Jean Cocteau: Autobiography of an Unknown (1985)
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In the not-too-distant future the aging gene has been switched off. To avoid overpopulation, time has become the currency and the way people pay for luxuries and necessities. The rich can live forever, while the rest try to negotiate for their immortality. A poor young man who comes into a fortune of time, though too late to help his mother from dying. He ends up on the run from a corrupt police force known as 'time keepers'.
Outside time and reality, the experiences of a poet. The judgement of the young poet by Heurtebise and the Princess, the Gypsies, the palace of Pallas Athena, the spear of the Goddess which pierces the poet's heart, the temptation of the Sphinx, the flight of Oedipus and the final Assumption. This film is the third part of Cocteau's Orphic Trilogy, which consists of The Blood of a Poet (1930), Orpheus (1950) and Testament of Orpheus (1960).
The merchant and his children, Adélaïde, Belle, Félicie, and Ludovic, are near ruin bankruptcy, but Adélaïde and Félicie nonetheless still spend lavishly on themselves keeping beautiful, whereas Belle slaves around the house. Crossing the forest one evening, their father becomes lost and takes refuge in a castle. Upon leaving, he steals a blossom off a rose bush. An angered beast demands one of his daughters for the theft.
Elisabeth and her brother Paul live isolated from much of the world after Paul is injured in a snowball fight. As a coping mechanism, the two conjure up a hermetic dream of their own making. Their relationship, however, isn't exactly wholesome. Jealousy and a malevolent undercurrent intrude on their fantasy when Elisabeth invites the strange Agathe to stay with them -- and Paul is immediately attracted to her.
Told in four episodes, an unnamed artist is transported through a mirror into another dimension, where he travels through various bizarre scenarios. This film is the first part of Cocteau's Orphic Trilogy, which consists of The Blood of a Poet (1930), Orpheus (1950) and Testament of Orpheus (1960).
Political intrigue and psychological drama run parallel. The queen is in seclusion, veiling her face for the ten years since her husband's assassination, longing to join him in death. Stanislas, a poet whose pen name is Azrael, is a suicidal anarchist, his imagination haunted into hate by longing for this queen who's drawn apart. He enters her private quarters intent on killing her then himself, but they fall in love, in part because he looks like the king. Stanislas wants her to regain political power by appearing to the public, and she tries to convince him to find hope and escape. All the while, the queen's enemies plot to keep the lovers together but to thwart their plans.
Jacques Demy pays grand homage to Jean Cocteau in this rock 'n' roll update of Orphée.
Simon Phoenix, a violent criminal cryogenically frozen in 1996, has escaped during a parole hearing in 2032 in the utopia of San Angeles. Police are incapable of dealing with his violent ways and turn to his captor, John Spartan, who had also been cryogenically frozen when wrongfully accused of killing 30 innocent people while apprehending Phoenix.
The frustrated loves of Jean Cocteau and Raymond Radiguet at the beginning of the 1920s. The death of Radiguet that sank Cocteau into opium. A story under the influence of drugs. A narrative in the spirit of Cocteau. And all this in a musical.
At the Café des Poètes in Paris, a fight breaks out between the poet Orphée (Jean Marais) and a group of resentful upstarts. A rival poet, Cègeste (Edouard Dermit), is killed, and a mysterious princess (MarÃa Casares) insists on taking Orpheus and the body away in her Rolls-Royce. Orphée soon finds himself in the underworld, where the Princess announces that she is, in fact, Death. Orpheus escapes in the car back to the land of the living, only to become obsessed with the car radio.
Herk Harveyâs macabre masterpiece gained a cult following through late night television and has been bootlegged for years. Made by industrial filmmakers on a modest budget, Carnival of Souls was intended to have the âlook of a Bergmanâ and âfeel of a Cocteau,â and succeeds with its strikingly used locations and spooky organ score. Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) survives a drag race in a rural Kansas town, then takes a job as a church organist in Salt Lake City. En route, she becomes haunted by a bizarre apparition that compels her to an abandoned lakeside pavilion.
Beauty and the Beast is the adaptation of a story by Madame de Villeneuve. Published anonymously in 1740 as La Jeune Américaine et les contes marins, it paints a portrait of Belle, a joyful and touching young girl who falls in love with the Beast, a cursed creature in search of love and redemption. In 1760, a condensed childrenâs version was published. It was from this version that Jean Cocteau and then Walt Disney drew their famous adaptations. Overshadowed, the original version by Madame de Villeneuve has never been adapted for the screen... until now!
