Movies - Classics, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Bogart, Kurosawa

Cast: Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Hardy Krüger, Steven Berkoff, Gay Hamilton

Plot Summary: An Irish rogue wins the heart of a rich widow and assumes her dead husband's position in 18th Century aristocracy. A gentlemanly rogue travels the battlefields and parlors of 18th century Europe determined to make for himself the life of a nobleman through seduction, gambling and dueling in this methodical film showing the rhythm and life of the period.

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Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgely, Martha Vickers, Dorothy Malone, Peggy Knudsen

Plot Summary: Private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a rich family. Before the complex case is over, he's seen murder, blackmail, and what might be love. Summoned by the dying General Sternwood, Philip Marlowe is asked to deal with several problems that are troubling his family. Marlowe finds that each problem centers about the disappearance of Sternwood's favoured employee who has left with a mobster's wife. Each of the problems becomes a cover for something else as Marlowe probes.

Writing credits: Raymond Chandler (novel), William Faulkner (screenplay)

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Cast: Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette, Tippi Hedren, Veronica Cartwright, Ethel Griffies

Plot Summary: A wealthy San Francisco playgirl pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town which slowly takes a turn when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people there, in increasing numbers and with increasing viciousness.

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Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet

Plot Summary: Classic film set in occupied Africa during the early days of World War II: An American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications. Casablanca is a 1942 romantic film set during World War II in the Vichy-controlled Moroccan city of Casablanca. The film was directed by Michael Curtiz, and stars Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine and Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa Lund. It focuses on Rick's conflict between, in the words of one character, love and virtue: he must choose between his love for Ilsa and his need to do the right thing by helping her husband, Resistance hero Victor Laszlo, escape from Casablanca and continue his fight against the Nazis.

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Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates, Warren Clarke, John Clive, Adrienne Corri

Plot Summary: In a futuristic Britain, a gang of teenagers go on the rampage every night, beating and raping helpless victims. After one of the boys quells an uprising in the gang, they knock him out and leave him for the police to find. He agrees to try "aversion therapy" to shorten his jail sentence. When he is eventually let out, he hates violence, but the rest of his gang members are still after him.

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Cast: Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, John Williams, Anthony Dawson, Leo Britt

Plot Summary: Ex-tennis pro Tony Wendice decides to murder his wife for her money and because she had an affair the year before. He blackmails an old college associate to strangle her, but when things go wrong he sees a way to turn events to his advantage.

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Cast: Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette, Jeffrey Jones, Bill Murray

Plot Summary: The mostly true story of the legendary director of awful movies and his strange group of friends and actors. The life of Edward D. Wood,Jr, hailed as the worst director (of 'Plan 9 From Outer Space', 'Glen or Glenda?' and 'Bride of the Monster') of all time. A biopic of the life and work of the legendary 'worst director of all time', Edward D.Wood, Jr., concentrating on the best-known period of his life in the 1950s, when he made 'Glen or Glenda', 'Bride of the Monster' and 'Plan 9 From Outer Space', and focusing on both his transvestism and his touching friendship with the once great but now ageing and unemployed horror star Bela Lugosi.

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Cast: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Madison Eginton, Jackie Sawiris, Sydney Pollack, Leslie Lowe

Plot Summary: A New York City doctor, who is married to an art curator, pushes himself on a harrowing and dangerous night-long odyssey of sexual and moral discovery after his wife admits that she once almost cheated on him.

Writing credits: Arthur Schnitzler (novel: Traumnovelle), Stanley Kubrick (screenplay) and Frederic Raphael (screenplay)

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Cast: Ben Kingsley, Candice Bergen, Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Trevor Howard, John Mills

Plot Summary: Biography of Mahatma Gandhi, the lawyer who became the famed leader of the Indian revolts against the British through his philosophy of non-violent protest. This film describes the life and times of Mahatma Gandhi, Indian political leader who managed to free his country from the British rule using peaceful means and thus giving hope and inspiration for generations to come.

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Cast: Derek Jacobi, Kenneth Branagh, Simon Shepherd, James Larkin, Brian Blessed, Ian Holm, James Simmons

Plot Summary: The gritty adaption of William Shakespeare's play about the English King's bloody conquest of France. King Henry V of England (Kenneth Branagh) is insulted by the King of France. As a result, he leads his army into battle against France. Along the way, the young king must struggle with the sinking morale of his troops and his own inner doubts. The war culminates at the bloody Battle of Agincourt.

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Cast: Tatsuya Nakadai, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Kenichi Hagiwara, Jinpachi Nezu, Hideji Otaki, Daisuke Ryu

Plot Summary: When a powerful warlord in medieval Japan dies, a poor thief recruited to impersonate him finds difficulty living up to his role and clashes with the spirit of the warlord during turbulent times in the kingdom. The film takes elements from the Warring States period in Japanese history. The shadowed warlord of the story is based on Daimyo Takeda Shingen and the climactic fight on the Battle of Nagashino which took place in 1573  [1].

Also Known As: Kagemusha (The Shadow Warrior), Kagemusha the Shadow Warrior, Shadow Warrior, The Double

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Cast: James Mason, Shelley Winters, Sue Lyon, Gary Cockrell, Jerry Stovin, Diana Decker

Plot Summary: Humbert Humbert, a divorced British professor of French literature, travels to small-town America for a teaching position. He allows himself to be swept into a relationship with Charlotte Haze, his widowed and sexually famished landlady, whom he marries in order that he might pursue the woman's 14-year-old flirtatious daughter, Lolita, with whom he has fallen hopelessly in love, but whose affections shall be athwarted by a devious trickster named Clare Quilty.

