Alexandra Stewart Movies

In this convoluted drama, a young woman and two cousins, whom she doesn't know, find that they are named as beneficiaries in their grandmother's will. The young woman, because she's never met them, mistakes a friend of her cousin, for her cousin. Meanwhile a maid begins sleeping with the butler, and the woman's real cousin falls in love with the lawyer. When the real cousin gets there, the mix-up is resolved. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Agency tackles the question of the efficiency of media manipulation. An unscrupulous advertising agency, in league with equally untrustworthy political campaign manager Robert Mitchum, plants subliminal messages in its TV commercials. Just as Vance Packard warned in the 1950s expose The Hidden Persuaders, these hidden messages persuade the viewers to vote for Mitchum's candidate. Given the potency of the the film's premise, it's disappointing to watch director George Gaczender handle the material (based on a novel by Paul Gottleib) is so cut-and-dried a fashion. But Mitchum is good, as are his costars Valerie Perrine, Lee Majors, Saul Rubinek and Alexandra Stewart. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In Louis Malle's apocalyptic fantasy Black Moon, Lily (Cathryn Harrison, granddaughter of Rex) drives down a lonesome road, and soon finds herself in a alternate world full of non sequiturs and bizarre characters. At times, this looks like a David Lynch film, what with an old woman conversing with a rat, a pack of naked children chasing a pig, a talking unicorn, a strange set of possibly incestuous siblings (one of whom is "underground" film star Joe Dallesandro), and several other warped set pieces. Malle reportedly culled inspiration for the narrative of this film from his own dreams. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this thriller a beautiful girl approaches a journalist in a Parisian bar. Her clothing is in tatters and she seems dazed. She tells him that someone has drugged her and that she needs a place to rest. The gentlemanly journalist obliges and takes her home. The following day, she has fully recovered and they stroll through town. The woman believes that someone is following her, and she suddenly disappears. Later the writer reads the paper and learns that her body was found in a car wreck. He is highly skeptical and tries to find her. Sure enough, he learns that the death was a ruse staged by her stepfather who wanted to collect on her insurance policy. The journalist saves the young woman from her step-parent, and the two fall in love. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Charles Heidseick's fight to introduce and popularize French bubbly in the 19th-century US provides the basis of this romantic made-for-TV biography. It was not an easy task as Champagne Charlie met with considerable resistance from American vintners. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Known to English-speaking audiences as Day for Night, La nuit américaine was director François Truffaut's loving and humorous tribute to the communal insanity of making a movie. The film details the making of a family drama called "Meet Pamela" about the tragedy that follows when a young French man introduces his parents to his new British wife. Truffaut gently satirizes his own films with "Meet Pamela"'s overwrought storyline, but the real focus is on the chaos behind the scenes. One of the central actresses is continually drunk due to family problems, while the other is prone to emotional instability, and the male lead (Truffaut regular Jean-Pierre Leaud) starts to act erratically when his intermittent romance with the fickle script girl begins to fail. In addition to all this personal drama, the film is besieged by technical problems, from difficult tracking shots to stubborn animal actors. The inspiration for future satires of movie-making from Living in Oblivion to Irma Vep, La nuit américaine was considered slight by some critics in comparison to earlier Truffaut masterworks, but it went on to win the 1973 Oscar for Best Foreign Film. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

Intentionally or unintentionally molded after the eccentric deadpan comedies of Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismaki, the quirky slice-of-life feature El Cantor unfolds amid the day-to-day of western European Jews. William (Luis Rego), a dentist living in the French port city of Le Havre, receives a telegram from his long-absent cousin, Clovis (Lou Castel), indicating that the latter will soon be docking and needs a place to reside. He's an itinerant Jew without a permanent home, nicknamed "The Cantor" by his parents for his obsession with imbibing as much Yiddish as possible during childhood. As a youngster, Clovis constantly played the prankster by teasing William and others, yet remained affable to generally everyone (including William). Sensing a rekindled closeness, William - to the chagrin of his wife Elizabeth (Francoise Michaud), who is still grieving from the recent loss of her father - obliges Clovis's request. This prompts Elizabeth to do everything in her power to persuade Clovis to leave, shy of physically throwing him out the door. Clovis remains, however, and soon accompanies William on an eventful trip into the city that neither will ever forget. Director Joseph Morder segments his film into distinct chapters with fade-outs in-between. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

French filmmaker Paolo Franchi's sophomore feature follows a psychologically damaged youth who makes the grim decision to kill his parents. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

An artist fending off his detractors (more imagined than real) ends up making things more difficult for himself in this satiric comedy. Kevin Kazanovitch (Mike Marshall) is a theatrical director whose latest production, a farcical comedy, has become a resounding success. But Kazanovitch is by his nature high-strung and has a pronounced streak of paranoia, and when he's informed that he's to receive a highly coveted award for his work, Kazanovitch is certain it's part of a plot by his detractors to discredit him. The director is so thoroughly convinced of this that he decides to rewrite a few scenes of his play to comment on those he believes are trying to ruin him; he calls his cast to a special rehearsal of the material one afternoon, but Yves Lempereur (Yves Afonso), the show's leading man, gets in an auto accident while rushing to the theater from shooting a television commercial. As chance would have it, the man who hit Lempereur's car was Gaston (Jean Lefebvre), who happens to be dating Fifi Flores (Lili Vonderfield), an actress in the show. Lempereur is injured in the accident and will not be able to tread the boards for a few weeks; Kazanovitch is in a panic, until he discovers Gaston has a photographic memory and can learn Lempereur's lines in a flash (and plays the role nearly as well as the more experienced actor). However, after Gaston is cast in the play, Kazanovitch discovers his new star has a secret life, including a long-standing addiction to gambling. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Based on a Solzhenitsyn book, this is the story of a Moscow official in Stalinist Russia whose future freedom depends on a technological break-through. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide

As young and penniless Rik roams about Rome, he finds lady luck on his side for a spell. Not only does he receive a bounty of coins from a weighing machine, but he also wins cash from a restaurant which awards him as its 10,000th customer. Not to mention the car. And the job. And the women. Before long, however, his luck changes, but not before he finds true love with a journalist. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide