Film Archive 1984
| THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT |
| LATENITE 010584 |
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| A dazzling visual diary of legendary performances, THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT chronicles the development of the Who from angry young mod upstarts to worldwide arena rock icons. Director Jeff Stein (who was just 21 at the time) was given unlimited access to archives of the Who, occasionally butting heads with famously strong-willed guitarist/songwriter Pete Townsend over the direction of the film. It begins with the band's famed guitar-smashing, 1967 American TV debut on The Smothers Brothers show and continues through Monterey Pop, Woodstock, and on into the 1970s as the band cements its "legend" status in the rock canon with such complex works as QUADROPHENIA. Twenty-two classic Who tunes are featured, including a special version of the title track, "My Generation," "Magic Bus," "Happy Jack," and "Long Live Rock." Manic drummer Keith Moon, who provides numerous laughs in the film, died a year before the film was released. |
| BRIMSTONE AND TREACLE |
| LATENITE 011284 |
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| A young con artist infiltrates the home of a businessman, his kindly wife and helpless crippled daughter by way of a ruse and soon ingratiates himself by taking a lot of responsibility off the shoulders of the weary mother. However, the drifter is only interested in what money and valuables he can get from the family and, when he is left alone with the daughter, molests her. |
| SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE |
| LATENITE |
| 011984 |
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| George Roy Hill's adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's whimsical antiwar black comedy--an immensely popular novel at the time of the film's release because of its implicit condemnation of the war in Vietnam--stars Michael Sacks as the placid Billy Pilgrim. He's become "unstuck in time," as the author describes him, or more prosaically, he's had a nervous breakdown as a result of a recurrence of the trauma of witnessing the horrific Allied firebombing of Dresden in 1945. The desultory narrative has Billy jumping from his war experience to his future on the planet Tralfamadore with the buxom Montana Wildhack (Valerie Perrine), then to an episode of shock therapy, then to an episode in his childhood, and then to his life as a relatively unhappy suburban optometrist. Throughout, the naive Billy remains a curious mixture of kindness and detachment, the best combination of qualities one could have, the author seems to imply, for surviving in a world of meaningless suffering. Vonnegut's novel may be unfilmable, and Hill may have been too cautious a choice as director, but he does a good job of conveying many of the qualities of the author's elusive style. Michael Sacks possesses the requisite air of innocence for his role, and Ron Liebman gives a great performance as a choleric fellow G.I. |
| MAD MAX |
| LATENITE 012684 |
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| Futuristic tale set in Australia, which has become a wasteland where vicious, fast-driving criminals cause death, destruction, and mayhem on the highways. The police do their best to maintain control, but their attempts prove futile. As a result, one cop named Max quits his job and goes on a vacation with his family. However they are terrorized by a gang of malicious speed-demons, who kill Max' wife and baby. Angry, Max rejoins the force, revs up his motorcycle -- and seeks bloody revenge against the fiends who murdered his family. |
| PAULINE AT THE BEACH |
| 020284 |
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| During a summer holiday on the Normandy coast, Pauline observes adults weave love, sex and grand romance into a completely foolish (and completely funny) tangle. |
| A HARD DAY'S NIGHT |
| LATENITE 020284 |
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| An exaggerated "Day In the Life" of the Beatlemania era Beatles. The foursome travel from train to hotel to television studio with their road crew, while "Grandfather" stirs up trouble, and even temporarily convinces one member to leave his responsibilities behind to go off "paradin'." |
| LA BALANCE |
| 021684 |
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| A brigade of cutthroat police inspectors use "narcs" to supply them with information regarding a drug syndicate. Most of the paid informants end up dead, so they are forced to recruit a new insider, one who is close to the action. The violent vice cop picks Dede, a charming and connected pimp, to rat on his former boss who is now his arch enemy. LA BALANCE features another striking performance from French beauty Nathalie Baye. |
| DON'T LOOK BACK |
| LATENITE 021684 |
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| A raucous and intimate road movie of Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of England, DON'T LOOK BACK may be perhaps the most influential rock star documentary of all time. D.A. Pennebaker's trademark cinema verité approach, with its comprehensive perspective, captures the paradoxical Dylan in alternating moments of confrontational belligerence and contemplative repose, all within the framework of the pop culture hurricane of one of the most publicized concert tours of the mid-1960s. Mobbed by frenzied fans and stalked by confounded journalists and music critics unable to penetrate his carefully evasive yet antagonistic persona, Dylan takes refuge with Joan Baez, his folk contemporary, and Albert Grossman, his juggernaut manager. As the tour progresses, a pattern emerges from Dylan's modes of expression, offering a glimpse of what would come to be a constant in his career: his perpetual redefinition of himself. Displaying the enigmatic performer's roles as both folk artist heir apparent to the Woody Guthrie throne and electric guitar rock pioneer who turned the Beatles on to pot, DON'T LOOK BACK preserves not only Dylan's musical genius but his inimitable, vital, and profound defiance of definition. |
| KOYAANISQATSI |
| 030184 |
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| Titled from a Hopi Indian word meaning "life out of balance," this unusual, lyrical film suggests that humanity is an ugly blight on the face of this beautiful planet. An awesome epic undersold by an adjective like "powerful." Sequel: POWAQQATSI. |
| CAF ... FLESH |
| LATENITE 030184 |
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| i... uh... i have no idea on this one. |
| REAR WINDOW |
| 030884 |
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| The weather is getting hotter, and photographer L.B. Jefferies (Jimmy Stewart) is stuck in his apartment with a broken leg and nothing to do--that is, nothing to do but spy on his neighbors through their open windows across the way in the apartment complex. There's an attractive and scantily clad dancer, a songwriter, a lonely woman, and the Thorwalds (Raymond Burr and Irene Winston), a bickering couple, among others. But when Mrs. Thorwald disappears, Jefferies is sure that something's wrong. Soon, despite the warnings of his girlfriend, Lisa (Grace Kelly), and his motherly nurse, Stella (Thelma Ritter), Jefferies has out his binoculars and telephoto lens and is studying his neighbor "like a bug under glass." However, looking in from the outside might not be as safe as Jefferies assumes. REAR WINDOW is not only a gripping story of murder and suspense, it is a celebrated allegory on the nature of film itself, a story in which the audience watches Jefferies watch the story unfold. The different windows represent the various different stories that are often told on film and also can be seen as representing the coming of television, as Jefferies can watch a multitude of "shows" from the comfort of his own apartment. |
| EL NORTE |
| 031584 |
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| Mayan Indian peasants, tired of being thought of as nothing more than "brazos fuertes" ("strong arms", i.e., manual laborers) and organizing in an effort to improve their lot in life, are discovered by the Guatemalan army. After the army destroys their village and family, a brother and sister, teenagers who just barely escaped the massacre, decide they must flee to "El Norte" ("the North", i.e., the USA). After receiving clandestine help from friends and humorous advice from a veteran immigrant on strategies for traveling through Mexico, they make their way by truck, bus and other means to Los Angeles, where they try to make a new life as young, uneducated, and illegal immigrants. |
| MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL |
| LATENITE 032984 |
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| This classic Monty Python comedy, directed by Pythons Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, is a hilarious send-up of the grim circumstances of the Middle Ages as told through the story of King Arthur and framed by a modern-day murder investigation. When the mythical king of the Britons leads his knights on a quest for the Holy Grail, they face a wide array of horrors, including a persistent Black Knight, a three-headed giant, a cadre of shrubbery-challenged knights, the perilous Castle Anthrax, a killer rabbit, a house of virgins, and a handful of rude Frenchmen. |
| ANIMATION FANTASTIQUE FANTASTICO |
| 033184 |
|
| no info available. |
| MR. ROSSI FINDS HAPPINESS |
| 040184 & 040784 |
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| Mr. Rossi obtains a magic whistle which allows him to travel through time and space. He visits the Stone Age, the medieval period, and even the future. |
| PATCHWORK |
| 040884 |
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| no info available. |