Writing credits: Vladimir Nabokov (novel), Vladimir Nabokov (screenplay)

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Cast: Tippi Hedren, Sean Connery, Diane Baker, Martin Gabel, Louise Latham, Bob Sweeney

Plot Summary: Mark marries Marnie although she is a habitual thief and has serious psychological problems, and tries to help her confront and resolve them. Marnie Edgar is an ice-cold habitual thief. She uses her looks to gain the confidence of her employers, robs them, and changes her identity. Her only loves are her horse and her mother, although she has problems with the latter relationship. Marnie applies for a job at Mark Rutland's Philadelphia publishing company. Mark recognises her since he is a client of her last employer, but instead of turning her in, he decides to watch her.

Music by: Bernard Herrmann

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Cast: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Jessie Royce Landis, Leo G. Carroll, Josephine Hutchinson

Plot Summary: A hapless New York advertising executive is mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies, and is pursued across the country while he looks for a way to survive.

Also Known As: Breathless (USA), In a Northwesterly Direction (USA), The Man in Lincoln's Nose (USA), Der Unsichtbare Dritte (Germany)

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Cast: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern, Leopoldine Konstantin, Reinhold Schünzel

Plot Summary: A woman is asked to spy on a group of Nazi friends in South America. How far will she have to go to ingratiate herself with them? Following the conviction of her German father for treason against the U.S., Alicia Huberman takes to drink and men. She is approached by a government agent (T.R. Devlin) who asks her to spy on a group of her father's Nazi friends operating out of Rio de Janeiro. A romance develops between Alicia and Devlin, but she starts to get too involved in her work.

Also Known As: Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious

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Cast: Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, Tuesday Weld, Treat Williams, James Hayden

Plot Summary: A former Prohibition-era Jewish gangster returns to Brooklyn over 30 years later, where he once again must confront the ghosts and regrets of his old life. Epic tale of a group of Jewish gangsters in New York, from childhood, through their glory years during prohibition, and their meeting again 35 years later.

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Cast: Tilda Swinton, Quentin Crisp, Jimmy Somerville, John Bott, Elaine Banham, Anna Farnworth

Plot Summary: Young nobleman Orlando is commanded by Queen Elizabeth I to stay forever young. Miraculously, he does just that. The film follows him as he moves through several centuries of British history, experiencing a variety of lives and relationships along the way, and even changing sex.

Based on Virginia Woolf's novel: Orlando: A Biography

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Cast: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam, John McIntire

Plot Summary: A young woman steals $40,000 from her employer's client, and subsequently encounters a young motel proprietor too long under the domination of his mother.

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Cast: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter, Raymond Burr, Judith Evelyn

Plot Summary: Professional photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries breaks his leg while getting an action shot at an auto race. Confined to his New York apartment, he spends his time looking out of the rear window observing the neighbours. He begins to suspect that the man opposite may have murdered his wife. Jeff enlists the help of his society model girlfriend Lisa Freemont and his nurse Stella to investigate.

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Cast: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers, Barry Nelson, Philip Stone

Plot Summary: Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) gets a job as the custodian of the Overlook Hotel, in the mountains of Colorado. The place is closed down during winter, and Torrance and his family will be the only occupants of the hotel for a long while. When the snow storms block the Torrance family in the hotel, Jack's son Danny - who has some clairvoyance and telepathy powers - discovers that the hotel is haunted and that the spirits are slowly driving Jack crazy. When Jack meets the ghost of Mr. Grady, the former custodian of the hotel who murdered his wife and his two daughters, things begin to get really nasty...

Also Known As: Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining'

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Cast: Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, John Gavin

Plot Summary: The rebellious Thracian Spartacus, born and raised a slave, is sold to Gladiator trainer Batiatus. After weeks of being trained to kill for the arena, Spartacus turns on his owners and leads the other slaves in rebellion. As the rebels move from town to town, their numbers swell as escaped slaves join their ranks. Under the leadership of Spartacus, they make their way to southern Italy, where they will cross the sea and return to their homes. Meanwhile, in Rome, the slave revolt has become a deciding factor in the power struggle between two senators: the republican Gracchus and the militarist Crassus, each of whom sees the fortunes of the rebellion as the key to his own rise to power or humiliating defeat. As the two statesmen attempt to aid, hinder and manipulate the rebels for their own benefit, Spartacus and his followers press on toward freedom.

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Cast: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore, Henry Jones, Raymond Bailey

Plot Summary: San Francisco police detective Scottie Fergusson develops a fear of heights and is forced to retire when a colleague falls to his death during a chase. An old college friend (Gavin Elster) hires Scottie to watch his wife Madeleine who has reportedly become possessed by her ancestor's spirit named Carlotta. Scottie follows her around San Francisco and is drawn to Madeleine and her obsession with death. He unwittingly becomes a figure in a complex plot, and is determined to discover the truth behind it all.

Also Known As: Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (USA), From Among the Dead (USA), Illicit Darkening (USA), Listen Darkling (USA)

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