Anna is a psychologist undertaking research about famous suicidal women. She takes a specific interest in the case of Antonieta Rivas Mercado, who killed herself in 1931 in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris.
Invisible aliens in a tiny flying saucer come to Earth looking for heroin. They land on top of a New York apartment inhabited by a drug dealer and her female, androgynous, bisexual nymphomaniac lover, a fashion model. The aliens soon find the human pheromones created in the brain during orgasm preferable to heroin, and the model's casual sex partners begin to disappear.
In 1914, with men gone to war, Marcel Proust hired Céleste Albaret as his attendant. More than eight years later, she was at his side when he died. During this entire time, she only entered his room when he rang for her, sleeping from 9 AM to 3 PM to wait during the night while he wrote. Marcel uses her as more than a servant: she is his muse, telling stories of her childhood to stir his remembrance of things past; she's in cahoots with him as he manipulates those he wants to draw on for his writing; she listens appalled to his descriptions of the underside of Paris. Hers is a life of love and sweet devotion as he races time to finish his work before death.
Against a plain, unchanging blue screen, a densely interwoven soundtrack of voices, sound effects and music attempt to convey a portrait of Derek Jarman's experiences with AIDS, both literally and allegorically, together with an exploration of the meanings associated with the colour blue.
1977. Stella entre en sixième, dans un grand lycée parisien. Stella entre dans le monde... Un nouveau monde, à l'opposé de celui qu'elle connaît. Presque un miracle. Elle, elle vit dans un café, un café d'ouvrier, à la frontière de Paris. Cette rentrée va changer sa vie.
In the panicky, uncertain hours before his wedding, a groom with prenuptial jitters and his two best friends reminisce about growing up together in the middle-class African-American neighborhood of Inglewood, California. Flashing back to the twenty-something trio's childhood exploits, the memories capture the mood and nostalgia of the '80s era.
Middle-aged dentist Biff Grimes reminisces about his unrequited love for beautiful Virginia Brush and her husband Hugo, his ex-friend, who betrayed him.
Max Walker is a suicidal man who selects an aspiring young filmmaker to record the end of his life. On the agenda for his last day on Earth: telling off his old boss, confessing some of his deepest secrets, and maybe even finding redemption.
In Africa early in World War II, a British rubber plantation executive reminisces about his arrival in the Congo in 1910. He tells the story of a love-hate triangle involving Harry Witzel, an in-country station superintendent who'd seen it all, Langford, a new manager sent from England for a four-year stint, and Tondelayo, a siren of great beauty who desires silk and baubles. Witzel is gruff and seasoned, certain that Langford won't be able to cut it. Langford responds with determination and anger, attracted to Tondelayo because of her beauty, her wiles, and to get at Witzel. Manipulation, jealousy, revenge, and responsibility play out as alliances within the triangle shift.
A theater projectionist's daughter is involved in the Resistance in WWII, but she doesnât share his political involvement & only believes in passion. She follows the men she loves unconditionally, suffering betrayal and hardship.
Colonel Sahab is a doctor in a psychiatry ward and Nurse Radha (Waheeda Rahman) is heart-broken after a civilian patient, Dev Kumar (Dharmendra), whom she cared for, pouring out her love and affection, leaves the hospital, as she had been unable to keep her heart separate from her professional work and had fallen in love with her patient. Next Arun Choudury (Rajesh Khanna), a writer and poet enters as a patient, suffering acute mania after being rejected by his lover, Sulekha. After refusing to take his care, Radha relents and starts nursing him. In between while caring for Arun she reminisces her past and tells a story of how she took care of injured brave army soldiers when she was posted in Laddakh during the Sino-Indian war of 1962.
Fast-talking Latino con artist Pestario "Pest" Vargas is the target of Scottish mobsters to whom he owes a considerable debt. Willing to do anything to raise money and avoid severe injury or death, Vargas agrees to a very unusual job -- he will be transported to a remote island and hunted by Gustav Shank, a racist German executive. If he can survive a full day and night, Vargas gets $50,000 and will be set free. Is he wily enough to elude Shank?
A man falls in love with a beautiful young woman and begins to suspect that he may have also loved her in a previous life.
Elyot and Sibyl are being married in a big church ceremony. Amanda and Victor are being married by a French Justice of the Peace. Both couples go to a hotel on the same day and are put in adjoining rooms with adjoining terraces. Things go fine until Amanda sees her former husband Elyot on the adjacent terrace. While they both pretend to be happy, both make plans to leave, but their spouses do not want to leave as it is their respective honeymoons. So the other spouses each go down to the bar. This leaves Elyot and Amanda together and they reminisce. Before long, the sparks again fly and they both decide to leave together to the Mountains of Switzerland. They love, they bicker, they fight, they stop. Then it begins over and over. Then Victor and Sibyl show up at their chalet.
Margie and her daughter reminisce about Margie's girlhood in the roaring twenties. In flashback, Margie, a smarter, less popular girl at Central High, meets handsome new French teacher Ralph Fontayne. Circumstances keep throwing them together and Margie, in company with every other girl in school, develops a crush on him. Margie's date for the prom gets sick, and what happens next surprises everyone.
Isabelle Douléan (Isabelle Adjani) is a medical student who lives with her dad, Jean (Lino Ventura). The fact that her parents (Ventura and Annie Girardot) don't live together anymore does not bother her that much. Love life, cute guy (Jacques Spiesser), annoying boyfriend (Francis Perrin), exam failure, and yearning for independence are some of the things Isabelle must deal with. These are like a slap in the face for her; it's something unexpected and painful at the same time. The film also looks at the aspect of fatherhood; it shows us how Jean copes with being a single father to Isabelle. His daughter's transition to adulthood is a big slap for Jean. Isabelle is not a baby anymore; that's a slap Jean must endure.
There are worlds, there are humans and there are Others. But there is only one Time which is the border between worlds. What if time breaks down? Reminiscence based on true events and physics, telling the story of a couple that trying to experiment the unproved parallel time and black-hole theories. They traveled to a town called Cesme for their research. But what they will face is much beyond the human mind.
A filmmaker sets out to make a new project in order to figure out how he's screwed up every relationship he's ever had.
In a home for delinquent girls, the worst offender exchanges reminiscences with the warden.
In a dystopian future, Dredd, the most famous judge (a cop with instant field judiciary powers) is convicted for a crime he did not commit while his murderous counterpart escapes.
When Earth astronaut Capt. Chuck Baker arrives on Planet 51 -- a world reminiscent of American suburbia circa 1950 -- he tries to avoid capture, recover his spaceship and make it home safely, all with the help of an empathetic little green being.
SEDUCED AND ABANDONED combines acting legend Alec Baldwin with director James Toback as they lead us on a troublesome and often hilarious journey of raising financing for their next feature film. Moving from director to financier to star actor, the two players provide us with a unique look behind the curtain at the world's biggest and most glamourous film festival, shining a light on the bitter-sweet relationship filmmakers have with Cannes and the film business. Featuring insights from directors Martin Scorsese, 'Bernando Bertolucci' and Roman Polanski; actors Ryan Gosling and Jessica Chastain and a host of film distribution luminaries.
Weng Weng plays an agent, code-named â00â who works for the Manila branch of Interpol. The Chief sends him in pursuit of an arch villain, Mr X, whose white sock covered head is reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klanâs pointed hoods. When Mr X holds the Philippines for ransom two businessmen, Maolo and Simeon, pay his demands. Weng Weng suspects foul play and goes deep undercover to reveal the true identity of the mysterious Mr X.
Lucy Harmon, an American teenager is arriving in the lush Tuscan countryside to be sculpted by a family friend who lives in a beautiful villa. Lucy visited there four years earlier and exchanged a kiss with an Italian boy with whom she hopes to become reacquainted.
Reminiscent of Sunset Boulevard, Hustler White transposes the action from the silver screen's old movie backlots to contemporary male prostitution and the porn industry. Said to be an homage to classic Hollywood cinema.
Filmmaker Jonathan Caouette's documentary on growing up with his schizophrenic mother -- a mixture of snapshots, Super-8, answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, and more -- culled from 19 years of his life.
Set in a five star Tokyo hotel on New Year's Eve, the film follows the misadventures of various hotel staff and guests in the run-up to midnight. The plot involves numerous characters, the different problems or situations they face in the run-up to midnight, and the ways that these different storylines interact and are resolved. The film is reminiscent of the Hollywood screwball comedies of 1930s and 1940s, and explicitly references the 1932 film Grand Hotel, whose plot also followed the interlinked lives of various characters in a fictional hotel over a short period.
