In Ulrike Ottinger’s contemporary reinvention of the famous morality tale, fin de siècle dandy Dorian Gray is reimagined as a drag role, played without comment on the switch by Veruschka von Lehndorff in the male lead. Ottinger’s collision of Oscar Wilde and Fritz Lang features Delphine Seyrig as one “Dr. Mabuse,” the head of a sinister multinational newspaper agency that conspires to create, control, and destroy celebrity figure Dorian Gray. The film is an odyssey through eye-popping tableaux, including a trip to an unforgettable underworld.
Tag: 1980s
Danny Glover stars as Apples Finnerty, a low budget film director whose life is crumbling. Finnerty can’t get work, he’s been evicted, and his wife is unfaithful. As he drives in to the hills, he gets a flat. A “helpful” stranger turns out to be an armed robber. Apples kills his assailant in self-defense and switches identities with him, escaping his own disastrous past. Unfortunately, his new identity is in hot water with the mob.
Dennis Weaver stars in this TV movie as a blue-collar family man who has earned his own keep for 40 years. He holds down a well-paying job at a Massachusetts factory–until one day, when he is summarily dismissed. The reason? He has spent his adult life harboring a terrible secret: he has never learned to read or write.
During the Vietnam War era, the influx of American soldiers to Okinawa boosted the local economy and introduced many bars and nightclubs. With exhausting displays of energy, Yôichi Sai presents a whirlwind romance between a local rocker and the daughter of a mixed American-Okinawan marriage.
A young Welsh soldier serving with the British Army in Northern Ireland is imprisoned for shooting a civilian while overcome with panic during a street disturbance. Despite his claim that he was acting under orders the Army makes him a scapegoat following a public outcry.
A documentary on film director William Wyler (1902-1981), this feature was conceived by his daughter, Catherine, as a loving tribute to him. Utilizing a wealth of film clips, many in black and white, the movie features interviews with Bette Davis, Lillian Hellman, Audrey Hepburn, Charleton Heston, John Huston, Laurence Olivier, Gregory Peck, Ralph Richardson, Barbra Streisand, Billy Wilder, Talli (the former Margaret Tallichet) Wyler, and the director himself. Some of the best of the Hollywood commentary comes from Wyler himself, interviewed only a few days before he died in 1981.
Joni gets persuaded to enter a bikini contest by her friends and likes the attention. She talks to another contestant, Harlow, who suggests she try exotic dancing at Kandyland, where she works. Joni gets fed up with her job at the dry cleaner’s, and boyfriend Frank won’t commit, so she gets a job at Kandyland. She finds others doing drugs and getting abused, and tries to make her new job, her lingering attraction to Frank, and her strong friendship with Harlow coexist.
The Japanese town of Yanagawa so captivated Hideo Miyazaki on his first visit that he decided to use it as the background for one of his stories. However, he entrusted Isao Takahata with directing the project. The producer of Nausicaä was so impressed with the efforts of the locals to protect the canals that run through the town that he would convert the entire film into a documentary about their peculiar history.