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443,456 | 819,382 | 43,590 | 6 | Glory . | Perversely , the thing reminds me of " Glory , " without the taken-for-granteds . I mean , now we take for granted that African-Americans are as good in the military as anyone else . ( God knows , they were the tidiest sailors on my ship . ) But at the time this film was released the accomplishments of the 442nd were s... |
442,527 | 819,382 | 32,467 | 6 | Fast , Corny , Fun . | Cagney is often an Irish-American on screen but in his personal life he was proud of his Norwegian grandfather ( " Nelson " ) . The problem with casting him was that he LOOKED and ACTED so Irish . He was so often a cocky bantamweight , as he is in this movie . He had a unique style . A bouncy half-psychotic body langua... |
442,852 | 819,382 | 217,723 | 6 | The MGM Version is Marginally Better . | Everyone knows the basic story . Basil Hallward ( Jeremy Brett ) paints a portrait of young Dorian Gray ( Peter Firth ) that perfectly captures his innocence and beauty . Lord Henry ( Sir John Gielgud ) is entranced by both the portrait and the model . He more or less woos Dorian Gray and corrupts him with his cynicism... |
442,540 | 819,382 | 58,997 | 6 | Entertaining , offbeat mystery from Preminger . | Carol Lynley joins her brother Keir Dullea in England , bringing her daughter Bunny . On her first day Lynley drops Bunny off at a day school , whence Bunny disappears . It seems that no one at the school or anywhere else remembers meeting Bunny . The police , in the form of Superintendent Lawrence Olivier , are brough... |
442,428 | 819,382 | 43,560 | 6 | Being and Nothingness . | This is , I think , what they called a " high concept " film . Let's have a young man climb out on the ledge of a New York hotel and build up a back story about his tsuris and at the same time tell small tales of the diverse witnesses to the guy's dilemma . That precisely how the movie moves along from point to point ,... |
442,736 | 819,382 | 91,474 | 6 | Tidy FBI vs . Serial Killer Story . | William Peterson is a traumatized FBI agent drawn back to duty by his colleague , Dennis Farina , to track down a serial killer , named " the tooth fairy " for his habit of removing his victims ' teeth , played by William Noonan . Brian Cox is Hannibal Lecktor , who remains safely locked away and plays a minor part in ... |
441,736 | 819,382 | 47,889 | 6 | Atmospheric comic-strip adventure story . | John Wayne is an American sea captain imprisoned by the Chinese Commies for Impure Thoughts and Eating With Forks . He is sprung by Lauren Bacall , an American doctor's daughter who is also the leader of a nearby village . His Mission : To shepherd the entire village of 180 people on a stern-wheeled ferryboat down the ... |
442,064 | 819,382 | 83,722 | 6 | There are cat people and then there are dog people . | This comment may contain spoilers There are two pretty extraordinary shots in this film . In the first , Nastassja Kinski is sitting with her head back on the seat rest . She's traveling in a train . She stares into the camera . And the background changes into a busy railway station where she opens a door and walks int... |
442,032 | 819,382 | 21,508 | 6 | In the Beginning , There Was the Cellulose . . . . . | This wouldn't be much more than a routine early comedy except for its historical interest . I mean , a John Ford talkie , the debuts of Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart . Tracy and Warren Hyman , two roughnecks , break out of prison , meet again in Kansas City , get into a fist fight in public , wind up back in the sl... |
442,789 | 819,382 | 43,540 | 6 | Sketched from a forgotten war . | Sam Fuller , the director , could sometimes give interviews that were as interesting as his movies . No baloney , and his cynicism was up front and cheerful . He'd been a Chicago newspaperman , straight out of " The Front Page " , and there is a photo of him leaning back in his chair , feet propped on the desk , a ciga... |
443,530 | 819,382 | 37,316 | 6 | Smile , boys , we're almost home . | This is a good role for Gary Cooper . He's tall , sun-tanned , speaks with what is supposed to be an Arkansas accent although it doesn't approach the saturation level of his Sergeant York , and is a humanitarian doctor with an inventive streak . He's also nattily dressed , but that's hardly worth mentioning since just ... |
442,198 | 819,382 | 106,661 | 6 | Routine romantic intrigue , interestingly played out . | There isn't much new in the idea . Two women , both hungry , living alone . A handyman comes in . He does both of them . One , in the course of an unrelated subplot , knifes a man to death and is sent to jail , carrying the handyman's baby . After a year or so , she gets out and is reunited with the handyman , her baby... |
442,976 | 819,382 | 97,493 | 6 | Critique of Pure Shalloness | Hard to understand why some people become leaders if they have no more in the way of personal qualities than the rest of us . No - - I mean high school , not politics . In a way , high school status spheres seem to echo those of the society around them . The men compete for power and the women for popularity . In " Hea... |
442,249 | 819,382 | 120,633 | 6 | Poisoned Wells | SPOILERS . Actually this is a pretty well-done movie about environmental law . There have been quite a few of them around over the last decade or so but this is one of the better ones . It follows the usual configuration - - the lone hero beginning as a materialist and contracting a bad case of ideals , making sacrific... |
441,872 | 819,382 | 111,001 | 6 | You Are What You Eat . | Saw this movie twice . The first time I thought it was tasteless and boring , except for Bridget Fonda's bathtub scene . I recently saw it again after several years and it didn't seem nearly so bad . Maybe I was able to get past the initial feeling that the writers and the director thought that gags about enemas and th... |
443,588 | 819,382 | 33,021 | 6 | Slam Bang Pseudo History . | For history buffs this must be more of a Santa Fe trial . Here is John Brown ( a real historical figure played by Raymond Massey ) demanding money from Boston abolitionists ( also real ) just before the Civil War . Give me the money , he shouts , and I'll start a slave revolution in the upland South . He knows that cou... |
442,959 | 819,382 | 363,029 | 6 | Eerie and engaging | What an odd film . The first ten minutes or so establish the ethos concisely . An Oriental woman enters Bill Pulman's office for a job interview . He asks , " Didn't Laura tell you I was busy and ask you to wait outside ? Either she did or she didn't . If she didn't , I call down and fire Laura . If she did , you close... |
442,960 | 819,382 | 332,452 | 6 | How do you like them Golden Apples ? | The movie is colossal , spectacular , stupendous , gongoristic , monumental , and secular . What happened to the GODS ? I mean the whole thing started with Eris and that damme golden apple and vain Aprhodite - - whom I would not want backing me in a war , I'll tell you . Yes . It's a godless movie , no doubt propagated... |
443,208 | 819,382 | 51,198 | 6 | Rambling , ambiguous , and funny . | All the critics have called John Ford's humor " broad " and I guess this is a pretty good example of what they mean . The opening scenes involve ancient float planes , a Stutz Bearcat , people falling into water , and a crash into the swimming pool at the Admiral's tea party . ( Tea party ! ) Subsequent scenes involve ... |
442,180 | 819,382 | 412,244 | 6 | Fairly familiar but exciting story . | Based on letter written home by English , Canadian , American , and German soldiers , this is a mixture in roughly equal proportions of newsreel footage , reenactments , and shots of the sites of battle as they stand today . It's good to see a docudrama about the Normany landings from the UK . So many of them have come... |
443,330 | 819,382 | 37,382 | 6 | Only the Names are Retained . | It's kind of like " Sex and the Single Girl " or " What You've Always Wanted to Know About Sex . " The titles are familiar or engaging enough to justify building a complete story from scratch . ( See also , " The Best of Sex and Violence , " which is the greatest title ever dreamed up , far superior to , say , " Henry ... |
442,071 | 819,382 | 399,146 | 6 | The Stalls Identity . | I was interrupted after about two-thirds of the movie and could only listen to the last part , but the film seemed interesting enough to warrant a few notes . First of all , for Cronenberg , this is a linear narrative . Basically , Tom Stalls ( Vigo Mortensen ) is an ex-hood who has begun a new life as the owner of a s... |
442,094 | 819,382 | 387,059 | 6 | Indolent look at a kaleidoscope of themes . | Well , just about every kind of quirk you might expect to find in a nice Jewish academic family in Berkeley is tucked away somewhere in this leisurely trip through misunderstandings . Richard Gere , gone white and looking great , does most of the talking and most of the moving . He teaches Hebrew Studies , he coaches h... |
442,260 | 819,382 | 287,963 | 6 | Power as an aphrodisiac . | The anthropologist Jules Henry once wrote that " men compete for power ; women compete for men . " Okay , it's kind of simple minded , but this movie neatly illustrates the point Henry was trying to make . Two women , Sandrine and Nathalie , meet by accident and begin an affair . Nathalie , the older and more experienc... |
443,601 | 819,382 | 470,765 | 6 | A runner up . | I haven't seen all of Christopher Guest's parodies , or rather the parodies of Guest and gang , which always include Eugene Levy ( he of the Groucho eyebrows ) , Catherine O'Hara , Parker Posey , Fred Willard , and other familiar faces . " Best in Show " was a real winner . This one is a runner up , close but no cigar ... |
443,011 | 819,382 | 69,903 | 6 | Above average entry . | This is the one in which Robert Culp is a murderous motivational research scientist who uses subliminal cuts in an advertising film to lure his victim , Robert Middleton , out into the lobby of the screening room . It's pretty good too . Culp is a cool , thoroughly organized killer . He's more amused by Columbo's antic... |
442,344 | 819,382 | 217,505 | 6 | Fine acting , spectacle . | Man , this doth bestride the world of 1860s New York like a colossus . It begins with a battle on the streets of the ( now disappeared ) Five Points of New York City , between the Irish immigrants led by Liam Neeson , head of the Dead Rabbits gang , and the nativists , led by Daniel Day-Lewis , sporting the most down-h... |
442,365 | 819,382 | 69,900 | 6 | Mainstream Columbo | Better than average . This episode is from the second season and Columbo was hitting its stride . The cast is excellent . Will Geer , in particular , is always outstanding . Anne Francis is beautiful and one wonders if she and Peter Falk reminisced about the old days in Ossining , New York , where both of them grew up ... |
443,389 | 819,382 | 37,408 | 6 | Lively Romantic Musical Comedy . | June Allyson and Gloria DeHaven are two sisters who fall for the same sailor , Van Johnson , at a party for servicemen in 1944 . Johnson comes from a very wealthy family and anonymously buys the girls ( they were " girls " then , not yet " women " ) a huge warehouse where our boys ( they were " boys " , etc . ) can REA... |
441,776 | 819,382 | 69,906 | 6 | Good Early Columbo | You can't help wondering what Lieutenant Columbo's first name was , but maybe it's better that we don't know . Suppose it had turned out to be something like " Jason " or " Brad " . In this entry the epic bumbler is thrust into the world of championship-level chess , more specifically the professional enmity that Lawre... |
441,707 | 819,382 | 69,905 | 6 | Right Up There on the Plus Side . | This is the one in which Vera Miles , as the head honcho of a tony cosmetics corporation , bashes in the head of subordinate Michael Sheen who has falsified the results of an experiment in such a way that he now has sole possession of the secret formula of a skin cream that will remove wrinkles . Enter Columbo , the pa... |
441,770 | 819,382 | 96,193 | 6 | Great Garner | This movie has been kicking around on cable TV lately and I've put off watching it because I expected it to be another very stretched version of a buddy cop movie . The story seems made for it . Experienced old real-life marshal Wyatt Earp teaches callus young phony cowboy Tom Mix how to solve a crime . " Dragnet " on ... |
443,569 | 819,382 | 107,302 | 6 | Serial Killer Movie With Some Thought Behind It . | This is a strange movie . It's as if it had been cobbled together independently by several different intellects and sensibilities . It's not a particularly dumb movie , a pointless slasher product , despite its fashionably misspelled title . It's not a rerun of , say , " The Texas Chainsaw Massacre . " It's not arty ei... |
441,789 | 819,382 | 39,645 | 6 | Should be better . | Bob Hope's comedies could be hilarious , but this one isn't . He plays his usual character , a coward who imitates his private-eye neighbor and gets into all kinds of hot water with Dorothy Lamour while searching for a map that will break up a ring of international gangsters who want to locate a uranium mine that " som... |
441,696 | 819,382 | 70,000 | 6 | Efficient update | You can't help comparing this 1973 TV version to the 1940s original directed by Billy Wilder and starring Fred MacMurray , Barbara Stanwyck , and Edward G . Robinson . As expected , the original comes out light years ahead , a classic of genuine film noir . The story line is still here . The skull shows through the ski... |
443,445 | 819,382 | 449,059 | 6 | Comedy has charm , humor , and is a commercial product . | We are introduced to the Hoover family : the mother ( Toni Collette ) , the achievement-obsessed father ( Greg Kinnear ) , the vulgar grandfather ( Alan Arkin ) , the depressed teen-aged son suffering from elective mutism ( Paul Dano ) , the scholarly , gay uncle who is recovering from a suicide attempt ( Steve Carrell... |
442,525 | 819,382 | 47,279 | 6 | Toledo tycoon toe to toe with Himmler & the Russkies . | It's a fast-paced thriller about a mob of Himmler's goons in post-war Berlin who kidnap an American GI , the son of a big wheel in the ferris business , and who want to trade the kid back for a pair of burnt-out old anti-Nazi Germans so they can torture and kill them as revenge . Get that ? If not , it's not too import... |
442,676 | 819,382 | 217,579 | 6 | Not bad for a TV movie . | Gary Lewis and the Playboys , Buddy Holly and the Crickets , Jason and the Argonauts . Sounds like a 1950s rock band but this outfit has legs , the story being at least 2300 years old - - and an oral tradition before that . It's a complicated narrative too . In order to save his mother's hide , Jason is forced by the k... |
442,502 | 819,382 | 89,360 | 6 | Neat Courtroom / Romance Drama | The plot's probably familiar . Man seems falsely accused of killing his wife . Hires attractive woman as his defense counsel . They seem to fall in love . She discovers he's guilty . Justice is served . What separates this from a Lifetime Movie Network flick is that it's actually pretty well thought out and splendidly ... |
443,034 | 819,382 | 109,444 | 6 | Okay , Clancy-Type International Action Thriller | Set between the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the global war on terrorism , the films settles on Colombian cocaine cartels for a convenient set of villains . At that , however , it's a bit unusual for Tom Clancy , presuming the movie incorporates details from his novel . For one thing , the story allows at l... |
442,693 | 819,382 | 111,149 | 6 | The weed of crime bears bitter fruit . | The story is pretty threadbare . Three roommates or flatmates ( Eccleston , MacGregor , and Fox ) find their fourth roommate or flatmate dead , evidently a suicide . They're pretty nonchalant about the naked dead body in bed . They go through his drawers and his luggage and find thousands of pounds sterling , which giv... |
443,084 | 819,382 | 24,368 | 6 | Dementia Praewax . | A fast-paced , enjoyable thriller , directed by Michael Curtiz , anticipating the 1953 " House of Wax " . That's the one with Phyllis Thaxter and Vincent Price . This one has the cast you'd associate with a 1933 production - - Fay Wray , Frank McHugh , Lionel Atill , Glenda Farrell as a snippy reporter , and others . T... |
443,281 | 819,382 | 516,878 | 6 | Shall we dance ? | The usual capricious nonsense , this time about a school of ballroom dancing that recruits lonely bachelors as students and then bumps them off at graduation and replaces each with a foreign agent . Steed enrolls as a client . Mrs . Peel gets a job as instructor . Clues include a rose tattoo and a garlic sausage . Biza... |
442,218 | 819,382 | 124,718 | 6 | All over the court but sometimes compelling . | The director , Spike Lee , has got talent . No question about it . He stylizes the film with momentary flashbacks and slow motion - - but just enough . Not so much as to interfere with the narrative or attract attention to the director . And the photography , as is usual in his films , is truly splendid . Coney Island ... |
442,997 | 819,382 | 109,417 | 6 | Miami Bitch | Anyone seeing this will recognize it as a variation on " Body Heat . " In some ways it's better , but in most it's not as good . " Body Heat " had several things going for it that " China Moon " does not . Its sultry score was distinctive . This score is generically blue . So's the photography . In " Body Heat , " the ... |
442,395 | 819,382 | 71,970 | 6 | A puzzling puzzle . | I guess I get the general idea . There is this ultra-secret organization , The Parallax Corporation , that specializes in - - what ? - - assassinations ? And Warren Beatty is a reporter who gets suspicious after the public killing of a politician and begins to investigate . He assumes an undercover identity and manages... |
442,692 | 819,382 | 47,209 | 6 | Down these mean streets . . . . . | A minor film about Jack the Ripper who , in this instance , is named Slade and played with unrelenting intensity by Jack Palance . It's not bad . The two Jacks are a little more sympathetic here than usual , though no less suspicious . It's essentially a remake of Laird Cregar's " The Lodger " and , if I remember , Alf... |
443,305 | 819,382 | 516,887 | 6 | Age regression . | This episode conforms to the usual template . Someone is killing off a couple of aristocrats who head a hush-hush missile program . The secret is that when these Lords and Viscounts and Honorables pick up a toddler's bouncing ball , a psychedelic drug enters their bodies through their fingertips ( cf . , Woody Allen's ... |
442,204 | 819,382 | 516,884 | 6 | Kind of cute . | This is an endearing episode , full of the usual whimsical , antinomian nonsense of the series . There's little logic and not much suspense . It's a comic adventure strip more than anything else , without a laugh track . Some gaggle of manufacturers has invented an anti-fertilizer that kills every living thing it's spr... |
442,491 | 819,382 | 126,886 | 6 | A Pleasant Surprise | I wasn't expecting much from the movie - - another audience-specific story of high school intrigue and bitchiness and comic one liners , along the lines of " Clueless " and what seems to be an interminable string of others . The setting is a high school in Omaha , and the focal point the election for the president of t... |
443,465 | 819,382 | 223,954 | 6 | Money is the Root of All . | Ed Harris , freshly out of the slams , hires a bunch of telemarketers to make cold calls and sell a gold mine . Julia Ormond , his girl friend , is his right-hand woman . Vince Vaughn is the most hard-headed and cynical of the hired salesmen . Harris tells Vaughn and the rest that this is not a scam . That he truly bel... |
442,018 | 819,382 | 516,908 | 6 | Beware of Old Ladies Bearing Knitting Needles . | Enjoyable whimsy . Diana Rigg disappears and is replaced by an innocent paid impostor , Liz Fraser , who has no idea why she's been hired for the job . Steed ( Patrick MacNee ) and Fraser try to track down the villains , who happen to run a knitting circle for elderly female persons . Some of them are programmed to go ... |
441,706 | 819,382 | 47,191 | 6 | I Love Lucy Writ Large . | We've come to take for granted that successful TV series will be made into full-length feature films . Even those that are extraordinarily dumb make it onto the big screen . But transferring " I Love Lucy " to the screen was an unusual move in the early 1950s . For one thing , the movies hadn't needed to adapt series f... |
442,379 | 819,382 | 70,022 | 6 | Stylized study of murder and character . | Everybody likes to ride around on a motorcycle in the sunshine , and , what with the desert climate of southern Arizona , you get not only the wind in your hair and the scent of sagebrush but a rosy tan as well . Unfortunately , Robert Blake and his partner , Zipper ( Billy Green Bush ) , are constrained by their polic... |
442,786 | 819,382 | 516,924 | 6 | eHarmony : The Prequel . | It gets a little wearisome explaining who John Steed and Mrs . Peel are , what their characters are like , the villains they typically encounter , and all the rest of the continuous features of this series . So I'll just point out one or two of the ways in which each episode is distinctive . In this case , men and wome... |
443,224 | 819,382 | 35,612 | 6 | Wartime Sabotage . | The Adventures of Tartu . Sounds like a children's movie , doesn't it ? Maybe about an orphan elephant or a unicorn . But it's more serious than that . Robert Donat is a British chemist sent into Rumania , through Germany , into Czechoslovakia to sabotage a huge industrial plant where the Nazis are manufacturing vast... |
442,498 | 819,382 | 43,379 | 6 | Run Out Your Larboard Guns ! | C . S . Forester's Captain must have been part of the global collective consciousness at one time . Lyndon Johnson's Vice President was once mistakenly introduced at a public gathering as " Hubert Horatio Hornblower . " I'm not sure anything like that could happen today since the art of reading novels has all but died ... |
441,738 | 819,382 | 51,019 | 6 | Tightly written military school drama . | Ben Gazzara is Jocko de Paris , a senior cadet at a military school and a real sadistic rat . His fellow students include some familiar names including Pat Hingle and George Peppard . This is one of those military schools in which senior cadets constantly rag the plebes , making them do and say foolish things , within ... |
443,353 | 819,382 | 39,515 | 6 | Noir is unfocused . | Well , it's got all the right trimmings - - Dick Powell , Thomas Gomez , Lee J . Cobb with a cigar . Names that sound phony and semi-ethnic - - " Guido Marchettis , " " Johnny O'Clock " . Released in 1947 , black and white . High-class setting with diversions into the seedier parts of an unnamed city . Tough cop , grea... |
442,592 | 819,382 | 24,453 | 6 | Effective Drama | You'd never know this was directed by John Ford if his name weren't in the credits . There's not a bottle of booze in sight , no fist fights , no comedic interludes . Henrietta Crosman is a tough , domineering Arkansas mother who denies her grown son every privilege of independence . Of course , no woman is good enough... |
442,856 | 819,382 | 516,945 | 6 | Portent of Things to Come . | A man dies in a car accident and 50 , 000 pounds worth of diamonds are found in his stomach . It's Steed's and Mrs . Peel's job to find out where they came from and where they were headed . The story involves a couple of Russian wolf hounds , a cigar-aficionado club , something about a high-end necktie shop , a financi... |
442,673 | 819,382 | 30,044 | 6 | Bloody Hell ! | Fast-paced yarn of the Royal Flying Corps in 1915 France . The crates are falling apart , the death rate grows apace , but the seasoned fliers keep a stiff upper lip and all that . Flynn and Niven are two of the aviators under Squadron Commander Basil Rathbone . Everyone seems to be having a good time , except when the... |
443,370 | 819,382 | 53,143 | 6 | Genial 1950s Comedy . | Cute and amusing . Cary Grant is the skipper of a submarine stuck in a remote Phillipine base at the beginning of World War II . Damaged in an air attack , the submarine barely gets under way , with Tony Curtis as a dapper last-minute replacement who shows up for duty in natty and immaculate dress whites . Curtis is a ... |
442,017 | 819,382 | 33,740 | 6 | Proto-noir | Betty Grable as the heroine has that cream-fed complexion and chirrupy optimism of the American Midwest . She doesn't really belong in what purports to be a film noir . Well , it isn't a film noir anyway , exactly . It's a murder mystery set in the kind of uptrodden Manhattan milieu in which people like Alan Mowbray as... |
442,179 | 819,382 | 39,808 | 6 | Amusing farce | Whatever the setting , and there were many , Danny Kaye always played himself - - the hypochondriacal , stuttering , cowardly , nervously fiddling neurotic . That's pretty much what he is here , and if you haven't seen a Danny Kaye movie this is a pretty funny introduction . The plot violates James Thurber's short stor... |
441,819 | 819,382 | 29,870 | 6 | Why , you dirty rat ! | This isn't the best of the Warner Brothers ' 1930s gangster movies but it's the clearest statement of the formula . It's got everything . It's like a Romanesque mosaic . Here's Jimmy Cagney as Rocky Sullivan , the ex-choir boy gangster who hitches up his pants and greets people with , " Whaddaya hear , whaddaya say ? "... |
443,329 | 819,382 | 95,897 | 6 | Exciting action , good acting . | In the first few minutes we witness the shooting of a woman who is a stranger to us . This is followed by a car chase through the Presidio and up and down the hills of the city . One of the cars in pursuit runs off the road . The remaining car in pursuit smashes into another vehicle , twirls through the air , and explo... |
443,160 | 819,382 | 29,864 | 6 | Zippy Crime Story | The renowned Dr . Clitterhouse ( Edward G . Robinson ) , interested in the criminal personality , joins a gang of thieves anonymously . He finds himself strangely thrilled in their presence . He carries out research , pupilary dilation and whatnot , and eventually plans their big heist . ( He gives his part of the proc... |
442,208 | 819,382 | 765,443 | 6 | Low-key , atmospheric crime drama . | David Cronenberg must be growing up . His early movies depended largely on the shock value of disgusting special effects . Watching them was like skimming through a medical text of skin diseases . Then he made " Dead Ringers , " which was vertigenously creepy without being revolting . And now " Eastern Promises , " whi... |
442,932 | 819,382 | 87,268 | 6 | Engaging Border Patrol Mystery . | I'll skip the plot except to say that two Border Patrol agents find a horde of money in the desert , have a fight with nasties in which one agent is killed , and the survivor takes off with the stash for Mexico . You can't help watching this without thinking of Jack Nicholson in " The Border . " " The Border " is far m... |
443,267 | 819,382 | 115,906 | 6 | Family Values . | This is a hard movie to interpret . Not the story , but the intended message , because surely there is one . The story is straightforward enough . Ruth Stoops ( Laura Dern ) is a drug-abusing , loud-mouthed , selfish girl who has had a couple of illegitimate kids and is now pregnant again . She's been in and out of jai... |
442,828 | 819,382 | 65,820 | 6 | Big Fella Along Him Speakee Plidgen Engrish . | You have to admire James Michener's resolve . He's the guy who wrote the book this screen play is based on . Michener wrote one novel or non-fiction work after another , each of them requiring an unconscionable amount of historical and geographic research . There are a couple of dozen doctoral dissertations scattered a... |
443,364 | 819,382 | 37,691 | 6 | Not bad noir . | This was Otto Preminger's and 20th-Century-Fox's follow-up to the highly successful " Laura " of the previous year . Many of the same personnel were involved , both on the screen and behind the camera . David Raksin , who'd written the theme song for " Laura " ( " not classical , but sweet " ) wrote " Slowly " for this... |
441,831 | 819,382 | 104,839 | 6 | Cute film about a serious subject . | Okay , there's this weird scientist , Sean Connery , who's hidden himself away in the tropical rainforest of South America and has been incommunicado for years . A " foundation " sends down a youngish , award-winning scientist , played by Lorraine Bracco , to monitor his behavior , find out what's up , and decide wheth... |
442,569 | 819,382 | 71,838 | 6 | Nothing Original , But Entertaining . | This could easily have been a script leftover in some shoebox from an unmade 1949 noir . It's a complicated story of blackmail and betrayal . Burt Lancaster is an ex-cop just released from prison , given a job by an old friend ( Cameron Mitchell ) as night watchman at a college , who falls in love with his parole offic... |
442,596 | 819,382 | 47,577 | 6 | Mixed Bag of SF Conventions . | The film divides itself more or less clearly into two parts . In the first part , electronic genius and atomic power researcher , Rex Reason , is challenged by an unknown source to build an interociter . He successfully passes the test . The interociter acts like a big , triangular TV except that it has a self-destruct... |
442,731 | 819,382 | 386,751 | 6 | Mystery , leisurely but intense . | This deliberate mystery about the death of a young man at an exclusive boy's school is surprisingly good . Edward Burns is a local police officer who suspects that foul play was involved . The body was found drowned in the local ice-laden river but his lungs contained traces of things found in toilet bowls . Was it a h... |
441,678 | 819,382 | 470,929 | 6 | The Mystery of the Severed Ears . | This is a fantasy , a mosaic made out of three complementary sets of tesserae . We have the " biographer " Selden ( Tim McInnerny ) whose assignment is to try to dig up any links between Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle ( Douglas Henshall ) and his fictional creation , the detective Sherlock Holmes , although it is agreed that a... |
443,542 | 819,382 | 113,552 | 6 | Not bad for a makeover . | Ben Hecht's original story had enough strength to be carried over into this successful remake , aided by a strong cast . I'm not sure how much the modernization of the script adds to it , but it's worth seeing . Caruso is a con who , out of concern for his family , rats on some friends when the prosecutor promises him ... |
443,274 | 819,382 | 516,824 | 6 | Shenanigans in a Shop . | If you've seen and enjoyed any of the episodes of " The Avengers " you should find this one satisfying . One of Steed's and Mrs . Peel's agents is shot dead while visiting a London shop . The receipt in his pocket indicates that he was shopping in the Baby Department , although she has no family . Mrs . Peel signs on a... |
442,695 | 819,382 | 113,540 | 6 | Urban tragedy | Send these kids to camp - - fast ! Or do SOMETHING . Wow , what a life . Basically this is a picture of the life kids who occupy a certain social space lead during their summer vacations . It jumps from episode to episode with a few continuing characters , including Chloe Sevigny and Rosario Dawson . To the extent that... |
443,179 | 819,382 | 47,542 | 6 | Inexpensive , unprepossessing thriller . | Basically it's a B movie script that is slightly elevated in significance by the fact that the intended victim is the President of the United States instead of , say , an anonymous guy with his face down on the bar of some tavern in Bloomfield , New Jersey . The fact that is stars Frank Sinatra along with Sterling Hayd... |
443,203 | 819,382 | 107,050 | 6 | Corny , enjoyable comedy | I wasn't expecting much of this movie - - another rip off of " The Odd Couple " - - but my kid insisted on watching it and I was pleasantly surprised . Matthau and Lemon have hated each other since one stole the other one's girl away . ( Both wives are gone now . ) They play nasty pranks on one another , relishing the ... |
443,047 | 819,382 | 60,490 | 6 | Hired by a # $ @ $ % to find scum . | It ought to have everything going for it . What a cast ! And they're all good - - with Paul Newman's Lou Harper at the top of his game , and , somewhere closer to her usual norm , Pamela Tiffen . Newman's performance is among his best . He's a gum-chewing cynical PI who's determined the find the truth behind the disapp... |
443,210 | 819,382 | 320,661 | 6 | Piece Be Upon You . | Some of the names are real enough - - King Baldwin and Saladin - - but I don't know how accurate a picture this is of what looks like the Second Crusades . ( I missed the first couple of minutes . ) I vaguely remember that Tiberia was captured by Salahudin , but maybe not . Basically , Jerusalem is run by the Christian... |
443,221 | 819,382 | 441,774 | 6 | People You Don't Want to Meet . | This is a re-telling of the story featured in Kastle's earlier and inexpensive black-and-white film . Martha Beck ( Salma Hayek ) and Ray Fernandez ( Jared Leto ) are two lovers who live in the own version of Cloud Cuckooo Land , traveling about the country in 1947 , meeting lonely widows through ads in Lonely Hearts t... |
441,740 | 819,382 | 120,202 | 6 | Easygoing Mamet Comedy . | It's not hilarious but it's consistent in its good-natured cynicism , from which most of its amusement quotient is derived . Mamet takes us to a small town in New Hampshire where Bill Macy is trying to set up locations for a film he is directing , ( Some problems there with the old watermill , the centerpiece of the st... |
443,438 | 819,382 | 57,129 | 6 | Very Spooky . | This ought to make your hair stand on end and there's not a special effect or a drop of blood in a cartload . Julie Harris is Nell , a complete wimp of a woman , who spends a couple of days and nights with three other folks in a supposedly haunted house . The others are Dr . Markway ( Johnson ) , and anthropologist wit... |
441,759 | 819,382 | 102,820 | 6 | Marginalized Persons | Jason Patric and Jennifer Jason Leigh are two undercover narcs who must be part of the drug world they inhabit and yet retain their identities as cops . In a way they're marginal people , like shop foremen - - no longer just workers , yet not part of management either . Or like cultural anthropologists , for that matte... |
442,622 | 819,382 | 369,339 | 6 | A Desert of the Mind | In this one , Tom Cruise is a hit man who's job is to wipe out five witnesses scheduled to testify against a drug lord , and then beat it . He's a real pro . He's a steel gray inside and out , from his hair to his suit and socks . He kills ruthlessly , with no regard for whether the victim deserves it or not . " I do t... |
442,469 | 819,382 | 37,761 | 6 | The Killing Sickness . | Laird Cregar , whose last movie this was , was one of those actors whose kind we seldom see today . Tall and bulky , with the features of a flabby puppy and a smoothly articulated voice , he made a few films in which he played maniacs . Clearly , he was headed towards interesting character roles but died before any suc... |
442,991 | 819,382 | 80,474 | 6 | New Broom Exposes Dirt . | A thoughtful film , it is also sprinkled with all sorts of features designed to increase its box-office appeal . Redford is Brubaker , the new reform warden who enters the prison in the guise of a prisoner in order to get a worm's eye view of the goings on . ( They're pretty crummy , what with patients having to pay fo... |
441,916 | 819,382 | 41,178 | 6 | Mitchum and Greer - - Together Again ! | The Big Steal , pairing Robert Mitchum with Jane Greer again , the couple from " Out of the Past . " It sounds profoundly noir . But in fact it's not . It's more of a romantic adventure with comedic and dramatic elements sprinkled around in it . You see , Mitchum is Halliday , an Army lieutenant in charge of the payr... |
443,036 | 819,382 | 144,546 | 6 | Not as bad as it ought to be . | Kind of unpromising material , if you think about it . A dozen people in different vehicles thrumming through the Oklahoma night while a mad killer is offing women and leaving their corpses holding their own hearts . ( Wow . ) What an opportunity to slather Technicolor Red Number Nine all over the screen . Instead the ... |
443,196 | 819,382 | 37,820 | 6 | Not dead , but liminal . | This isn't Val Lewton's best , although it's by no means a failure , given the strictures of the production - - budget , schedule , and so on . The story has a handful of people quarantined on a Greek island so as not to spread the plague . Half of them die of the disease , two are murdered by a crazed woman who was pr... |
442,597 | 819,382 | 107,207 | 6 | Original Sin | Daniel Day-Lewis is Gerry Conlon , a Belfast Catholic . He's a young guy who leads a reckless life , throwing rocks gleefully at British armored cars , stealing from a prostitute's apartment . But things are getting rough in Belfast . A resolution has just been passed that allows for the arrest and retention of suspect... |
442,528 | 819,382 | 37,795 | 6 | Classic of the genre . | It really IS a classic of the genre , but the problem is that the genre itself is so dated as not to be taken seriously anymore . That happens to genres . Would you watch a Western in which the good guy wears a white hat and the bad guy wears a black hat and one " calls the other out " and they have a mano-a-mano shoot... |
442,935 | 819,382 | 481,522 | 6 | Random comments on a tragic event . | If you're going to assess the movie AS a movie , you have to try to separate it from the events it purports to describe . The events are far too horrible for us to grasp fully , but the movie is accessible to us , fully formed , financed , edited , and marketed for our enlightenment . I guess that doesn't really make i... |
441,900 | 819,382 | 100,404 | 6 | These Lawyers Keep Writing Novels | It used to be doctors that boasted about the literary artists that rose from their ranks - - William Carlos Williams , Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle , Michael Crighton , Frank Slaughter . ( Frank Slaughter ? ) Now it's coming to be lawyers . Back in 1959 , " Anatomy of a Murder " was a lonely best seller . Lately there has be... |
442,817 | 819,382 | 462,200 | 6 | Dual Redemption . | Christina Ricci is a nymphomaniac in a small Southern town . That's a good start right there . In her previous films I found myself so wound up in her broad forehead , Walter Keane eyes , and tiny lips and mental process that I never realized she had a figure . But that she does , and it's pretty much on display here .... |
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