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442,799 | 819,382 | 35,262 | 7 | Laugh-worthy nonsense . | The Hope and Crosby Road pictures were very popular in the 1940s and " The Road to Morocco , " the third in the series , shows them at about their best . Well , maybe " Zanzibar " was at the top , with " Utopia " not far behind . The climax in this one depends a little too much on minor gimmicks like dribbling glasses ... |
441,829 | 819,382 | 118,586 | 7 | Grappling With Hormones . | Alison Folland is a young woman in a shabby section of New York who , after a tempestuous friendship with blond , impatient Tara Subkoff , and the murder of her gay buddy Luke , comes to terms with her own lesbianism and finds a happy and accommodating partner in Lucy , a band leader in a place that looks like the Swin... |
443,599 | 819,382 | 453,467 | 7 | Well-done , tricky , time-travel crime thriller . | If you should tune in to this film after the first twenty minutes or so , you are likely to be clueless about what happens afterward . It's confusing enough from the beginning . Instead of deja vu ( already seen ) I finished it with an uncanny feeling of presque vu ( almost seen ) . A special government agency has thes... |
442,255 | 819,382 | 660,875 | 7 | In Search of Time Lost . | This is a strange episode of Night Gallery , a moving story of a man who is fully aware of the way that he has killed time and time is now killing him . Rod Serling , the writer , did a splendid job of evoking nostalgia for times gone by , peaceful optimistic times , as contrasted with the wreck things seemed to be tur... |
443,004 | 819,382 | 61,248 | 7 | Bourgeois | I recently finished watching most of the 69 episodes from this series on DVDs . After recovering from the brief psychotic episode they induced I tried to figure out just what the subtext of this series was . I mean , what made it so very popular in the last 60s , and in today's reruns . Any attempt at a comprehensive e... |
442,601 | 819,382 | 50,613 | 7 | Macbeth-san . | Okay , the warriors Washizu and Miki ride back from a victorious battle through a magic forest and run into a wispy specter that tells them that Washizu will become king while Miki's son will inherit the kingdom . Coaxed by his wife , Washizu assassinates the king and takes his place . Again coaxed by his wife , he has... |
443,377 | 819,382 | 405,159 | 7 | Ponderous , not at all bad . | Clint Eastwood has earned the satisfaction he seems to get out of making leisurely , moody pieces like this , instead of the drive-in kinds of mindless commercial properties he once had to produce to satisfy his bankers . He has enough ambition and talent to do without the orang-utans . You can tell this is one of his ... |
441,794 | 819,382 | 52,543 | 7 | A Killing on the Stock Market | I'm not sure that Rod Steiger comes across as very Italian in this movie . He wasn't really very good with dialects . And maybe he doesn't need to be too " Italian " anyway ; Capone was born in Brooklyn , not Italy as he liked to claim . Steiger is a repulsive looking gangster here - - treacherous , sweaty , brutal , u... |
442,952 | 819,382 | 384,638 | 7 | Better Angels of Our Nature | There is humanity and bravery enough to go around in these seven stories . Bravery because people risked invaluable things for the sake of others , and humanity because some of them gave things to others even under conditions so hopeless that there was nothing left to risk . It's impossible not to be moved by narrative... |
442,573 | 819,382 | 37,024 | 7 | Tense Fictional Tale of Jack the Ripper | In this story Laird Cragar goes flapping around a Whitechapel theater in his ulster , a crazed and overweight Batman , trying desperately to murder the delicious stage star Merle Oberon . This is one of those movies made under the Code . All of the Ripper's victims were " stage girls , " instead of the drunken prostitu... |
443,408 | 819,382 | 33,152 | 7 | Entertaining Arabian Fantasy | The kids ought to love this good-natured , fast-paced fantasy adventure from the Arabian Nights . The color photography is splendid , but then everything else is as well - - wardrobe , makeup , production design , special effects , and the magical mystery score by Miklos Rozsa . It's got just about everything in it tha... |
442,838 | 819,382 | 52,700 | 7 | Slick crime story and character study | Director Richard Fleischer handles this story of Leopold ( Judd Steiner / Dean Stockwell ) and Loeb ( Artie Strauss / Bradford Dillman ) with functional and aesthetic aplomb . Nothing in the script or the shooting seems extraneous . It all flows smoothly along like the well-done production that it is , like a gripping ... |
