Mimsy Farmer Movies

When the famous artist Bob Northrup is kidnapped by his agent and the agent's two brothers and ordered to produce paintings, the infuriatingly unresponsive fellow doesn't make a fuss or complain at all. However, neither does he produce any artwork, depriving his captors of any excuse for their actions. After some consideration, however, it begins to appear that the situation is very much to the artist's liking, since he will now have absolutely no worldly concerns whatever. The artistic goose may indeed lay some more of his much-prized golden eggs. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In this commando action-adventure by Antonio Margheriti, Captain Wesley (Lewis Collins) has been charged with cleaning out some drug sites in Thailand and gathers up four of his mercenaries for the task. His superior is Fletcher (Ernest Borgnine), a drug enforcement officer with shady business contacts. Wesley and his crew, including the tough Charlton (Klaus Kinski) and China (Lee Van Cleef), head out into the jungle to eradicate the drugs at their source. Battles and explosions follow. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

The Death of Mario Ricci is a Swiss/French/West German coproduction, filmed on location in Switzerland. Gian-Maria Volonte stars as a TV newscaster who journeys to a remote alpine village to interview a famed malnutrition expert. Upon his arrival, Volonte learns that there's an ongoing investigation in the village concerning the mysterious death of an Italian immigrant. Inexorably, the journalist becomes involved in the investigation, and with equal inexorability the chain of evidence leads to the malnutritionist. The Death of Mario Ricci is consistently lovely to look at, though dramatically it's as hollow-centered as a piece of Swiss chocolate. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The internationally renowned string quartet had been performing together for most of their adult lives when their lead violinist suddenly died, leaving the remaining three confused about their lives and careers. Up till then, all they had known were the rigors of constant practice and traveling. Music was everything, and they never took the time to sample Life's other pleasures. The trio decide to split up, but then a young violinist shows up and convinces them to reform the group and let him take over. He is one of the most talented players they have ever heard and the quartet once again makes sweet music. But as good as he is on stage, the youth is a wild man off stage who freely smokes dope, sleeps with fans, and parties whenever he can. Seeing that his private life has not affected the brilliance of his playing and even suspecting that it may even improve his playing, the three old players are thrown into personal tail spins as they look back at their own austere life choices. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The French Foreign Legion intervenes on behalf of 3,000 European and American civilian hostages in the town of Kolwezi, Zaire. Kantangese rebel forces hold the hostages in the small mining town and subject their victims to various ordeals. The military springs into action to save the captives in this uneven adventure that pays homage to military valor and dedication. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Lafayette (Gerard Depardieu), a young-ish misfit Frenchman and Nocello (Marcello Mastroianni), an older misfit Italian, live in a run-down section of New York City and are friends. Lafayette works for Flaxman (James Coco), an excitable antiquarian who owns and runs something called the "Roman Museum," by means of which he upholds the standards of a former age. Lafayette also works for a women's lib group, which one day decides to "rape" him to see how the shoe fits on the other foot. Rather than being much bothered, Lafayette starts a liaison with the woman who actually had sex with him. In this rambling tale, these men are shown to have great difficulty enduring intense emotions, and the situations that arise force them to confront this difficulty repeatedly. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The majority of Italian communists had been somewhat independent from strict adherence to the Soviet Communist Party's dictates for several decades by the 1970s. This biographical drama explores the career of Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), one of the communists who, in the '20s and '30s began to break with Moscow over issues of strategy. Born in Sardinia, Gramschi, together with Palmiro Togliatti created the newspaper L'Ordine Nuovo in 1919. He became the Secretary of the Italian Communist Party in 1924. Arrested in 1926, he died days after his release from prison in 1937. His writings, The Prison Notebooks, cover the period between 1929-35. In these, he substituted the conception of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" for the "hegemony of the proletariat." His emphasis was on intellectual guidance rather than domination by the state. The movie mostly explores his career while he was in prison, from which he was allowed to circulate his notions concerning a gradual revolution. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

A young med student is doing his grad work at the local morgue when a series of mysterious and unexplained deaths (ascribed to suicide) surround her. The sudden influx of corpses is more than this fellow can handle. ~ Rovi

Francesco Barilli, star of Prima della Rivoluzione, made his directorial debut with this unique, hallucinatory horror-thriller. Mimsy Farmer portrays Sylvia, a chemist who begins to suffer from strange visions. She sees a mysterious woman in black applying perfume in a mirror, strangers following her everywhere she goes, and a ghostly little girl reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland, who may be Sylvia herself as a child. It turns out that Sylvia stabbed her mother's sexually abusive boyfriend to death long ago, and now her visions are driving her to madness and cleaver-murders. The other possibility, however, is that literally all of Sylvia's friends are Satanists conspiring to cause her suicide. This is a remarkable film, weaving reality, fantasy and memory into an almost seamless fabric to dizzying and poetic effect. Admittedly, there are several logical lapses and unanswered questions, but the film's singular vision more than compensates for such oversights. Barilli went on to direct the unnerving drama Pensione Paura. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

Two families of Moroccan rug-makers are contrasted in this award-winning French-language film. The poor family makes its living by dyeing the wool used in the rugs made in the richer family's factory. When the boss of the factory refuses to see the son of the poor family following an accident which has injured his father, the poor son breaks into the boss's house. He is met by unsupportable abuse from the rich wife, who flogs him for dirtying her carpets. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This strident Yugoslavian/Italian film is a very uneven adaptation of a small portion of the famous and much-loved whimsical novel The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulghakov. It attempts to deal only with the Moscow portion of the novel. Even so, it was a brave attempt to film the unfilmable, and uses animation and other techniques to portray the more fantastic aspects of the story. In the film, which lovingly recreates the Moscow of the 1920s, the Master (Ugo Tognazzi) is a playwright. He is attending the dress rehearsal for his play, which is being performed over the objections of everyone involved, except for his girlfriend Margarita (Mimsy Farmer) and Professor Woland (Alain Cluny). He grows frantic when he discovers that the Professor is actually the Devil (the actual supernatural being, not just a very bad man). The Master tries to warn people but is committed to an insane asylum for his pains. At the play's premiere, the Professor uses his magical powers to add terrifying special effects which send the audiences screaming out of the theater. The film makes many guarded references to the persecution (past and present) of artists under communism. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi