owner and financier Augustus Parkington. He moves them to New York, tries to remake her into a society woman, and establishes their home among the wealthiest of New York's high society. Family and social life is not always peaceful, however, and she guides us, in flashbacks, through the rises and falls of the Parkington family fortunes.
Prompted by the death of his father and the grief of his mother, a man recalls the story of how they met in flashback.
In the post Spanish civil war years, Catalan kids would sit in circles among the ruins and tell stories, known as "aventis" (the film's original title in Catalan, its original language). These tales mix war stories, local gossip, comic book characters, fantasy and real events. The "aventis" told in this film are told in flashback. In the mid 80s, 45 or so years after the age of the "aventis," a doctor and a nurse-nun (who grew up together, and now are co-workers in a hospital) identify the corpse of one of the main characters of the "aventis" of their childhood and adolescence. Besides the interesting flashbacks - a chronical of the Civil War in a "typical" Barcelona microcosm itself, the discovery of this body (belonging to someone long presumed dead) leads to other surprises and unresolved doubts, several decades later.
They meet and they make love. They live together and they make love. Dong-Ki has one night stand with Shin-Ah, a woman who has hardly any faith in true love but indulge herself in sex. Shacking up and making love with each other day in and day out, these two young persons, however, find themselves argue about tiny little things and soon they grow tired of each other. Separation, nevertheless, makes Dong-Ki realize that he has already found the love of his life and a marriage proposal is his next step. Shin-Ah, on the other hand, has no intention to settle down...
The film begins in a flashback from the titular character, Antoine. We are introduced to his fixation with female hairdressers which began at a young age. The film uses flashbacks throughout and there are frequent parallels drawn with the past. We are unsure what Antoine has done with his life, however we know he has fulfilled his childhood ambition, to marry a haidresser.
In Havana, Cuba in the late 1950's, a wealthy family, one of whose sons is a prominent nightclub owner, is caught in the violent transition from the oppressive regime of Batista to the Marxist government of Fidel Castro. Castro's regime ultimately leads the nightclub owner to flee to New York.
Told in flashback form, the film traces the rise and fall of a tough, ambitious Hollywood producer Jonathan Shields, as seen through the eyes of various acquaintances, including a writer James Lee Bartlow, a star Georgia Lorrison and a director Fred Amiel. He is a hard-driving, ambitious man who ruthlessly uses everyone - including the writer, star and director - on the way to becoming one of Hollywood's top movie makers.
A fiery Cuban woman guides an emissary from the U.S. president through the jungles of war-torn Cuba.
Ben Sanderson, an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter who lost everything because of his drinking, arrives in Las Vegas to drink himself to death. There, he meets and forms an uneasy friendship and non-interference pact with prostitute Sera.
A former Imperial Russian general and cousin of the Czar ends up in Hollywood as an extra in a movie directed by a former revolutionary.
World-weary arthur Fernando has returned to his native Columbia to live out his days in peace. But Fernando's once-quiet hometown has become a hotbed of violence, drugs and corruption. On the brink of despair, Fernando meets Alexis, a beautiful but hardened street kid who lives by the rule of the gun. Together, they forge an unlikely relationship.
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
Maria, a Ukrainian doctor, comes to Portugal to spend a year with Greco, her husband who is also a doctor. Upon arrival at Faro airport she is the only person from Kiev approached by agents of Immigration and Customs that lead her to a room of interrogation, without any explanations. All this occurs because the authorities suspect that something illegal should be behind her trip, since she is from Eastern Europe and her husband is Senegalese.
Ajay (Siddharth) comes to Kasi, where his thoughts and ideas on life and death undergo a sea change after he meets a young boy. He relocates to Chennai and stays in a house owned by a couple S V S Murthy (Mouli) and Jayam (Geetha). They treat him as their own son. A do-gooder, Ajay with his jovial nature wins the heart of all those whom he comes across. Vidya (Nithya Menen), a photo journalist meets Ajay and falls for his good nature. Ajay with the help of Vidya even gets street children obtain sponsorship for their education. But things take a turn when Vidya expresses her love to Ajay. He quietly walks off the place and decides to leave Chennai. But a rude accident to Vidya puts the responsibility on Ajay's shoulders to get her back to health. He takes her to USA for a surgery. Meanwhile a flashback reveals that Ajay was a successful doctor in the United States and who led a happy life.
A lacerating love story, 'Sid & Nancy' chronicles the brief, intense attachment of two of punk's most notorious poster children, Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.
Bonnie and Hillary are two young lost souls who meet one day and discover that they get along. They talk about their lives and run around and and keep getting really excited. Their day escalates into an eruption of violence and rage that can only be understood by the two girls.
In war-torn Japan, the Tokugawa Shogun, desperate to restore peace to his people, orders the assassination of the hostile warlords. A beautiful young woman is raised from birth with nine other orphans, to become an assassin. Her name is Azumi, the ultimate assassin.
