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Frances Ha
Woody Allen meets French new wave as Frances (Gerwig) bluffs her way through tough times to follow her dreams. Frances Halladay is a 27-year-old dancer who lives in New York City with her best friend from college, Sophie. Her life is upended when Sophie tells her she plans to relocate from Brooklyn to Tribeca, which
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Tokyo Story
Voted number 1 in the 2012 Sight & Sound directors’ poll, this gentle tale focuses on a small town Japanese couple, played by Chishū Ryū and Chieko Higashiyama, as they reflect on changing family values and relationships in post-war Japan. With their children scattered to Tokyo and Osaka, and too busy with their own lives
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Tabu
A tale of forbidden love in two parts. Aurora, now alone in Lisbon, once led a romantic life in Africa.
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The Palm Beach Story
‘The Palm Beach Story’ is a fast-paced, witty and light-hearted ‘screwball’ comedy from the early 1940s, about a married couple down on their luck financially. It stars two of the great stars of the golden Hollywood era, Claudette Colbert (who won the Best Actress Oscar for ‘ It Happened One Night’) and Joel McCrea (star
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Lift to the Scaffold
Distinguished French director Louis Malle (1932-95) made his debut feature film at the age of 24 with this taut thriller, having won the Palme d’Or in 1956 for the documentary The Silent World, co-directed with Jacques Cousteau. The film’s narrative and editing techniques are seen as a key influence on the Nouvelle Vague movement. The
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Young Frankenstein
Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder’s loving pastiche of the old Universal Studios series of monster movies, some of which was shot using the original Hollywood props from the 1930s. While the critics were often sniffy on its release, the film has gone on to be considered a classic in its own right, being recognised by
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Gueros
This feisty Mexican comedy-drama, filmed in black and white on a micro-budget, is the debut feature from director Alonso Ruizpalacios. Mexican movie star Gael Garcia Bernal (who played Che Guevara in one of the WFC’s earliest features, Motorcycle Diaries) is associate producer. Ruizpalacios was born in 1978 and studied stage directing in Mexico City before
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The Servant
The first of three film collaborations with the American director Joseph Losey, Harold Pinter’s screenplay adapts a 1948 novel by Robin Maugham, pen name of the 2nd Viscount Maugham (1916–1981), the Eton-educated nephew of the novelist W. Somerset Maugham. Filmed in London during one of the coldest British winters on record, The Servant dissects the
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Ninotchka
Garbo stars in a comedy romance, yes, this is the film where she laughs for the first time on screen. Gone is any trace of the tragic actor as Garbo plays a serious Russian sent to Paris on official business. Inculcated with loathing for Western values, she meets a roué out to charm her, played
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The Pawnbroker
Rod Steiger (On the Waterfront, Dr Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night) launched a stellar career as a serious actor with his Oscar-nominated performance as an embittered concentration camp survivor running a pawnshop in 1960s Harlem. A powerful drama from director Sidney Lumet, who made some of Hollywood’s most visionary political/social dramas (12 Angry










