Notable Woody Allen films:
- Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) · A middle-aged couple suspects foul play when their neighbor’s wife suddenly drops dead.
- Annie Hall (1977) · Neurotic New York comedian Alvy Singer falls in love with the ditsy Annie Hall.
- The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001) · An insurance investigator and an efficency expert who hate each other are both hypnotized by a crooked hypnotist with a jade scorpion into stealing jewels.
- Love and Death (1975) · In czarist Russia, a neurotic soldier and his distant cousin formulate a plot to assassinate Napoleon.
- Sleeper (1973) · A nerdish store owner is revived out of cryostasis into a future world to fight an oppressive government.
- Take the Money and Run (1969) · The life and times of Virgil Starkwell, inept bank robber.
- The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) · In 1930s New Jersey, a movie character walks off the screen and into the real world.
- Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) · Between two Thanksgivings, Hannah’s husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondriac ex-husband rekindles his relationship with her sister Holly.
- Manhattan (1979) · A divorced New Yorker currently dating a high-schooler brings himself to look for love in the mistress of his best friend instead.
“If my films don’t show a profit, I know I’m doing something right.”
Woody Allen
Notable Almodóvar films:
- Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) · A woman’s lover leaves her, and she tries to contact him to find out why he’s left. She confronts his wife and son, who are as clueless as she. Meanwhile her girlfriend is afraid the police are looking for her because of her boyfriend’s criminal activities. They talk to a female lawyer, who turns out to be the lover’s new lover, and everyone’s path keeps crossing each other’s in a very complicated and confusing manner.
- Hable con ella (Talk to Her) · After a chance encounter at a theater, two men, Benigno and Marco, meet at a private clinic where Benigno works. Lydia, Marco’s girlfriend and a bullfighter by profession, has been gored and is in a coma. It so happens that Benigno is looking after another woman in a coma, Alicia, a young ballet student. The lives of the four characters will flow in all directions, past, present and future, dragging all of them towards an unsuspected destiny.
- Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother) · After her son is hit by a car and killed on his seventeenth birthday, Manuela makes her way back to Barcelona, where she had previously lived with the boy’s father. There she comes into contact with a number of quirky individuals, including a transsexual male prostitute, a pregnant nun, and a lesbian actress.
- La mala educación (Bad Education) · In the early 60s, two boys - Ignacio and Enrique - discover love, movies and fear in a Christian school. Father Manolo, the school principal and Literature teacher, both witnesses and takes part in these discoveries. The three characters come against one another twice again, in the late 70s and in 1980. These meetings are set to change the life and death of some of them.
- Volver (Volver) · The backdrop is Madrid and its lively working-class neighbourhoods, where the immigrants from the various Spanish provinces share dreams, lives and fortune with a multitude of ethnic groups, and other races. At the heart of this social framework, three generations of women who survive wind, fire and even death, thanks to audacity, goodness and a limitless vitality.
- Tacones lejanos (High Heels) · A girl’s mother returns after 15 years to find her daughter has married one of her (the mother’s) old boyfriends. They try to mend their broken mother/daughter relationship and deal with their common lover.
- Carne trémula (Live Flesh) · Pizza delivery man Victor is having an argument with Elena, whom he met a few days ago, but she was high then and doesn’t want to hear about him. Reacting to the noise, two cops, young David and older Sancho, arrive at the scene, the gun accidentally goes off.. Four years later David is a wheelchair basketball star, he’s married to Elena, Victor is released out of prison and their destinies begin to cross again.
- La flor de mi secreto (The Flower of My Secret) · Leo Macias writes sentimental novels with great success but hidden under a pseudonym, Amanda Gris. She is unhappy with her professional life and with her husband, a soldier working in Brussels and Bosnia that is never at home. She will try anything to change her life.
- Los abrazos rotos (Broken Embraces) · Harry Caine, a blind writer, reaches this moment in time when he has to heal his wounds from 14 years back. He was then still known by his real name, Mateo Blanco, and directing his last movie.
“I also wanted to express the strength of cinema to hide reality, while being entertaining. Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life and your loneliness.”
Pedro Almódovar
You think you’re God Almighty, but you know what you are? You’re a cheap, lousy, dirty, stinkin’ mug! And I’m glad what I done to you, ya hear that? I’m glad what I done!
On the Waterfront (1954)
A sketch Edith Head made for Paul Newman, for the film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969).
7th August 1963: Elizabeth Taylor looks on as her daughter Liza Todd has her hair combed by a hairdresser, on the set of “Becket” at Shepperton Studios, Middlesex.
