John Howard Davies - probably most famous for his portrayal of orphan "Oliver Twist" in David Lean's classic - is a little too weedy, for me, as the title character in this adaptation of Thomas Hughes' story about a young boy sent to the prestigious Rugby School in the 1830's where he encounters bullies; brutality and ultimately kindness. Robert Newton turns in a great performance as "Dr. Arnold" who believes that the somewhat cruel educational practices are of the past, and so he and "Tom Brown" try to improve things. This film is not so faithful to the book; but uses the two lead performances, as well as a convincing effort from John Forrest as his nemesis "Flashman", to convey much of it's sentiment. I probably preferred the 1940 version, but there's not much in it.
Under the USSR oppression a family breaks up and its members find themselves on opposite sides of the barricades. Based on the Mykolas Sluckis' novel, the film tells the story of a dramatic and painful reality of the post-war Lithuania.
A down-on-his luck writer meets a movie producer, who asks him to write a screenplay on the condition that he visit locations for the film. Chaos ensues.
A Headmistress steals from her own school. As a young girl Colleen McCabe asks a priest in confessional "What is sin?" Thirty years later she is found out for practising it. An ex-nun,she leaves the convent because she becomes disillusioned with spiritual matters and goes into teaching, being appointed headmistress of the John Rigby School in London. Along with a small coterie of chosen staff members to act as her spies,she misappropriates half a million pounds from school funds which she spends on luxury goods and a trip on the Orient Express. Meanwhile the school suffers,having to use ancient text books and pupils as cleaners. She is tried,although admitted to hospital for depression on the trial day, and sentenced to five years in jail, later reduced to four. The film alternates dramatized scenes of Colleen's misbehaviour with interviews with those who knew her.
Coy, a sailor without ship, banished from the sea by a navigation accident occurred during his guard, knows in an auction of naval objects in Barcelona to an attractive and mysterious woman, Tangier. This, in hard struggle with an Italian adventurer, Nino Palermo, manages to get a cartographic jewel of eighteen, the Maritime Atlas of Urrutia.
An injured RAF pilot, confined to a wheelchair is committed to an eerie hospital where he starts to lose his mind.
After a failed anti-Nazi sabotage mission leaves his eleven comrades dead, a Norwegian resistance fighter finds himself fleeing the Gestapo through the snowbound reaches of Scandinavia.
When a new pupil arrives at a comprehensive school, he decides to take his video camera to film the bullies at work.
An ambitious carnival man with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychologist who is even more dangerous than he is.
One day Sammy and his younger sister Ellie happen upon a cabin where Alice, a young, partially deaf girl with epilepsy is being kept by her abusive stepfather. The three soon become friends and hope to get Alice an education and help her escape from the torture she undergoes daily. However, Alice's stepfather soon finds out about the friendship Alice has struck up and punishes her brutally. This story of friendship and youth shows that everyone is human and deserves to be treated so, no matter their disability or weakness.
Bruce Macdonald follows punk bank Hard Core Logo on a harrowing last-gasp reunion tour throughout Western Canada. As magnetic lead-singer Joe Dick holds the whole magilla together through sheer force of will, all the tensions and pitfalls of life on the road come bubbling to the surface.
A headstrong young girl in Afghanistan, ruled by the Taliban, disguises herself as a boy in order to provide for her family.