Directed by: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Starring: Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem, Barbara Valentin
Picture credit: DVD Beaver
First Viewing
Synopsis: An aging German woman finds herself a pariah after she starts dating an immigrant worker.
This film owes a great debt to All That Heaven Allows. In fact, in many ways it plays like a loose remake of [...]

Directed by: Volker Schlöndorff
Starring: David Bennent, Katharina Thalbach, Daniel Olbrychski
Picture credit: DVD Beaver
Second Viewing
Synopsis: About the exploits of a strange young boy in World War II-era Germany who decides to stop aging.
Off-putting and kind of unpleasant, I didn’t much care for this the first time I watched it, and watching it again, I still don’t [...]

Directed by: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Starring: Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Mühe, Martina Gedeck
Second Viewing
Synopsis: An agent for the secret police in communist-era East Berlin finds himself drawn to the latest target of his surveillance.
I originally watched this around when it was first released, and I remember liking it quite a lot, but finding it to [...]

Directed by: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly
Starring: Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds
Fourth Viewing
Synopsis: In Hollywood at the beginning of the sound era, a director and his cast realize that the only way to save their disappointing film is to turn it into a musical.
I’m skipping pretty far ahead in the list, but I recently [...]

Directed by: Adrian Lyne
Starring: Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, Anne Archer
Picture credit: Blu-ray Definition
First Viewing
Synopsis: After a one-weekend affair, a man finds himself at the mercy of an increasingly obsessed woman.
This is a film that has inspired quite a few movies in the years since its release — the most recent one I can think of [...]

Directed by: Gillo Pontecorvo
Starring: Brahim Hadjadj, Jean Martin, Yacef Saadi
Second Viewing
Synopsis: Tracing a couple of years in the Algerian resistance of the 1950s.
I’ll admit that I was really not looking forward to revisiting this film; my memory of it was that it was dull and completely overrated. Well, I didn’t exactly love it [...]

Directed by: Michael Curtiz, William Keighley
Starring: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone
Picture credit: Groucho Reviews
First Viewing
Synopsis: Robin Hood and his merry band of outlaws fight back against a corrupt king.
This movie is quite possibly one of the most well-regarded action/adventure movies ever, so my expectations for it were fairly high. It didn’t disappoint. [...]

Directed by: Andrzej Wajda
Starring: Zbigniew Cybulski, Ewa Krzyzewska, Waclaw Zastrzezynski
First Viewing
Synopsis: A couple of resistance fighters try to figure out what to do next after realizing that they’ve botched an assassination attempt on a communist politician.
Well, that was a pleasant surprise. Not that I was expecting this to be bad, but I was unfamiliar [...]

Directed by: John Huston
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn
Picture credit: DVD Beaver
First Viewing
Synopsis: A grizzled, normally-solitary steamship captain in WWII-era Africa takes on a passenger who convinces him to help the war effort.
I’ve been a fan of John Huston’s for a while now, so the African Queen has definitely been on my to-see list (I’m also [...]

Directed by: Nick Broomfield
Starring: Nick Broomfield, Arlene Pralle, Steve Glazer
First Viewing
Synopsis: A documentary about a filmmaker’s interactions with Aileen Wuornos’ adoptive mother and her less-than-competent lawyer as he attempts to gain access to Wuornos herself.
Well, this is a bit of a puzzlement. The list isn’t exactly doc-heavy (this is the first documentary I’ve watched [...]