All Recommendations
Window Water Baby Moving
On a winter's day, a woman stretches near a window then sits in a bathtub of water. She's happy. Her lover is nearby; there are close ups of her face, her pregnant belly, and his hands caressing her. She gives birth: we see the crowning of the baby's head, then the birth itself; we watch a pair of hands tie off and cut the umbilical cord. With the help of the attending hands, the mother expels the placenta. The infant, a baby girl, nurses. We return from time to time to the bath scene. By the end, dad's excited; mother and daughter rest. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
Casanova's Return
Leo Bernardi is a successful and acclaimed Italian director. He’s approaching the end of his career but he cannot accept his slow decline. He has just finished shooting his last movie and he’s deeply sad. The movie is inspired by the novel about Casanova written by Arthur Schnitzler, a character so similar to the director, even more than he could imagine. Schnitzler’s Casanova is aged, glory days are over: he lost his charm and his attraction to women, he’s broke and no more eager to travel through Europe. After a long exile, he just wants to go back to Venice, his homeland. While traveling home Casanova meets a girl, Marcolina. She reawakens his desire, lost for years. So, he tries to seduce her but that leads him to a tragic understanding: he’s an old man now. It’s not by chance that Leo Bernardi decided to tell this story right now, in a pivotal moment of his life and career. The destiny of both Casanova and his director leads them to a final confrontation.
Gate of Hell
Japan, 1159. Moritō, a brave samurai, performs a heroic act by rescuing the lovely Kesa during a violent uprising. Moritō falls in love with her, but becomes distraught when he finds out that she is married.
Ulysses and the Giant Polyphemus
An early horror treatment of the hero's encounter with the one-eyed man-eating Cyclops.
Labyrinth of Cinema
When lightning strikes a theater about to close its doors, three moviegoers are thrust back in time to the world inside the screen.
Aven
Performance, 23 September 2005, at Zoersel, Seppenshuis. Avens are relics from prehistoric times (3000 BC). They are natural cavities in the limestone soil that have been washed out by water. The early inhabitants used those cavities as a quarry from which they extracted the clay for their pottery. When the clay ran out or had become too difficult to reach these caverns were used as depositories for food. Usually an AVEN was connected to an underground vein of water. I saw AVENS like this in Cambous, Languedoc. They date from 3000 BC. "I think they’re wonderful. Time and time again it surprises me that as soon as I perform a work existing in my head, it begins to lead a life of its own. During the try-out I discovered that an AVEN could also be the crater of a blue meteor fallen from Sirius into our garden or just as likely a hole in the ground caused by the impact of a poisonous gas bomb."
Miami Vice
A case involving drug lords and murder in South Florida takes a personal turn for undercover detectives Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs. Unorthodox Crockett gets involved romantically with the Chinese-Cuban wife of a trafficker of arms and drugs, while Tubbs deals with an assault on those he loves.
The Seventh Seal
When disillusioned Swedish knight Antonius Block returns home from the Crusades to find his country in the grips of the Black Death, he challenges Death to a chess match for his life. Tormented by the belief that God does not exist, Block sets off on a journey, meeting up with traveling players Jof and his wife, Mia, and becoming determined to evade Death long enough to commit one redemptive act while he still lives.
My Neighbor Totoro
Two sisters move to the country with their father in order to be closer to their hospitalized mother, and discover the surrounding trees are inhabited by Totoros, magical spirits of the forest. When the youngest runs away from home, the older sister seeks help from the spirits to find her.
My Mother's Castle
To his chagrin, young Marcel Pagnol and his family move back to their home in Marseilles, France, far from their pastoral holiday cottage in the hills. Determined, Marcel makes the long voyage back to the cottage on foot and lands himself in trouble. One day Marcel's father discovers a shortcut to the cottage, but it requires trespassing. Despite their trepidations, Marcel and his family begin using the secret trail to reach their cottage.
Ikiru
Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.
Throne of Blood
Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the spirit's prophecy comes true, Washizu's scheming wife, Asaji, presses him to speed up the rest of the spirit's prophecy by murdering his lord and usurping his place. Director Akira Kurosawa's resetting of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in feudal Japan is one of his most acclaimed films.
La Strada
When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.
Cabaret
Inside the Kit Kat Club of 1931 Berlin, starry-eyed singer Sally Bowles and an impish emcee sound the clarion call to decadent fun, while outside a certain political party grows into a brutal force.
GoodFellas
The true story of Henry Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian Brooklyn kid who is adopted by neighbourhood gangsters at an early age and climbs the ranks of a Mafia family under the guidance of Jimmy Conway.
Seven Samurai
A samurai answers a village's request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six others to help him teach the people how to defend themselves, and the villagers provide the soldiers with food.
Rope
Two young men attempt to prove they committed the perfect murder by hosting a dinner party for the family of a classmate they just strangled to death.
Cocoon: The Return
The reinvigorated elderly group that left Earth comes back to visit their relatives. Will they all decide to go back to the planet where no one grows old, or will they be tempted to remain on Earth?
The Dark Knight
Batman raises the stakes in his war on crime. With the help of Lt. Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman sets out to dismantle the remaining criminal organizations that plague the streets. The partnership proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a reign of chaos unleashed by a rising criminal mastermind known to the terrified citizens of Gotham as the Joker.
Dawn of the Dead
During an ever-growing epidemic of zombies that have risen from the dead, two Philadelphia SWAT team members, a traffic reporter, and his television-executive girlfriend seek refuge in a secluded shopping mall.