| ALLEGRO NON TROPPO |
| LATENITE 041284 |
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| Animated masterpiece which is set to the music of six classical works which include Ravel's "Bolero," and Stravinsky's "Firebird." Comic live action is interspersed between animated segments. |
| FANTASIES |
| 041484 |
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| A young couple attempt to turn a Greek island into a tourist resort. Bo Derek was only 16-years-old when this film was made. |
| VIP MY BROTHER SUPERMAN |
| 041584 & 042884 |
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| no synopsis available. |
| CARMEN |
| 041984 |
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| A film version of the famous Bizet's opera, where a soldier (Don Jose) falls in love with a beautiful factory's worker (Carmen), but she does not correspond him. |
| LITTLE GIRL LOST |
| LATENITE 042084 |
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| Based on a true story, The Brady family fight to adopt a little girl they fostered. But then social welfare decide to send Tella back to her natural father, who it is apparent is sexually and physically abusing her. The Bradys fight to get her back. |
| A CLOCKWORK ORANGE |
| LATENITE 042684 |
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| 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. |
| WEST AND SODA |
| 040584 |
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| The Three Stooges meet Sergio Leone in this cartoon collision from the creator of Allegro Non Troppo. |
| REPULSION |
| LATENITE 051084 |
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| REPULSION, starring the incomparable Catherine Deneuve, was director Roman Polanski's first movie filmed in English. It chronicles the descent into schizophrenia of a sexually confused, isolated young woman named Carol who works at a beauty parlor and shares an apartment with her sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux). One day Helen and her boyfriend, Michael (Ian Hendry), go off on vacation together and Carol is left alone in the empty apartment, where the only sounds are the constant ticking of a clock, faucets dripping, and the invasive ringing of a telephone. Extremely paranoid, Carol refuses to let anyone in and never leaves the building herself, in effect breaking off all contact with the outside world. In this claustrophobic environment, she begins to lose her grip on reality, suffering from hallucinations of being attacked by a phantom rapist and hands reaching out from the walls to grab her. Highly acclaimed and extremely gripping, Polanski's disturbing film can be seen as a prelude to his later work in the field of psychological horror: ROSEMARY’S BABY and, especially, THE TENANT. |
| WHEN THE MOUNTAINS TREMBLE |
| 051184 |
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| This amazing documentary tells the tale of a war that was barely reported in the media, yet affected a shockingly large amount of people. The film centers around Rigoberta Menchu, an Indian woman who took on the might of the Guatemalan military. As they decimated a helpless Mayan population, they didn't bank on the strength and will power of the inspiring Menchu, but fortunately documentary filmmakers Pamela Yates and Newton Thomas Siegel were present to capture her tale. |
| NICARAGUA: REPORT FROM THE FRONT |
| 051184 |
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| no info available. |
| TIBET, A BUDDHIST TRILOGY |
| 051284 |
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| no info available. |
| LIQUID SKY |
| LATENITE 051884 |
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| A small UFO secretly lands in the apartment of a promiscuous, bisexual model. The alien kills the woman's lovers as they are experiencing orgasms with her, since this provides the unearthly visitor nourishment(!). The bewildered model, unaware of the alien's presence, believes that she is responsible for the deaths. |
| ENTRE-NOUS |
| 051984 |
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| In 1942 in occupied France, a Jewish refugee (Lena Weber) marries a soldier (Michel Korski) to escape deportation to Germany. Meanwhile a wealthy art student (Madeleine) loses her first husband to a stray Resistance bullet; at the Liberation she meets an actor (Costa Segara), gets pregnant, and marries him. Lena and Madeleine meet at their children's school in Lyon in 1952 and the intensity of their relationship strains both their marriages to the breaking point. |
| REUBEN, REUBEN |
| 060784 |
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| A drunken poet suffering from writer's block, makes ends meet through lecturing on the New England college circuit. While traveling on business he sleeps with married women and steals tips from waiters. Academy Award Nominations: Best Actor--Tom Conti, Best (Adapted) Screenplay. |
| FILTHY RICH |
| 061484 |
