Janus Films
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Filmmaker Les Blank considered this free-form feature documentary about singer-songwriter Leon Russell, filmed between 1972 and 1974 while Blank was living at the Russell/Shelter records recording studio compound on Grand Lake of the Cherokees in NE Oklahoma, but unreleased due to creative differences and music clearance problems, to be one of his greatest accomplishments. Includes scenes of Russell and his band and others performing, both in concert...
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Dr. Sanada is an alcoholic, in part due to the despair that constantly assails him as he tries to keep the inhabitants of a post-World War II Tokyo slum as healthy as possible. Food and medical supplies are scarce, the neighborhood is around an open sewer, and the only place to buy medicines is the black market-- controlled by the Yakuza. Matsunaga, a young yakuza with a violent temper, seeks Sanada's help to remove a bullet from his hand, but Matsunaga's...
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Sanshiro Sugata: Akira Kurosawa's effortless debut is based on a novel by Tsuneo Tomita about the rivalry between judo and jujitsu.
The most beautiful: This portrait of female volunteer workers at an optics plant during world War II, shot on location at the Nippon Kogaku factory, was created with a patriotic agenda.
Sahshiro Sugata, part two: This sequel is a hugely entertaining adventure, reuniting most of the major players from the original and...
4) Kwaidan
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After more than a decade of sober political dramas and social-minded periodpieces, the great Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi shifted gears dramatically for this rapturously stylized quartet of ghost stories. Featuring colorfully surreal sets and luminous cinematography, these haunting tales of demonic comeuppance and spiritual trials, adapted from writer Lafcadio Hearn's collections of Japanese folklore, are existentially frightening and meticulously...
5) Hopscotch
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One of the CIA's top international operatives is suddenly relegated to a desk job in an agency power play. Unwilling to go quietly, and with the aid of a chic Viennese widow, he puts himself back in the game by writing a memoir exposing the innermost secrets of every major intelligence agency in the world. The CIA now wants him dead, but he refuses to cooperate--because he's having to much fun!
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El norte: Enrique and Rosa are brother and sister Mayan Indian peasants, living in the mountains of Guatemala. When the village attempts to organize for better treatment, Enrique and Rosa are forced to flee as the Guatemalan army is sent in to punish the townspeople. Receiving clandestine help from friends and humorous advice from a veteran immigrant, they make their way to Los Angeles, hoping to make a new life as young, uneducated, and illegal...
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Based on E.M. Forster's novel of requited love. A young, independent-minded, upper-class Edwardian woman who is trying to sort out her burgeoning romantic feelings, divided between an enigmatic free spirit she meets on vacation in Florence and the priggish bookworm to whom she becomes engaged back in the more corseted Surrey. Funny, sexy, and sophisticated, this gargantuan art-house hit.