1985 - My Top 20 Films

In Medieval Japan, an elderly warlord retires, handing over his empire to his three sons. However, he vastly underestimates how the new-found power will corrupt them and cause them to turn on each other...and him.

After finding an old rifle, a young boy joins the Soviet resistance movement against ruthless German forces and experiences the horrors of World War II.

Twin zoologists lose their wives in a car accident and become obsessed with decomposing animals.

After a long absence, Adas Miauczynski visits his family house and spends one evening with his eccentric ritual-driven parents.

During the final months of Argentinian Military Dictatorship in 1983, a high school teacher sets out to find out who the mother of her adopted daughter is.

In the winter of 1942-43, a Jewish family leaps from a train going through Silesia. They are separated in the woods, and Leon, a local peasant who's now a farmer of some wealth, discovers the woman, Rosa, and hides her in his cellar. Leon's a middle-aged Catholic bachelor, tormented by his sexual drive. He doesn't tell Rosa he's seen signs her husband is alive, and he begs her to love him. Rosa offers herself to Leon if he'll help a local Jew in hiding who needs money. Leon pays, and love between Rosa and him does develop, but then Leon's peasant subservience and his limited empathy lead to tragedy. At the war's end, a ray of sunshine comes from an unexpected place.

Lucy Honeychurch shares a brief romance with George Emerson in Florence. Yet as she tries to move on with her life and look for marriage elsewhere, can she truly forget the events of that summer?

Karl and Richard, two German soldiers captured by the Russians in World War I, become very close friends-so close that Richard shares intimate stories about his wife, Anna. Through these stories, Karl falls in love with her in his thoughts. When Karl escapes and goes to Richard's home, Anna knows he is not her husband. But although she tries to resist Karl's love, she feels a growing response to him. Then, one day, Richard returns... This beautifully shot work was the only East German film ever to win the Golden Bear at the West German Berlin International Film Festival. Shortly after this success, however, the film's distribution was suspended due to problems with the literary rights. After over 20 years, the film is now finally available again.

A gay man and a political prisoner are together in a prison. The gay man narrates the stories of two fake movies and his own life.

A tale spanning forty years in the life of Celie, an African-American woman living in the South who survives incredible abuse and bigotry.

A family is deeply affected by the father's extramarital affairs and the turbulent consequences of the Tito-Stalin split.

The wife of the recently deceased lawyer tries to cope with grief after his loss and to keep his last case going in court.

A story of a young woman arrested by police on the day of her wedding for embezzlement, and promptly sentenced to life. She is already pregnant and has her baby in prison. Immediately after birth they are separated and only later Klara finds out that the child had a spine injury in an orphanage. After the years her sentence is shortened and she is released from prison on parole after 12 years.

Two professional assassins fall in love.

A poetic tale of a life lived close to nature. The director, who is also the protagonist, takes us inside his real family life - his country house in the woods, his marriage, his brother and his dying father.

In 1935 New Jersey, a movie character walks off the screen and into the real world.

A film version of a well-known Georgian folk-tale. A young boy has to be immured into the walls of a fortress in order to stop it from crumbling to pieces.

A teenager with a massive facial skull deformity and biker gang mother attempt to live as normal a life as possible under the circumstances.

Ordinary word processor Paul Hackett experiences the worst night of his life after he agrees to visit Marcy, a Soho resident that he met that evening at a coffee shop.

The story of Patsy Cline, the velvet-voiced country music singer who died in a tragic plane crash at the height of her fame.