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409,899 | 2,567,136 | 78,844 | 7 | Manners Maketh . . . | Dysfunction is a staple in the Art world , the novels of William Faulkner , Carson McCullers , etc would be lost without it - as would Southern Gothic as a genre , and it spills over into cinema , often in adaptations of novels , plays such as Beth Henry's Crimes Of The Heart , virtually anything by McCullers , Tenness... |
410,004 | 2,567,136 | 43,278 | 7 | It Beats A Yank At Oxford . . . | . . . Oxford , Mississippi , at least . Okay , the Paris we get is Paris , Culver City apart from the Establishing library footage of the real McCoy but it IS Paris in spirit than which nothing , nowhere , is better . Okay , Kelly is no Astaire but then who is and Caron is no Hepburn , ditto but Alan Lerner is light ye... |
409,630 | 2,567,136 | 32,234 | 7 | Field ( s ) Of Drams | I've just had the chance to check this out again after several years . Time was I found Fields easy to take especially when he managed to slip some manual dexterity - at which he excelled - into his movies . Time , I fear , hasn't been kind to our boy though anyone who likes slapstick - and there are thousands , how el... |
408,747 | 2,567,136 | 41,368 | 7 | Barbara Nails Thelma | This was probably the tail end of the first great Noir cycle but even if it does tend to flag a little it's still worth anyone's time . Stanwyck is on best scenery-chewing form and Paul Kelly is fine in a lower-billed role . Wendell Corey was , of course , prime lumber and wisely Siodmak doesn't give him anything diffi... |
410,136 | 2,567,136 | 299,658 | 7 | Class of 1975 | Some 27 years after its Broadway opening the movie adaptation of Chicago finally made it to the screen albeit with a couple of ' alterations ' - at least one number , ' Class ' was jettisoned after shooting and this time around Mary Sunshine is actually played by a female rather than a guy in drag , which scored heavil... |
409,933 | 2,567,136 | 53,168 | 7 | The Small Dipper | There's a lot of irony here whether intentional or not . For instance the protagonist , Michel , makes a living as a dip yet he NEVER seems to lock the door of his apartment which is in what is more or less a tenement . Not only does he not lock the door but times he leaves it ajar to boot . By now I've seen enough Bre... |
409,236 | 2,567,136 | 1,082,051 | 7 | Day In The Museum | As episodic films go this is right up there with the best boasting a cast to delight anyone who admires French cinema , not least a return to acting - albeit in a minor capacity - for Tonie Marshall who last appeared BEFORE the camera twelve years ago but filled in the time usefully by writing and directing some fine m... |
408,794 | 2,567,136 | 91,715 | 7 | Bridge Over Shallow Water | Consider the cast : Richard Bohringer , Daniel Auteuil , Phillipe Leotard , Jean Yanne , Michel Piccoli , Fanny Ardant , Jeanne Moreau - seven of the heaviest hitters in French cinema - throw in a bargain priced DVD and who WOULDN'T buy it ? This dream cast ensures that it IS worth watching but there are those who may ... |
410,185 | 2,567,136 | 47,597 | 7 | That Towering Feeling | One Hundred Ways To Lose Your Lover ? Forget the Black Widow and the Praying Mantis they're SO Paleolithic , take a leaf out of Marguerite's book , boff them , have them thrown from the eponymous tower into the Seine with an archer standing by to place an arrow where it will do the most good when they surface . Alexand... |
409,489 | 2,567,136 | 37,651 | 7 | HellO , Dollys | No one ever accused a Hollywood biopic of sticking slavishly to the facts and after beginning by blatantly casting two leggy blondes ( Betty Grable , June Haver ) to portray the real-life short , stocky brunette eponymous twins this biopic fits where it touches . Of course in 1945 no one went to the movies accompanied ... |
409,077 | 2,567,136 | 154,174 | 7 | Baudu Drowning | Alfred Greven , the honcho of the German-run Continental Films during the Occupation , was a man of parts . He thought nothing of employing blackmail to ' perusade ' both Edwige Feuillere and Danielle Darrieux to work for his outfit and when Darrieux called a halt after three films he saw to it that she didn't work aga... |
409,601 | 2,567,136 | 942,379 | 7 | Oh , Brother | Though it shares many similarities with Rich Man , Poor Man , not least the ending this movie is far more superficial than Irwin Shaw's fine novel . It has the same number and ratio of siblings - two boys , one girl , and one of the boys is successful legitimately ( cop , as opposed to businessman ) and one is marked l... |
409,175 | 2,567,136 | 24,136 | 7 | Father's Day | Although he'd been directing films since the very early silent days Maurice Tourneur displayed no impatience to graduate to full-length features and was still turning out two , three and four reelers well into the 1930s . This melodrama is a case in point , made the same year as another short , Lidoire , this featured ... |
410,020 | 2,567,136 | 57,168 | 7 | Alas , Only On Paper | This is the second of the two movies that Garland shot in 1963 , the last , as it turned out , she would ever make for though she lived another six years the only singing she did for a camera was for television . As much as anyone and perhaps more than most Judy Garland was one of those performers you either love or de... |
408,756 | 2,567,136 | 27,925 | 7 | Hornets Nest | In some ways this anticipates Welles ' Mr . Arkadin inasmuch as it is an uneven film crammed with brilliant performers , directed by an acknowledged master with a plot verging on the bizarre . Welles , of course didn't need much help with screenplays - if we exclude Citizen Kane - yet Pabst had three on the payroll two... |
410,101 | 2,567,136 | 37,635 | 7 | Vent Act Of 1945 | The Michael Redgrave segment stands head and shoulders above the others and is the one thing that most people remember about this Ealing Studios release that ventured into new territory for a studio associated with comedy laced with occasional melodrama ( It Always Rains On Sunday ) . It was also an early sighting of t... |
409,673 | 2,567,136 | 471,030 | 7 | Black Street | This is the kind of movie that could play the Festival circuit indefinitely , amass several gongs and then disappear off the radar . The multiplexers are not likely to stay with it because pace-wise your average snail would leave it dead in the water . This is not to say that it lacks interest but it spoon-feeds its in... |
409,575 | 2,567,136 | 26,023 | 7 | Master Baker | Jean Gabin was not long out of the Music Halls and had yet to make an impact on the screen when he made this movie so perhaps it is not so surprising to find him singing at one point . Marc Allegret's previous movie was Fanny , the second part of the great Pagnol trilogy so on paper the omens were good . Top-billed Bak... |
409,723 | 2,567,136 | 455,078 | 7 | That Old Gang Of Mine | I chose to see this on the strength of Diane Kurys and Michelle Laroque or vice versa so the rest was something of a bonus . There's nothing new in the premise which is little more than Class Reunion time with added spin . Essentially one brother writes a book in which he is critical of his ' Mr TV ' type brother , who... |
409,115 | 2,567,136 | 39,889 | 7 | Harbour Lite | This English version of Henri Decoin's L'Homme de Londres - both based on a Simenon novel - outperformed Brighton Rock at the English box office back in 1947 and some 60 years later it holds up much better that BR if only because it's less risible - no Dickie Attenborough heading up a gang of pensioners here , just Bob... |
409,290 | 2,567,136 | 414,387 | 7 | Bennett , Ban It , Bin It . . . | . . . or How To Decline Jane Austen . We're told that comparisons are odious but let's fact it , this IS a much-filmed novel , I'm not sure just how many adaptations there have been but it's probably fair to say that this is more Austen 7 than Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud . It's watchable without being memorable and it mak... |
409,454 | 2,567,136 | 26,095 | 7 | Legionnaire's Disease | Duvivier , Gabin , what's to be bad , right . W - e - e - ll , I have to say right off that this could have been better ; Gabin had already appeared in an earlier Duvivier entry , Maria Chapledaine and within a couple of years he would score really heavily in Duvivier's Le Belle equipe and Pepe Le Moko - in fact you co... |
409,740 | 2,567,136 | 177,515 | 7 | Love For Sale | This is yet another ' domestic ' entry from the first decade of Sound in French Cinema and it's no better and no worse than the majority though hardly in the same league as the high quality stuff being turned out by the likes of Pagnol , Duvivier , L'Herbier , Prevert-Carnet etc , for whilst those talents turned out , ... |
410,269 | 2,567,136 | 996,983 | 7 | Squatter's Rights | Carole Bouquet hasn't had too much luck with apartments in recent years , a couple of years ago she hired some illegal immigrants to renovate her apartment and ended up with debris , this time around she's a writer instead of a lawyer and studying the roots of prejudice so when a squatter in the shape of Marc Lavoine m... |
409,767 | 2,567,136 | 416,508 | 7 | UnAustentatious | It would take someone far more knowledgeable than I am to comment on the veracity or lack of it in this take on the early , pre-published life of Jane Austen so all I can do is approach it as a period piece with an unresolved Beatrice and Benedek relationship as its centre . Again I have no knowledge of Jane Austen's p... |
409,975 | 2,567,136 | 24,258 | 7 | Ruth In Alien Corn | For admirers of early Hollywood talkies this movie fields an impressive cast list ; Ruth Chatterton , George Brent , Guy Kibbee , Frank McHugh and an uncredited Mayo Methot for good measure . It is , of course , pure meller and crammed with plot and subplot that shows just how anaemic today's johnny-one-note plots are ... |
410,005 | 2,567,136 | 31,907 | 7 | Second Fiddle Makes It To First Base | This is a pleasant enough diversion which pokes gentle fun at the search for an ' unknown ' to play the eponymous role in a film adaptation of a best selling novel . Someone actually gave this more than the customary ten seconds thought because it was released in 1939 , the same year as Gone With The Wind , a film that... |
408,830 | 2,567,136 | 195,028 | 7 | Polar Negri | Still acting at the age of 83 Charles Gerard has had a fairly undistinguished career embracing three disciplines , writer - 6 screenplays , director , 10 movies and actor , 63 roles and judging by his list of titles as director I'd have to guess that La loi des hommes is fairly typical . Any film that features both Mic... |
409,640 | 2,567,136 | 1,164,621 | 7 | A Walk On The Tame Side | I was invited to view and comment on this movie by the makers and I'm happy to oblige . The idea of showing a situation from two points of view is not , of course , new , but then what is . The most recent example that springs to mind is A la folie . . . pas du tout , Audrey Tatou's follow-up to Amelie but that of cour... |
409,712 | 2,567,136 | 45,525 | 7 | I Blame The Parents . . | . . . and so does Cayette . On the other hand Cayette spent virtually all his career blaming somebody . It's a sobering thought that Ken Loach probably hero-worshipped Cayette and almost certainly saw him as a role model . There is , thankfully , one large difference between guru and disciple and that is that unlike Lo... |
409,171 | 2,567,136 | 43,132 | 7 | End Of The Road | Hindsight is , of course , a wonderful thing . It allows us , for example , to put ourselves in the shoes of a mature , regular moviegoer in 1950 and speculate what we would have made of a 20th Century Fox movie released that year , directed by Otto Preminger in which Dana Andrews plays a Manhattan-based detective name... |
409,681 | 2,567,136 | 464,049 | 7 | Middle Class | There appears to be a consensus in the English press that this film is not as good as the play upon which it is based which is not unlike a Chinaman remarking that Paris is not as nice as Beijing ( not many provincial Chinese will have seen Beijing just as not many cinema-goers go to the theatre ) these guys are paid t... |
409,768 | 2,567,136 | 772,105 | 7 | With Friends Like These . . . | At a superficial level this is Beauty And The Beast with spin . The Beast isn't really handsome and Beauty doesn't really fall in love with him but he is unprepossessing to say the least and she is attractive and maybe even beautiful in the right light . The Beast , Geremia is a tailor by profession who does a little l... |
408,817 | 2,567,136 | 39,737 | 7 | Night Of The Hunted | At this time in his career - he was emerging from his Hopalong Cassidy years into adult mainstream cinema - Robert Mitchum had his share of offbeat female co-stars and if you thought Mitchum and Katherine Hepburn ( Undercurrent ) was a tad off-the-wall how about Mitchum and Judith Anderson , the Hamlet-playing distingu... |
409,341 | 2,567,136 | 37,795 | 7 | Christopher Robbin ' | Today this plays like a creaky period piece but apparently it was the cat's pajamas back in 1946 when it became the first film by a major studio ( Fox ) to be shot on location - The Naked City , erroneously thought to be the groundbreaker was actually shot later . It is , of course , thinly disguised propaganda for the... |
408,761 | 2,567,136 | 806,686 | 7 | Mella Yella | This is one of a number of recent German films that have played in England - Mostly Martha , Goodbye , Lenin , The Lives Of Others - and Academics and failed Pseuds are starting to talk about a German New Wave which is totally misleading because unlike the French so-called New Wave these German films are actually quite... |
408,875 | 2,567,136 | 62,728 | 7 | Whys and Wherefores | Having recently seen two other Chabrol films starring his then wife Stephane Audran I thought this slightly earlier one would be fairly similar and I was as right as I was wrong . Certainly the trademarks are on hand - stylish settings , photography , behaviour verging on the obsessive etc - but this time Chabrol throw... |
409,558 | 2,567,136 | 150,464 | 7 | Guilty Pleasures | Gerard Lanvin and Virginie Ledoyen first appeared together in Les Marmottes in 1993 and teamed up again five years later for this remake of Simenon's En Cas de malheur exactly forty years after Jean Gabin and Brigitte Bardot did it first time around . There's not a great deal of originality in the storyline - young , a... |
409,636 | 2,567,136 | 490,234 | 7 | Secrets And Truths | This is certainly head and shoulders above Miller's last movie , La Petite Lili , in which he thought he was better than Chekhov and generally stank up the screen . Apparently this is also an adaptation , this time of a modern novel which I haven't read so I don't take it so personally . Another - and better - French d... |
408,979 | 2,567,136 | 31,983 | 7 | They Capture The Castles | There was probably a good reason why RKO put these top-rated stars into a vehicle that was alien to everything they had done before ; it's interesting to speculate that perhaps the studio felt the franchise was winding down and needed kick-starting in a new direction , or maybe the studio felt the partnership was growi... |
409,146 | 2,567,136 | 375,679 | 7 | The Kingfish Syndrome | Nothing in the several episodes of ' Due South ' or the Oscar-Winning ' Million Dollar Baby ' , just two of his writing credits , prepared me for Crash . At a very basic level it echoes Robert Penn Warren's terrific novel All The King's Men , a thinly disguised portrait of Huey ' Kingfish ' Long , whose complex charact... |
410,290 | 2,567,136 | 39,776 | 7 | Gale Warning | Four of the seven ' Road ' movies , just over half the franchise , were made in the 1940s and this one , released in 1947 , was the last of them . All seven are available on DVD in a handsome slipcase resembling one of those Louis Vuitton steamer trunks that you took with you on a world cruise if you were well-heeled a... |
409,055 | 2,567,136 | 45,464 | 7 | Key Personnel | This one got under the wire . Released just over half a century ago it did bupkes at the Box Office and went from flop to cult . Today it only surfaces , if at all , at venues like London's National Film Theatre where it receives one or two screenings at best . It's one of those films in which it is possible to read al... |
409,467 | 2,567,136 | 39,781 | 7 | Rocambole Waltz | Veteran writer-director Jacques de Baroncelli got into films in 1915 and wrote some 21 screenplays and directed 86 movies between then and his death in 1951 ; most of these were domestic dramas , what Hollywood referred to as ' programmers ' and it's ironic that the finest film with which he was associated was Henri De... |
409,991 | 2,567,136 | 169,865 | 7 | Top Banana | As a student of irony it pleases me immensely to know that even as Jacques Prevert was inventing the concept of poetic realism with director Marcel Carne - Quai des Brumes was written back to back with Ernest le Rebelle - he was also writing Ernest le Rebelle which is about as far from realism , poetic or otherwise , a... |
409,668 | 2,567,136 | 37,865 | 7 | Wilde In The Country | One of the better by-products of this technological age is that gradually , via TV and / or DVD one is able to catch up with movies like this that were either released before one's time or just proved elusive . The first problem is almost immediate ; after establishing that Cornel Wilde has just returned from two years... |
409,145 | 2,567,136 | 284,277 | 7 | Sullivan's Travels | I can't help feeling that some of the people who've commented on this are asking this director to be something he's not - he is , by the way , Georgian , not French , although his last few films were made in France . He does tend to meander and more or less hit upon an idea and let it lead him where it will which may b... |
409,033 | 2,567,136 | 465,903 | 7 | Lives Of A Senegal Lancer | It's difficult to guess the target audience the producers were aiming for here . The only ' marquee ' name is Michel Serrault and though his CV is as impressive as any he is way up in the paint cards and it's asking a lot to expect him to carry a film as offbeat as this . It's May , 1940 and the Germans are coming . In... |
410,196 | 2,567,136 | 34,116 | 7 | Jingle Jangle Jungle | As it turned out this was the second in a franchise that no one thought of as a franchise at the time . Hope and Crosby had been teamed with Dorothy Lamour in what was intended as a one-off , Road To Singapore , and when Fred McMurray and George Burns passed on this someone remembered that Road To Singapore had made a ... |
408,835 | 2,567,136 | 440,963 | 7 | Cut To The Chase | ' Action ' barely rate even a blip on my personal radar but this one enjoyed a fairly universal fine critical response so when I found myself in another city and checked out the sole multiplex this was the only game in town , making it that or the nearest bar . I can see where the critics were coming from and I guess t... |
408,771 | 2,567,136 | 379,725 | 7 | Term Of Trial | I finally got around to seeing this in a London with unseen good films thin on the ground . Whilst I found it less than riveting it did keep me watching and I was able to wallow in Caroline Keener's fantastic support as Harper Lee . Hoffman is just as brilliant in the eponymous role as everyone said he was yet neverthe... |
410,256 | 2,567,136 | 69,281 | 7 | Not So Fast , Inspector | As it turned out this was Mank's last film and that makes it fitting that it is the best of his ' late ' work - There Was A Crooked Man , The Honey Pot , Cleopatra etc . He was , of course , working with playwright Anthony Shaffer who adapted his own highly successful play for the screen - one of the few times Mank fai... |
409,592 | 2,567,136 | 796,335 | 7 | Here Comes Mr Jourdain | Every so often the inevitable happens and I'm faced with a film that I want to see with a leading actor I can't stand . So it is here ; I accept that Romain Duris has his admirers and good luck to him but to me he's just another ugly , smirking , journeyman actor like Gaspard Ulliel and Benoit Magimal . To make matters... |
409,604 | 2,567,136 | 84,589 | 7 | Honey , I'm Home | There is , of course , as someone once said , nothing new under the sun and the cynic in me wonders if Janet Lewis , who wrote ( in 1982 ) the novel on which this film is based , was familiar with a British film directed in 1946 by Basil Dearden entitled ' The Captive Heart ' . In that film a Czech soldier , Karel Hase... |
409,378 | 2,567,136 | 31,507 | 7 | Power To The People | The day after the latest cinematic retelling of the Jesse James story opened in London - and is , by all accounts , a fairly turgid affair - the BBC screened this popular version from 1939 , shot in the old three-strip Technicolor and starring Tyrone power and a cast of Hollywood stalwarts - Henry Fonda and Jane Darwel... |
409,602 | 2,567,136 | 87,003 | 7 | . . . by any other name . . . | . . . this rose would smell . Smell as sweet ? Smell as hokey ? Smell of desperation ? Probably a little of each . The opening is masterful , a group of agents kibitzing in a down-market Lindy's and gradually homing in on one of their own kind , Danny Rose . At this stage the film opens out to cover a self-contained ep... |
409,141 | 2,567,136 | 322,420 | 7 | Miracle Of The Belles | Unlike the majority of posters I haven't seen that many Kusturica movies so I can't really comment on the charges of repetition . What I can say is that I found it uneven which is apparently a signature of this filmmaker . It would be wrong to say I was bored by the more tranquil scenes but neither was I doubled over w... |
409,788 | 2,567,136 | 426,266 | 7 | For Whom The Belles Toil | This is essentially a vehicle for one of France's best kept secrets , Fabrice Luchini , who spends lot of his time in the theatre in Paris with occasional forays into films that have mainly domestic appeal - one exception being Patrice Lecontes ' Confidances trop intimes ' that was shown in England and possibly the U .... |
410,074 | 2,567,136 | 139,831 | 7 | Sparrers CAN Sing | Marcel Blistene may well have possessed an overdeveloped sense of symmetry for he began and ended his Directorial career in 1946 with Etoile Sans lumiere starring Edith Piaf and ended it 10 films and thirteen years later with Les Amants de demain , starring Edith Piaf . If Blistene made only ten films ( plus one TV epi... |
410,137 | 2,567,136 | 36,160 | 7 | This Contented Rosie | At the time this must have been easy to file as painless propaganda ; Launder and Gilliat start off as if attempting to emulate Noel Coward's classic This Happy Breed , we are introduced to a cut-rate Gibbons family and in particular two daughters , one a flighty Queenie clone this time called Elsie ( Joy Shelton ) and... |
409,419 | 2,567,136 | 48,641 | 7 | Brief Encounters | Having seen the Musical version of this film , A Little Night Music , several times I watched the movie with one eye on how faithfully it had been adapted and the other as if I were adapting it into a musical and looking for suitable places to ' spot ' numbers . On balance I found the adaptation remarkably faithful to ... |
408,951 | 2,567,136 | 469,055 | 7 | If Chic Flic . . . | . . . isn't French for Chick Flick ( which of course it isn't ) then perhaps it ought to be for this affectionate account of four close-knit girl friends by yet another actress turned writer ( 15 Aout ) turned director Lisa Alessandrin assembles all the standard ingredients , men , domesticity , cosmetics , clothes , e... |
409,197 | 2,567,136 | 74,888 | 7 | The Miller's Tale | From my point of view Miller is uneven ; I disliked for example his tampering with Checkhov in La Petite Lili as much as I enjoyed his Betty Fisher and / or Garde Vue . Now thirty years old The Best Way To Walk probably qualifies as ' middle period ' and is no worse for that . There will be those who will see echoes of... |
410,029 | 2,567,136 | 38,109 | 7 | Technical Hitch | Personally I've always found Hitchcock to be vastly overrated which is not , of course , the same as saying he made bad films so much as the competent films he did make have been inflated out of proportion by academics and film snobs . That said this is a fairly reasonable entry that still works on an Entertainment lev... |
409,675 | 2,567,136 | 459,502 | 7 | Holes In The Hols | This is Olivier Peyon's first feature length film so it would be churlish to be too critical yet there are a couple of points that distract the viewer from the story and wonder Why or How . For example the film opens with the camera tracking very closely a large truck carrying lumber ; the first thought is that the tru... |
409,477 | 2,567,136 | 44,829 | 7 | Gold Standard | This is another in the slightly off-centre whimsical quasi-comedies turned out by Ealing in the late forties and early fifties . Once again Tibby Clarke has come up with a slightly offbeat script though even at the time ( 1951 ) it must have been fairly obvious that the unsuitably-dressed Englishman sitting with Alec G... |
409,555 | 2,567,136 | 412,922 | 7 | Puppy Love But Not A Dog | American child actors are notorious for being sophisticated beyond their years , irritating , cynical , nauseating etc so it's a refreshing change to find a movie in which this is not the case . It's true that the writing , especially in the voice-over narration is on a level above the average eleven year-olds but that... |
410,167 | 2,567,136 | 36,112 | 7 | The Old Army Game | This is one of those films which film buffs are expected to have seen and enthused over in the cradle and one of several which I , buff that I am , got around to seeing years - in this case sixty or more - after its initial release when the accumulated hype of half a century has a mountain to climb . In my case the fir... |
409,043 | 2,567,136 | 36,135 | 7 | Dark Grey | One line of dialogue stood out for me and actually made the film ; Lockwood and Calvert are travelling by coach to Calvert's London home and she asks Lockwood ( who has just played Desdemona to Granger's Othello ) how long Granger has been an actor . ' As far as I'm concerned he never was ' replies Lockwood , a brillia... |
410,172 | 2,567,136 | 783,608 | 7 | Get Carter | I can't improve on Shakespeare ( but then who can ) in summarizing this entry ; . . . it is a tale told by an idiot , full of sound and fury , signifying . . . Nothing . So who's the idiot here , certainly not Paul Schrader who is , ultimately , telling the tale albeit via his eponymous character Carter Page III ( Wood... |
410,193 | 2,567,136 | 38,032 | 7 | Baked Alaska | This is , unquestionably , one of the best of the ' Road ' franchise . It began with a one-off , Singapore , and even the second , Zanzibar , was more accident than design but with the third entry , Morocco , the franchise was up and running and this , the fourth title , builds on the strengths of Morocco and reaches s... |
408,751 | 2,567,136 | 55,597 | 7 | A Step Too Farr | There's a lovely irony at work here inasmuch as Dirk Bogarde resolutely remained coy and refused to ' come out ' himself in his private life yet was prepared to play a character on screen who admitted to his wife before they married that he was gay and when one of his gay lovers commits suicide rather than ' out ' Melv... |
409,859 | 2,567,136 | 33,858 | 7 | Hunt Ball | When is a remake not a remake is one that will keep the pedants occupied long past my own bedtime and on the whole I'm content to let them pick the bones out of it whilst I savor and / or am disappointed by the latest example to find itself on a screen near me . You could argue that one of the clues is when a remake re... |
409,094 | 2,567,136 | 298,126 | 7 | Oh , I DO Like To Be Beside The Seaside | This is another charmer . The great thing about France is that filmmakers are allowed to make ' small ' films like this without being penalized . In the same year ( 2002 ) for example Le Chignon d'Olga was also released and between them both films racked up something like 100 , 000 admissions but nobody yelled , no hea... |
408,941 | 2,567,136 | 408,236 | 7 | Daylight Shaving Time | It's going to take a brave person to kick against the waves of euphoria with which this has been greeted . I have no problem with sacred cows as a rule but in this case I didn't DISlike it enough to subject it to a hatchet job . I'm definitely not a fan of Burton's Gothic landscape and I can take or leave Johnny Depp a... |
409,000 | 2,567,136 | 44,706 | 7 | Time To Kill | If you didn't see this movie between its release in 1952 and the release in 1959 of Rio Bravo ( and presumably did see the Howard Hawks classic and THEN watched the Fred Zinneman roman a clef ) it's going to be tough to view it dispassionately . We also have to assume that at least half the audience back in 1952 totall... |
409,844 | 2,567,136 | 477,095 | 7 | The Old College Try | Nice to be able to write something positive about a British film for a change . Okay , it owes more than a little to Le Chignon d'Olga - a likable leading man lusting after the wrong girl when the right one is under his nose - but it passes a pleasant ninety minutes . James McAvoy captures the right combination of nerd... |
408,923 | 2,567,136 | 62,452 | 7 | O , Mistress Minefield | I had to stop the DVD and wind back when I caught the briefest glimpse of someone who looked like Anouk Aimee in the boxing match sequence and sure enough it was one of the two stars of Lelouch's biggest hit by a country mile , Un Homme et une femme , though what she was meant to signify is anybody's guess . As if that... |
409,672 | 2,567,136 | 44,686 | 7 | Cruel Fete | It was slightly surreal to watch this film at the National Film Theatre given that the NFT was itself part of the Festival Of Britain so that today's audience may well have been sitting on the site of the corner shop that was discovered to be right in the path of the development . The drama , such as it is , surrounds ... |
410,104 | 2,567,136 | 387,131 | 7 | The Rake's Progress | As someone who 1 ) admires the novels of John Le Carre and 2 ) is the owner of a healthy dose of cynicism I was slightly uneasy when I began to read reports that this was the ' best ' adaptation of any Le Carre novel . Though it's a while since I've seen either I don't recall there being much wrong with The Spy Who Cam... |
409,140 | 2,567,136 | 27,478 | 7 | Publish And Be Damned | Prevert wrote this screenplay for Renoir the same year he wrote Jenny for Marcel Carne and it's interesting to speculate what might have happened in French cinema had Prevert forged a partnership with Renoir instead of Carne . There's a lot here about workers ' rights ' a subject that still , 70 years down the line , s... |
409,228 | 2,567,136 | 42,524 | 7 | Nuts In May | If you approach this as what it is , unashamed feelgood family fare then you'll probably enjoy it without necessarily wanting to see it again for a few years . It's basically a morality tale in which good defeats bad and everyone lives happily ever after . In a nutshell - sorry about that - Jimmy Durante with wife and ... |
409,334 | 2,567,136 | 46,889 | 7 | Water Over The Dam | The DVD of this movie has just been given away with an English newspaper so that I've had a chance to watch it . There are lots of comments posted here and I've just read enough of them to note the controversy it has aroused , most of it relating to deviations from the facts that used to come under the heading of poeti... |
409,444 | 2,567,136 | 137,439 | 7 | Mellow Fruitfulness | Autumn comes round every year and so , it seems , does Eric Rohmer . Essentially we're watching paint dry here and taking our time about it yet somehow Rohmer contrives to make watching paint dry watchable . The plot , if you can call it that , involves Marie Riviere's Isabelle contriving to find a man for her long-tim... |
409,987 | 2,567,136 | 196,460 | 7 | Collectors Item | Once again there is only one previous comment for this film , once again it is written by a Frenchman living in France and once again it registers disappointment . How I wish I could be so blase ' about French films of the 30s / 40s and let's face it , I probably would be if I could turn on my television set and see ex... |
409,941 | 2,567,136 | 77,276 | 7 | Black And Tan | This French cult movie is now available on DVD and the plus factor is that it boasts virtually all of Splendid , the theatre company who collectively wrote and acted in several landmark productions such as Le Pere Noel est une ordeure , and is a chance to see the early - it was only his second full-length film - direct... |
410,014 | 2,567,136 | 18,770 | 7 | Allan Key | This is all mood and none the worse for it . Trivia buffs will seek it out because Abel Gance had a supporting role ( to say nothing of Marguerite Gance as Madeleine Usher ) , Luis Bunuel adapted Poe and quit as co-director when he failed to see eye to eye with Epstein . Several posters have praised the music which I f... |
409,185 | 2,567,136 | 291,538 | 7 | Lite-Housekeeping | Yet another small gem from that great year of French pics 2002 . The talent is out of the right bottle too if anybody asks you , writer director Claude Berri and male lead Jean-Pierre Bacri , no slouch as a writer himself . To a certain extent is IS a male fantasy with Emillie Duquenne all but throwing herself at Bacri... |
409,154 | 2,567,136 | 84,843 | 7 | Strike Up The Bland | Despite a reasonably varied output Jacques Demy is destined to be remembered by film buffs as the onlie begetter of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and by admirers of Cole Porter , Larry Hart , Frank Loesser , Johnny Mercer etc as the William MacGonigall of lyricists , indeed Demy established something of a record in the nu... |
409,537 | 2,567,136 | 381,849 | 7 | L'hommes du train | At least they waited fifty years to remake this which means that most of the popcorn brigade wouldn't have seen the original and have probably never seen an actor half as good as Van Heflin who makes Christian Bale look like the cardboard cutout he is . A lot of critics have been salivating over this remake and hailing... |
409,752 | 2,567,136 | 46,960 | 7 | Hello , Mary Lou , Goodbye , Job | In the early fifties the portmanteau movie was still hanging around ; it came in several formats ; the easiest was to adapt short works by noted writers , Maugham , O'Henry , Maupassant , etc . La Ronde was one variant on this using a common theme and different actors for each episode . Souvenirs perdus linked four sto... |
409,015 | 2,567,136 | 31,282 | 7 | It Wasn't All Classics . . . | . . . in 1939 though they'd have you think so . There were also bread-and-butter entries like this one , pleasant enough , entertaining even , but lacking that little ' extra ' in an era that offered Easy Living , The Awful Truth etc . Of course anything with Eve Arden is going to be watchable and it's especially inter... |
409,339 | 2,567,136 | 22,611 | 7 | It's In The Bag | This was the first of several collaborations between Jacques Prevert and his kid brother Pierre . Prevert senior wrote two other screenplays that same year but it was junior's first At Bat . For a four and a half reeler it's quite tasty albeit weighed down by a hackneyed plot - the one where all the guys want to marry ... |
409,492 | 2,567,136 | 29,345 | 7 | Taking The Fifth | For someone who takes movies as seriously as I do and has logged literally millions of miles of celluloid there's still an awful lot I've yet to see including musicals , one of my favorite genres and this was one of them yet barely five minutes in I realized that I had in fact seen it albeit via a remake with non-too-s... |
409,990 | 2,567,136 | 44,753 | 7 | Blade Ruiner | Gordon Douglas was something of a poor man's Michael Curtiz at Warner Brothers inasmuch as he could turn his hand to just about any genre the studio assigned him to . In the early fifties Alan Ladd had run out of exotic locations to meet Veronica Lake and William Bendix at Paramount and although his greatest performanc... |
409,373 | 2,567,136 | 40,325 | 7 | Past Its Cell-By Date | This is a fairly elusive early film by Mank and it's nice to get the chance to catch up with it in the Mank season at the NFT - where , bizarrely , they're showing 19 out of the 20 movies he directed and inexplicably omitting Somewhere In The Night which is freely available on DVD . The original work was by John Galswo... |
409,954 | 2,567,136 | 25,480 | 7 | Danielle In The Lion's Den | Those who love Wilder can and will find something to love in even his most blah projects - The Emperor Waltz for example - and this is no exception . It's fascinating to notice little ' touches ' not necessarily commonplace in 1934 like the early scene when the protagonist , recently stripped of his car by a tough-love... |
409,490 | 2,567,136 | 49,406 | 7 | They Shoot Horses , Don't They | Kubrick made this film before being stricken by what I call David Leanitis , a disease with no known cure in which directors who have done sterling work and enjoyed great success with ' small ' films become susceptible to an overwhelming urge to do ' epic ' witness Lean himself who made a brilliant and acknowledged all... |
409,833 | 2,567,136 | 62,380 | 7 | When in Rome | All three principals - Writer , Director , Actor - had turned out far superior stuff to this and I speak as someone who bows to no one in my admiration for Richard L . Breen's Pete Kelly's Blues and A Foreign Affair ( co-written with Billy Wilder ) , Gordon Douglas ' Young At Heart and Frank Sinatra's entire career . J... |
409,119 | 2,567,136 | 179,096 | 7 | Ivory Coasting | Richard Pottier , all but forgotten today , was as fine a journeyman as any director working in French cinema - he was actually born in what used to be known as the Austro-Hungarian empire in the middle of the twentieth century ; he worked with Prevert , Fernandel and directed no less than five movies for Continental d... |
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