Italy
This is the story of a Sicilian woman that tries to have avidly as many sexual adventures as possible. She uses different identities and personalities, but she can’t stop collecting adventures. One day she meets Valerio, a young student who falls in love with her.
Spans 300 years in the life of one famed musical instrument that winds up in present-day Montreal on the auction block. Crafted by the Italian master Bussotti (Cecchi) in 1681, the red violin derives its unusual color from the human blood mixed into the finish. With this legacy, the violin travels to Austria, England, China, and Canada, leaving both beauty and tragedy in its wake.
When an African dictator jails her husband, Shandurai goes into exile in Italy, studying medicine and keeping house for Mr. Kinsky, an eccentric English pianist and composer. She lives in one room of his Roman palazzo. He besieges her with flowers, gifts, and music, declaring passionately that he loves her, would go to Africa with her, would do anything for her. “What do you know of Africa?,” she asks, then, in anguish, shouts, “Get my husband out of jail!” The rest of the film plays out the implications of this scene and leaves Shandurai with a choice.
The story takes place in northern Italy in the 1950’s. Lola and Masetto are about to get married. Masetto wants to keep Lola as a virgin until they are married. But Lola is impatient to remain in chastity until the wedding night. She wants to be sure that Masetto is a good lover, before she commits herself into marriage. She does everything to trick Masetto into breaking the moral tradition.
Roseanna is dying of a heart condition, and all she wants is to be buried next to her daughter, in a cemetery that is getting full fast. The cemetery can’t expand because Capestro, the man who owns the land next to the cemetery, won’t sell. While Marcello is doing good deeds to make sure no one dies, Roseanna thinks of Marcello’s future.
Two investigative reporters for a tabloid magazine track down across country “The Night Flier”, a serial killer who travels by private plane stalking victims in rural airports. One of the reporters, Richard Dees, begins to suspect that “the Night Flier could perhaps be a vampire”
A touching story of an Italian book seller of Jewish ancestry who lives in his own little fairy tale. His creative and happy life would come to an abrupt halt when his entire family is deported to a concentration camp during World War II. While locked up he tries to convince his son that the whole thing is just a game.
A young policewoman slowly goes insane while tracking down an elusive serial rapist/killer through Italy when she herself becomes a victim of the brutal man’s obsession.
Lucy Harmon, an American teenager is arriving in the lush Tuscan countryside to be sculpted by a family friend who lives in a beautiful villa. Lucy visited there four years earlier and exchanged a kiss with an Italian boy with whom she hopes to become reacquainted.
Two Swedish business men are kidnapped in Rome by the Mob, and moved to Sicily. Carl Hamilton is sent to Sicily on direct order from the Swedish Government. He is sent to negotiate for their release. Hamiltons partner and best friend, Lundwall, is murdered by the Mob. Hamilton is dragged into a bitter and brutal vendetta between himself and the Mob-leader Don Tommaso.
Morgan Adams and her slave, William Shaw, are on a quest to recover the three portions of a treasure map. Unfortunately, the final portion is held by her murderous uncle, Dawg. Her crew is skeptical of her leadership abilities, so she must complete her quest before they mutiny against her. This is made yet more difficult by the efforts of the British crown to end her pirate raids.
A cemetery man has the unusual problem of the dead rising from the grave. Himself and his assistant must end these creatures’ lives again after they are reborn. Everything is going well until “She” comes along and stirs things up a bit.
At a college in Rome, a professor, nicknamed “Dodo” is in a deep depression. His stunningly beautiful wife has just left him for another man. Dodo wants her back very badly and has erotic daydreams about her. A beautiful young student in his class asks him for a ride home and seduces the lucky man, but still he wonders about his wife and her lover.
A childhood incident has convinced Faith Corvatch that her true love is a guy named “Damon Bradley,” but she has yet to meet him. Preparing to settle down and marry a foot doctor, Faith impulsively flies to Venice when it seems that she may be able to finally encounter the man of her dreams. Instead, she meets the charming Peter Wright. But can they fall in love if she still believes that she is intended to be with someone else?
A New York film director, working on his latest movie in Los Angeles, begins to reflect the actions in his movie and real life, especially when he begins an affair with the lead actress.
An anorexic young woman escapes from a psychiatric clinic and meets a young man who wants to help. She is caught and returned to her parents, who are soon beheaded by a garrotting stranger making the rounds about town, apparently striking only when it rains. The orphaned young woman and her new lover launch their own investigation and are endangered when a link is discovered with the victims and a particular operation performed years before.
Little Buddha is a movie about the life of Siddhartha starring Keanu Reeves and Bridget Fonda and directed by Bernardo Bertolucci.
Bad Boy Bubby is just that: a bad boy. So bad, in fact, that his mother has kept him locked in their house for his entire thirty years, convincing him that the air outside is poisonous. After a visit from his estranged father, circumstances force Bubby into the waiting world, a place which is just as unusual to him as he is to the world.
A year after losing his friend in a tragic 4,000-foot fall, former ranger Gabe Walker and his partner, Hal, are called to return to the same peak to rescue a group of stranded climbers, only to learn the climbers are actually thieving hijackers who are looking for boxes full of money.
This stylishly photographed horror movie centers upon a beautiful, good-hearted schoolteacher whose life becomes a living hell after she is chosen to bear the son of Satan. Her horrible ordeal begins when an ancient enigmatic traveller places an ancient, supposedly extinct, insect up her nose. It crawls into her brain. She soon begins having terrifying dreams and more. When she learns the awful truth about her relationship with the Dark Master things get even worse. Still the baby is born and the poor woman faces a terrible and, genre-wise, surprising choice.
Atlantis is more visual art than nature film and a ‘must see’ for any Luc Besson fan. The film captures the feel of what it’s actually like to swim underwater better than any film I’ve ever seen, perfectly illustrating the form and texture of sea water. Beautiful. Highly recommended for anyone interested in visual arts or diving.
Two horror segments based on Edgar Allan Poe stories set in and around the city of Pittsburgh. “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” concerns a cheating wife who is trying to scam her dying husband out of millions by having her doctor/hypnotist lover hypnotize the geezer into signing his dough over to her. The old man dies while under hypnosis and is stuck in the limbo between the here and the hereafter. The door to the physical world is opened and the undead attempt to enter it. “Black Cat” is the story of Rodd Usher, an alcoholic photographer/artist, who descends into madness after he kills a stray cat that his live-in girlfriend Annabelle brings home. One murder leads to another, and the complex cover-ups begin.
A beautiful felon, sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a policeman, is given a second chance – as a secret political assassin controlled by the government.
The tragic story of Vincent van Gogh broadened by focusing as well on his brother Theodore, who helped support Vincent. Based on the letters written between the two.
A former drug lord returns from prison determined to wipe out all his competition and distribute the profits of his operations to New York’s poor and lower classes in this stylish and ultra violent modern twist on Robin Hood.
A young child is terrified to discover that a planned family trip is to be haunted by vile plant-eating monsters out of his worst nightmare…
Splendor is the name of an old movie theater managed by Jordan (Mastroianni), who inherited it from his father. The theater is in decay and only generates debts and trouble, but Jordan gets aid in his almost quixotian quest from projectionist Luigi (Troisi) and ushurette Chantale (Vlady). However, Jordan is finally forced to sell the Splendor to businessman Lo Fazio (Piperno), which plans to transform it in some kind of furniture store. When Jordan leaves the theater for the last time (the very first scene), he recalls the glorious days of Splendor and movies in general.
In medieval Europe, crusading knights massacre a village full of suspected devil worshipers and build a large Gothic church above the cursed remains. It is now present day, and this elaborate cathedral still stands. But when its sealed crypt is accidentally reopened, a group of people trapped inside the church become possessed by the fury of the damned! Can the blood of the innocent survive this unholy communion, or will the ultimate demonic evil be unleashed upon the world?!
A young man is confined in a mental hospital. Through a flashback we see that he was traumatized as a child, when he and his family were circus performers: he saw his father cut off the arms of his mother, a religious fanatic and leader of the heretical church of Santa Sangre (“Holy Blood”), and then commit suicide. Back in the present, he escapes and rejoins his surviving and armless mother.
After a young man is bitten on the hand by a radioactive snake, his hand changes into a lethal snake head, which attacks everyone he comes into contact with. Also, his body becomes filled with snakes. Now, he must prevent himself from hurting others.
Fantasy tale based on the tale of the legendary sailor. Here Sinbad must recover five magical stones to free the city of Basra from the evil spell cast by a wizard. His journey takes him to the isle of the Amazons where the queen tries to capture him, to a battle with ghost warriors on the isle of the dead, and ultimately to a battle with his own double.
Underwater deep-sea miners encounter a Soviet wreck and bring back a dangerous cargo to their base on the ocean floor with horrifying results. The crew of the mining base must fight to survive against a genetic mutation that hunts them down one by one.
Lewis Collins is back to leading mercenaries on the move in Southeast Asia. This time the cast is unusually good including Lee Van Cleef, Brett Halsey (Cop Game), Romano Puppo (Robowar), Mike Monty (Raiders of Atlantis), Bobby Rhodes (The Great Alligator), etc. Anyway, Van Cleef has Collins go on some random mission to locate a disc with all sorts of valuable crazy intelligence data on it. It just happens that Donald Pleasence, a random government official, hires another mercenary-for-hire Manfred Lehman to tag along and make sure the data ends up in the right hands. Van Cleef isn’t taking any chances, and since he is crooked and murders Collins’s other bosses quickly, he places Romano Puppo in the group as well to make sure the operation runs smoothly. Collins may not be too expressive but at least he seems to figure out quickly who’s out to get him, so the mission continues with lots of double-crosses, twists and turns, and of course lots of explosions!
The deserted island hotel hides a dark and sinister secret. Hundreds of years ago a witch held sway there, dominating her coven and spreading an evil that has seeped deep into the earth. Two centuries later, a photographer and his virginal fiance sneak onto the island to research its gruesome history. Soon all will find themselves falling victim to a horror that has survived the ages….
A group of unlikely companions receive a radio call leading to a deserted house with a grisly past. After exploring the house, the group makes the foolish decision to split up, leading to a trail of death and destruction as the house unleashes its deadly past. Along the way expect severed heads, exploding light bulbs, demonic clown dolls, and creepy children.
A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village’s theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater’s projectionist.