Accattone (1961)
The Poor Man's "Dolce Vita"
Genre : Drama
Runtime : 1H 57M
Director : Pier Paolo Pasolini
Writer : Pier Paolo Pasolini
Synopsis
A pimp with no other means to provide for himself finds his life spiralling out of control when his prostitute is sent to prison.
Stevie, fresh from prison in Scotland, finds a job on a London construction site. The working conditions are poor and most of the men are working under aliases, due to immigration status and to not conflict with their "signing on" for unemployment benefits. Some coworkers help Stevie secure housing, squatting in a council estate. Then Stevie meets Susan, from Ireland, who's struggling to be a professional singer.
The tragic story of the beautiful daughter of a middle-class refugee family from East Pakistan. Neeta, the protagonist, sacrifices everything for her unappreciative family.
The spirit of an ancient evil queen posesses the body of a young anthropological student, who then goes on a murderous rampage.
The "head" of the family is literally that--a giant head on a tiny body, who psychically controls the rest of his even weirder family.
Documents 18 months in the lives of three crack addicts in Lowell, Massachusetts.
Detroit detective Marty Kingston (Liotta) is the leader of an undercover narcotics team, whose members are being systematically murdered one by one. To solve the brutal killings, Kingston joins forces with a cocky, young homicide detective. But neither of them is prepared for the shocking corruption their investigation will uncover — stunning secrets that will set both men on a violent collision course with betrayal and vengeance.
Police try to capture someone who is commiting ritual murders of women during Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
Bill Cannon (Dan Duryea) loses everything to alcohol: his job, his family, his self-respect. Soon after his wife and daughter leave him, he receives word his little girl has been injured in a car accident outside Chicago. His wife will call later with news, but Bill’s short the $53 he needs to keep his phone from being disconnected. Filled with anguish, he heads out onto the Los Angeles streets to find some way to come up with the cash. As his character encounters expected cruelty and unexpected kindness, Duryea takes what might have been mere melodrama and turns it into a perceptive examination of one shattered soul. The other fine star of this race-against-the-clock programmer is an unglamorous, lunch-bucket L.A. rarely captured on film.
Three cowboys, mistaken for members of an outlaw gang, are relentlessly pursued by a posse.
A reporter and a promiscuous young woman try to solve a series of child killings in a remote southern Italian town rife with superstition and a distrust of outsiders.
An old prince lives in his ancient palace in Rome together with the ghosts of his ancestors. For years he has proudly rejected huge offers by a real estate group seeking to buy the palace and build a department store in its place, but when he suddenly dies his nephew signs the deal. The palace seems lost, but the ghosts forge a plan to save it from destruction.
An unlikely Hollywood hooker helps a detective set a trap for a mutilator pimp.
A young journalist asks an old artist about the portrait of a naked Indian woman that he has in his study. The artist tells the story of Maria Candelaria, a young Indian woman who was rejected by her own people for being the daughter of a prostitute. She is protected by a young Indian man, Lorenzo Rafael, who has fallen in love with her.
In Paris, in the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Cesar Charron owns a theater at the Rue Morgue where he performs the play "Murders in the Rue Morgue" with his wife Madeleine Charron, who has dreadful nightmares. When there are several murders by acid of people connected to Cesar, the prime suspect of Inspector Vidocq would be Cesar's former partner Rene Marot. But Marot murdered Madeleine's mother many years ago and committed suicide immediately after.
A prostitute and a drifter find themselves bound together as they make their way through the rural South, doing what they have to do to survive.
The descendant of Elizabeth Bathory is abducted by a cult of self-proclaimed supermen who achieve this state of superiority by drinking from the "blood cows" (read: people) kept at the "dairy farm", and they try to get her to join them.
One of the most ambitious spaghetti westerns, The Forgotten Pistolero is a retelling of the Greek legend of Orestes, who avenges the murder of his father with the help of his friend and former mentor Pylades and his sister Electra. In Baldi’s movie, Orestes is called Sebastian, a man living on his own. One day a wounded stranger called Rafael/Pylades takes shelter in his house and tells him that he, Sebastian, is the son of a Mexican general who was murdered by his wife and her lover. Sebastian has no recollection of the massacre, but the tolling of the bells announcing the Ave Maria bring back fragmented memories. Finally Sebastian is re-united with his sister Isabella and together they avenge the murder of their father. The film is a bit confusing from time to time, with a storyline that seems over-complicated for a spaghetti western, but patient and attentive viewers are rewarded. The Forgotten Pistolero is also known for Roberto Pregadio’s awesome score.
After getting a taste for blood as children, Hansel and Gretel have become the ultimate vigilantes, hell-bent on retribution. Now, unbeknownst to them, Hansel and Gretel have become the hunted, and must face an evil far greater than witches... their past.
A wandering tough biker girl aids a female delinquent gang in their battles against an all-male Seiyu group over a fixed boxing match.
A haunting erotic fairytale about Lucy, a young University student drawn into a mysterious hidden world of beauty and desire.
After years spent working as a prostitute in her Italian village, middle-aged Mamma Roma has saved enough money to buy herself a fruit stand so that she can have a respectable middle-class life and reestablish contact with the 16-year-old son she abandoned when he was an infant. But her former pimp threatens to expose her sordid past, and her troubled son seems destined to fall into a life of crime and violence.
A man and his son take an allegorical stroll through life with a talking bird that spouts social and political philosophy.
This biblical drama from the Catholic Marxist director focuses on the teachings of Jesus, including the parables that reflect their revolutionary nature. As Jesus travels along the coast of the Sea of Galilee, he gradually gathers more followers, leading him into direct conflict with the authorities.
Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to chose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.
A wealthy Italian household is turned upside down when a handsome stranger arrives, seduces every family member and then disappears. Each has an epiphany of sorts, but none can figure out who the seductive visitor was or why he came.
Four corrupted fascist libertines round up 9 teenage boys and girls and subject them to 120 days of sadistic physical, mental and sexual torture.
Microphone in hand, Pier Paolo Pasolini asks Italians to talk about sex, apparently their least favorite subject: he asks children if they know where do babies come from, asks old and young women about gender equality, and asks both genders if a woman's virginity still matters, how do they view homosexuals, if sex and honor are related, if divorce should be legal, if they support the recent abolition of brothels, etc. He interviews workers, intellectuals, students, rural farmers, the bourgeoisie, and other different people, painting a vivid portrait of Italy in the years of the Economic Boom, suspended between modernity and tradition.
Four short films by four different directors dealing with the principles of modern life.
Based on the plot of Euripides' Medea. Medea centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed her for another woman.
After the end of World War II Karen, a young displaced woman from Lithuania, marries Italian fisherman Antonio to get away from her internment camp. But the life on Antonio's island, Stromboli, threatened by its volcano, is a tough one and Karen cannot get used to it.
In pre-war Italy, a young couple have a baby boy. The father, however, is jealous of his son - and the scene moves to antiquity, where the baby is taken into the desert to be killed. He is rescued, given the name Edipo (Oedipus), and brought up by the King and Queen of Corinth as their son. One day an oracle informs Edipo that he is destined to kill his father and marry his mother. Horrified, he flees Corinth and his supposed parents - only to get into a fight and kill an older man on the road...
A handsome Belgian sailor on shore leave in the port of Brest, who is also a drug-smuggler and murderer, embarks upon a voyage of highly charged and violent homosexual self-discovery that will change him forever from the man he once was.
During the Nazi occupation of Rome in 1944, the leader of the Resistance is chased by the Nazis as he seeks refuge and a way to escape.
A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. But in the course of a single day he unknowingly captures a death on film.
In the future, the government maintains control of public opinion by outlawing literature and maintaining a group of enforcers, known as “firemen,” to perform the necessary book burnings. Fireman Montag begins to question the morality of his vocation…
Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.
A conscientious factory worker gets his finger cut off by a machine. The accident causes him to become more involved in political and revolutionary groups.
A small-time thief steals a car and impulsively murders a motorcycle policeman. Wanted by the authorities, he attempts to persuade a girl to run away to Italy with him.
A day in the life of an unfaithful married couple and their steadily deteriorating relationship in Milan.
When elderly pensioner Umberto Domenico Ferrari returns to his boarding house from a protest calling for a hike in old-age pensions, his landlady demands her 15,000-lire rent by the end of the month or he and his small dog will be turned out onto the street. Unable to get the money in time, Umberto fakes illness to get sent to a hospital, giving his beloved dog to the landlady's pregnant and abandoned maid for temporary safekeeping.