443,331 | 819,382 | 26,174 | 7 | Up into the shrouds , Lads ! | It's Flynn's first big picture and it brings him together with Olivia DeHavilland , Michael Curtiz , and Erich Wolfgang Korngold . It's not their best movie together but it's a terrific introduction to the parts these personalities were to play in swashbucklers . Flynn is brash and cocky . ( He didn't change much until... |
442,096 | 819,382 | 493,459 | 7 | Meanly amusing , informative documentary . | This film consists of interviews with directors and actors , archival footage of public events , and clips of what the MPAA considers questionable taste from mostly recent movies . It's position is clearly a First Amendment one . That's my position too . And the movie is really funny . The MPAA rating board is a secret... |
442,128 | 819,382 | 75,866 | 7 | Pretty Good Later Entry . | This is the one in which the diminutive Ruth Gordon plays an Agatha-Christie type of murder mystery author who locks her nephew by marriage into a safe . Gordon believes that he murdered her niece and the young fellow dies of suffocation , while Gordon is traveling back and forth to New York . He manages , however , to... |
442,568 | 819,382 | 28,333 | 7 | Hard Work and Talent Pay Off . | Fred Astaire's character , Lucky , may depend on the turn of a card or the spin of a roulette wheel to decide his fate but Fred Astaire did not . He and Ginger Rogers , whom he pursues here as usual through several contretemps , put in an enormous amount of work . Astaire insisted that there be few cuts during the danc... |
441,734 | 819,382 | 99,259 | 7 | Atmospheric crime / police thriller . | This movie always impresses me as interesting though I'm not sure why . The story itself doesn't really amount to that much . A big-city cop takes annual vacations near a small town in the desert and , donning his uniform , stops and kills motorists at random , leaving their bodies in the car trunks for the local cops ... |
441,810 | 819,382 | 75,864 | 7 | Likable Entry . | I guess Robert M . Young , the writer , had been reading Tom Wolfe or he wouldn't have come up with the extravagant title of this nice little story . Theodore Bikel belongs to a club for people whose IQs register in the upper two percent of the population's . There are half a dozen or so other members who meet regularl... |
443,343 | 819,382 | 19,702 | 7 | High muzzle velocity . | Sound was hardly used in film before Hitchcock began his playful experiments with it . In " Blackmail , " Annie Ondra has stabbed and killed a lustful neighbor in defense of her virtue . No one knows who committed the murder but the next morning it is the talk of Chelsea . Ondra is haunted by guilt . She sees mementos ... |
442,315 | 819,382 | 52,711 | 7 | Not bad - - I think . . . | I haven't seen this movie for more years than I care to remember . It was released accompanied by sensationalistic contemporary tag lines - - " Beatniks ! Rebels ! " - - partly because George Hamilton is seen playing the bongos once in a while . Yet , it has stuck in my memory . It really was an unusual film . First of... |
442,323 | 819,382 | 87,932 | 7 | Evocative Tale of Two Promoters , . | Nobody would accuse this tale of being taut . It meanders around sufficiently that we get to know the characters , their families , their values - - and therein lies its charm . Eric Roberts is Pauli , the reckless Italian optimist , and Mickey Rourke is his more sensible , principled Irish cousin . The milieu is New Y... |
442,129 | 819,382 | 24,025 | 7 | Introducing Fred and Ginger | The A story , involving a romance between Gene Raymond and Delores del Rio , is pretty silly . It's the kind of plot that would be handed over to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in their later films , and it's dismissible . Fred and Ginger are not romantically connected in this , their first film together . They just ha... |
442,535 | 819,382 | 47,647 | 7 | High comic adventure . | Enjoyable , cartoon nonsense about a group of American mercenaries who flee the recently defeated Confederacy for employment in the French Emporer Maximilian's army . A simple-minded plot revolves around the tentative friendship of two men , Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper , as the leaders of the Americans , and involve... |
443,362 | 819,382 | 441,909 | 7 | Sumptuous . | I had to catch this in snippets and so missed part of the story as it was unfolding , but in some ways the linear narrative is a lesser element of the film . Mostly , we see convincing characters interacting in the believable atmosphere of a small Spanish town . Even the ghost is , well , kind of believable . It's the ... |
442,115 | 819,382 | 37,101 | 7 | Snappy Detective Yarn . | With this movie , Dick Powell switched his image from faded musical star to tough guy , and he's pretty good . He's nasal and cynical and sure of himself as he works his way , as Philip Marlowe , through a world of suave villains ( Otto Krueger ) , gigantic and rebarbative clients ( Mike Mazurki ) , blond seductresses ... |
442,139 | 819,382 | 424,952 | 7 | A Political Party | At the end of this documentary , " Hail to the Chief " plays in the background as President George W . Bush mounts the stage at a military dedication . The camera focuses on Senator Kerry clapping ritually along with a hundred others in the audience . " So now Kerry has a chance to unseat George Bush , " says Allie Pel... |
443,229 | 819,382 | 35,153 | 7 | Well-done Story of Fliers Stranded in Holland . | It's pretty good , and it ought to be . Powell and Pressburger produced , wrote and directed it . It was shot by Ronald Neame and edited by David Lean . And the cast includes some well-known faces - - Pamela Brown , Godfrey Tearle , Bernard Miles - - as well as some , uncredited , who were to become familiar over the n... |
443,323 | 819,382 | 112,651 | 7 | Better than average doc . | A history of homosexuality as presented in the cinema . It makes some good points , even if some are a little obvious . As an example , Lilly Tomlin , the narrator , points out that female homosexuality seems to be a little less objectionable to the public than male homosexuality - - and it's true in my experience . I'... |
442,006 | 819,382 | 386,342 | 7 | Sad , in more ways than one . | A kind of prune Danish about a happily married couple , Michael and Sarah and their two doll-like daughters , and Michael's reckless and irresponsible younger brother Jannik . Michael , a major in the army , is sent to Afghanistan where his helicopter is shot down , and he's thrown into a prison cell with a Danish comr... |
443,008 | 819,382 | 457,430 | 7 | Dorothy on a Drastic Bummer . | The film had enough hype behind it that I settled in to watch it . In the first ten minutes I was considering watching an Agatha Christie mystery instead . At the end of fifteen minutes it had me and I couldn't get away . Ofelia , who should know better at fourteen , has childhood fantasies about fairies and fauns and ... |
443,348 | 819,382 | 23,948 | 7 | Life Styles of the Rich and Famous . | I didn't have much hope for this classic . I knew it was one of those multi-plot movies with MGM stars doing their turns . It was likely to be talky too , and from a stage play co-authored by Edna Ferber - - a woman , yet - - and from some ungodly place like Oklahoma or Wisconsin . I didn't care if she'd been a member ... |
442,872 | 819,382 | 112,641 | 7 | Ossessione | A reprise of Goodfellas , mostly , as has been pointed out , and although long , not as tired or boring as some have felt . How could a movie with Steve Allen and Jerry Vale be all bad ? People have wondered why Scorcese and Coppola keep coming back to mobsters , specifically the Mafia , and all that corruption mixed w... |
443,442 | 819,382 | 120,382 | 7 | All About the Man in the Moon . | Kind of a complicated business , this film . Most of Peter Weir's movies are , but at least he lays open here the source of our discomfort . There are basically three layers . ( 1 ) The visual story we see unfolding on the screen , the one that Peter Weir shows us . ( 2 ) The story as constructed by the world's greates... |
442,547 | 819,382 | 33,253 | 7 | Fine , Professional Western . | Walter Brennan , whose movie this is , is " Judge " Roy Bean , the ruler of the tiny frontier town of Vinagaroon , Texas . He's a hanging judge . Everybody that comes into his bar room cum court room is " guilty " and they are all hanged , whatever the offense . Brennan's character is one of those blustering military h... |
443,567 | 819,382 | 63,094 | 7 | Deliberate Comedy Rewards Patience . | It's about an embezzler , Peter Ustinov , who infiltrates a British company , Texa-Conn or something like that , posing as a computer whiz and security expert . He secretly learns to hack into the computer , while gathering the admiration of his boss , Karl Malden , the enmity of his office rival , Bob Newhart , and th... |
442,516 | 819,382 | 38,991 | 7 | Impaled on the Sword of Justice . | No , it's not Albert Camus . It's better - - more dramatic , more visual , more bombastic - - it's Orson Welles . Welles at the time was having trouble with his reputation . He couldn't finish a movie , it dragged on forever , it cost a fortune , and so on . So he ran into difficulties raising money , as he would for t... |
442,775 | 819,382 | 112,664 | 7 | A heroine properly sung | Margaret Higgins Sanger has earned her place in human history , and for more reasons than she , or most of us , could know . Her experiences in her own family taught her that population control could help relieve suffering and poverty , and she was willing to pay for the opporunity to make that argument in public , as ... |
441,702 | 819,382 | 854,678 | 7 | Cool Hand Dilawar . | Anybody see " Cool Hand Luke " ( 1967 ) with Paul Newman as an inmate at a small southern prison camp ? That's the one in which a guard tells Luke , " You got to get your mind right . " A gripping movie , comic and then tragic . The guards , led by the pock-faced " man with no eyes " , are real mean mothers . For infra... |
441,786 | 819,382 | 32,284 | 7 | Masterful dancing , good songs . | A fine black-and-white musical with a weak script , great dancing by Eleanor Powell and Fred Astaire , and songs ( mostly ) by Cole Porter . It's the only film that Powell and Astaire made together . They really didn't get along together that well . Astaire had always been sensitive about having partners who were nearl... |
442,737 | 819,382 | 177,971 | 7 | Wind , Force Plenty . | It's almost the opposite of elephantine epics like " Titanic " and " Pearl Harbor . " Those were stereotypic stories of romance padding out an action scene or two . Should she affiliate with the lower-class guy ? Which of two daring lovers should she choose ? This one has half an hour or so of realistic introduction an... |
442,728 | 819,382 | 420,609 | 7 | Engaging , skillful movie . | Nobody had ever heard of the senseless murder of four members of the Clutter family in Kansas . And then Truman Capote wrote about it . Let's see . Capote's story was serialized in The New Yorker . Then there was his non-fiction novel , " In Cold Blood , " so thoroughly hyped that it was even brought to my attention in... |
442,853 | 819,382 | 455,584 | 7 | Thoughtful and Suspenseful Mystery . | It's a complicated plot . David Kelly , as Frank Kovak , is an ancient and brilliant scientist who has invented a kind of chip that can be implanted in an unsuspecting victim's neck . He's had this done more than a hundred times and all these unknowing subjects are walking around on Mallorca , the tourist mecca in Spai... |
443,480 | 819,382 | 418,689 | 7 | Heroes are socially constructed . | Iwo Jima is probably the most famous battle of the Pacific Campaign in World War II . The casualty rate was extremely high . ( Close to 100 percent for the Japanese . ) Aside from that , it's hard to know why . There was virtually no room for maneuver , no tank action to speak of , no bayonet charges , American artille... |
442,039 | 819,382 | 98,844 | 7 | Superior Series | It's pretty original for a TV series . " Law and Order " is the proper title because the first half has a pair of cops investigating a crime and the second half shows us the DA's office prosecuting the wrong-doers . The writers seem to know something about their subject too , which is a refreshing change . I can't coun... |
442,223 | 819,382 | 120,801 | 7 | Two Self-Indulgent Achievers . | I'm absolutely sure that this film would be of more interest to film buffs and Welles fans than to the average viewer , although the buffs and fans might find it infuriating at times . The search for purity and perfection is bound to end in failure because , after all , who is pure ? And what is perfect ? The buffs and... |
443,540 | 819,382 | 87,781 | 7 | Engaging | I don't know why I enjoy this movie as much as I do . I haven't cared about baseball much since I was ten years old . This isn't Redford's best performance by any means . The story is an ur-sports one . Act One : Prodigy is discovered . Act Two : Tragedy leads to slump . Act Three : Protagonist overcomes demons and win... |
442,126 | 819,382 | 1,019,454 | 7 | Credible and Informative . | It isn't that HBO can sometimes turn out a television movie that's at once inexpensive and admirable . After all , anybody can hit a home run once in a while . It's that HBO has managed to do it so consistently , and by tackling subjects that are by no means guaranteed share-collectors . I mean controversial stuff - - ... |
442,496 | 819,382 | 106,519 | 7 | Injustice is meted out . | It's quite a decent movie . Al Pacino is Carlito Brigante , a Puerto Rican New Yorker . Sean Penn is Kleinfeld , the lawyer who gets him out of the slams after only five years on a thirty-year sentence . Penelope Ann Miller is Gail , the old girl friend Carlito takes up with again after his return to the city . Pacino ... |
443,307 | 819,382 | 63,442 | 7 | Man See , Man Do . | Charlton Heston is the only survivor of a space expedition that has crashed on a planet some millions of light years from earth , and thus some 2 , 000 years in the future . He stumbles into a rude civilization in which apes rule , while the tribes of speechless humans are treated as wild animals and periodically round... |
443,304 | 819,382 | 35,015 | 7 | Subdued and Evocative . | The execution , by Orson Welles and his comrades in arts , is superb but the story itself almost buries its implications for modern society under one of those multi-dimensional generational narratives , like " The Young Philadelphians " or even " Peyton Place . " Young George Amberson Minafer ( Tim Holt ) grows up from... |
442,984 | 819,382 | 258,463 | 7 | Rambo in the City . | You remember , I'm sure , how John Rambo was a practically superhuman expert at surviving and killing in the forest ? And he was hunted by a horde of ill-motivated nincompoops and outwitted all of them in the mountains of Washington ? Well , " The Bourne Identity " is like that , except that its setting is urban and it... |
442,625 | 819,382 | 72,431 | 7 | Rude Desires | Mel Brooks is in touch with out deepest desires , no doubt about it . Fear , greed , lust , self aggrandizement , jealousy - - everything we enjoy denying that we have . This is illustrated in the opening scene , under the credits . A coffin is opened . There is a rotting skeleton holding a book . A pair of hands reach... |
442,030 | 819,382 | 312,549 | 7 | What's worth dying for ? | Two indisputable things to be learned from this film : ( 1 ) Ireland does not look like it does in " The Quiet Man " and ( 2 ) Cate Blanchett has got to be one of the finest actresses around . Dublin here resembles any large American city , with wealthy drug lords cashing in at the top , a horde of distributing goons n... |
442,157 | 819,382 | 68,555 | 7 | Diverting Woody Allen Comedy | Gee , what a cast Woody Allen was ( and still is ) able to muster for his movies , even though none of them is paid blockbuster wages since Allen's movies tend to draw in a selective audience . None of his productions have performed like " The Sound of Music . " Here we have too many recognizable faces to mention , but... |
442,518 | 819,382 | 151,804 | 7 | Bartleby the Nerd . | I was called away and missed the last half or so of the film , except for the final few minutes , so I can't judge accurately how nearly the film fulfilled the promise of his first 40 minutes . But it was coming along very well indeed . Ron Livingston , who works with a computer in a cubicle , just like everyone else i... |
443,371 | 819,382 | 56,592 | 7 | Good Movie About a Decent Guy . | Gregory Peck is Atticus Finch , a Southern lawyer who defends a black man ( Brock Peters ) unjustly accused of rape . ( It was almost the other way round . ) Peck does his best but Peters is convicted anyway by the all-white jury ; this is 1932 . In Macon . That's in Georgia . While being transported elsewhere " for hi... |
442,633 | 819,382 | 50,356 | 7 | Which Enemy ? | I take the title to be the kind of pun that Richard Matthieson was fond of using . In one sense , the enemy is of course the submarine commanded by the clever Curt Jurgens . In another sense , the enemy is more obliquely identified in a " philosophical " conversation that Robert Mitchum , commander of a Buckley-class d... |
442,021 | 819,382 | 68,402 | 7 | Death By Ice . | This is the one with Robert Culp as the aggressive self-starting manager of a football team who murders its madcap owner , Dean Stockwell , in the swimming pool of his playboy mansion . Culp has established an alibi for himself by manipulating a taped recording , phone , wiretaps , and other such stuff , some of which ... |
441,887 | 819,382 | 105,236 | 7 | A True Original | SPOILERS . There's no doubt about Quentin Tarentino's inventiveness . This was a real shocker when I first saw it several years ago . There had been violence before , but never so inexplicable . And gore before , but never gore quite so galore before . And that odd , quirky dialog - - alternately clumsy and adroit . It... |
442,429 | 819,382 | 120,663 | 7 | Night Life of the Gods . | One gets the impression that the detractors of this movie outnumber the admirers but I suspect that , if it's true , it's because the movie was directed by THE Stanley Kubrick . It's hard to top a string of hits , some of them near masterpieces . If it had been directed by some nonentity who had just graduated from fil... |
442,027 | 819,382 | 46,031 | 7 | In the Zone | A drama involving political intrigue , smuggling , and general malfeasance in the Eastern and Western Zones of Berlin . James Mason is the smooth operator who smuggles such commodities as meat from the West into the needy Stalinist East . Claire Bloom is the innocent who is visiting her brother Geoffrey Toone , a Briti... |
443,386 | 819,382 | 382,765 | 7 | Slow , engrossing community drama . | I'm not ordinarily given to slow , moody movies unless they're well done . This one is pretty well done , especially considering its slender plot . The Australians have done this before , with " The Last Wave " ( which came out of the cinematic hinterland ) , " Picnic at Hanging Rock " , and " Lantana . " That's a lot ... |
443,441 | 819,382 | 83,806 | 7 | Irreverent and snappy . | FULL OF SPOILERS . This is a pretty fast and enjoyable crime thriller based on Ira Levin's play about two gay playwrights ( Caine and Reeve ) that plot the murder of one's rich wife ( Cannon ) to get the property and the insurance . The plot succeeds but Christopher Reeve as the younger and less established of the two ... |
442,992 | 819,382 | 130,444 | 7 | Change Partners and Dance With Her | I wasn't expecting much from " Aimee and Jaguar , " mainly because my satellite delivery company gave it a rating of only two stars out of four , usually reserved for semi-junk like Batman sequels . But that rating was deceptively low . This is a well-done and even fascinating flick . There are three chief reasons for ... |
443,468 | 819,382 | 89,841 | 7 | Holy # @ # % , Boss , Somebody Done the Job on Zingo ! | I'm not sure Richard Condon has ever written a serious word in his life . " The Manchurian Candidate " had its pathos but it was largely masked by Condon's prose style - - detached , ironic , and humorous . In another novel he describes a typical meal for his Alfred Hitchcok character and it takes up half of a full pag... |
441,674 | 819,382 | 52,365 | 7 | Thumping Historical Adventure . | Stunning photography of the Norwegian fjords by Jack Cardiff , only one of the enjoyable features of this action movie . Ernest Borgnine is Ragnar a ( literally ) rapacious Viking . The Vikings , as we all know , were given to pillaging - - which is almost as fun as raping - - along the coastal settlements of England ,... |
441,878 | 819,382 | 318,974 | 7 | Surrender is not an option . ( ? ) | In World War II many Japanese soldiers fought according to the Samurai's code of Bushido , the way of the warrior , battling to the last man and committing sepuku rather than surrendering . And then there's the kamikaze business . The response of Americans to this was one of mixed contempt and bewilderment . Repeatedly... |
442,954 | 819,382 | 39,286 | 7 | Pretty Good Noir . | I haven't read the source , Richard Brooks ' novel " The Brick Foxhole , " which I hope is not as infelicitous as its title , but I understand the original villain was a homophobe not an anti Semite . ( And to be honest , Sam Levene is written as a gay guy who picks up a drunken soldier . ) But , okay , you have to go ... |
441,948 | 819,382 | 120,601 | 7 | Craig's Other's Other Wife . | This is a difficult movie to describe so you have to bear with me . John Cusack plays an unsuccessful puppeteer in New York , married to a thoroughly deglamorized Cameron Diaz . He has the hots for his sole employee , his tough and savvy office-mate , Catherine Keener . Then he discovers a kind of crawlspace in his off... |
442,492 | 819,382 | 118,414 | 7 | Good Big-Budget Epic . | A decent cast and some tight writing make this a pretty good spectacle . Poor Odysseus ( Armand Assante ) . He spends ten years fighting for the Greeks in the Trojan War , and it takes him another nine years to survive the return trip and reach his kingdom in Ithaca . He undergoes many adventures - - some good and some... |
443,596 | 819,382 | 120,617 | 7 | Just the facts . | I've given this film a good rating because , based as it is on a set of particular facts , it doesn't fit into the usual war-film mold . It may be so mainly by default , but that doesn't make it any less original . Here's the mold . A small group of soldiers sets out on a difficult mission . There are fire fights . Som... |
441,791 | 819,382 | 74,174 | 7 | Dirty Little Dozen . | Most movies about kids and sports are pretty boring but this one , though not flawless , is quite a lot of fun . The director , Michael Ritchie , has this obsession with competitive sports . In his movies , when people want to relax they go water skiing . But he's found the humor in this mostly formulaic story of a Lit... |
441,812 | 819,382 | 446,755 | 7 | Slow , gorgeous tale of romance and cholera . | Englishman Edward Norton , a dedicated microbiologist , is married to toothsome Naomi Watts in this film , and he catches her in flagrante delicto with married Liev Schreiber . This disappoints Norton . Together the couple travel to a remote Chinese village where Norton devotes his time to trying to solve a cholera epi... |
443,083 | 819,382 | 437,800 | 7 | Warm , subtle family story . | It's the story of a black middle-school girl ( Keke Palmer ) from the wrong Los Angeles neighborhood who comes out of nowhere and - - exercising her native skill and a good deal of patience - - manages to tie for the championship in the national spelling bee . We know ahead of time that , as in " Searching for Bobby Fi... |
443,213 | 819,382 | 25,748 | 7 | They Seek Him Everywhere . | Sink me , a dammed good movie about the Reign of Terror and the dangerous efforts of an Englishman known as the Scarlet Pimpernel , aka Sir Percy Blakeney , aka Leslie Howard , and his small band of colleagues to rescue at least a few aristocrats from the French guillotine . The film has three themes going on at the sa... |
441,632 | 819,382 | 286,493 | 7 | Moral mystery . | Three issues dealt with in this movie . ( 1 ) Who murdered Mona , the transsexual ? ( 2 ) Will the sheriff , Billy Bob Thornton , overcome his revulsion for queers , men who dry flowers , women who like to wear spike collars , people of either sex who lust after cold sauerkraut , and other assorted wimps and pre-verts ... |
441,879 | 819,382 | 98,051 | 7 | Workable thriller . | Kind of an enjoyable , undemanding political thriller in which Tommy Lee Jones is a hired assassin and Gene Hackman is an Army sergeant who tries to find him , while he himself is hunted by the police after being framed for a murder . There are predictable elements in the plot . A car chase through the streets of Chica... |
442,489 | 819,382 | 475,095 | 7 | Huston Goes to War . | John Huston , the Hollywood director who made the war-time documentaries described in this film , is rather a dull interview subject but a fascinating guy . He had the long , thin , somewhat bashed-in face of the boxer that he once was . He'd also been mixed up in the Mexican cavalry and other enterprises that seem out... |
442,309 | 819,382 | 74,330 | 7 | Slick and Successful | An above-average entry in the series . A stage magician , the ever-loathsome Jack Cassidy , sneaks away in mid-act while supposedly hidden in a locked box and snuffs his partner and blackmailer , Nehemia Persoff . Cassidy's secret is that he was a guard in a concentration camp when he was young and it simply wouldn't d... |
442,184 | 819,382 | 45,125 | 7 | Lots of fun | The Commedia dell'Arte is an old Italian form of stage presentation , dating from the 16th century and featuring a series of stock characters like Arlecchino , Pantolone , Pulchnello , and Capitano . Everyone in the audience knew their comic weaknesses and looked forward to seeing them on display , kind of like a John ... |
442,077 | 819,382 | 83,197 | 7 | Unusual low-key medical drama . | In the ten years or so before this film's release there was a flurry of high-profile breakthroughs in cardiovascular surgery . Heart transplants , bypass surgery , mechanical hearts , animal hearts in human bodies . Names like DeBakey became household words . One might imagine this low-budget movie to be a sensationali... |
441,733 | 819,382 | 338,564 | 7 | Tense police story . | The beginning slips by in a jiffy and the rest of the movie doesn't pause for long either , so if you don't pay attention you might get lost . I'm happy to report that none of the confusion evolves out of all the Chinese characters looking alike , because I can easily distinguish , for instance , the " good " mole's Dr... |
443,041 | 819,382 | 69,919 | 7 | Light-hearted NYC heist flick . | It's a pretty dumb title - - " Cops and Robbers . " Sounds as if it ought to be a gritty urban crime tale starring maybe Steven Segal . Instead it's a good-natured look at two ordinary New York City cops who are tired of the violence and selfishness they see on the job , the greed and perspiration . They dream about ge... |
442,672 | 819,382 | 33,537 | 7 | See the pretty airplanes and brave men ! | Errol Flynn is a Navy doctor who witnesses the death of a flier and completes a program to become a flight surgeon . The regular aviators resent him , especially the squadron commander , Fred MacMurray . But Flynn and his earnest colleague , Ralph Bellamy , solve one problem after another in aviation medicine , climaxi... |
442,101 | 819,382 | 454,848 | 7 | Surprising bank heist flick from Spike Lee | I missed the first 20 minutes or so of this film so that may have contributed to my inability to follow some details of the plot . I get the impression , though , that it was pretty complicated to begin with . And there seems to have been some elisions here and there . ( What , exactly , is the significance of the diam... |
441,946 | 819,382 | 353,969 | 7 | Insidious and , finally , gripping . | The first fifteen minutes or so seem kind of slapdash , with over-emphatic acting , undistinguished photography , and exposition that seems to be going nowhere . But if you make it over that bar , you'll find a police procedural with a good deal of personality and a more subtle story than you might have expected . It c... |
442,074 | 819,382 | 67,778 | 7 | Breaking taboos . | A French film about the relationship between a teen-aged boy ( Ferreux ) and his mother ( Massari ) . Well , I guess more generally it is about Ferreux ' coming of age , a kind of Bildungsfilm , because other characters play a part in his development - - a girl his age , a priest and tutor , and so forth . Ferreux and ... |
442,713 | 819,382 | 47,264 | 7 | A Man Gets Lonesome . . . . | I wish I could pin down exactly what it is that makes Charlton Heston's walk so distinctive , but I guess it may not be unique . He walks like a lot of tall men - - Henry Fonda , John Wayne , Clint Eastwood . There's a certain seven-league-boots quality to their slow strides . Just the opposite of Joe Pesci , Mickey Ro... |
442,506 | 819,382 | 104,690 | 7 | Tragic and ennobling . | A . L . Kroeber was a fascinating and brilliant man , completely devoted to his field . During the earthquake of April , 1906 , he pulled himself out of the rubble in his downtown home , shook off the dust , and walked many miles up hill to check on his Museum , which was located where the U . C . Medical Center now st... |
441,725 | 819,382 | 37,469 | 7 | A dream is a life , a little more coherent than most . . . . | SPOILERS Fritz Lang had a reputation for stalking around the set barking orders through a megaphone , wearing breeches and riding boots and a monacle , the last of the great cartoons . At least he got the job done . " Woman in the Window " is pretty good noirish stuff . I say " noir-ish " because it's missing one of th... |
442,342 | 819,382 | 93,818 | 7 | Evocative and good-natured nostalgia . | A film about growing up in Rockaway during the early 1940s , framed by piece after piece of contemporary pop radio songs and programs . It strikes a viewer as even more autobiographical than usual for Woody Allan . That's not necessarily a good thing , I suppose . What happens to an artist may seem pregnant with import... |
442,070 | 819,382 | 107,290 | 7 | Some mean mothers - - | As a critic , Edgar Allan Poe had a simple theory of literary aesthetics . Throw logic out the window and go for the effect . Does it really MATTER why the guy is in a pitch-black room with a pit in the middle and a scythe swinging overhead ? As a novelist Michael Crighton is too much the techie to ignore logic . He gi... |
443,372 | 819,382 | 119,942 | 7 | The Art of Holding Office | The movie is full of funny scenes . One of the scenes that is most amusing has Governor Stanton ( Travolta ) and his staff sitting around an over-sized table at a familiar Southern barbecue joint , slopping down chicken and ribs and bottles of beer . The governor , the black barbecue owner , and the campaign strategist... |
441,958 | 819,382 | 132,659 | 7 | The Multiple-Sided War | We probably have Ken Burns to thank for this miniseries on the American Revolutionary War . Five years previously , Burns had produced " The American Civil War , " which was wildly popular - - for a PBS miniseries anyway . " The Revolutionary War " follows much the same format - - Charles Kuralt narrates , rather than ... |
443,216 | 819,382 | 642,391 | 7 | Useless , Underpowered , and Impotent - - like You . | This is the episode in which his family and neighbors talk Al into shelling out $2100 for a computer , over which Marcy rhapsodizes . " It's got 30 megabytes of memory . " Twenty-one hundred dollars 25 years ago for 30 MBs . That's your free market at work for you , folks . Lamentably , no one knows how to use it . Whe... |
442,202 | 819,382 | 217,363 | 7 | WTFU in Cincinatti . | Art can cause a lot of trouble . No doubt about it . In 1913 , a ballet debuted in Paris , " The Rite of Spring , " full of strange rhythms and telling the story of the barbaric sacrifice of a young virgin . The audience included such luminaries as Picasso , Cocteau , Proust , Ravel and Debussy . Some folks liked it , ... |
443,344 | 819,382 | 516,905 | 7 | Good-bye , Mrs . Peel . ( Sob ) | I don't know that this episode is any more whimsical than the others . The plots were rarely the point anyway . The point was understated style , and this episode has that in abundance . But there are differences between this and the earlier episodes . The Organization that Steed and Mrs . Peel worked for is here revea... |
441,927 | 819,382 | 70,030 | 7 | Riding the Rails | This is the kind of story that Tom Wolfe might have written . It's about what he would have called a " status-sphere " and ordinary sociologists would have called a subculture . It's about competition within a limited environment , about acquiring status , about working your way up the ladder of prestige within a parti... |
441,882 | 819,382 | 51,036 | 7 | Nifty black and white drama | SPOILERS . . . . What a bunch of skuzzbags . There is hardly a non-greedy guy in the movie , although the three women are all okay . But here we have Burt Lancaster as the all-powerful columnist J . J . Hunsacker ( read " Walter Winchell " ) and Tony Curtis as the slimy press agent Sidney Falco and Emil Meyer as the br... |
442,500 | 819,382 | 43,363 | 7 | Please don't play with the bulls . | I don't know who made up the dumb title for this pretty good movie but I suspect it was the head of the studio , Herbert J . Yates , known far and wide for his lack of taste . " The Bullfighter and the Lady . " He wanted to change the title of John Ford's " The Quiet Man " to " The Prizefighter and the Colleen . " He i... |
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