A 'chance' meeting in the street, give you the opportunity to Agata and Marc to help each other to overcome the inertia of their lives. Tired of going from bed to bed and boy to boy, Agata is confronted with the challenge of staying, not flee to problems. But Agata does not know what's wrong, feels a barrier to enjoying sex. The parents of Agata added to the situation, an extra humor and problems. Eroticism, sensuality, tension and humor, make this film a new style of film making, where bodies do not hide and the sex scenes are displayed naturally, openly.
Intended as the concluding film in the trilogy on the modern history of Taiwan began with Beiqing Chengshi (1989), this film reveals the story through three levels: a film within a film as well as the past and present as linked by a young woman, Liang Ching. She is being persecuted by an anonymous man who calls her repeatedly but does not speak. He has stolen her diary and faxes her pages daily. Liang is also rehearsing for a new film that is due to go into production soon. The film, entitled Haonan Haonu, is about a couple Chiang Bi-yu and Chung Hao-tung who returns to China to participate in the anti-Japanese movement in China in the 1940s and are arrested as communists when they go back to Taiwan.
In the elegant world of artists and musicians, Gertrud ends her marriage to Gustav and takes a lover, the composer Erland Jansson. When he also fails to live up to her idealistic standards, she leaves him and imposes on herself a kind of exile of the heart. In flashbacks and in conversations laced with memories, we also learn of her affair with Gabriel, who still wishes she would go off with him, and we learn of her adolescence, with its early expression of her isolating ideal of absolute love. Written by
Frankie is brought up in a strict middle class family, but like any other adolescent, he is curious about sex during puberty, so he turns to his "sex mentor" - porn magazines and his mate Jing. With the help of Jing, Frankie has the opportunity of camping with his crush Zoey, and spending time alone with her, during which he loses his virginity to her... not quite! He turns out to be doing the well-known ugly she-boy from school! The episode devastates Frankie, and he decides to leave Hong Kong for the U.K. to continue his study, where he acquaints with lecherous senior James. Frankie is in a stable relationship with Zeta after graduating. Their only problem is their sex life: Zeta is sexually anxious and sets certain restrictions. Not only does that prevent Frankie from being sexually satisfied, it also indirectly leads to their breakup. Frankie then begins his journey back to the mainland with Jing to pick up chicks in clubs.
Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda are all married now, but they're still up for a little fun in the sun. When Samantha gets the chance to visit one of the most extravagant vacation destinations on the planet and offers to bring them all along, they surmise that a women-only retreat may be the perfect excuse to eschew their responsibilities and remember what life was like before they decided to settle down.
Raymond Lembecke (Vincent Gallo) is a con just out of prison after serving time for selling drugs for his mob boss Tony Vago (Rod Steiger). (Lembecke was innocent and took the rap for Vago.) Lembecke thinks Vago owes him big time so, when his former boss gets him a measly job in a warehouse, he decides on revenge and plans to steal a million dollars worth of drugs from him.
Danger Death Ray, the funniest of the cheesy spy films that MST had fun with. Former Tarzan Gordon Scott sucks in his gut for this one. Professor Carmichael has developed a death ray "for peaceful purposes only" but a vague group of bad guys want it instead, so he's kidnapped by doughy guys and taken to their toy sub (via a toy helicopter)Bart Fargo must rescue him cause he's the only American spy who looks good in womanly sunglasses. Cool music accompanies him as he searches for Carmichael while he must deal with evil Abe Lincolns, a fey bad guy tuned friend of Fargo's and a couple of women who he must sleep with. In the end the ineffective bad guy gets killed, the professor and the death ray get rescued and Bart gets the woman. There's also a complex scene with a watch thrown in a pool which symbolizes the amount of time that was wasted on smart screen writing for the movie.
LIME SALTED LOVE is a minimalist, surreal examination of abandonment, guilt, abuse and psychic pain set in this minute's hipster enclaves of Los Angeles. The film, told in rippling flashbacks from its four main characters, drains out of the eyes of the institutionally confined, David Triebel, his guilt-ridden younger brother, Chase, Ellie, his emotionally damaged girlfriend, and Zephyr, the sexual provocateur. In the visual narrative tradition of David Lynch the film depicts the tale of three bonded brothers broken by the accidental death of one and the residual guilt draping the remaining two The film examines how damaged people are hurt even more by their own willful ways. Sometimes it is the smallest things we do to others that destroys them...
A couple checks into a suite in Las Vegas. In flashbacks we see that he's a computer whiz on the verge of becoming a dot.com millionaire, she's a lap dancer at a club. He's depressed, withdrawing from work, missing meetings with investors. He wants a connection, so he offers her $10,000 to spend three nights with him in Vegas, and she accepts with conditions. Is mutual attraction stirring?
Manu (Raffaela Anderson) has lived a difficult life. Abused and violently raped, she sets off to find herself only to meet Nadine (Karen Bach), a prostitute who has encountered one too many injustices in the world. Angry at the world, they embark on a twisted, rage-filled road trip. They choose to have sex when they please and kill when they need. Leaving a trail of mischief and dead bodies in their wake. Generating a media blitz and man hunt, soon everyone is out to capture the young fugitives.
The Girl and Death tells us the impossible love story of Nicolai and the courtesan Elise. A love obstructed by materialism, wealth and death threat.
Jess Gradwell and her teenage daughter boast a superclose relationship. When it comes to sex, however, Mom won't stand for anything less than premarital celibacy. So she gets a pretty healthy dose of her own medicine when she winds up getting pregnant from a brief encounter with a newly single doctor! This new situation poses a major challenge to the mother-daughter dynamic. Tune in to see if Jess and her daughter can rise to the occasion.
Though a childhood bout with polio left him dependent on an iron lung, Mark O'Brien (John Hawkes) maintains a career as a journalist and poet. A writing assignment dealing with sex and the disabled piques Mark's curiosity, and he decides to investigate the possibility of experiencing sex himself. When his overtures toward a caregiver scare her away, he books an appointment with sex surrogate Cheryl Green (Helen Hunt) to lose his virginity.
Japanese fishery instructor Akira is attracted to beautiful Cuban young girl Martia. Though initially rejected, Akira still returns with Martia to her homeland. On the way he sees a post-revolution Cuba, cultivating fields, relics from the revolution, armies in training, and Castro in a political rally.
Young Cuban Rafael just buried his mother, and comes to Houston to meet his father John for the first time. The difficult part is that John doesn't know he is Rafael's father. John runs a dance studio, and everyone prepares for the World Open Dance championship in Las Vegas. It soon becomes clear Rafael is a very good dancer, and Ruby is the biggest hope for the studio at the championship.
In the middle of the night, someone brings Ivan's body home to his wife and his sad-faced, jug-eared son. Through flashbacks, the film discloses the relationships among Ivan and his brother Alex, a cop with a cleanliness fetish; siblings Juliette and Jimmy, Ivan's partners in a seedy nightclub; the love triangle of Alex, Juliette, and Marie, a professor of philosophy; and of Alex and his nephew, Ivan's dour, stoic son. Ivan's death changes every relationship.
After a one-night stand a couple is faced with the terrifying possibility of what they really want.
Stranded and alone on a desert island during a cruise, a spoiled rich woman and a deckhand fall in love and make a date to reunite after their rescue. He is stood up.
A young couple living in a Connecticut suburb during the mid-1950s struggle to come to terms with their personal problems while trying to raise their two children. Based on a novel by Richard Yates.
The story starts in the 1930's at one of the largest rubber-tree plantations in Indochine (Vietnam). This plantation is owned by the French colonist Eliane, a proud woman who lives with her father and her native adoptive daughter Camille. She doesn't have a husband or a man in her life (apart from her father), but gets to know the young officer Jean-Baptiste when both want to buy the same painting at an auction. They have a short affair, but then she refuses to see him again. In the meantime it's Camille who has fallen in love with Jean-Baptiste and Eliane knows it. She makes sure he's sent to one of the most desolate outposts on some remote island, making sure that the two will never see each other again. Camille has no choice, but to marry the man she was promised to, but in the meantime she starts a search to find the man she really loves.
On a Tuesday night, five couples have separate sexual adventures. Matt and Kris, friends for years, want to have an only-once, no-strings good time. Abby and Andrew, married, celebrate his birthday, but it's marred by angst and miscommunication. Mia and Eric are exes, making sure they are over each other. Jaime and Ken work together and this is a first date. Inez and Gord invite his roommate, Dave, to join them. By the time each couple has gone through a prelude, foreplay, sex, an interlude, orgasm, and afterglow, they've answered basic questions: can sex be anonymous, are we bored, is our marriage really finished, does anyone tell the truth, and how do we make someone happy?
A Broadway playwright puts murder in his plan to take credit for a student's script.
At a rundown bus station in rural Cuba, the line of passengers waiting just keeps getting longer. The problem is that every bus that passes by is already full. Their only hope is to wait for the station's bus to be fixed. As the disparate group settles in, relationships start forming between the passengers: Emilio (Vladimir Cruz), a young engineer, becomes smitten with a beautiful young woman (Thaimi Alvarino) who is en route to meet her Spanish fiancé, a blind man (Jorge Perugorria) gets support from the others to go to the head of the line. Frustration and disorder reign when the one bus brakes down and no one can leave. Resigned to working together, the group magically transforms the station into a beautiful place where no one wants to leave.
Set in the early 90s, Dana (Shea Curry), a recently divorced young woman embarking on an acting career. Months earlier she met a young, charismatic, theater cast-mate, Jack (Michael Buie) in the Spring play at the local dinner theater. They seemingly look like good friends until flashbacks expose their history and brush with romance. Thus, "can a man and woman really be "just friends". Only For You is a story about life, love, friendships, choices and believing in ourselves at all costs. It addresses the question: "What happens when you find the right love at the wrong time?" and it is a story about life, love, friendships, choices and believing in ourselves at all costs.
London barrister's marriage is under strain after his affair with a shop-girl who is out to have him. Told in flashback.
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