A young car thief kills a policeman and tries to persuade a girl to hide in Italy with him.
Attack on the Iron Coast is a 1967 British-American Oakmont Productions international co-production war film directed by Paul Wendkos in the first of his five picture contract with Mirisch Productions, and starring Lloyd Bridges, Andrew Keir, Sue Lloyd, Mark Eden and Maurice Denham. The film depicts an account of Allied Combined Operations Headquarters commandos executing a daring raid on the German-occupied French coast during the Second World War. The film is based on the commando raid on the French port of St. Nazaire and is reminiscent of the film The Gift Horse. In the United States it was released as a double feature with Danger Route.
Roland Brissot bought for a nickel a talisman that gives him love, fame and wealth. The talisman is a cut left hand, and it works perfectly. But of course there is nothing free in this world, and after one year the devil comes and asks for his due... Written by Yepok
Set in the late '20s. A thirtyish young man, who heads a small factory, faints at the funeral of a close friend. He decides to go home to his aunt and uncle for a while, but gets involved with a family of five women who had been in love with him at one time though he had apparently loved only one, who, unknown to him, has died since his departure. The women are mainly disillusioned with life or estranged from husbands while the youngest has a crush on him.
A failed Hollywood actor returns to his home town in Wisconsin and reminisces about his life in L.A. to a potential new girlfriend about his faults, auditions, misadventures, and confrontations with the evils of Hollywood.
An Italian anthology film directed by Roberto Rossellini starring Anna Magnani and Federico Fellini. The film has two parts: "Una Voce Umana" ("The Human Voice") and "Il Miracolo" ("The Miracle").
During WWII, a corporal in the desert reminisces about the love he left behind and faces uncertainty about his strength as a leader.
A father reminisces about his childhood when he and his younger brother moved to a new town with their mother, her new husband and their dog, Shane. When the younger brother is subjected to physical abuse at the hands of their brutal stepfather, Mike decides to convert their toy trolley, the "Radio Flyer", into a plane to fly him to safety.
During the Algerian war for independence from France, a young Frenchman living in Geneva who belongs to a right-wing terrorist group and a young woman who belongs to a left-wing terrorist group meet and fall in love. Complications ensue when the man is suspected by the members of his terrorist group of being a double agent.
After the war, Matt Gordon returns to Singapore to retrieve a fortune in smuggled pearls. Arrived, he reminisces in flashback about his prewar fiancée, alluring Linda, and her disappearance during the Japanese attack. But now Linda resurfaces...with amnesia and married to rich planter Van Leyden. Meanwhile, sinister fence Mauribus schemes to get Matt's pearls.
In an afterlife resembling the present-day US, people must prove their worth by showing in court how they have demonstrated courage.
From producer Guillermo del Toro and director Jorge Gutierrez comes an animated comedy with a unique visual style. THE BOOK OF LIFE is the journey of Manolo, a young man who is torn between fulfilling the expectations of his family and following his heart. Before choosing which path to follow, he embarks on an incredible adventure that spans three fantastical worlds where he must face his greatest fears. Rich with a fresh take on pop music favorites, THE BOOK OF LIFE encourages us to celebrate the past while looking forward to the future.
Dancing great Bill Williamson sees his face on the cover of Theatre World magazine and reminisces: Just back from World War I, he meets lovely singer Selina Rogers at a soldiers' ball and promises to come back to her when he "gets to be somebody." Years go by, and Bill and Selina's rising careers intersect only briefly, since Selina is unwilling to "settle down." Will she ever change her mind? Concludes with a big all-star show hosted by Cab Calloway.
Alain Leroy is a recovering alcoholic who decides to end his life, but first decides to visit his friends in Paris one last time, in an attempt at finding a reason to continue living.
A former valedictorian quits her reporter job in New York and returns to the place she last felt happy: her childhood home in Connecticut. She gets work as a lifeguard and starts a dangerous relationship with a troubled teenager.
Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.
Two men in 1930s Mississippi become friends after being sentenced to life in prison together for a crime they did not commit.
After another spat with her kids, Dona HermÃnia decides to take some time off from them and hides away in her aunt's house, where she reminisces about her kids in an age when they still needed her.
The impressionistic story of a Texas family in the 1950s. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father. Jack finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith.
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