Popular Hong Kong actress Amy Yip plays Sister Har — a seminal figure in 1960s and ’70s Hong Kong nightlife — in this biographical film that follows the scenester’s rise and fall from the upper echelons of society to the glamour and excess of Hong Kong’s teeming underworld. A truly fascinating portrait of the allure and excess that were part of the fabric of Asia’s favorite playground.
Tag: biography
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Sisi/Last Minute
The immature young ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Franz Joseph, was extremely shy around women but (according to this film) was constantly being propositioned, lewdly or otherwise, by ambitious courtesans. When he was finally married to his Empress, the teen-aged Bavarian princess Sisi (Elizabeth), it seems that his relief knew no bounds, for he was now sure that he would never have to think about sex ever again. According to the filmmakers, this is the true history of that marriage. This story is a complete reversal of the romantic legend depicted in the popular 1955 film Sissi, which helped brighten the emerging stardom of Romy Schneider.
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Bugsy
New York gangster Ben ‘Bugsy’ Siegel takes a brief business trip to Los Angeles. A sharp-dressing womanizer with a foul temper, Siegel doesn’t hesitate to kill or maim anyone crossing him. In L.A. the life, the movies, and most of all strong-willed Virginia Hill detain him while his family wait back home. Then a trip to a run-down gambling joint at a spot in the desert known as Las Vegas gives him his big idea.
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My Best Friend, General Vasili, the Son of Joseph Stalin
Based on a true story of a sport star Bobrov, who happened to become befriended by Vasili, the son of Stalin.
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The Doors
The story of the famous and influential 1960s rock band and its lead singer and composer, Jim Morrison.
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The Secret Life of Arnold Bax
A biopic about the eminent composer Sir Arnold Bax.
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Jack Benny: Comedy in Bloom
Co-stars and celebrity admirers go through Benny’s entire career
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For a Lost Soldier
In the occupied Netherlands near the end of WWII, a young teenager, Jeroen Boman (Maarten Smit) is sent to the Dutch countryside to avoid the war in Amsterdam. While living with his adopted family, Jeroen meets and becomes friends with a Canadian soldier named Walt Cook, who is stationed at the same town he is staying at. Joroen and Walt spend a lot of time playing around and eventually a romantic relationship develops between them. The boy’s sexual curiosity leads him to have a sexual experience with Walt, an encounter that is shown with some vague detail but without actually showing any nudity, even though sexual intimacy between the two of them is implied. Overall, the movie handles this difficult subject with an elegant style and feeling, without having the adult-child relationship overwhelm the viewer and thus allowing the movie to be seen as just a wartime relationship between two people that marks an important time in a young boy’s life.
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Those Old Love-letters
A film about the life of Raimond Valgre, an Estonian songwriter and singer of the 1930s and 40s, the political changes of his country and his life after the war when his songs were considered not suitable for the Soviet way of life.