MY LIBRARY

As the devoutly single Don Johnston is dumped by his latest girlfriend, he receives an anonymous pink letter informing him that he has a son who may be looking for him.

The chronicle of the political tension in Chile in 1973 and of the violent counter revolution against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende.

Chronicles the events immediately surrounding the CIA- supported coup itself.

Guzmán’s final installment shifts from covering the actions of Allende’s opponents to those who battled to revive & promote their toppled leader’s vision for a new Chile.

In the Alpine village of Tolzbad in the 1800s, the townsfolk talk quietly and restrain their movements lest they incur avalanches. This atmosphere lends itself to repressed emotions - shown through the parallel stories of butler student Johann lusting after his mother (an old flame of the mysterious Count Knotkers) and Klara's attraction to her father (who lusts after his other daughter), leading to duels and suicidal plunges galore. All this is shot in the style of an early German sonal film, complete with intertitles, crackly sound-track and 'hand-tinted' colour effects.- Written by Michael Brooke <michael@everyman.demon.co.uk>

On the run and in search of help, two wounded gangsters find refuge in the secluded castle of a feeble man and his wife; however, under the point of a gun, nothing is what it seems.

"Jacques Tourneur at work in color on Western landscapes is something to behold. The credits roll over a matte of a damp day in Portland (slanting rooftops, a ship’s half-seen mast, boards over a muddy street) that’s practically a Grafström, the Oregon Trail that follows is finely-drawn watercolor. The nascent commune of Jacksonville would be Fordian, except that Dana Andrews’ negation of piety ("A man can choose his own gods") and Andy Devine’s acknowledgement of Indian rights ("We’re on their land. They ain’t likely to forget that") challenge Manifest Destiny. Overlapping triangles -- Andrews-Susan Hayward-Patricia Roc, Andrews-Hayward-Brian Donlevy, Andrews-Roc-Victor Cutler, Hayward-Donlevy-Rose Hobart. Hoagy Carmichael with mandolin amid the ramblers and settlers is wastrel, commentator, mediator, and voyeur ("...a little store and lots of time"). The cabin-rising sequence tips its hat to Hathaway’s Trail of the Lonesome Pine, and was studied by Weir. The wedding bash celebrates wholeness but these are forces in tenuous balance, Donlevy voices Tourneur’s ambivalence ("The illusion of peace is upon it") moments before the Indians materialize via a single reverse shot that seems to introduce a parallel world. Another space-expanding reverse shot, this time embodying tensions from within rather than from without, takes place right before Andrews’ brawl with Ward Bond, cutting from a medium-shot of the two at the saloon counter to another revealing the townspeople in the wings, waiting for the spectacle. (The fight, remarkably bloody and ugly, hinges on the haunted image of the disoriented Bond smashing his fist into a wooden pole. Hayward sits with the cheering crowd.) A film of "thin margins": The saloon doubles as a hanging courtroom, the garden becomes an inferno. The view of a dazed Roc wandering in the woods after the slaughter is from I Walked with a Zombie, and finds its way into Demme’s Beloved; Stars in My Crown revisits the territory with hope for harmony, but Wichita and Great Day in the Morning know better."

Two down-on-their-luck former outlaws volunteer to be Texas Rangers and find themselves assigned to bring in an old friend, now a notorious outlaw.

Outraged by Redleg atrocities, the James and Younger Brothers along with Kit Dalton join Quantrill's Raiders and find themselves participating in even worse war crimes.

After being released from prison, ex-gunfighter John Wesley Hardin hopes to have his autobiography published in order to rehabilitate his tarnished reputation.

Julie, a daydreaming librarian, meets Céline, an enigmatic magician, and together they become the heroines of a time-warping adventure involving a haunted house, psychotropic candy, and a murder-mystery melodrama.

Eric Braeden stars as Dr. Charles Forbin, who has created a supercomputer named Colossus, built solely for the purpose of controlling the nuclear defenses of the Western alliance. It isn't too long after, however, that the Russians announce that they too have built a similar computer for those same purposes on their side--Guardian. And when the two machines begin sharing information at a speed nobody can believe, an attempt is made to disable them.
This unfortunately just raises the machines' ire; and in retaliation, they launch their weapons at each other's home nations. The result is a chilling scenario that is potentially becoming all too real these days.
COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT was not a big hit at the box office for various reasons. One is that its cast wasn't exactly well known. Another reason is that its ending isn't exactly a happy one. Still a third reason is that Universal had trouble trying to promote it in the wake of the huge success of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. The latter reason is obvious: Colossus and Guardian, like HAL in the Kubrick movie, become central characters here. The difference here is that while HAL malfunctions due to a programming conflict, Colossus and Guardian remain all too stable, convinced beyond a doubt that they know how to protect Mankind better than Man himself. As the computers point out: "One inevitable rule is that Mankind is his own worst enemy."
Joseph Sargent's direction is efficient, and the special effects work of Albert Whitlock still manages to work despite its obvious age. An overlooked gem in the sci-fi genre, this should be given a revival.

2004 film directed by Mike Nichols

In 2027, in a chaotic world in which humans can no longer procreate, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea, where her child's birth may help scientists save the future of humankind.

Claire, a school teacher with a camera is on her first visit to Cannes. She happens upon a film sales assistant, Man-hee, recently laid off after a one-night stand with a film director.

A young man is confronted with corrupt and vindictive colleagues at work and negligent officials at the hospital where his mother is dying. As he searches quixotically for a steadfast moral code by which to live, he suffers from the knowledge of human frailty and our darker inclinations to do harm.

2004 film by Hou Hsiao-Hsien

A young American girl visits Paris accompanied by her fiancee and her wealthy uncle. There she meets and is romanced by a worldly novelist; what she doesn't know is that he is a blackmailer who is using her to get to her uncle.

Beautiful high society type Doris Worthington is entertaining guests on her yacht in the Pacific when it hits a reef and sinks. She makes her way to an island with the help of singing sailor Stephen Jones. Her friend Edith, Uncle Hubert, and Princes Michael and Alexander make it to the same island but all prove to be useless in the art of survival. The sailor is the only one with the practical knowhow to survive but Doris and the others snub his leadership offer. That is until he starts a clam bake and wafts the fumes in their starving faces. The group gradually gives into his leadership, the only question now is if Doris will give into his charms.

A manicurist and an engaged loafer, both planning to marry money, meet and fall in love.