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409,261 | 2,567,136 | 48,990 | 6 | Plate Glass | This movie rounded off a week of Michael Powell movies on British TV and it will be hugely enjoyed by anyone who likes 1 ) War films and 2 ) Michael Powell films but since I am unable to work up much of a sweat about either I endured it rather than enjoyed it . This is not the same as saying it was badly made because t... |
409,667 | 2,567,136 | 51,406 | 6 | Spellbound | Daniel Taradash was dab hand at fashioning screenplays from other media , be it a novel - From Here To Eternity - or a play - Bell Book And Candle . John Van Druten had been an established playwright since the early thirties when he had a huge success with Young Woodly . In the fifties he dramatised Christopher Isherwo... |
409,801 | 2,567,136 | 29,217 | 6 | Scarface - Lite | Looking at this entry in the 21st century it's easy to see how well it fitted into the Warner ' House ' style of social realism . Although it carries a disclaimer it was apparently no secret to anyone and his Uncle Max that Eduardo Cianelli's Johnny Vanning was heavily based on ' Lucky ' Luciano and also contained elem... |
409,561 | 2,567,136 | 395,543 | 6 | Lost Soul Music | The Sundance Festival doesn't have a great track record in rewarding films that I , personally , want to see and a second strike against this entry was its Country / Soul music background - I'm one hundred per cent with Buddy Rich on this subject who , when about to undergo open heart surgery was asked if he was allerg... |
410,135 | 2,567,136 | 47,073 | 6 | Diving Bella | This is little more than a programmer designed for the undemanding and very much a product of its time . Take the casting , for example , Fox knew they had a good thing in Widmark and seemed bent on keeping him working - this was his nineteenth movie in eight years - as long as he was solid marquee product . He was a m... |
409,852 | 2,567,136 | 401,445 | 6 | Non Vintage | The English critics have more or less blasted this new release unanimously but I went anyway . I'm lion-hearted . And you know , it wasn't too bad . Sure , it owes something to Avanti and Ridley Scott is no Billy Wilder and Russell Crowe is definitely no Jack Lemmon but Marion Cotillard , soon to be seen as Edith Piaf ... |
408,995 | 2,567,136 | 808,244 | 7 | Class Act | It's always amusing when minor talents convince themselves that not only are they Major and not Bush leaguers but actually superior to the Old Masters . Noel Coward had his share of flops ( Sirocco , anyone ) but these were far outweighed by his triumphs and two things he did as well as anyone and better than most was ... |
408,783 | 2,567,136 | 23,929 | 7 | Dire Streets | Russian-born Victor Trivas directed only five movies but had a writer credit on about a dozen including Welle's The Stranger and Preminger's Where The Sidewalk Ends . He also worked as an Art Director and that shows in his set-ups in this early Sound film , a Gallic counterpart to Wellman's Wild Boys Of The Road or eve... |
409,410 | 2,567,136 | 480,242 | 7 | Dan , In Real Life . . . | . . . would NEVER have a family like this , Mom , Pop , Siblings , Nephews , Neices and not a single dysfunction between them . This is The Waltons and Little House On The Prairie combined . That being said the central storyline involving Binoche and Carrell comes off thanks to the writing and acting . Probably if you ... |
409,176 | 2,567,136 | 2,181 | 7 | Waxing Lyrical | Long before Sigmund Freud stamped his gravitas on it Edgar Allan Poe had more or less patented the idea that the greatest terrors are the ones locked behind the eyelids eclipsing anything more tangible . In 1914 with some dozen films under his belt Maurice Tourneur picked up this ball and ran with it . In just a tad ov... |
409,560 | 2,567,136 | 47,860 | 7 | Battle ( Of The Sexes ) Cry | It's probably too late to address the legalities now but at the time there may well have been an infringement of the Trade Descriptions Act in a movie titled BATTLE Cry that runs two and a half hours and contains barely twenty minutes of actual combat but that's not the same as saying it's a bad movie , indeed , I scor... |
409,034 | 2,567,136 | 759,509 | 7 | Room Service | With a standing ovation at Cannes and the kind of reviews the cast could have written themselves this is a re-affirmation that audiences don't WANT cgi , s & v or mindless pap but are looking for throwbacks to simpler times when one went to the movies to be ENTERTAINED not preached / sermonised at or in search of a soc... |
409,603 | 2,567,136 | 380,689 | 7 | Now It Can Be Tolled . . . | . . . and , like the man said , never ask for whom it tolls . This is alleged to be the 10th version of Les Liasons Dangerouse and I haven't seen any of the previous nine . The main thing I took away from this version was elegance , stateliness , formality . Not unusual of course in a film emanating from the Eastern he... |
409,036 | 2,567,136 | 116,676 | 7 | ( Big ) Cat And Mouse | If this isn't quite top drawer Veber it IS still Veber and that means it's almost certainly throw two mis-matched males together in the cause of laughter . This time around it's Jean Reno - later to feature opposite Depardieu in Veber's Tais-toi - and Patrick Bruehl . The former is an anthropologist who is taking a Sha... |
408,814 | 2,567,136 | 35,262 | 7 | The Fez Is Familiar | Whenever I'm discussing films with friends , family , colleagues , acquaintances etc and the ' Road ' franchise is mentioned it is always Morocco that seems to be emblematic of the series . Chronologically it was the third out of seven but the first one acknowledged by the Front Office to BE part of a franchise . Singa... |
408,807 | 2,567,136 | 864,751 | 7 | Crappy Families | When I saw this in a Multiplex the audience were falling about with laughter so it must be doing something right . Three couples each with kids or , to put it another way , three couples each with the kids from hell . It's a simple premise ; once they get through fantasizing about killing their respective kids the adul... |
409,637 | 2,567,136 | 43,955 | 7 | Highly Strung | Though light on excitement this multi-directed ( five helmers in all were involved and that was before Hughes added his own once-over-lightly ) is strangely satisfying albeit it is more Detective Story than Kiss Of Death . If Ryan walks away with it and Mitchum allows him to do so it is rich in supporting players such ... |
408,793 | 2,567,136 | 45,591 | 7 | Past The Dead Wood Stage | This must have been like a breath of fresh air in 1953 . There hadn't been an ' Original ' screen musical for several years , instead there had been several ' bio-pics ' of composers / performers and Day had even featured in one ( I'll See You In My Dreams , the biopic of lyricist Gus Kahn ) herself . So this Annie Get... |
409,461 | 2,567,136 | 45,586 | 7 | Back Home In Indiana | Nobody ever accused Hollywood of being slow to cash in on success and just as Jolson Sings Again followed The Jolson Story as night follows day so On Moonlight Bay was succeeded by By The Light Of The Silvery Moon a couple of years later . It's more or less the mixture as before except that this time they get much more... |
408,973 | 2,567,136 | 26,361 | 7 | Viktor Victorious | I caught this at a screening forming part of a mini retrospective of Jessie Matthews ' thirties movies . There were roughly one hundred and twenty people present and I'd guess the majority were in their forties and fifties with about a half dozen girl couples in their twenties . The film was released in 1935 so even if... |
410,182 | 2,567,136 | 482,088 | 7 | Unhappy Hookers | Since her breakthrough role in Amelie it has been Audrey Tautou's fate to be compared to her namesake Audrey Hepburn and Pierre Salvadori has taken this seriously enough to come up with his own take of Breakfast At Tiffaney's ; that was the one , you may remember where Hepburn played a hooker in all but name , making a... |
409,625 | 2,567,136 | 30,667 | 7 | Historical Walkabout | According to the IMDb cast list Sacha Guitry plays one role , a schoolmaster , in this movie . According to my eyes he plays at least three other roles . What can I tell you . Pedants will question the fact that 1 ) a math teacher decides to regale his class with a history lesson and 2 ) that a class in any school anyw... |
408,990 | 2,567,136 | 54,412 | 7 | Airs And Disgraces | This is yet another over lauded movie that was received apparently ecstatically on its release and has gone on to achieve semi-cult status . The problem then is that seeing it for the first time almost half a century after the initial release one has to imagine what all the fuss was about . It does benefit from some fi... |
409,018 | 2,567,136 | 869,977 | 7 | At Swim Three Birds | In the areas where they overlap this fine movie is light years ahead of 2004s Innocence , which gave the impression of a rheumy eye and heavy breathing ogling young girls . Here the effect is much more realistic and really gets inside the heads of the three protagonists as they fumble their way through an adolescence r... |
409,660 | 2,567,136 | 110,612 | 7 | Pop Pap | This is another case of Hollywood Arrogance presuming to eclipse French Style . The original , Mon Pere ce heros , was one of the most charming films of 1991 so naturally the accountants in Hollywood thought they could hire Depardieu and phone the rest in . They did , however , take the precaution of hiring Francis Veb... |
409,428 | 2,567,136 | 36,951 | 7 | ID Hi , ID Ho | Julien Duvivier arguably made a star out of Jean Gabin via La Bandera in 1934 - they had worked together previously when Gabin appeared in a small role in Maria Chapeldaine and would do so again profitably in La Belle Epoque , Pepe Le Moko and Voice les temps des assassins - and in 1944 when both found themselves in Am... |
409,163 | 2,567,136 | 35,082 | 7 | Hope Of Haven | John O'Hara ( 1905 - 1970 ) was the finest American Short Story writer of the 20th century and one of the finest novelists . Virtually all of his novels were best-sellers but of the four ( Butterfield 8 , A Rage To Live , From The Terrace , Ten North Frederick ) adapted for the screen only the latter - which won the Na... |
409,917 | 2,567,136 | 62,994 | 7 | Splacing The Mainbrice | Even as late as 1968 Hollywood couldn't help buying Broadway musical hit shows and tampering with them . In this case they inexplicably jettisoned what was arguably the best ballad in the score , The Music That Makes Me Dance as well as several lesser numbers . That said the film itself delivers from the two leads down... |
410,006 | 2,567,136 | 33,152 | 7 | Khurds And Whey | This is one of those films that you feel that if you haven't seen them make you feel slightly inadequate . I finally caught up with it some 67 years after its initial release but can't say I'm now a better person . The major selling points were the ' special ' effects which are still fairly passable and must have been ... |
408,897 | 2,567,136 | 369,053 | 7 | Into The Woods | Hats off to Julian Fellowes for reminding the cognoscenti what a fine novelist Nigel Balchin was and for arguably introducing him to a new audience , although this is unlikely to attract the popcorn crowd . Balchin was one of three English writers all active in the thirties , forties , and fifties who all had ' day ' j... |
409,080 | 2,567,136 | 808,357 | 7 | The Lady From Shanghai | The dirty raincoat brigade are in for a tough time with this one because they're gonna have to sit through the thick end of two hours screen time before we get to the sex scenes that have been hyped by the PR outfits in an effort to ' sell ' a movie set in Asia sixty years ago and centering on a political situation vir... |
409,969 | 2,567,136 | 45,808 | 7 | Gasser | I usually find that British films of this vintage don't stand up too well - indeed in some cases they fell down even on release - but this is an exception . It's not too difficult too imagine how fresh it must have seemed back in the early fifties to palates jaded by war and austerity and the social history alone is wo... |
408,904 | 2,567,136 | 35,128 | 7 | Cabaret And Cabarus | By the time Continental Films was launched in October , 1940 , Fernandel had been making films for a decade and had been a leading vedette for over half that time which made him a desirable asset for the German-run company . Honco Alfred Greven wooed Fernandel in two ways ; he agreed to give his brother-in-law , Jean M... |
409,136 | 2,567,136 | 95,511 | 7 | Reader , I Dazzled Him | There's more than a little touch of Pirandello in the night about this entry in which a young woman , Constance , is not only reading a book entitled The Reader , to her husband in bed but also projects herself on to the eponymous character , Marie , and acts out either her own ( Constance ) fantasies or those of the f... |
408,975 | 2,567,136 | 24,025 | 7 | Plane And Fancy | I've been gradually working my way through a Boxed Set of eight of the nine movies that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made at RKO between 1933 and 1939 - saving the studio from bankruptcy in the process - and I saved the first til last ( Roberta is the missing title ) on the grounds that it wasn't technically a Rogers... |
409,272 | 2,567,136 | 337,978 | 7 | Die-cast | What can I tell you ? Saturday afternoon and I set out for a couple of hours at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park but halfway there the weather changes and it starts to rain . So , what's playing at the Multiplex today ; Die Hard 4 . 0 whatever that means . How bad can it be and it IS raining . Actually it could ha... |
410,229 | 2,567,136 | 441,909 | 7 | Re : Volver | Recently I've checked out a couple of early Almodavar films which the NFT are screening in conjunction with the release of this , his latest , and I found them slightly pathetic . With Volver , however , I gladly add my voice to the majority who have found things to praise here , not least Penelope Cruz , building on t... |
410,231 | 2,567,136 | 198,298 | 7 | Her Jungle Love | For me at least this is a chance to get a glimpse of the Great Arletty in a strictly bread-and-butter movie , possibly the French equivalent of the quota quickie , ephemera whose only purpose was to fill the cinemas for a week or so and then be consigned to the vaults . Chronologically it came smack-dab in the middle o... |
409,425 | 2,567,136 | 792,965 | 7 | Full House | Claude Berri is a director who often seems on the verge of becoming a name outside France but somehow doesn't quite make it . His films are interesting - One Leaves , The Other Stays - to excellent - Lucie Aubrac with very little dross . Now he's taken a popular French novel and cast Audrey Tautou in a lead for which s... |
409,994 | 2,567,136 | 780,571 | 7 | River Of No Return | This is arguably Kevin Costner's best film in a long time - I haven't seen too much of his recent work because it was so obviously second-rate / embarrassing but here he's back on track despite a storyline that stretches credibility to breaking point - what are the odds for example that Brooks and Smith would randomly ... |
409,118 | 2,567,136 | 30,578 | 7 | Little Things Mean A Lot | For someone like me who unashamedly loves French cinema it is great to see Robert Lynen given a chance to carry a film . Lynen had already given an outstanding performance in Duvivier's second ( and sound ) version of Poil de Carotte and by 1944 he would be dead , a victim - like Harry Baur who played his screen father... |
408,929 | 2,567,136 | 66,249 | 7 | Down To Cases | This has been called Billy Wilder's last Great film which seems a little unfair on three of the four - Avanti , The Front Page , Fedora - that followed it although I wouldn't argue that his last film , Buddy , Buddy , was also his worst . No one admires Wilder more than I do but I still find it difficult to work up muc... |
409,516 | 2,567,136 | 160,513 | 7 | ( Bad ) Dream Weaver | Had this been made in the old days it would have been firmly labelled a ' woman's picture ' and possibly rated as a one , two , three or even four handkerchief weepie . Although someone old-fashioned in content it does benefit from excellent performances from the thee leads and whilst it's true that Sigourney Weaver ge... |
410,107 | 2,567,136 | 290,435 | 7 | An Affair To Forget | As an admirer of Tonie Marshall I was disappointed with this effort and of the four Marshall films I've seen ( and own ) , Venus Beaute , France Boutique , Les enfants du salauds I have to relegate this to fourth place . Yet again Leo McCary's ' An Affair To Remember ' crops up in someone else's movie . Maybe Noel Cowa... |
409,174 | 2,567,136 | 493,556 | 7 | Sheep's Eyes May Safely Glaze | There probably aren't too many films from 1913 floating around and the chances of comparable vintage by genuine talents is even more remote which makes this early film from Maurice Tourneur well worth seeking out . In the nothing-new-under-the-sun department the shots of the girl surrounded by goats would be replicated... |
409,403 | 2,567,136 | 30,341 | 7 | Varnishing The Lady | As someone who has always found Hitchcock to be vastly overrated I have to confess I enjoyed this early effort . I was drawn by Micheal Redgrave , being a great fan of his ; he'd done a small , uncredited role in a vehicle for fellow stage actor John Gielgud but this was his first real film and he went in at the deep e... |
409,508 | 2,567,136 | 113,149 | 7 | Gleesome Threesome | This is Josie Balasko in her ' Ma Vies est un enfer ' mode or wearing what some viewers will choose to call her ' vulgar ' hat . A once-over-lightly of the plot will explain why . Alain Chabat and Ticky Holgado are estate agents and neither can keep it in his trousers ; Holgado even makes a pass at his own daughter - h... |
409,853 | 2,567,136 | 120,768 | 7 | Sweet Talk | Screened on late-night TV recently this one kept me watching til the small hours . The writers tip their glove by naming the protagonist Danny Roman and then SHOWING him to be the ' noblest Roman of them all ' but I can live with that late at night . It adheres to classic formulae in that it begins by catching Roman at... |
408,958 | 2,567,136 | 780,516 | 7 | Diamond Geezers | It's a miserable day here in London and among the week's new releases only two are even worth considering , Clint Eastwood's Changeling and Michael Radford's Flawless . In the end the weather tips it ; Changeling is a long haul and ' serious ' I'll catch it later ; Flawless is lighter , Radford directed Il Postino and ... |
409,759 | 2,567,136 | 39,344 | 7 | M'aide Dedee . . . | . . . I WANT to like you but you don't make it easy . To be fair to all concerned they were working in a genre - poetic realism - which had just about run out of gas by 1948 , even the co-founders , Jacques Prevert and Marcel Carne had called it a day after their mega flop of 1946 Les Portes de la nuit ( hailed today a... |
409,964 | 2,567,136 | 189,142 | 7 | Marcel Wave | Adapting Proust for the screen is akin to training a dog to walk on two legs , what matters is not how well you succeed but that you attempt it at all . To make it even more difficult Ruiz has elected to concentrate on the last volume of the magnum opus where all the characters of the first six volumes come together in... |
409,634 | 2,567,136 | 780,536 | 7 | In Dutch | I hope Martin McDonagh is cutting Harold Pinter in for a piece of the gate on this . Not content with ripping-off Pinter's two-hander The Dumb-Waiter ( in case you didn't see it that's the one where two hit man are killing time - sorry about that - whilst waiting to learn their next assignment which turns out to be for... |
409,335 | 2,567,136 | 497,465 | 7 | Spanish Fly-By-Night | Lots of positive reports about this one coupled with ' his best for ages ' squibs perhaps oversold this one . There are several pluses ; the location shooting that stops just short of being a valentine to Barcelona , the really fine performance from Rebecca Hall , the not bad performances from Javier Bardem and Penelop... |
409,160 | 2,567,136 | 50,390 | 7 | If You Want To Get A Head | The title of this film can be translated as bringing things to a head and although he had fourteen further films in him purists would argue that Henri Decoin's career had already come to a head by the mid-fifties . He was certainly at his peak in the late thirties and early forties and still capable of turning out qual... |
408,845 | 2,567,136 | 52,339 | 7 | What A Life | Maupassant scholars and pedants will find ample grist for their respective mills in this entry given that Astruc has opted to take the source material merely as a guide and instead of starting at A and proceeding inexorably to Z he has reserved the right to take a bowl of alphabet soup , select a letter at random , exp... |
409,915 | 2,567,136 | 39,305 | 7 | Rough Passage | This is probably mid-range Bogie in that it is not really in the same league as The Maltese Falcon , The Big Sleep , etc but still several notches above some of his early Warner Bros fodder . In one respect it anticipates one element of The Manchurian Candidate inasmuch as in both movies a Major in the United States Ar... |
408,791 | 2,567,136 | 83,925 | 7 | Serrault + Chapeau = De Trop | If this movie were ever shown in English-speaking countries they could do worse that call it Tailor and Cutter , which pretty much sums up the plot ; Charles Aznavour is a tailor in a French provincial town and the only citizen to suspect hatter Michel Serrault of serial murder . As usual Chabrol is good at depicting F... |
408,726 | 2,567,136 | 242,994 | 7 | Six Characters In Search Of Themselves | If your attention-span is severely traumatized by Police Academy then best give this one a miss . Keeping track of all the separate threads is like keeping track of individual strands of spaghetti after it's doused in sauce . On the other hand if you make the effort you may decide it's worth it . In one sense it revolv... |
409,354 | 2,567,136 | 48,119 | 7 | Dying On Velvet | Although he had several scenes in the film and was referred to - by surname at least - several times IMDb in their wisdom fail to credit the actor who played artist Charles Dana Gibson who inspired both a look and a cocktail - a Gibson is a martini with an onion instead of an olive . This apart Charles Brackett , Billy... |
409,440 | 2,567,136 | 757,361 | 7 | Oh ! Noah | The way I figure it Noah Baumbach went to see Gene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night and figured it was a comedy . I can just hear him saying ' Shoot ! That guy O'Neill wouldn't know a dysfunctional family if one bit him on the ass ; I got me a REAL prime example , one that'll make the Tyrones look like the Walto... |
410,184 | 2,567,136 | 35,039 | 7 | Plane And Fancy | Often when I come to post a comment on something like this - A French film made in the 30s , 40s or 50s - I find only one previous comment by dbmonteuil and nine we are in accord , especially in the case of Julien Duvivier , but he doesn't seem to think too much of this one which is sad because I quite enjoyed it . Of ... |
408,831 | 2,567,136 | 54,701 | 7 | A Plague On Both Your Houses | I've heard better sales pitches than one promoting a movie made by a bush league French director with a 99 per cent Japanese cast but the result is surprisingly pleasing . It's our old friend the mixed-race love story and may not have been possible had not the much higher profile Marlon Brando not broken the ground wit... |
409,800 | 2,567,136 | 54,698 | 7 | The Unhappy Hooker | This film calls to mind the celebrated Brooks Atkinson quote in his review of the first production of Pal Joey in 1940 . Acknowledging that the Rodgers and Hart score was up to snuff likewise the acting he then drew attention to the fact that the entire cast were low-lifes , heels and / or worse and asked ' Can you dra... |
409,670 | 2,567,136 | 43,660 | 7 | High Society , Low Morals | This was one of several more or less ho-hum features that Robert Wise directed between The Set-Up and Somebody Up There Likes Me . In some ways it's a prototype of Dial M For Murder with a would-be murder victim wife ( Valentina Cortese ) turning to family friend ( William Lundigan ) when she suspects her husband ( Ric... |
409,360 | 2,567,136 | 143,116 | 7 | Family Jules | My summary doesn't work in French where the ' s ' in Jules is silent and if it comes to that Mady Berry is not , to the best of my knowledge , related to Jules ; both made lots of films but Jules had the good fortune to work for directors like Carne and Renoir which more or less guaranteed international distribution . ... |
409,825 | 2,567,136 | 79,980 | 7 | Black Comedy | Alain Corneau is amongst the finest of the current writer-directors in France which makes it all the more surprising that he didn't attempt to tighten this script and erase some of the more obvious holes . Frank Poupart ( Daeware ) is a not very good door-to-door salesman peddling household goods from a suitcase so it ... |
409,738 | 2,567,136 | 32,410 | 7 | Down Argentine Why ? . . . | . . . when it could just as soon have been called Down Upper Sandusky Way in terms of plot . What it was , of course , was at once a morale booster and a nod to its South American neighbours from the movie capital of North America if not the world . This was Carmen Miranda's first appearance outside the Latin American ... |
408,745 | 2,567,136 | 54,605 | 7 | Mad Kraut Disease | Like Peter Viertel after him Robert Siodmak was born in Dresden which after 1945 became part of East Germany . Having been more or less obliged to flee a still united Germany one jump ahead of Hitler Siodmak was arguably one mad Kraut when he returned to his homeland to round out his career . Nazi hunters are not , of ... |
409,050 | 2,567,136 | 66,448 | 7 | Paris When It Sizzles | Mank didn't write the screenplay for this , his penultimate movie but elected instead for a script from the team responsible for Bonnie and Clyde . The plot itself , a melange of Western meets Big House was also something of a departure though given his proved eclecticism no one was really surprised . Curate's Egg is a... |
408,804 | 2,567,136 | 39,273 | 7 | Actor Proof | It was , perhaps , inevitable that Sacha Guitry would eventually get round to writing about his father , Lucien , a star of Le Comedy Francaise and a couple of Silent films ( he died in 1925 ) and an actor of the school that included Jack Barrymore , Bransby Williams and others of that ilk . Never one to hide his light... |
409,005 | 2,567,136 | 889,606 | 7 | Cometh the hour . . . | In 2005 Pascal Thomas adapted an Agatha Christie story for the screen , signed up Catherine Frot and Andre Dussollier for the leads and enjoyed the minor success which prompted him to do it again ergo Zero Hour . In my case top-billed Danielle Darrieux - still acting in her ninety first year - was all the inducement I ... |
409,016 | 2,567,136 | 132,521 | 7 | Czechmate | Karl Anton was born in Prague and made the majority of his films in German and for all I know they were quite distinguished but you can't prove it from this effort ; I'm guessing it was a creaky operetta when it was written for the stage and by the time it got to the screen it was seriously arthritic ; on the other han... |
409,798 | 2,567,136 | 52,415 | 7 | Great Book , Shame About The Movie | Irwin Shaw's novel The Young Lions was arguably the finest of the post-war novels about World War II ; unlike the majority of novels that appeared between 1945-55 it concerned itself with ALL the major theatres of war in Europe and North Africa whilst others - The Naked And The Dead , Pacific island ; The Cruel Sea , N... |
409,479 | 2,567,136 | 415,932 | 7 | Suivez moi | This is arguably the best performance to date from Monty Clift look-alike Laurent Lucas or maybe it's the classiest movie he's been in so far . Even Charlotte Gainsbourg who I've always been able to take or leave ( sorry , Yvan ) as I have her old mum , Jane Birkin , turns in something at least resembling a performance... |
409,382 | 2,567,136 | 47,913 | 7 | Dogged Determination | As the previous poster mentioned Truffaut hated this movie so Jean Dalannoy had to be doing something right . Delannoy was , of course , making fine films when Truffaut was still throwing his toys out of his pram and insulting his betters so that in itself is a benchmark . I doubt if anyone would be tempted to rank thi... |
409,161 | 2,567,136 | 765,141 | 7 | Slow Pulse | This is clearly aimed at the art house audience rather than the Multiplexes though there are those among the popcorn pillocks who may well appreciate the brilliant interplay between Michael Lonsdale and Mattieu Alamric as CEO and in-house psychologist respectively of a large German corporation in France . Ostensibly Al... |
409,433 | 2,567,136 | 765,142 | 7 | What's Up , Doc ? | It's difficult to know what Benoit Cohen had in mind here . Mid-life crises are not exactly new but they usually involve dressing younger , buying a sports car and generally making a fool of oneself ; seldom does someone in the grip of MLC abandon a highly successful career to become a full-time rock musician as in thi... |
409,213 | 2,567,136 | 95,302 | 7 | High Hopes Low Fruition | To watch a movie like this again - I saw it on release and now it's a freebie with a Broadsheet - is to wonder aloud why Mike Leigh , who proves here that he CAN write an Original screenplay , felt compelled to rip off Chabrol's Une Affaire des femmes in Vera Drake . Like much , if not all of Leigh's output this is an ... |
408,954 | 2,567,136 | 299,594 | 7 | Sea Change | I almost gave this one a miss having seen a couple of Breillat films that were virtually hardcore porn with mainstream actors - Francois Berleand , Amira Casar - and been underwhelmed . However , compared to things like Romance and Anatomy Of Hell , Breve Traversee is Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm . Okay , there is a sexu... |
409,574 | 2,567,136 | 45,162 | 7 | Sermons On The Mount | I found this one disappointing when I saw it first several years ago and now it's a freebie with a major newspaper I see no reason to revise my original opinion . All hands were above average and all made much better films before and after this one - Peck and King worked together six times and their first two At Bats p... |
409,849 | 2,567,136 | 475,380 | 7 | Heathcliffhangers | Q . How do you confuse a Multiplex Moppet . A . Put Ewan McGregor on the marquee and then have him kiss Douglas Hodge . They're gonna love this in the UGCs but the rest of us can bask in a strangely old-fashioned portmanteau entry with no fancy angles - in fact hardly Any Angles at all to speak of ; Long Shot , Medium ... |
409,431 | 2,567,136 | 443,354 | 7 | Hearsay | This debut movie from writer director Alante Kavaite won't be released in France until the summer and Londoners were given an early showing as part of the Rendez-vous With French Cinema weekend at the Curzon , Mayfair . Knowing as much about it as anyone not connected with it I was drawn by the name of Ludmila Mikael w... |
409,897 | 2,567,136 | 39,566 | 7 | Meet Me At St Patrick's Cathedral | On a superficial level - and come to think of it there isn't really a deeper one - this is Meet Me In St Louis without the songs and the story tilted towards the parents rather than the children . On the other hand Sally Benson's reminiscences of her life in turn of the century St Louis ran in the New Yorker sans words... |
409,242 | 2,567,136 | 1,105,739 | 7 | Weirds And Music | There seems to be a current vogue in French cinema for adding songs to what otherwise would be non-musical films . Faubourg 36 has some sort of excuse inasmuch as it is centred on a Music Hall but Agathe Clery and this one would have worked quite as well as straight films . Of the two this , a tale of espionage , is th... |
408,841 | 2,567,136 | 120,018 | 7 | Three Bland Mice | This is Chabrol's take on the caper movie with Mamet-type twists and if you don't expect the earth to move it's pleasantly enjoyable . This is an Isabelle Huppert who is almost wholesome - fully wholesome when compared to the sleaze for which she seems to have a penchant - which means she's so good to look at that any ... |
409,198 | 2,567,136 | 27,698 | 7 | Ziggie Stardust | This movie was released in the same year that the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 featured a duet performed by Bob Hope and Eve Arden and written by Vernon Duke and Ira Gershwin . ' I Can't Get Started ' went on to become a ' standard ' helped initially by a 12 " 78 rpm recording by Bunny Berigan . Ironically , of course , Fl... |
409,186 | 2,567,136 | 315,152 | 7 | I Didn't Have To Work Hard . . . | . . . liking this one . Let's face it , Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi AND Jean-Pierre Darroussin , what's not to like . As it happens 2002 was an excellent year for French cinema so this one was in with some stiff competition but it still holds its own . Plot-wise we're talking flimsy : Darroussin is about to be divorced from... |
408,989 | 2,567,136 | 56,937 | 7 | Three On The Nile | It is , of course , impossible to approach this film as just another release in a typical week because for better or worse it comes with baggage - the original director fired , ditto original writers , escalating production problems , the world press feeding frenzy surrounding the Burton-Taylor offscreen romance and la... |
408,985 | 2,567,136 | 37,449 | 7 | Forward March | This was one of several freebies in a newspaper with the catch-all title ' War Films ' ( Tunes Of Glory takes place entirely in peacetime , A Matter Of Life And Death is only peripherally concerned with war ) and I put off watching it based on a vague feeling it would turn out to be jingoistic crap . Having watched it ... |
409,104 | 2,567,136 | 360,717 | 7 | Monkey Business | I don't usually bother with ' epics ' and I'm especially averse to CGI but what the hell , it's Christmas , a time of year when my arm is susceptible to a gentle twist or two so off I went and found I was watching three films in one ; an hour of Depression-era New York plus voyage , a little over an hour on Skull Islan... |
409,765 | 2,567,136 | 160,149 | 7 | Or Would You Rather Be A Mule | It's definitely a Man's Life in the courier business . In 18th century France you were still known as a courier , travelled by stage coach and ferried your cargo - bearer bonds , legal documents , even cash - in a briefcase or strongbox and robbery and occasional death were occupational hazards . Today you're known as ... |
408,927 | 2,567,136 | 45,094 | 7 | Bali Hi-De-Hi | By this time - the sixth in an eventual series of seven - the formula was well established ; wise-cracks , in-jokes , forget the ' fourth wall ' , throw in some ' cameos ' ( in this case Bogie , Jane Russell , Bob Crosby and Martin and Lewis ) , a ' plot ' that sees Bing con Bob into taking some dangerous job ( human c... |
408,809 | 2,567,136 | 459,880 | 7 | If You Go Down In The Woods Today | I suppose I should begin by stating that I've never read the novel nor seen any of the previous adaptations ; a girl I know in Paris has been recommending it since it was released long before it picked up Cesars for Best Actress , Film and Writing this year . Though I haven't read or seen it previously I knew , or thou... |
409,725 | 2,567,136 | 435,479 | 7 | You CAN Go Home Again ( But I Wouldn't Bother ) | Pascal Greggory has it made - on paper , at least . A town house only marginally smaller than the Musee d'Orsay , complete with a full complement of servants - a lifestyle in fact that it seems only Prince Charles aspires to today - and last but not least a trophy wife in the shape of Isabelle Huppert . Ah , there's th... |
409,951 | 2,567,136 | 56,868 | 7 | Put Your Dreams Away | This is one of several British films dating back to the 1950s / 60s that were recently given away by a National newspaper and for me at least it's the one that seems to hold up the best , not least due to the fine performance by Tom Courteney . The dreamer has , of course been with us since James Thurber's Walter Mitty... |
410,171 | 2,567,136 | 37,515 | 7 | Supreme Irony | As everyone and his Uncle Max knows Hollywood is run by accountants rather than creators so it's ironic to discover that accountants can't count ; having changed the title of Agatha Christie's novel from Ten Little Indians ( which was itself a subtle change from Christie's original Ten Little Ns ) to And Then There Wer... |
409,935 | 2,567,136 | 104,507 | 7 | Istanbul Was Constantinople . . . | . . . and there's a lot of that about because Vietnam WAS Indochina at the time this movie deals with which is primarily the 1930s . Eliane Devries ( Catherine Deneuve ) has both a daughter and a son yet has never given birth which is maybe a metaphor for France ' adopting ' Indochina . Like Heart Of Darkness the film ... |
409,365 | 2,567,136 | 53,242 | 7 | Flawed Gem | My summary does double duty as a description of the eponymous character , a very light-skinned West Indian girl ' passing ' for white and the film itself , a low-key exploration of racial tension in pre-Swinging Sixties England . In terms of police-based drama we were still in the era of Dixin Of Dock Green with the mo... |
409,263 | 2,567,136 | 57,076 | 7 | Spectre At The Feast | I don't as a rule ' do ' James Bond though I did see most of the Sean Connery titles on television where this one , the second in the franchise , surfaced again last night on the BBC . What it has going for it is a lack of OTT special effects and a reasonably credible plot . There's also a nice touch in the opening pre... |
409,927 | 2,567,136 | 29,971 | 7 | Flagging Franchise ? Pas du tout | There's been quite a lot of disappointment registered over the years , from initial critical and public reaction through comments right here , about this production which fail to do it justice . It is , to a certain extent , understandable , a minimal score , Astaire playing a non-performer for the first time in the fr... |
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