reviewId int64 363k 588k | userId int64 33.9k 15.9M | itemId int64 1 1.42M | rating float64 1 10 | title stringlengths 1 10.9k ⌀ | content stringlengths 81 11.6k ⌀ |
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410,285 | 2,567,136 | 95,274 | 6 | Listener , I Imprisoned Him | In one sense this is two films in one , always difficult to pull off and more so when the contrast is so startling ; for two thirds of the running time we're comfortably ensconced in the thirties and living the privileged life vicariously largely via the Lasts ( James Wilby and Kristin Scott-Thomas ) who rattle around ... |
409,434 | 2,567,136 | 478,149 | 6 | Eradicating Rita | This is one of those ' what if ' conceits that sometimes come off spectacularly and more often than not bomb . This time around we are asked to surmise ' what if ' Orson Welles couldn't get arrested in Hollywood in the late forties and in the wake of his separation and impending divorce from Rita Hayworth found himself... |
409,002 | 2,567,136 | 39,179 | 6 | Hearts And Flours | In the early nineteen forties Simone Signoret nominated Tino Rossi and Jacques Trenet as her favourite singers ; in 1949 she fell head-over-heels for Yves Montand and in 1951 she married him . Montand , of course , left both of them for dead which in Rossi's case wasn't that hard , probably even Vaughan Munroe , the Si... |
409,595 | 2,567,136 | 206,210 | 6 | Chinese Checkers | As an actor Erich von Stroheim made some of his finest films in France . Sadly , this was not one of them and students of irony may well relish the fact that in that same year and with the same director ( Christian Jacque ) he made one of his finest , Les Disparus de St Agil . There was , in the 1930s , something of a ... |
409,237 | 2,567,136 | 1,319,569 | 6 | Endgame - The Prequel | I suppose it had to happen ; pseuds have been speculating for years about just WHERE those Beckett characters were BEFORE they climbed into dustbins and : or got themselves buried up to the neck . Wonder no more for here is an answer of sorts . You have to hand it to Isabelle Huppert ; for a major actress she seems to ... |
410,201 | 2,567,136 | 382,765 | 6 | A Town Called Malice | This is going to cause some bemusement in the Multiplexs inasmuch as it takes it time saying ultimately very little . World-class actress Laura Linney is outstanding as apparently the only person in Jindabyne with anything approaching a moral compass . Gabriel Byrne as her husband and leading Man Without A Conscience i... |
410,091 | 2,567,136 | 95,250 | 6 | Don't Luc Now . . . | . . . but it's been done before . On the other hand what hasn't but so many posters seem to regard this as totally original that I have to question whether they are real movie buffs or maybe just like underwater stuff . It's not necessary to have actually SEEN every film ever made or even say a Tenth of all the films e... |
409,061 | 2,567,136 | 47,985 | 6 | Bogey-Man | I'm somewhat bemused by the amount of praise lavished on this movie by previous posters . Maybe in 1955 it came off better than it does in 2006 . There's not much actually WRONG with it but when you see a name like Wyler on the credits you expect a little something extra . For me Freddie March has always been mannered ... |
409,761 | 2,567,136 | 41,640 | 6 | Mr Bland Builds His Dreams | A previous poster said it all and succinctly ; Carne sans Prevert is like Rodgers without Hart . Of course no film that stars Jean Gabin , features Louis Seigner ( grandfather of Emmanuelle and Mathilde ) and is directed by Marcel Carne could ever be totally bad it's just that the potential for greatness has been misse... |
409,978 | 2,567,136 | 52,357 | 6 | Falling In Love Again | It's a proved fact that if something is repeated enough times the susceptible person will eventually accept it as fact . Not everyone is susceptible to manipulation and so it is that I find myself at odds with two things that I have heard - and seen on the printed page - repeated for most of my life , 1 ) Alfred Hitchc... |
409,418 | 2,567,136 | 385,017 | 6 | Den And Now | This is one of those films that you feel might have been really good if only they'd taken a little more time and trouble . Matthew MacFadyen has , I suppose a following amongst the kind of teenage girl who fancies Jude Law , Ewan McGregor et al and they may well be disappointed when they find out they have to actually ... |
410,287 | 2,567,136 | 32,993 | 6 | Singapore Slang | Victor Schlesinger , who also helmed the second movie in the franchise , Zanzibar , may well have directed all the Road films had he not died tragically young ( 51 ) after helming The Fleet's In . Had he done so the franchise may have had more variable scores inasmuch as Schertzinger was one of a handful of film direct... |
410,262 | 2,567,136 | 45,152 | 6 | The Sound Of Silents | I've always had a problem with the accolades heaped upon this fine movie because that's all I see , a FINE , well-made , well-sung , well-danced film as opposed to a ' classic ' , ' all-time great ' , ' best musical ever made ' notices that hand around its neck like an albatross constantly threatening to choke the life... |
409,107 | 2,567,136 | 424,205 | 6 | Silent Night | Any film based on this subject matter is , by definition , destined to wind up as something of a Curate's egg . The Christmas ' truce ' of 1914 has been well documented and even mentioned in passing in several films set in the same period but until now it has never been the centrepiece of a complete film . Given that a... |
409,279 | 2,567,136 | 80,889 | 6 | The Spy Who Came Out From The Heat | This was shown late last night on TV and having watched it and then read the first page of comments here I'm slightly bewildered by what seems exaggerated praise . By permitting a middle-aged , non-athletic WAlter Matthau to take on both the CIA and FBI and make monkeys out of both is stretching credibility to the limi... |
409,545 | 2,567,136 | 30,202 | 6 | Three-Quarter Tome | As a great admirer of Julien Duvivier and now , at last , having seen The Great Waltz some 60 plus years after it was made I can't help wishing that Duvuvuer had been tempted to Hollywood by something a little more substantial . I don't , of course , know the circumstances but given the horror stories about Hollywood m... |
409,299 | 2,567,136 | 37,447 | 6 | Mills Bomb | It may well have passed muster at the tail end of the war but seen today the flaws are there for all to see . Stewart Granger's working class accent is a joke and his wooden , over-the-top acting little better . John Mills phones it in as the ' decent ' man who goes AWOL when he hears that wife , Joy Shelton , is stepp... |
410,114 | 2,567,136 | 27,726 | 6 | Emperor Gavotte | In some ways this resembles Billy Wilder's The Emperor Waltz ; period setting , well-known crooner in the lead , light on songs and a general awkward feel . People like Dick Powell , Arthur Treacher , Charlie Butterworth and Edward Everett Horton just don't ' do ' tights and it takes a while to get over this . Claude R... |
409,509 | 2,567,136 | 119,969 | 6 | Petits Fours | With Valerie Lemercier's third film as a triple-threat ( writer-director-actress ) , Palais Royal still filling the salles in Paris where it has now racked up well over one million admissions it's interesting to turn to her first effort where she was content to give the writing credit to Sacha Guitry and confine her ow... |
410,094 | 2,567,136 | 56,846 | 6 | My Bet Noir . . . | . . . or one of them is the movement that pseuds insist on promoting to upper-case as The New Wave and I dismiss as the lower-case new wavelet but in life we can seldom pigeon-hole everything and Jacques Demy is a case in point ; he is part of the hiccup only inasmuch as his early features were made just as the vague i... |
409,376 | 2,567,136 | 96,219 | 6 | Hot Air | It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man who hosts a talk show in the media must be a son of a bitch . In subsequent years ( ) half a century ago we were treated to hatchet jobs on a radio ( The Great Man ) and TV ( A Face In The Crowd ) host , both of whom bore a striking resemblance to the real Arthur Godfre... |
409,671 | 2,567,136 | 53,225 | 6 | The Dating Game | A pre-credit introduction by Fabian of the ' Yard ' attempts to sell this as an expose of vice with special reference to human trafficking - very relevant today - but it quickly segues into just another girl-in-jeopardy thriller in which vice is only peripheral . The first fifth shows how easy it is for an innocent and... |
408,956 | 2,567,136 | 39,478 | 6 | Kid Stuff | I shudder to think what the ' academics ' will talk this one up . Consider : a determined group of ' little ' people triumph over a gang of bullies aided no little by ' cracking ' a code . I can hear them now in Film ' schools ' the length and breadth of the land ' explaining ' how to ' read ' this as a metaphor for an... |
409,514 | 2,567,136 | 39,515 | 6 | Bad Timing | Despite assembling all the staples - nightclub / casino setting , cops , crooks and conmen , low-key dialogue , would-be anti-hero - this entry somehow winds up as less than the sum of its parts . Clearly an admirer of Abe Lincoln ( you can fool some of the people all of the time . . ) Dick Powell had wisely abandoned ... |
410,179 | 2,567,136 | 420,087 | 6 | Country Matters | No writer would invent a character like Garrison Keillor , one one hand a sophisticate who writes for the ultimate sophisticated magazine The New Yorker and on the other the down-home writer and MC of A Prairie Home Companion , two hours of gospel / country music and hokey commercials . True to form Keillor has written... |
409,441 | 2,567,136 | 43,288 | 6 | Teach Me Tonight , Blackbeard | Having tried his hand successfully at most other genres Jacques Tourneur , son of the great Maurice , moved to swashbucklers in 1950 via the Burt Lancaster vehicle The Flame And The Arrow . Having enjoyed a huge international success with Flame he followed it with a fictionalized account of Anne Boney , a lady pirate w... |
409,111 | 2,567,136 | 373,450 | 6 | In The Immortal Words Of Pontius Pilate . . . | . . . what is truth ? We could add Does It Matter / Who Cares etc . This is a reasonably entertaining film but further than that I'm not prepared to go . I'll usually go to ANY movie about showbiz however peripheral but classics like Mank's All About Eve and Wilder's Sunset Boulevard have made it tough for the competit... |
409,353 | 2,567,136 | 437,526 | 6 | Catherine Wheels ( And Deals ) | Up to now Catherine Breillat has been unashamedly up-front in a series of modern day medium-core pornographic movies . It seems a little late in the day to seek respectability by setting the graphic couplings in a period setting but that essentially is what she's done . For French film buffs it's a joy to see people li... |
409,972 | 2,567,136 | 202,172 | 6 | Endgame | Those with a penchant for French cinema will be inclined to seek this one out because it's one of two films that Jean-Pierre Aumont shot in the same year , i . e . it arguably marks his first appearance on screen . There's actually more to it than that , not a great deal perhaps , but certainly a little . For reasons n... |
409,421 | 2,567,136 | 115,928 | 6 | How I Got Sidetracked | It's fair to say that had I not found Rois et Reine so rich , complex and ultimately enjoyable I may not have taken the trouble ( to say nothing of the three hours needed ) to watch this earlier work by Arnaud Desplechin toplining the same two very fine actors ( Manu Devos and Mathieu Almaric ) . The fact that this tim... |
408,998 | 2,567,136 | 58,557 | 6 | If The Spirit Moves You | The DVD release has an ' extra ' in the shape of Bryan Forbes talking about the film in the course of which he takes full credit for ' inventing ' the child that died at birth - a revelation withheld until the closing stages ; until then Kim Stanley has given the impression that it lived for some years . This raises th... |
408,750 | 2,567,136 | 83,449 | 6 | Ames And The Man | This clearly grew out of Michael Palin's Ripping Yarns series on television and I suspect that most of the adverse comments on IMDb might have been more positive had the film been kept to Ripping Yarns length , but of course feature films need to weigh in at around ninety minutes and that may have been the problem . As... |
410,280 | 2,567,136 | 47,580 | 6 | Cream Soda Fountain | Rome was flavor of the month in fifties Hollywood ; Paramount wound up with a mega hit sleeper on its hands when the romantic chemistry between Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday proved both a commercial and critical success . Hollywood minds are , of course , geared to spin-off potential ; if One romance... |
409,971 | 2,567,136 | 43,153 | 6 | Wrong Note Rag | For 1950 this was probably about as close as you were going to get to a film celebrating jazz . It's a curious hybrid for all that with just about everyone wrong for their respective parts ; it was an open secret that it was based - albeit loosely - on the short life of cornettist Bix Beiderbecke so right away they get... |
409,706 | 2,567,136 | 50,861 | 6 | Coronation Chick ( en ) | Terence Rattigan's ' Coronation ' ( it was commissioned to mark the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 ) play was something of a disappointment when staged initially ( later than intended ) with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in the two leading roles yet it re-surfaced twice more ; once ( here ) as a film , ad... |
408,866 | 2,567,136 | 212,712 | 6 | Boy ! Did YOU Get A W ( r ) ong Number | Time and again films that are over-hyped tend to disappoint and so it is here . Whilst there is lots to admire in the set ups , use of light and shadow , ' feel ' , competent acting , we tend to admire them as separate even disparate units that seem unable to cohere and form a wholly satisfying experience . It may well... |
408,882 | 2,567,136 | 320,661 | 6 | A Kingdom For A Hearse | This gives a new meaning to the expression something for everyone ; you've got Androcles And The Lion - Balian spares the life of a man he thinks is a slave and much later the man , who was , of course , a master and not a slave , returns the favour ; you've got The Man In The Iron Mask via Baldwin who wears a silver m... |
410,056 | 2,567,136 | 41,158 | 6 | Barkley Bandwagon | Even those of us who are too young to have seen those great Astaire / Rogers black and white musicals the first time around - and let's face it , even one who was only ten in 1935 , the year Top Hat was released , would now be eighty one and unlikely to be active on this or indeed any other board - will still feel a fr... |
409,375 | 2,567,136 | 185,142 | 6 | Skating On Thin ice | In a long and distinguished career that spanned 40 years and 150 films Fernandel directed only three , none more than mildly successful despite screenplays by luminaries such as Jean Aurenche and Sacha Guitry ( the third film , Simplet , was written by his brother-in-law Jean Manse ) . Two of those films were made for ... |
409,957 | 2,567,136 | 50,814 | 6 | Bedtime Story | I have to agree with most of the other posters that despite a wonderful score this movie is a disappointment . Okay , they lost three of the numbers during the transition from Broadway to Hollywood - one of them , alas , A New Town Is A Blue Town - but at least they didn't hire another songwriting team to supplement Ri... |
409,121 | 2,567,136 | 52,950 | 6 | Cool Yul | I've only just caught up with this one so any ' cutting edge ' element it may have had at the time - it was made three years after those Russian tanks cut a swathe through Hungary - is long diluted and there is more interest in the cast - from Ron Howard in only his second film , to Gerard Oury who would direct the fir... |
410,055 | 2,567,136 | 67,900 | 6 | Cop Out | I don't think that anyone who admires and respects Melville approaches this , his last film , more than probably aware of the negative notices and general feeling of disappointment , prepared to add another voice to the chorus of condemnation . One approaches - or should approach - it in search of positives and hoping ... |
408,760 | 2,567,136 | 97,995 | 6 | L'Infant Paradis | As a rule I have a hard time watching Vanessa Paradis but on the other hand I've only seen the stuff she did in the last decade . In this , her debut effort at the age of 17 , she had yet to hone her nauseating Goldie Hawn schtick and was halfway believable as a screwed-up wild child . Director Brisseau cast 60 year ol... |
409,275 | 2,567,136 | 35,429 | 6 | Village Voices | Before watching even one frame of this film it is as well to remind ourselves that it was made in 1942 , more or less the exact middle of the war , a war for which no one at the time could predict an outcome and one that could certainly have gone either way . It brings together a mixture of established Stage - Leslie B... |
409,230 | 2,567,136 | 47,370 | 6 | Key Largo | On paper this had the makings of a winner ; co-scripted ( with her ex - Collier Young ) by that most intelligent of actresses ( who was also no slouch as a director ) Ida Lupino , directed by Don Seigel at just about the time he started making a noise ( Riot In Cell Block 11 was made back-to-back with this entry ) , wi... |
409,388 | 2,567,136 | 783,233 | 6 | Who's Sorry Now | There's a lovely irony at work here inasmuch as the bulk of the action takes place in the thirties / forties , an age when movies were made for the masses rather than a ' target ' audience but even a target audience is no longer sufficient so that today movies like this are what I choose to call Festival Fodder , where... |
410,189 | 2,567,136 | 420,291 | 6 | Little Boy Lost | Damian Lewis is a fine actor but someone should really tell him that he doesn't do accents . After his hilarious attempt at Russian in Stormbreaker he fares only marginally better with American - what we get is not so much Mid-Atlantic as about fifty miles from England Atlantic - and is in danger of becoming a latter-d... |
409,542 | 2,567,136 | 33,491 | 6 | Room For Improvement | Puffin Asquith turned out three films in 1941 and one of the others was Quiet Wedding which was , like this one , an adaptation of a stage play - in fact Puffin made something of a speciality of this and adapted several Rattigan plays for the screen most notably the masterpiece The Browning Version - and here the origi... |
409,387 | 2,567,136 | 827,517 | 6 | You Can't Go Home Again | With the possible exception of the London Film Festival we don't get too many Norwegian films in England so Reprise is something of a rarity . The reviews I saw were mixed and probably ran on a between three and seven i . e . no one really hated it whilst no one really loved it . Being lion-hearted I went anyway and fo... |
409,710 | 2,567,136 | 187,474 | 6 | School Of Thought | With the obvious exception of yet another Masterclass in Acting from Isabelle Huppert there isn't too much to enjoy here , at least on the surface . Huppert plays a real character , Madame Maintenon , initially the mistress and then the wife of Louis the Fourteenth who took it into her head to found a school - the Sain... |
409,437 | 2,567,136 | 42,788 | 6 | Harry All In | Unlike the majority of Hollywood ' stars ' who saw England as a chance to revive a flagging career Richard Widmark crossed the pond when he was still a top box-office attraction ( and would continue so for the next decade ) . Director Dassin had his own reasons as one of the discretion is the best part of valour Americ... |
409,367 | 2,567,136 | 31,575 | 6 | Mane Attraction | Although clearly listed on the credits as one of three co-directors you have to click ' more ' on the IMDb credits to find the name of Michael Powell . Surprisingly he had turned out some twenty-some films already and this was hot on the heels of The Spy In Black . Produced in 1939 and released two months after War bro... |
409,707 | 2,567,136 | 102,368 | 6 | Falaubert's Pair At It | On paper Huppert plus Chabrol is an unbeatable parlay but several times it has run out of gas and this , alas , is no exception . Bizarrely Chabrol has opted to film a novel whose essence is tedium - Emma's ennui with the minutiae of day-to-day life is the key to her subsequent actions - by speeding up the pre-marriage... |
409,456 | 2,567,136 | 34,172 | 6 | A Shadow Of Its Former Self . . . ? | . . . yes and no is the answer . The franchise relies on the rapport between Loy and Powell and that remains firmly intact . The world that Nick and Nora inhabit is as unreal as the Carvel of Andy Hardy and if you want to resist that rather than surrender to it why bother to see the movies . The topicality is reinforce... |
409,739 | 2,567,136 | 809,425 | 6 | Strasbourg Goose | Guerin makes Erich Rohmer look like Speedy Gonzales and elevates watching paint dry to a new level . As a travelogue it's interesting and shows downtown Strasbourg from several angles none of which is designed to put potential visitors off . It's semi-referential on several levels recalling among other Before Sunrise /... |
409,535 | 2,567,136 | 106,226 | 6 | Guilt On The Gingerbread | This is Scorcese anxious to prove he can do more than make movies about sub-humans like de Niro and Pesci competing to see who can say the f-word the most times in between killing and maiming other animals like themselves and on that level it more or less succeeds . Somewhere along the way he's clearly seen a Max Ophul... |
409,600 | 2,567,136 | 42,851 | 6 | Race Against Time | American born Bonar Colleano carved out a more or less successful career in British films - even , improbably , starring opposite Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire on the London stage . Despite that prestigious credit he wasn't really leading man material and despite his top billing here it is more of an ensembl... |
410,265 | 2,567,136 | 935,030 | 6 | Beat Me Daddy , Eight To The Bar | Jalil Lespert is the latest French actor to have eyes for directing and to his credit far from something feel-good he's opted for a downbeat storyline which he tells in the style of a jazz riff and perhaps in an effort to ensure we appreciate this he signed veteran jazz musician Archie Shepp and gives him a substantial... |
409,628 | 2,567,136 | 119,494 | 6 | Cold Comfort Farm | It's not really enough to TELL us it's 1941 , put the women in turbans and show the odd uniform if there's no FEEL of the period ; frankly Foyle's War ( a series on English TV ) had more feel for the times and that was far from spot-on in period detail . As it stands Lands Girls could easily be an extra long episode of... |
409,805 | 2,567,136 | 40,098 | 6 | From Russia With Affection | I've heard of swings and roundabouts but this is ridiculous ; what Julien Duvivier gained by having a near perfect Anna in Vivien Leigh he lost by being saddled with Keiron Moore as Vronsky . His presence can probably be explained by his status as a contract artist with Korda and though he did appear in one or two dece... |
409,745 | 2,567,136 | 58,283 | 6 | Little Boxes | One of the hallmarks of a superior screenplay is the way it deals with ' awkward ' questions whilst one of the hallmarks of a good movie is that ' awkward ' questions don't begin to raise their quizzical heads until long after you reach home . So : Having established in the first minute of screen time that Olivia de Ha... |
408,758 | 2,567,136 | 432,264 | 6 | The Dwight Stuff | This snuck into London this week virtually unheralded and playing at only one cinema . By chance I stumbled on a paragraph that mentioned the star was Brenda Blethyn so on that basis I checked it out . It's yet another of those ' indie ' productions that is fine to see once but probably won't stand repeat viewings . Bl... |
410,058 | 2,567,136 | 58,249 | 6 | A Clash Of Symbols | There may be those who would describe this as Rules Of The Game Lite dealing as it does with the mores of French society in the 1930s but one crucial difference is that Renoir made his film AT THE TIME whereas Bunuel was working a quarter of a century later . It's never really explained - unless , of course , I missed ... |
410,140 | 2,567,136 | 46,714 | 6 | The Way To The Stairs | In a perfect world of course and as it applies to film there would be a definitive film in one genre and no one would bother trying to equal it and leave well enough alone . Alas , we don't live in a perfect world though we DO have a definitive Air Force British movie covering the second world war in the shape of Ratti... |
409,734 | 2,567,136 | 58,238 | 6 | New Gun In Town | Knowing of writer-director Richard Wilson's connection with Orson Welles I was curious to see if any of the maestro's magic had rubbed off but alas . . . What Wilson serves up is a rehash of Johnny Concho , a Sinatra vehicle from 1957 . In that movie Sinatra , by virtue of his gunman brother , ' ruled ' the town until ... |
408,948 | 2,567,136 | 454,602 | 6 | It's All In The Game | I've heard of sport as a metaphor for life but this is ridiculous ; there's literally barely a frame in which two or more of the principals are not rowing , jogging , playing squash , golf , canoing or mountain climbing . It's all in the interests of our old friend the company ' bonding ' session and anyone who saw the... |
409,901 | 2,567,136 | 119,314 | 6 | Hoarse Whispers | This is the type of film I tend to avoid in the hype of initial release and I haven't felt particularly deprived to miss out on it . It's now been shown on English television and I didn't find it sufficiently mediocre to switch off . Most of the elements are in place , stunning visuals , sentiment , dime-store philosop... |
409,858 | 2,567,136 | 89,009 | 6 | Russian Lullaby | This is very much the Mixture As Before which wheels out the Usual Suspects , Bannen , Elliott , Calder , etc , and lets them meander through ten reels of Is He , Isn't He , Was He , Wasn't He , Will He , Won't he til it figures the punters have had it up to here at which time it throws in an ambiguous ending . It was ... |
409,295 | 2,567,136 | 49,456 | 6 | Touch And Gauguin | I find I can't relate to the comments I've just been reading on this movie . I have to say that I've just watched it for the first time some fifty one years after it was initially released and that may be a factor . The one thing you can usually count on with Minnelli is a movie bathed , if not drenched in colour and I... |
410,156 | 2,567,136 | 53,279 | 6 | Sign Of The Times | Released in 1959 between Godard's Brainless and Truffaut's The Four Hundred Yawns this entry from Rohmer was right there as the first lappings of the New Wavelet dampened the feet of Real French Directors . Within three years the New Wave was washed up ; eventually Truffaut joined the opposition and made Le Dernier Met... |
409,669 | 2,567,136 | 34,273 | 6 | Hope Springs . . . | It's interesting to speculate whether or not Anthony Hope had any idea what he was doing when he penned The Prisoner Of Zenda and had a lookalike commoner stand in for nobility as an emergency measure . The plot surfaced again in the eighties via Moon Over Parador when it was Actor / Dictator rather than Commoner / Kin... |
409,188 | 2,567,136 | 300,270 | 6 | Some Argentines Full Of Beans Do It | This is a toughie to dope . It's difficult to figure out its target audience . Set in a spa town in Argentina the principal characters either live in a hotel or are visiting it for a Medical Conference . One of the doctors , an ENT man who resembles Arthur Miller ( the late Arthur Miller as Miller's death has just been... |
410,011 | 2,567,136 | 71,577 | 6 | Great Scott , Lesser ( Much ) Clayton | This is the kind of film - Billy Wilder's The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes is another - in which the Opening Credits montage is actually better than the film itself . The Wilder film was , of course , butchered and a whole central sequence jettisoned but so far as I know that didn't apply to Clayton's movie . It's f... |
408,826 | 2,567,136 | 104,121 | 6 | Run Of The Mill | What we have here is essentially a debatable point : Is it better to see ANYTHING by Welles , even a travesty or should we resist the temptation to tamper and merely speculate on what might have been . There are , of course , precedents for offering uncompleted works by acknowledged masters - Scott Fitzgerald's The Las... |
409,276 | 2,567,136 | 1,045,670 | 6 | Driving Miss Dizzy | At least Mike Leigh didn't rip THIS one off a better director as he did with his last film , Vera Drake . On the other hand , there's not much of a plot to speak of , more a series of vignettes that could just as easily have been called Scenes From An Unrealistic Life . Sally Hawkins has little to do other than mimic t... |
409,486 | 2,567,136 | 373,889 | 6 | The Trouble With Harry | I haven't read one single word of the Harry Potter saga ; I did see the first film and thought it okay but not much more . On the other hand I get withdrawal symptoms if I don't see at least one movie a week and this week - the new films open here on Fridays - the pickings were pretty lean so I figured this couldn't be... |
410,187 | 2,567,136 | 78,907 | 6 | There's No Business Like Snow Business | As far as sequels go - which , on average is not very far at all - this isn't bad . The fantastic success of Les Bronzes was reason enough to get Splendid together to write and perform in a sequel and turn Patrice Leconte loose to ' direct ' them . Like the first one it's essentially a series of sketches rather than a ... |
410,288 | 2,567,136 | 53,690 | 6 | Oh ! Mr . Porter . . . . | . . . what have they done to your wonderful Broadway show ? Answer ; about what you'd expect from a Hollywood that had a congenital aversion to transposing Broadway musicals to the screen untampered with so that , for example , a family from Oshkosh , Wisconsin , who went to NY on vacation and saw , for example , The P... |
409,631 | 2,567,136 | 49,055 | 6 | Swings And Roundabouts | This is possibly the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical I like best or , to put it another way , the one I dislike least . When it comes to Rodgers and Hart versus Rodgers and Hammerstein it Larry Hart , no contest , as far as I'm concerned . There's no question that Rodgers was directly affected by his lyricists , with L... |
410,286 | 2,567,136 | 62,407 | 6 | Journeys End . . . | . . . in lover's meetings so the man said . I've never fully understood the appeal of this film although I accept that's it's held in high esteem . It may have something to do with the leading man ; having seen him dozens of times on both stage and screen any special talent he may and is indeed alleged to possess has a... |
409,358 | 2,567,136 | 414,879 | 6 | No Way , Jose | Richard Berry is a fine actor who has directed six films to date , one of which , Moi Cesar , was a popular success and a fine study of childhood . A couple of years ago on the Paris stage I saw him play the Lino Ventura role in L'Emmerdeur opposite Patrick Timsit and I'm happy to say that both actors appear in the rem... |
409,609 | 2,567,136 | 345,032 | 6 | Love Locked Out | One sign that a film has failed to hook and hold the viewer is if ' awkward ' questions keep niggling away as you watch and prevent you from surrendering to whatever charm or other qualities it may possess . Or , to put it another way , sloppy writing . Let me show you what I mean . Scene # 1 . Two guys are talking mor... |
409,837 | 2,567,136 | 53,663 | 6 | Another Part Of The Forest | With titles such as Ciboulette , Fric-Frac , Douce , Le Diable au corps , Lauberge Rouge and La Traversee de Paris punctuating a very tasty CV we were perhaps entitled to expect more from Claude Autant-Lara than this suet pudding snatched from the jaws of a soufflé ' but on the other hand he did shoot it in his 60th ye... |
409,666 | 2,567,136 | 55,558 | 6 | Duet Manque | this is like no other John Ford movie I've ever seen . Whilst it's true the plot resembles that of The Searchers it has none of the ' feel ' of a typical Ford movie , western or otherwise . The best sequence by far is one long two-shot of Stewart and Widmark shot from the waist up as they sit , talk and throw in almost... |
409,316 | 2,567,136 | 73,453 | 6 | Chess Pie | Asked by his wife , Susan Clark , if he'd like to take in an Eric Rohmer movie ( Ma Nuit chez Maud ) , Harry Moseby , Gene Hackman , replies , ' I saw a Rohmer movie once , it was like watching paint dry ' . This observation by writer Alan Sharp is , of course , right on the money , but Sharp's own movie ( this one ) i... |
408,779 | 2,567,136 | 31,334 | 6 | Doesn't Deserve To Get The Bird | This is exactly the kind of Boy's Own Paper yarn that I'd walk a mile for a camel to take me away from . On the other hand most Boy's Own Paper yarns don't come complete with Ralph Richardson , an actor who automatically enhances any film he cares to grace with his presence . The English scenes are reasonably lavish , ... |
408,974 | 2,567,136 | 443,543 | 6 | Find The Lady | I've been looking at the first few comments on this and it seems clear that they are the work of 1 ) the easily satisfied and / or 2 ) people who are not regular movie-goers or readers of mainstream fiction and thus have no knowledge of The Prestige , The Princess Bride or Carter The Great , all three of which touch on... |
410,159 | 2,567,136 | 758,766 | 6 | They're Playing Our Song | It's a good twenty years since the Musical They'r Playing Our Song was produced on Broadway so most of the target audience for Music and Lyrics are unlikely to know it but Writer-Director Marc Lawrence would have been in his mid-twenties at the time and may well have seen the Show , a lightly-disguised story of the wor... |
409,227 | 2,567,136 | 31,252 | 6 | I'm An Indian Too ? | Towards the end of this film much is made of an extended sequence where Henry Fonda sneaks out of a beleaguered fort to get help and in doing so TOTALLY outruns the three indians on his trail . This would have been more believable if we had been provided with any previous proof of or even reference to Fonda's skill in ... |
409,658 | 2,567,136 | 31,259 | 6 | A Handful Of Dust | It's difficult to believe that this collection of tired clichés and cardboard characters was written by Robert Rossen but there you go . Having signed Julie Garfield from the Group Theatre Warners thrust him into one tough - guy - who - never - had - a - chance vehicle after another after it paid off handsomely in his ... |
409,364 | 2,567,136 | 488,604 | 6 | Math Hypnosis | It's probably symbolic - and certainly ironic - that before frame one we spend what seems like ten minutes just listing all the production companies involved in the making of this movie . So when we get underway and find ourselves involved in a labyrinthine plot we half expect a Cretan maiden to turn up at any moment a... |
409,246 | 2,567,136 | 469,494 | 6 | Oil Be Dammned | This is the first time I've seen Daniel Day Lewis on screen ; usually he appears in films that are hyped to death and it doesn't help that one of these , Gangs Of New York , teamed him with Scorcese , another pseud's favourite and equally over-hyped as an individual . I can't say I fell asleep or didn't enjoy it but ne... |
410,279 | 2,567,136 | 40,369 | 6 | Castle In The Air | Not for the first time - and surely neither for the last - I find myself apparently watching a different film to other posters here . I have to say from the outset that I tend to find Ford as overrated as Hitchcock on the whole ; this is not to say that either man is less than competent and more than a Journeyman yet w... |
409,593 | 2,567,136 | 494,238 | 6 | And A Little Child Shall Read Them | Although the credits make it clear that this is an adaptation of a novel ( which I've never heard of or read ) it has all fingermarks of something designed by a committee ; flying monkeys as in The Wizard Of Oz ( which is utilised in another context ) , a James Bond-type villain bent on world domination , a device for ... |
408,893 | 2,567,136 | 413,015 | 6 | We Never Clothed | On paper this is a movie nostaligists can wallow in , Nostalgia is , after all , its raison d'etre and not just common or garden Nostalgia but Show biz Nostalgia , arguably the most potent of all and , as if that were not enough they've thrown in Judi Dench as not so much the icing but the fairy on top of the cake comp... |
409,183 | 2,567,136 | 51,378 | 6 | When Irish Eyes Are Smiling . . . | . . . it's twelve to seven the eyes in question belong to William Irish , aka Cornell Woollrich and the smile will be ironic because this plot is PURE Woollrich / Irish - in fact Moreau starred in a GENUINE Irish plot some years later , The Bride Wore Black . If you like serendipitous coincidence then this will be righ... |
409,078 | 2,567,136 | 38,342 | 6 | Comfort Zone | Journeyman director Lance Comfort never did much that wasn't ephemeral and here he turns in another ho-hum melodrama from a novel by Vera Caspary , which the author set in the New England of 1913 , on the eve of one war and which now finds itself in Old England in 1945 , at the end of another . Margatet Lockwood is cle... |
409,465 | 2,567,136 | 40,283 | 6 | Stelli By Starlight | Jean Stelli was yet one more journeyman director who racked up a creditable number of domestic films but never really made a noise Internationally . Here he teams up with a similar journeyman screenwriter in the shape of Francoise Giroud whose most prestigious credit was as ' third ' writer on Jacques Becker's Antoine ... |
410,023 | 2,567,136 | 60,086 | 6 | Girl Talk | Essentially this is Saturday Night And Sunday Morning in color , with a few more ' birds ' and a cockney accent . Albert Finney's Arthur Seaton worked in a large cycle factory ( Raleigh ) in Nottingham , dressed well and concentrated all his energies on Friday and Saturday night when he would go down the pub and pull a... |
409,796 | 2,567,136 | 459,666 | 6 | The Worst Of Times | Charles Dickens once began a novel with ' It was the best of times , it was the worst of times ' and to these Western eyes the latter obtains here . It's a nice touch - though not exactly revolutionary - to have three sets of lovers in three time zones played by the same two actors , Chang Chen and Shu Qi but the third... |
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