Rock Hudson narrates a compilation of clips from Marilyn Monroe’s 20th Century-Fox movies. The documentary traces Monroe’s early studio beginnings as a bit player in “A Ticket to Tomahawk” to her final screen moments in the unfinished “Something’s Got to Give.”
Tag: USA
Otto Kruger once again plays a dynamic, bombastic attorney in Columbia’s Counsel for Crime. Kruger plays William Mellon, a shifty shyster whose underhanded methods loses him the love of his sweetheart Anne, who subsequently marries a powerful senator. What Mellon doesn’t know is that Anne has borne him a son, whom the senator has adopted. Reaching adulthood, Paul opts for a legal career himself, taking a clerical job with his own father’s firm. In typical “B”-picture, Mellon is charged with murdering one of his more odious clients – and Paul is appointed prosecuting attorney in the case.
Growing Up Female is the very first film of the modern women’s movement. Produced in 1971, it caused controversy and exhilaration. It was widely used by consciousness-raising groups to generate interest and help explain feminism to a skeptical society. The film looks at female socialization through a personal look into the lives of six women, age 4 to 35, and the forces that shape them–teachers, counselors, advertising, music and the institution of marriage. It offers us a chance to see how much has changed–and how much remains the same.
Tom Noonan’s dark comedy features a husband-and-wife team of psychotherapists who run a New-Age therapy group out in the wilderness. Late one night, Jack and Rita are visited by one of their patients, Cosmo, and his wife, Arlie. Cosmo’s wife has felt “left out,” since her husband spends so much time with the therapists and confides all of their secrets to them. Arlie has insisted on meeting them–the evening begins awkwardly, then painfully grinds on, as various tensions and power struggles emerge between and among the two couples.
Tom Noonan’s play-turned-film What Happened Was… won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Best Dramatic Feature in 1994. 20 years later, Noonan returned to his roots with The Shape of Somethng Squashed, an independent film developed from his latest theatrical hit. It tells the story of an older ‘has been’ actor who is asked to participate in a read-through of a play at a legendary theater company. The production depends on the success of the read-through, but unbeknownst to the actor he is only standing in for a star playing hard to get.
A cadet at West Point is subjected to “internal exile”, which means that other students refuse to talk to him or acknowledge his existence, after he is accused of violating the school’s code of honor,
Documentary about some people afflicted with congenital deformities of an extreme nature. Their ability to live with their aberrations while remaining socially involved and upbeat is truly inspirational. While their predecessors were often seen in so called “freak shows” that were part of various exhibitions from Coney Island to traveling circuses, these performers were actually the more fortunate ones in an era of little tolerance for those who were different from the accepted norm.
Jimmy Pearls, a directionless young drifter, kills Henry Logan’s son and two other men after he found out that they murdered Jimmy’s parents for their land. Trying to get away from Logan’s vengeance, he goes to ground in the mountains and meets Winston Patrick Culler, an old trapper, who becomes his traveling companion and protector. Jimmy doesn’t understand though why Culler is helping him…