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| When Big Guy Beck dies, the heirs to his estate are given a stipulation (via a pre-recorded video will) before they inherit his wealth. They have to live with Big Guy's illigitimate son, Wild Bill Westchester and his wife Bootsie, and they have to learn to accept the Westchesters as their own family. Of course, this does not bode well with the snooty Becks, and petty rivalries and catfights soon ensue in this sitcom spoof of '80s primetime dramas. |
| TALK DIRTY TO ME, PART II |
| LATENITE 062184 |
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| no info available. |
| THE ROAD WARRIOR |
| LATENITE 062884 |
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| A former police officer is now a lone wanderer, travelling through a devasted Australia after a nuclear war looking for the now-priceless fuel of petrol. He lives to survive and is none too pleased when he finds himself the only hope of a small group of honest people running a remote oil refinery. He must protect them from the bike gang that is terrorising them whilst transporting their entire fuel supply to safety. |
| BASILEUS QUARTET |
| 070584 |
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| The upper middle-aged members of a famous string quartet find their lives thrown off balance by an extraordinarily talented and good- looking young violinist who joins the group. Includes passages of classical music. |
| THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW |
| LATENITE 071284 |
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| After Janet accepts Brad's marriage proposal, the happy couple drive away from Denton, Ohio, only to get lost in the rain. They stumble upon the castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a transvestite who is holding the annual convention of visitors from the planet Transsexual. Frank-N-Furter unveils his creation, a young man named Rocky Horror, who fears the doctor and rejects his sexual advances. When Frank-N-Furter announces that he is returning to the galaxy Transylvania, Riff Raff the butler and Magenta the maid declare that they have plans of their own. (An audience participation film) |
| THE KING AND I |
| 071384 |
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| Mrs. Anna Leonowens and her son Louis arrive in Bangkok, where she has contracted to teach English to the children of the royal household. She threatens to leave when the house she had been promised is not available, but falls in love with the children. A new slave, a gift of a vassal king, translates "Uncle Tom's Cabin" into a Siamese ballet, expressing her unhappiness at being with the King. She attempts to escape with her lover. Anna and the King fall in love, but her British upbringing inhibits her from joining his harem. She is just about to leave Siam when she hears of the King's imminent death, and returns to help his son, her favorite pupil, rule his people. |
| LES COMPERES |
| 072084 |
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| Unable to find her runaway son, a woman deceives two of her ex-lovers from her youth, a mild-mannered teacher and a tough journalist, that each is the real father in order to obtain their help. |
| MY BEST FRIEND'S GIRL |
| 081084 |
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| A vivacious girl, stranded in an Alpine ski resort, is rescued by two handsome friends. She finds herself drawn to each of them and complications abound as the men are troubled by her friendliness. |
| ANOTHER COUNTRY |
| 081784 |
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| An elderly, exiled British spy looks back on his life at school during an interview with an American journalist. As he remembers his days at an English boarding school in the 1930s, the film moves to Britain chronicling his young life. In school, he falls in love with a young, male classmate, exploring his homosexuality. He is also exposed to Marxist ideas for the first time, both of which, ostensibly, contribute to his later activities as a spy. |
| THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME |
| LATENITE 082384 |
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| The members of Led Zeppelin are called back from vacation by manager Peter Grant to play Madison Square Garden. The film is enhanced by each of the band member's personal fantasies (hallucinations?), such as the opening scene (which is awfully confusing the first time around) in which Peter Grant, dressed in a 1930s black gangster suit drives a 1930s black Ford to a house and blasts everyone with a machine gun. |
| HEAVY METAL |
| LATENITE 083084 |
