Linda Véras Movies

In Polish Russia, Stoloff (Yul Brynner), a Cossack in exile from his land and family, has gained control over a small Jewish village. The villagers live mainly by horse-thievery, under the leadership of Kifke (Eli Wallach). Stoloff's regime is tolerated with difficulty until he commandeers the village's horses (the sole source of wealth) for the Russian army. Naomi (Jane Birkin) has been away in France, where she has gotten a notion of revolution, and she inspires the town to resistance. This action gets her into deep trouble, from which only the wily Kifke and his assistant Zanvil (Oliver Tobias) can rescue her. Zanvil is particularly motivated, as he is in love with Naomi. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Spaghetti Western fans used to the likes of Django and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly might be taken by surprise when watching Sabata. True, the film does star spaghetti Western star Lee Van Cleef as the tight-lipped hero of the title, but it has a very different feel from the genre's traditional, Sergio Leone-derived style. Director/co-writer Gianfranco Parolini (alias Frank Kramer) takes things in a direction that seems to fall halfway between The Wild Wild West TV series and a James Bond movie; the film is packed with colorful characters, exotic weapons, and the action scenes that mix wild stunts with pyrotechnics. Parolini appropriately gives the film a light touch, playing up the colorful and humorous aspects while delivering the action. The end result is a little too long for this sort of light material, causing it to drag a bit in the middle, but it is too good-natured and entertaining to dislike. In short, Sabata is likely to make fun viewing for Euro-cult fans and anyone interested in an offbeat Western. ~ Donald Guarisco, Rovi

A skillful thief with a penchant for knives attempts to outwit a slew of bloodthirsty treasure hunters in this brutal Italian Western from director Sergio Sollima. The gold they seek may be enough to finance the Mexican Revolution -- depending on who gets to it first and what they intend to do with it. Whether it's the thief Cuchillo (Tomas Milian), his passionate fiancée, the sheriff-turned-bounty-hunter, the ruthless bandits, or the fearsome American agents who end up with the gold, two things are certain -- the stakes are high and the competition is literally cutthroat. Run, Man, Run! also features music by Bruno Nicolai and the legendary film composer Ennio Morricone. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Contempt is the story of the end of a marriage. Camille (Brigitte Bardot) falls out of love with her husband Paul (Michel Piccoli) while he is rewriting the screenplay Odyssey by American producer Jeremiah Prokosch (Jack Palance). Just as the director of Prokosch's film, Fritz Lang, says that The Odyssey is the story of individuals confronting their situations in a real world, Le Mépris itself is an examination of the position of the filmmaker in the commercial cinema. Godard himself was facing this situation in the production of Le Mépris. Italian producer Carlo Ponti had given him the biggest budget of his career, and he found himself working with a star of Bardot's magnitude for the first time. ~ Louis Schwartz, Rovi

With a deft guiding hand, director Roberto Rossellini brings out the depths in this study of a man's transformation during the German occupation of Milan. Based on a novel by Indro Montanelli, the story is true. Colonel Mueller (Hannes Messemer) and his cohorts have decided to plant a spy in the Milan prison. They choose a petty thief from the streets who earns his living plying the black-market trade and assign him to the task. He is thrown in jail under the false identity of General della Rovere (Vittorio De Sica) in order to bring the Italian resistance fighters among the prisoners, out into the open. As the fake general slowly makes friends with these men, he becomes a leader of sorts, and this transformation gets him thinking in a different way about himself. This well-wrought drama was given the "Best Foreign Film" award in 1960 by the New York Film Critics, and it won the Golden Lion at the 1959 Venice Film Festival. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi