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443,244 | 819,382 | 356,487 | 7 | A whistle-blower movie , and a good one . | There have been myriad films about whistle blowers since the success of " Serpico " - - and before ( eg . , " On the Waterfront " ) . Some , like those mentioned , are quite well done . Others are Hollywoodized to the point of staged but fake reality and one hundred percent predictability . I won't mention any . Well ,... |
442,726 | 819,382 | 46,889 | 7 | Effective and exciting British war movie . | This film recounts an historical incident in which about two dozen British Lancasters delivered specially designed bombs that destroyed two important dams supplying water and hydroelectric power to the industrial area of the Ruhr . It sticks fairly close to the facts and it doesn't meander about . No rivalries over wom... |
442,381 | 819,382 | 102,059 | 7 | You Can't Go Wrong Here . | Sometimes silly , more often outrageously funny , and always propelled , it's a relatively well-plotted comedy , with Charlie Sheen and Cary Elwes competing for Valeria Golena and for the status of Top Gun in a Navy fighter squadron . If you've seen any of Jim Abraham's - - or Abraham's and Zuckerman's - - films before... |
442,593 | 819,382 | 31,252 | 7 | It's Quiet Out There - - Too Quiet . | It's an exciting frontier adventure story , starring Henry Fonda , Claudette Colbert , and the rest of the stock company of director John Ford . Supposedly in the Mohawk Valley of upstate New York , it was actually filmed in Utah's Wasatch Mountains , in stupendiferous , colossal , formidable , transmogrifying Technico... |
441,867 | 819,382 | 31,235 | 7 | Old-fashioned , fast , enjoyable Western . | Olivia de Havilland is really attractive here , fresh faced and brunette with big dark eyes . She looks so thoroughly American . Any normal man would want to throw himself at her feet , show her his bankbook and genealogical tree , and beg her to marry him . Marry - - not simply cohabit , because she's not that kind of... |
442,392 | 819,382 | 18,773 | 7 | A Chaplin Delight . | This feature stands alongside " The Gold Rush " and " Modern Times " as among Chaplin's best . If it lacks the exoticism and technological sophistication of the other two , it has some marvelously funny set pieces . Chaplin , as the Tramp , gets mixed up with a pickpocket while visiting the circus . Mistaken by the pol... |
442,369 | 819,382 | 369,672 | 7 | The Odd Trio | Drenched in the humidity of a New Orleans summer ( that's a rough quote from the florid and unnecessary narration ) , the movie gives us an odd trio . Bobby Long ( Travolta ) is an old ex-literature professor . Lawson Pines ( Macht ) is his protégé and former teaching assistant who is now supposedly writing Bobby Long'... |
443,246 | 819,382 | 36,027 | 7 | A Trip Worth Taking . | Frances Dee ( Mrs . Joel McRea ) , a Canadian nurse , takes a job on the small Caribbean island of Saint Sebastian . Her duty is to care for the wife ( Christine Gordon ) of the owner of the sugar plantation ( Tom Conway ) . Conway's brother ( James Ellison ) manages the place . Assorted characters are present , includ... |
443,361 | 819,382 | 343,172 | 7 | Strangely involving minor film . | There's nothing much to the story . A young woman steals some money from the dreary Vermont supermarket where she works , decides to run away to Florida where he has dreams of attending school with her friend Julie , and encounters an odd couple on the highway . If you remember the elderly couple from " Rosemary's Baby... |
443,038 | 819,382 | 88,677 | 7 | Superior adaptation of Twain's novel . | Ernest Hemingway once said that all American literature began with " Huckleberry Finn . " A bit of an exaggeration from Papa , but there was certainly nothing like " Huckleberry Finn " before it came along . Twain's novel was uniquely uncompromising . At the very beginning , Huck's father shakes a jug of booze and , wh... |
442,689 | 819,382 | 419,749 | 7 | Strange Heroes . | Lumet seems to have returned to the theme he tackled in " Twelve Angry Men " - - one stand-up guy who is disparaged in court by the others on his team until , in the end , he enters his house justified . Vin Diesel is the star and he does a surprisingly good job , mixing vernacular English with the savvy of a street ra... |
442,523 | 819,382 | 49,406 | 7 | Kubrik gallops out of the gate . | The Killers obviously owes a lot to " The Asphalt Jungle " of four years earlier , and also reflects the influence of the kind of semi-documentary post-war intrigues that Henry Hathaway and some others made - - " The House on 92nd Street " , for instance - - with their baritone narrations and emphasis on clockwork pr... |
442,949 | 819,382 | 27,630 | 7 | Probably Fred and Ginger's Best . | What an entertaining movie . Astaire and Randolph Scott are in the Navy . Astaire has to woo back Ginger in San Francisco , while Scott must be persuaded that Harriet Hilliard is worthy of being his wife . Everything works out fine . It's sometimes argued , and I can see why , that Scott's romance with Hilliard is unne... |
441,973 | 819,382 | 109,579 | 7 | Is Torture a Sin ? | Considering that this is a play and rather looks like one , it's pretty good . Well , it's good anyway . A lawyer , Gerardo ( Stuart Wilson ) and his wife Paulina ( Sigourney Weaver ) have just retired in their comfortable , isolated house next to a cliff overhanging the sea . The location is somewhere in South America... |
442,478 | 819,382 | 55,728 | 7 | Point of Order . | A pretty good , ensemble movie about political intrigues and the personal secrets and ideologies that propel them . Henry Fonda is the titular star but , really , there are half a dozen people who play important roles with , arguably , Don Murray's being the most dramatic and challenging . The plot . President Franchot... |
442,468 | 819,382 | 25,452 | 7 | Knockabout Hitchcock Thriller . | Hitchcock and Truffaut almost had an argument over the relative value of this ( 1934 ) version of " The Man Who Knew Too Much " and the 1956 remake . Hitchcock , always averse to confrontation , finally admitted that the early film was the work of a talented amateur and the 1956 version that of a professional . For a "... |
443,482 | 819,382 | 36,910 | 8 | Propaganda - - good propaganda . | The poetry is sublime . A little touch of Harry in the night Once more , dear friends , once more unto the breach . The history sucks . Hitler used the same reasoning . Oh , please , don't make us invade your city and rape your women and smash your babies ' brains out against the wall . Please - - give up before you ma... |
443,594 | 819,382 | 45,659 | 8 | War at Sea , Well Above Average | It's hard to understand what it is that turns some seamen into superior writers . Of course they have a lot of yarns to tell , but where does the skill in telling them come from ? Nicholas Monserrat , on whose best-selling book this movie is based , never wrote a ground-breaking novel but no one is better at conveying ... |
443,045 | 819,382 | 105,151 | 8 | Let's Make a Movie ! | Robert Altman was a hard man to get hold of . While shooting this movie , an actor asked what the dialog was supposed to be about - - what should he say ? Altman's reply : " I can't tell you what to say . " His first big film , " MASH " , struck me as slapdash , designed to be funny , and anachronistic , a statement ab... |
442,906 | 819,382 | 30,637 | 8 | Was Ever Woman In This Humour Wooed ? | A briskly paced and sometimes hilarious retelling of George Bernard Shaw's most entertaining play . The Pygmalion of Greek myth is Leslie Howard , a professor of phonetics specializing in regional and class accents , who brings his Galatea to life in the person of Wendy Hiller , transformed from dirty , homely , gutter... |
442,232 | 819,382 | 218,094 | 8 | I Can Resist Anything But Temptation | Above-average TV movie . It raises some interesting questions and , unfortunately , tries to provide answers . It's the dark side of " Stand and Deliver . " A teacher in a working-class Chicago high school , Dr . Plecki , tries to - - wait a minute . What's a guy with a doctorate doing teaching in a slum school ? Never... |
442,509 | 819,382 | 54,443 | 8 | This is what happens when you don't beat them enough . | A cheap , well executed British SciFi film about a cohort of superintelligent , mind-reading children growing up in a small English village . The original title of the story , I think , was " The Midwitch Cuckoos , " a less exploitative but far more appropriate title than " Village of the Damned . " We may think of cuc... |
442,341 | 819,382 | 32,599 | 8 | Hold That Tiger . | I think there are three versions of this play kicking around out there and this one is the best , not to mention the fastest . The director , Howard Hawks , was always good at light comedy , improvising gags on the spot and taking all sorts of liberties with the script . Sometimes the plot got lost along the way ( " Th... |
443,097 | 819,382 | 43,961 | 8 | Murphy's Best | I can't understand why this movie isn't more well known or why it doesn't get more critical applause . Well , I suppose it's in black and white , it's short , it has no expensive bankable stars , and no love interest . I can't think of any other reasons , because this is a very good movie indeed . John Huston's directi... |
442,661 | 819,382 | 431,197 | 8 | Very Well-Done International Police Thriller . | There is an extremely violent attack within the protected area of Riyadh , Saudi Arabia , and many men , women , and children are killed , including some Americans . America has no jurisdiction but back-negotiations lead to a team of American agents led by the FBI's Jamie Foxx acquiring a five-day pass in Riyadh to hel... |
443,592 | 819,382 | 54,412 | 8 | Scotland the Brave | This is a fine movie . If anyone wants to examine the difference between what passes for a " good movie " these days and a " good movie " fifty years ago , " Tunes of Glory " is a good place to start . The direction is economical , with little in the way of razzle dazzle . Ronald Neame has almost " edited himself out o... |
442,488 | 819,382 | 52,520 | 8 | What's Not to Like ? | Rod Serling was quite a guy , a nice Jewish kid from Binghamton , NY , who volunteered for the paratroopers in WWII , was wounded , and attended Antioch College in Yellowsprings , Ohio , on the GI Bill . He worked his way up through TV , and sometimes feature films , as a writer and finally got his own series , " The T... |
442,878 | 819,382 | 65,126 | 8 | Authentic | I have a kind of synchronistic relationship with this movie . I had dinner in a Chinese restaurant in Washington , DC , called " Chin's " , and the next day sensed in the theater that the Chinese guy would be called " Chin . " A bit later I bought a worn paperback copy of the novel in Mrs . Cohen's bookstore in South W... |
441,692 | 819,382 | 388,395 | 8 | Rambling and slow , but strangely moving . | It's hard to imagine how the director , Michael Schorr , could draw us into the story of a plump old retiree with a face as interesting as a honeydew melon ( Horst Krauss ) , but he manages to do it . Lif in Schultze's German town is filled with inaction . We get several static shots of the architecture and the layout ... |
441,961 | 819,382 | 95,705 | 8 | Fast and zany parody of policiers . | I have to hand it to the Zuckers and Abrahams . This is really funny , a send-up of every crime movie you've ever seen , something about a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth during her visit to Los Angeles . It borrows from every place . There's a scene lifted directly from Don Siegel's " Telefon . " Some of the first... |
442,602 | 819,382 | 78,111 | 8 | Most Friendship is Feigning , Most Loving Mere Folly . | There are a couple of reasons to see this well-executed movie . One is Brooke Shields in her only believable performance , as a defiant self-absorbed brat who learns not just about sex but about love . She is , of course , dazzlingly beautiful and barely pubescent and it's necessary to get beyond that . Value judgments... |
442,570 | 819,382 | 433,383 | 8 | Surprisingly low key docudrama . | I approached this film warily . Here you've got George Clooney as writer and director and actor , and who IS George Clooney ? A self-proclaimed liberal with a background in afternoon television dramas . He's made a movie about a shameful episode in America's past in which lives were ruined and there were few heroes . A... |
443,177 | 819,382 | 24,034 | 8 | Icon of Vernacular Culture . | If you haven't seen this one , you've not only missed the movie itself but the irregular and irreverent allusions to it that crop up in other sources from time to time . You NEED to see this one , in the sense that you need to know that George Washington was our first president . The story of a naive girl ( Ruby Keeler... |
442,174 | 819,382 | 87,892 | 8 | East is East , West is West | David Lean wasn't an especially likable guy . When Guiness arrived on the set , Lean told him he'd been hoping for another actor for the part of Godbole . He was so sadistic to Sessue Hayakawa on " The Bridge on the River Quai , " blaming Hayakaway's flawed English for all the delays that Hayakawa's breakdown scene was... |
441,821 | 819,382 | 118,749 | 8 | Mature Audiences Only | An affectionate look at the Golden Age of porn movies , from the late 1970s to , say , the early 1980s . The cast list is filled with familiar names who deliver the goods with expected skill . Philip Seymour Hoffman is unusually fine but then they're almost all outstanding . No need to carry on about the content . It's... |
441,985 | 819,382 | 37,008 | 8 | Love and murder , splendidly done | It's hard to fault this film , whose plot I won't bother to outline . It may not be an artistic masterpiece but it shows what Hollywood could do at its very best . It's a murder mystery wrapped around a love story , with the stiff self-contained Dana Andrews as the investigating detective and the eyeball-coagulatingly ... |
442,118 | 819,382 | 37,017 | 8 | Thoughtful and Exciting Drama From Hitchcock . | This doesn't get much attention and I'm not sure why , because it certainly deserves more . The story of a diverse handful of survivors adrift in the Atlantic after their ship is torpedoed , it represents one of the technical and narrative challenges that Hitchcock at the time was beginning to impose on himself . There... |
442,367 | 819,382 | 107,007 | 8 | Defines Epic . | Who's going to want to watch a movie about the American Civil War ? Oh , sure , maybe the public will watch an ageless soap opera like " Gone With the Wind " but a movie about nothing but a BATTLE ? No women in it ? No slashers ? No aliens or car chases or huge explosions or sex ? Americans have no interest in their ow... |
442,314 | 819,382 | 43,859 | 8 | Above par | This isn't as funny as the Nevil Shute novel it's based on but it's still very amusing indeed , with undertones of seriousness , kind of like Much Ado About Nothing . Don't mean to make a big deal out of it . It's an inexpensive movie with that grainy black-and-white photography that made so many post-war British films... |
441,899 | 819,382 | 390,221 | 8 | Gripping | It probably sounds depressing - - three girls from a village in Colombia find themselves broke , are hired as mules to smuggle drugs into New York by swallowing little condoms full , get mixed up with unfeeling and possibly murderous receivers in America , and find themselves almost broke again , or worse . But this is... |
441,667 | 819,382 | 99,225 | 8 | Eris ? | Did the author of the book on which this movie is based actually win a Newbery ? I can understand why , without ever having read it . The movie is like an above average after-school special . There are two equally important themes dealt with . ( 1 ) Is Stephanie Zimbalist really the Caroline who disappeared fourteen ye... |
442,465 | 819,382 | 37,077 | 8 | Fast , often hilarious comedy . | Preston Sturges , who wrote and directed this headlong parody of small-town life and war-time patriotism , was a man of multiple talents . Take his direction , for example . He pulls of this outrageous stunt without any razzle dazzle at all . Any modern comedy would blast us with funny music and shots that last about a... |
441,883 | 819,382 | 32,762 | 8 | Crackerjack | SPOILERS . . . It's hard to imagine that an unassuming fantasy adventure like this would be made today . There are no pop songs in it . There are no outstanding special effects . The makeup isn't grotesque . It's black and white . And we no longer believe in selfless heroes or in crude villains . This movie owes quite ... |
442,235 | 819,382 | 34,965 | 8 | Inept Crooks | S . J . Perelman , on whose play this is based , would sometimes use the nom de plume Sidney Namelrep , a silly , devil-may-care joke that is perfectly in tune with his sense of humor . He wrote some of the most outrageously funny pieces ever to appear in the New Yorker . His comedy is filled with whimsy , non sequitur... |
442,044 | 819,382 | 30,341 | 8 | Headlong Comic Thriller From Hitchcock | Not as polished as his later generic examples like " North by Northwest , " " The Lady Vanishes " is fast paced , full of fun , and suspenseful . Margaret Lockwood boards a train in Ruritania or Moribunda or some Middle European country to go back to England and marry her fiancé . She bumps into the wisecracking folk-m... |
443,200 | 819,382 | 45,897 | 8 | Engaging dilemma | If this had come from anyone but Hitchcock in 1953 it would have been regarded as a great success . The story has its holes but is generally plausible . Montgomery Clift and most of the other principles are at the very least competent . The photography , as is usual with Hitchcock , is evocative and the black-and-white... |
442,404 | 819,382 | 26,529 | 8 | Gypo in Nightown . | Sometimes realism can work against the effectiveness of a film . That's no problem here . The sets are cheesy , inside and out . The fog is ubiquitous , half disguising the shabbiness of the production . If there's a bar , the name painted on the front window says simply , " Wine And Spirits . " The result is a claustr... |
441,709 | 819,382 | 21,749 | 8 | Charlo at the top of his game . | Charlie Chaplin made some extremely funny shorts but of his longer films , this is one of the best , along with " The Gold Rush " and " Modern Times . " Two stories are woven together . One is Charlie's on-again off-again friendship with a wealthy drunk . The guy has a case of multiple personality . When drunk he showe... |
442,123 | 819,382 | 85,859 | 8 | Let's Get Native . | An easygoing , gentle , and thoroughly successful comedy . Peter Riegert is an executive at the Houston firm of Knox Oil , in the employ of Mr . Happer himself , Burt Lancaster . Lancaster has a terrific plan to develop an oil refinery on the Scottish coast and sends Riegert there to negotiate the deal with the presuma... |
442,368 | 819,382 | 120,815 | 8 | The Fate of Rebels | Seeing it again , nine years after its release , you can't help being struck by how familiar things are : the pale blue cast of the photography , the distinctive special effects , the squib charges exploding not with blood but with dust when a man is hit , the clank of bullet against armor , the shaky camera , the enem... |
442,748 | 819,382 | 83,909 | 8 | An Unexpected Surprise | Larry Schiller , who is credited with directing this movie , comes off in Mailer's book as a no-nonsense , grasping , egomaniacal self promoter - - a Horace Babbitt for our times . So it comes as a big surprise to find that this movie is professionally done and even tasteful . Schiller was one of the first , well , jou... |
442,388 | 819,382 | 120,824 | 8 | New Wind Sweeps Clean | SPOILERS . It doesn't start out promising . As in " American Beauty , " we hear Kevin Spacey's exhausted voice-over telling us how he was physically mishandled by his father and how empty his life is now . A brief marriage to a half-mad Kate Blanchett results in a child , Bunny , but it doesn't seem to help Spacey . At... |
442,058 | 819,382 | 110,932 | 8 | Time's Up | Why do networks take a decent movie like this and lop off parts to fit it into a Procrustean bed ? So they can include more commercials and make money . Why do contestants cheat on TV quiz shows ? Well , yes , to make money too - - but more than that . They want adulation as well as new Caddies . At least Herb Stempel ... |
442,028 | 819,382 | 39,416 | 8 | Some of His Best Friends Are Anti-Semites . | I have to give this movie bonus points , not because it approaches cinematic perfection , but because of its pioneering exploration of a politely ignored social problem . Gregary Peck is a journalist given an assignment to write a story about anti-Semitism . His " Maw " , Anne Revere , gives him the idea of pretending ... |
443,565 | 819,382 | 481,797 | 8 | We get too soon old and too late smart . | This film , shot mostly in Rumania and directed by Francis Ford Coppola , has some of the most splendid location photography I've ever seen . Indoors is all burnished gold and dark shadows , like " The Godfather , " and snowy piny landscapes have never been more snowy or more piny . The cinematographer , Mihai Malaimar... |
443,248 | 819,382 | 45,876 | 8 | Capitalism in the Raw . | Rowdy , masculine , adventurer David O'Keefe ( Lancaster ) sees millions of dollars of copra ready to be harvested from the coconuts on Yap , a South Sea Island . The local representative of a German trading company ( Andre Morell ) is sympathetic but hopeless : the " natives " are too lazy to work because they already... |
442,806 | 819,382 | 363,163 | 8 | Unforgettable | I tuned in late to this film , not expected very much , because we have all I suppose seen so many documentaries of Hitler's last days in the bunker , and a reconstruction with Alec Guiness thrown in for good measure . Many of these presentations depend on interviews with Trudl Junge , Hitler's secretary at the time . ... |
442,940 | 819,382 | 145,044 | 8 | First , do the patient no harm ? | Dr . William Palmer ( Keith Allen ) seems to have forgotten the first principle of the Hippocratic oath . He goes about nonchalantly poisoning people who inconvenience him financially or emotionally . It's not clear exactly how many people he managed to put away , but he can certainly lay claim to the title of England'... |
442,837 | 819,382 | 85,959 | 8 | Where would you like to start ? | This one and " The Life of Brian " top their list , in my humble opinion . Each time this rolls around on cable TV I expect finally to find it boring but rarely do . If I can make it to the second sketch , the aquarium with the fish , I'm hooked . Now , I can't spell out too many of the situations without ruining the s... |
442,327 | 819,382 | 95,242 | 8 | Grace Under Pressure | The natural tendency of a TV movie made about a turbulent time in history is to turn the story into a soap opera . That way , the producers can avoid expensive and expansive battle scenes with millions of extras , impeccable props and sets , monumental stars , and dialog that , having been rewritten and polished to a s... |
441,743 | 819,382 | 37,366 | 8 | Flying High Now | This is not at all a bad movie . Earlier comments have observed that the first half of the film is mushy and corny , but let us be kind to the demand characteristics of the time . The USA was a lot cornier then than it is now . And even during that first half , the film is more than watchable . Van Johnson does his all... |
441,800 | 819,382 | 87,561 | 8 | Give him a break . . . . | Here is Olivier in his 70s , a guy who simply could not stop working . In his last years , visibly old , his face fallen , disabled by disease , he still kept calling his agent and asking , " Can't I work " ? I'm going to cut the guy some slack . I mean - - the very fact that he was able to PICK UP Cordelia and carry h... |
442,335 | 819,382 | 72,272 | 8 | Down Home Musicals . | It's hard to evaluate a documentary like this because it's a compilation of musical numbers from the legendary MGM factory over a period of more than thirty years , and although the numbers all show a good deal of effort , some are invariably an improvement over others . There are a couple of dozen episodes , introduce... |
442,714 | 819,382 | 759,612 | 8 | Slow , thoughtful character study . | The UK has certainly had its share of serial murders , probably none more popular than one of the first , Jack the Ripper . This story involves a series of crimes , the moores murders , and the two perps , Ian Brady and Myra Hendley who , acting in concert , dispatched more than five young kids in the most bestial fash... |
442,203 | 819,382 | 52,357 | 8 | Only the most shallow man would fail to be impressed by appearances . | Vertigo is considered Hitchcock's masterpiece by high-brows and viewed as a slow , dull movie by proletarians . Indulge this Olympian generalizations for a moment . If you don't know the story by now , it goes something like this . Jimmy Stewart is a San Francisco detective retired from the force because he contracte... |
442,660 | 819,382 | 1,196,112 | 8 | Righteous Wrath . | If I were judging this as a public service message , I'd give it a higher grade . As a documentary film , it spends all but the last fifteen minutes of its time on case studies of four or five families convicted of child molestation in Bakersfield , California . There were several dozen convictions , some 35 of which w... |
442,336 | 819,382 | 32,484 | 8 | Light-hearted , thoroughly Hitchcockian Thriller . | Sometimes Alfred Hitchcock would get hold of a Big Idea and run with it and the results were usually disappointing - - " Rope , " " Spellbound , " " The Wrong Man . " But there's nothing pretentious about " Foreign Correspondent . " There's a secret clause to one of those secret treaties , and there's a murder or two ,... |
442,742 | 819,382 | 124,008 | 8 | More things in heaven and earth . . . | I've only seen this once , when it was released more than twenty years ago , but have never been able to forget it . Two English women touring Versailles witness some strange people and odd goings on but they don't discuss it with one another until their return home , when they compare notes . Their independent account... |
442,178 | 819,382 | 45,161 | 8 | So much better than it would be if remade today . | I think I've only seen this twice - - once in its release , when I was a kid , and again on TV , about ten years ago , so my memory of the details are a bit fuzzy . The plot is rudimentary by our standards . A sniper ( Arthur Franz ) is stalking San Francisco . The police ( Adolf Menjou ) want to either shoot him or ca... |
442,956 | 819,382 | 43,456 | 8 | Zero Tolerance Policy for Aggression ? | A superior example of the SF films so popular during the 1950s . Oh , the plot is full of holes and some of the characters are cardboard but it's enjoyable nonetheless and , more than that , thought provoking . Is the plot full of holes ? Well , I don't really know exactly what that means , but the fact is that I have ... |
443,023 | 819,382 | 69,947 | 8 | Fine international crime thriller . | Fred Zinneman , the director , has put out some pretty low brow stuff , like " High Noon , " but it's all done with craftsmanship . This one is just about the opposite of " High Noon , " a thriller in which not a moment is wasted . Everything that happens is relevant to the plot and concise . Not only is the movie buil... |
442,267 | 819,382 | 37,420 | 8 | What's that clicking in your throat ? | This is about as corny as they come . Everybody's so - - NICE . Danny Kaye is a shy elevator operator . Dinah Shore is a nurse who loves him . Constance Dowling is the girl Danny Kaye thinks he loves , but when she meets Danny's roommate , Dana Andrews , they fall for one another . ( During a scene involving a horse-dr... |
441,635 | 819,382 | 98,621 | 8 | Marital Blitz | Give Danny DeVito the right story and he clicks . He does it here . What do a tornado , a hurricane , and an ex-wife have in common ? They all get the house . Except when the husband's lawyer manages to dig up some rule that allows the husband to stay in the house as long as he and his wife lead separate lives . The hu... |
441,675 | 819,382 | 41,239 | 8 | In This Sign Shall You Conquer : $ | A powerful picture of a young man named Midge Kelly ( Kirk Douglas ) starting from nothing and rising to the top of the fight business to become Middleweight Champion . On his gradus ad Olympus , he is accompanied by several friends , lovers , and relatives ( Paul Stewart as Midge Kelly's manager ; Ruth Roman as his wi... |
442,245 | 819,382 | 119,978 | 8 | Rite de Passage | All cultures have what the sociologist Emil Durkheim called " rites de passage , " also sometimes called puberty rituals , in which the initiate enters the ceremony as a child and emerges as an adult . Coppola and his team show us Rudy Baylor's rite de passage as an attorney . Matt Damon , as Rudy , is a fresh faced pr... |
442,694 | 819,382 | 418,038 | 8 | Sauce for the gander . | Well , this is outright propaganda aimed at Fox News . It doesn't pretend to be anything else , and therein lies its superiority to Fox News as reportage and as a source of opinion . I've rarely watched Fox News and so can't comment in much detail on the target of this documentary . But from what I've seen , both on th... |
442,242 | 819,382 | 340,855 | 8 | Lying Down With Dogs . | An intense , depressing movie . It sticks pretty close to the facts but focuses chiefly on the relationship between Charlize Theron as Lee and Christina Ricci as Selby . The police are hardly there at all . In fact , neither is anyone else except for Bruce Dern who makes one or two short but welcome appearances . It co... |
441,988 | 819,382 | 39,661 | 8 | Above Average Drama | The story of a young man ( Power ) who is a barker at a carnival in the Midwest . He's cuckolding this old drunk , accidentally kills him , and then coaxes " the code " out of the dead man's wife ( Blondell ) . The two-person code is a secret way of pronouncing words that enables a blindfolded " psychic " to read and a... |
443,022 | 819,382 | 43,338 | 8 | Mmm . Two Scoops . | What a good movie . It's hard to believe that the audience was considered so sensitive in 1947 that the original title , " Ace in the Hole , " had to be dropped and replaced with this less ironic one . Viewers were thought unprepared for a film in which a reporter misbehaved , with lethal results . " The Big Carnival "... |
441,977 | 819,382 | 78,788 | 8 | The heads - - you're lookin ' at the heads . . . . | What a movie . Martin Sheen is an anguished Army captain in Vietnam in 1968 , ordered to proceed up river to the Cambodian border on a Navy River Patrol Boat and assassinate a Colonel Kurtz ( Marlon Brando ) who has apparently gone berserk and established his own little , ruthless anti-communist empire in the jungle . ... |
442,526 | 819,382 | 37,515 | 8 | Enjoyable Christie Adaptation | Ten people , almost all strangers to one another , are invited to spend a weekend at a house on an isolated island . Shortly after they introduce themselves , the recorded voice of their absent host , U . N . Owen , accuses them each of murder . Each protests his innocence and claims not to ever have met Mr . Owen . Th... |
442,819 | 819,382 | 642,376 | 8 | The Shoe Groupie | It may sound crazy to argue that this is one of the funniest episodes in this or any other series and , at the same time , that there is an underlying theme of pathos , but it's true . Well - - Charlie Chaplin managed to do it once in a while , and Billy Wilder . Why shouldn't a couple of sitcom writers trip over the s... |
442,915 | 819,382 | 113,277 | 8 | Excellent crime thriller . | This is a long , involved , and generally superior caper movie , something on the order of " The Asphalt Jungle " but with a cop thrown into the sauce . In addition , as a kind of subplot , we have a duel of wits between Pacino who represents LA's Robbery and Homicide , and DeNiro as the head of the honorable gang betr... |
443,564 | 819,382 | 45,274 | 8 | Roman Holiday . | What a set up for a ten-handkerchief movie . A man of about 70 , a retired petty bureaucrat in Rome , can't pay the rent his selfish landlady is demanding . He only gets his pension of $25 ( 1951 ) once a month and he's in arrears . In the end he loses the apartment and everything else and is trying to commit suicide b... |
442,451 | 819,382 | 109,370 | 8 | Satire , clumsy but funny | Who could expect much in the way of comedy from Michael Moore who seemed a one-shot success with a documentary that oozed irony but was criticized for editorial chicanery ? But this one pretty much works . It falls somewhere between the zaniness of " Airplane " and the black comedy of " Doctor Strangelove . " It's far ... |
441,920 | 819,382 | 477,348 | 8 | It Don't Do No Good To Be Fast on the Draw No More . | It's hard to know exactly what to make of this film because it doesn't follow the usual narrative structure . Bad things happen to people , whether they are good , bad , or indifferent . And the soft-spoken but menacing murdering man in black who simply kills anyone who gets in his way , and even a couple who don't , w... |
441,695 | 819,382 | 91,763 | 8 | A Study in Racial Antagonism | This is a good movie , and a brave one , for several reasons . The plot and other elements of the film have been covered elsewhere , so I'd like to just make a few comments on the role of race in the Vietnamese conflict . The combat experience in Vietnam was an almost perfect mirror of a famous social psychology experi... |
441,785 | 819,382 | 22,286 | 8 | An Original Ethnic Mobster . | Compared to Mervyn LeRoy's " Little Caesar " , " The Public Enemy " is a little more - - well , I don't want to use the word " sophisticated " because it's anything but that . It's more - - developmental . Yes , that's the word . Little Caesar's character begins and ends as an adult gangster . Tom Powers ( Jimmy Cagney... |
441,663 | 819,382 | 82,945 | 8 | It Isn't Easy Being Blue | In Lumet's earlier work , Serpico , Frankie went through little in the way of a crisis of conscience . His fellow cops were corrupt bullies , comic Paisanos , sadistic goons , or real mean mothers . Serpico was an immensely popular movie for a number of good reasons , including the fact that it was a story of good guys... |
442,858 | 819,382 | 516,948 | 8 | Tis a far , far better episode . | I find this one of the more enjoyable entries in the series . It aired on Christmas day and is built around a story in which Steed and Mrs . Peel are invited to a Dickensian Christmas party at one of England's stately homes , owned by Mervyn Johns , who is a renowned collector of Dickensiana . At the Christmas Eve part... |
443,587 | 819,382 | 39,536 | 8 | Grim and Realistic Crime Thriller . | One of the best of the post-war noirs . There's no treacherous femme fatale and no Robert Mitchum in a trench coat but it's got just about everything else - - a hold up , a shooting , a worried Victor Mature , prison scenes , a soupcon of happiness , big menacing black sedans , snub-nosed revolvers , monstrous . 45s , ... |
442,629 | 819,382 | 78,754 | 8 | Dark Side of the Moon of Musicals . | There have been dark musicals before - - " West Side Story , " " It's Always Fair Weather " - - but this one takes the palm . When Bob Fosse had his bypass surgery he was still a relatively young man and the procedure was still in its initial phases , by no means routine . It's something to be scared of under any circu... |
442,047 | 819,382 | 80,678 | 8 | One of Us . | This has to be the only totally straight movie that David Lynch ever put his fingers on . And at that , it's not entirely straight , but it seldom edges into Lynch's private vision , or through the looking glass , or down the rabbit hole , or into The Garden of Earthly Delights or the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir , o... |
442,385 | 819,382 | 102,592 | 8 | Show me the money . . . | SPOILERS . This genre piece excels . Everything seems to click and work together well . The story isn't very complicated . Three killers - - Billy Bob Thornton or whatever his three names are , Williams , and Beach - - drive from LA to Star City , Arkansas , where two LA detectives ( Metzler and Billings ) and a local ... |
442,228 | 819,382 | 454,776 | 8 | Slow , Gripping , Historical Drama . | It's 1797 in Great Britain . The rebellion in the colonies is long over , the Napoleonic wars are beginning , the men who broker power still wear wigs , the women wear low-cut full dresses with integral uplift bras , people argue over such social issues as slavery , and not a shot is fired nor a cutlass unsheathed . If... |
443,376 | 819,382 | 37,635 | 8 | Superb , Thrilling , Horrific | This is a very good , inexpensive Ealing movie . I can't imagine that they would make something like this now . It makes your hair stand on end and there is only one murder and not a drop of blood to be seen . It's not a masterpiece of art but , like a lot of Poe's short stories , a work of true craftsmanship . I won't... |
442,578 | 819,382 | 452,623 | 8 | Truth and Consequences | Some keen dialog here . Boston policeman , Ed Harris , to Private Investigator , Casey Affleck : " Look , just forget what I said the other night and we'll be friends . " Affleck : " And if I don't ? " Harris : " That's not the kind of ' if ' you want to bring into your life . " It's the story of a three-year-old girl ... |
441,924 | 819,382 | 120,274 | 8 | Strength and Grace | There's a scene in " Some Like it Hot " in which Jack Lemmon dances a tango with Joe E . Brown . The tune is a famous one , La Cumparasita or something like that , turned into an American pop song in the 1950s with English lyrics and named " Strange Sensations . " Anyway , the dance is played for laughs . Well , it's u... |
442,777 | 819,382 | 104,952 | 8 | Captured , Georgia | Well , this captures Georgia all right . Small-town Georgia , with its loblolly and slash pine forests and red clay earth , and its baked-brick buildings , and hard-charging justice system . The South in many ways is one of the most laid-back areas of the country ; everybody's friendly-like , elderly neighbors visit ne... |
442,097 | 819,382 | 120,255 | 8 | Deliberate , thoughtful , adult drama . | What a satisfying movie this is . A small snowy town in the Canadian north is struck by a tragedy . A big-city lawyer ( Ian Holm ) visits the place shortly after a school bus trundles off an icy highway and drowns most of the kids aboard . Holm wants to sue somebody - - passionately , angrily . In the course of intervi... |
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