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| This unique collection of six animated stories combines science fiction with fantasy, horror, comedy, sex and rock music. The segments include "Harry Canyon" and "Den." In the first, a New York City cab driver gets mixed up with a beautiful femme fatale. Although he's become so hardened that he keeps a death ray in his car to kill troublesome riders, he lets his guard down long enough to fall for his latest passenger... and it could cost him his life. In "Den," a nerdy student travels to another planet and transforms into a macho stud with incredible strength. While fighting villains, beautiful women throw themselves at him. |
| ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS |
| 090684 |
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| The quintessential moment in glam-rock history, ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS is David Bowie at his best. This film of the 1973 concert (released 10 years later) documents the hallucinogenic collage of kitsch, Warhol/Pop irony, and flamboyant excess that was the Bowie phenomenon: his trademark synthetic androgyny is a musical symbiosis of feminine passion and masculine dominance that define his funky, gender-bending art and, ultimately, the glam-rock genre as a whole. Early on, the film cuts to elaborate backstage costume changes between sets, highlighting a playlist that includes such classics as "Changes," "Space Oddity," "Time," and "Suffragette City." In this comprehensive document of a seminal peformer in music history, director D.A. Pennebaker captures the enigmatic singer's smoldering brilliance like a Hubble photograph of a supernova; it is essential viewing for Bowie fans and music historians alike. |
| QUADROPHENIA |
| LATENITE 090684 |
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| After essentially inventing the rock opera format, The Who followed the cult favorite TOMMY and numerous aborted rock-opera projects with the album QUADROPHENIA. This film version, directed by Franc Roddam, illuminated the feelings of disillusionment and confusion evident in songs such as "Love Reign O'er Me," "Dr. Jimmy," "The Real Me," and "Bellboy." |
| MAGNUM FORCE |
| LATENITE 091284 |
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| In the second of "Dirty Harry" films, Bay Area cop Harry Callahan is up against unknown vigilantes killing off mobsters who are getting off through the courts. |
| SUGAR CANE ALLEY |
| 091484 |
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| Martinique, in the early 1930s. Young José and his grandmother live in a small village. Nearly everyone works cutting cane and barely earning a living. The overseer can fine a worker for the smallest infraction. The way to advance is to do well in school. José studies hard and succeeds in an exam allowing him to attend school in the capital. With only a partial scholarship, the tuition is very costly. José and his grandmother move to Fort-de-France to make José's studies easier... |
| THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT |
| LATENITE 092784 |
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| Through concert performances and interviews, this film offers us an "inside look" at this famous rock group, "The Who". It captures their zany craziness and outrageous antics from the initial formation of the group to its major hit "Who Are You", and features the last performance of drummer keith Moon just prior to his death. |
| AFTER THE REHEARSAL |
| 092884 |
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| Although initially intended for the small screen, AFTER THE REHEARSAL was Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s final film to be released theatrically. (He went on to write several scripts and direct for stage and television.) Henrik Vogler (Erland Josephson), an aging director in the process of staging a production of August Strindberg’s A DREAM PLAY, remains in the theater alone one night after a rehearsal has taken place to reflect on his life and career. He is subsequently joined by young ingenue Anna (Lena Olin), who seems to have romantic designs on him, and later by Rakel (Ingrid Thulin), a former lover of Henrik’s and possibly Anna’s mother. Although rather modest in scale--this is a film with one set and essentially three actors--the philosophical ramifications of this short (just over 70 minutes) Bergman feature on the nature of art and the artist’s creative dilemma are typically far-reaching. It is almost impossible not to conclude that the womanizing Vogler represents Bergman himself, who, like his alter ego, was romantically involved with several of his longtime leading ladies. |
| ALTERED STATES |
| LATENITE 100484 |
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| An American researching different states of consciousness with the aid of mind altering drugs and an isolation chamber begins to experience disturbing physical changes in his body that point toward an evolutionary regression. |
| ERENDIRA |
| 100584 |
|
| While Erendira, a beautiful teenage girl, has a surreal mystical vision, her grandmother's house catches on fire and burns to the ground. Her grandmother holds Erendira responsible and, in order to extract restitution from the girl, forces her into prostitution. Erendira's surreal mystical experiences continue while her grandmother grows rich from exploiting her. |
| RUMBLE FISH |
| LATENITE 101184 |
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| Rusty James is an up-and-coming street hoodlum, lamenting the salad days of the gangs when his older brother, The Motorcycle Boy, ran things as President of the Packers. Before disappearing two months earlier, Motorcycle Boy outlawed gang wars, or "rumbles," by a treaty. When Rusty James breaks the treaty in a fight with Biff Wilcox, and gets seriously hurt, his brother suddenly appears. Distracted, delusional and enigmatic, his brother seems haunted and disinterested in his past as a "neighborhood novelty." Over the next few days, James' dead end life of posturing seems to fall apart; he loses his girlfriend, his friends, his own sense of confidence. The future looms like a dark, unknown wall locking James in. Through Motorcycle Boy's example, he finally learns to break free from others' expectations, and his own inner demons. |
| THE EVIL DEAD |
| LATENITE 102584 |
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| Director Sam Raimi's first film has achieved legendary status since its 1982 release, and for good reason. Though perhaps not as widely seen as its two sequels, EVIL DEAD 2 and ARMY OF DARKNESS, THE EVIL DEAD is arguably the best of the three. It is the story of five college-age friends who travel to a cabin in rural Tennessee where the stumble upon the Book of the Dead, an ancient tome bound in human flesh and inked in blood. After unwittingly awakening the unspeakable terror told of in the book, each of the friends is transformed into the evil dead, one by one, except for Ash (Bruce Campbell). So, Ash is left with no other way to survive than to dismember the living corpses of his sister, girlfriend, and two of his friends. Shot on a shoestring budget, the film boasts some impressive camera work and extremely over the top gore effects as well as a sense of humor much more subtle than the tongue-in-cheek aesthetic of the two sequels. |
| REPO MAN |
| 102684 |
|
| Frustrated punk rocker Otto quits his supermarket job after slugging a co-worker, and is later dumped by his girlfriend at a party. Wandering the streets in frustration, he is recruited in the repossession of a car by a repo agent. After discovering his parents have donated his college fund to a televangelist, he joins the repossession agency (Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation) as an apprentice "repo man". During his training, he is introduced into the mercenary and paranoid world of the drivers, befriended by a UFO conspiracy theorist, confronted by rival repo agents, discovers some of his one-time friends have turned to a life of crime, is lectured to about cosmic unconsciousness by the repo agency grounds worker, and finds himself entangled in a web of intrigue concerning a huge repossession bounty on a 1964 Chevy Malabu driven by a lunatic government scientist, with Top Secret cargo in the trunk... |
| TAXI DRIVER |
| LATENITE 110184 |
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| Disrguntled war vet and cabbie Travis Bickle (DeNiro), a lonely man obsessed with pornography and violence. As events in Travis' life begin to turn for the worse, he slowly descends into the depths of his own paranoia, driving away the one woman willin to love him, eventually exploding in an orgy of killing against the "scum" of the streets he hates so intensely. |
| CAREFUL, HE MIGHT HEAR YOU |
| 112284 |
|
| Two sisters, one wealthy and the other working class, battle for the custody of their young nephew. The poor boy, caught in the middle of the women's struggle, runs away and goes in search of the father he never met. This fine Australian production won eight Australian Film Institute Awards. |
| MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL |
| LATENITE 122084 |
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| This classic Monty Python comedy, directed by Pythons Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, is a hilarious send-up of the grim circumstances of the Middle Ages as told through the story of King Arthur and framed by a modern-day murder investigation. When the mythical king of the Britons leads his knights on a quest for the Holy Grail, they face a wide array of horrors, including a persistent Black Knight, a three-headed giant, a cadre of shrubbery-challenged knights, the perilous Castle Anthrax, a killer rabbit, a house of virgins, and a handful of rude Frenchmen. |
| THE STONE BOY |
| 122184 |
|
| A young man, shattered with guilt after accidently killing his older brother, turns to his family for support and compassion. There, however, he finds only fury and rejection. A sensitive tale of a family torn apart by a tragic accident. |