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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409,216 | 2,567,136 | 49,177 | 7 | The Star Who Came In From The Cold | Several posters have quoted Renoir voicing his desire to make a film showing Ingrid Bergman smiling to camera . The short answer is wouldn't we all whilst the harsh reality is that only a select few got to do so . At this stage of her career Bergman couldn't get arrested ; in 1949 she left Hollywood to make a picture i... |
409,264 | 2,567,136 | 35,916 | 7 | Old Hat | For some reason I've never seen this movie on television though it's reasonable to assume it's been shown over the years so when it surfaced as part of an 8 Fox Musicals boxed set at a silly price ( £30 , which works out at £3 . 75 a throw ) I snapped it up , especially since 1 ) it was selling elsewhere at £50 and 2 )... |
408,900 | 2,567,136 | 40,317 | 7 | Three-Quarter Wilder . . . | . . . is , of course , streets ahead of four-quarter Godard but this does disappoint more than it pleases . If she's not careful Joan Fontaine is likely to wind up on the wrong end of a Trivial Pursuit question : Which non-singing , non-dancing actress still managed to co-star with a leading singer and THE dancer of th... |
409,848 | 2,567,136 | 443,453 | 7 | Let's Hear It For Anti-P | The negative aspect of this brilliant satire is that it won't really change anything . Those sad no-lifers who invented PC and continue to practice it , slowly making the world an unhappier place will fail to recognize themselves as the butt of this black humour , people like that never do . The other sad thing is that... |
408,980 | 2,567,136 | 78,978 | 7 | What If . . . | . . . Alec Harvey ( Trevor Howard ) and Laura Jesson ( Celia Johnson ) hadn't been happily ( even boringly ) married when they had that chance meeting in ' Brief Encouter ' but instead full of angst because 1 ) his wife was terminally ill and they had mutually agreed that she would take her own life and 2 ) her husband... |
409,063 | 2,567,136 | 73,221 | 7 | Perrier Masquerading As Champagne | This is perhaps best viewed as a complement to La Femme Infidele inasmuch as both films feature infidelity in the well-heeled set and in both cases infidelity segues into murder with both murderers confiding in their spouses - those same spouses on whom they'd been cheating - whilst waiting to be nailed by the flics . ... |
409,313 | 2,567,136 | 443,496 | 7 | The Art Of Falling Down In Darkness | Here we have on one level a Burke hareing about , ironically someone has snatched his body and attached it to a mind that is spinning out of control . For the referential it's possible to read it as Mamet's take on Heart of Darkness and / or Falling Down ; for those who wouldn't know Joseph Conrad from Lefty Grove it's... |
409,084 | 2,567,136 | 993,789 | 7 | Cruel Yule | Clearly in one respect at least a disciple of Jacques Rivette , Arnaud Desplechin doesn't do brief . Presumably he sees anything under two hours as a one-reeler and tends to deliver around two and a half hours as a mean average . He also has a tendency to use actors over and over - for example Manu Devos , Mathieu Amla... |
409,979 | 2,567,136 | 55,798 | 7 | One Flew Into The Cuckoo's Nest | Although there is fine support from the likes of Karl Malden , Neville Brand , Thelma Ritter , Betty Field and Eddie O'Brien in a cameo the film stands or falls on Lancaster's central performance and it's a performance that can't be faulted . Having established himself in one prison movie , Brute Force , and followed i... |
409,840 | 2,567,136 | 52,556 | 8 | Lovers And Other Strangers | This represents yet another nail in the coffin of the new wavelet ; released in 1958 it features everything the spoiled brats were rebelling against and as if that weren't enough it was shot by Henri Decae , who they liked to claim as their own , proving here that at heart he was light years away from their hand-held a... |
409,181 | 2,567,136 | 28,214 | 8 | Stocks And Shears | There may be a term paper in French filmmakers and money metaphors . Back in 1921 Marcel L'Herbier adapted the Greek legend of Prometheus and equated him with a financier ; fifteen years later Maurice Tourneur - who had spent a considerable time making American films - adapted the Biblical story of Samson and made him ... |
409,009 | 2,567,136 | 864,691 | 8 | The Music That Makes Them Dance | Triple-threat Noemie Lvovsky is one of that relatively small group of French female directors who continue to act - her latest acting job , Valerie Bruni-Tedeschi's Actress , opens in Paris next week . When she gets in right , as she did in Sentiments , Lvovsky is right up there with Nicole Garcia and Valerie Lemercier... |
410,191 | 2,567,136 | 124,314 | 8 | Last Round At The Coach And Hearses | It would be interesting to know what a contemporary audience made of this when it hit the salles in 1939 ; it was one of 94 French films released that year but it's debatable whether any other wove together so many elements from other movies . Consider : The leading lady is an officer in the Salvation Army ( Major Barb... |
409,845 | 2,567,136 | 160,737 | 8 | The Final Tattoo ? | In retrospect this was ideal fodder for the masses on the brink of war ; sight gags , songs , comedy AND Fernandel , one of THE comic icons of French Cinema . The plot is just something that permits Fernandel to strut his stuff - his boss catches him at a funfair when he should be working in his capacity as night watch... |
408,792 | 2,567,136 | 30,642 | 8 | Foxy Trot | Some forty years ago there were two enormously talented French Writer-Directors who moved effortlessly between Stage and Screen , often adapting their own theatrical triumphs for film . If Marcel Pagnol is arguably still remembered outside France by virtue of his great Trilogy ( Marius , Fanny , Cesar ) of the early th... |
409,741 | 2,567,136 | 160,730 | 8 | Funny Girl , Funny Lady , Funny Kid | This was 18 year old Danielle Darrieux ' seventeenth film in four years and if we accept that not that many teenagers get to make that many films it becomes apparent that she was more than just another ' cute ' kid . The fact that her co-star , Albert Prejean had made his first film when Darrieux was just four years ol... |
409,170 | 2,567,136 | 41,800 | 8 | When ' Teen ' Equalled Clean | If , as I'm sure I read somewhere , the word ' teenager ' was coined in the mid 1950s then the boys and girls who epitomize joie de vivre in this minor masterpiece from 1949 are merely young people who are not yet in search of a label . It has been compared to the New Wavelet that would swirl round the ankles of older ... |
409,854 | 2,567,136 | 193,239 | 8 | The Grooms Came C . O . | If you attempt to take this film literally you'll encounter the kind of problems that one of the three people who have posted reviews here has noted . Until Time Travel arrives it remains impossible to know just WHAT it felt like in 1939 with a World War waiting in the wings , i . e . would we crave escapism and yearn ... |
410,264 | 2,567,136 | 446,707 | 8 | A Plague On Both Your Houses | Yet another entertaining policier from France and one of the last films made by the late and very much lamented Michel Serrault , which would be reason enough to see it but as it turns out that reason is superfluous because the film stands on its own two feet as an excellent thriller with an unusual storyline which beg... |
409,291 | 2,567,136 | 54,494 | 8 | Bizarre Notes From Underground | This is a screen adaptation of one of those novels they said couldn't be filmed . Raymonde Queneau is a sort of James Joyce-lite whose work is studded with word-play but Jean-Paul Rappeneau and director Louis Malle make it work . A simple premise - Zazie , played by 12 year old Catherine Demongeot , is brought to Paris... |
408,808 | 2,567,136 | 814,786 | 8 | The Two Faces Of Lulu | Carine Tardieu has turned out a gently enigmatic film of the kind that used to be called a ' woman's picture ' . The protagonist Lucille , known as Lulu is first seen in a pre-credit sequence fighting in a school playground and looking about ten or twelve whilst a short time later she is seen at the wheel of the family... |
409,217 | 2,567,136 | 30,637 | 8 | Hungarian Rhapsody | There's a wonderful ' in joke ' at work here : Leslie Howard , the ultimate ' English ' man , teacher of English and expert ON English was actually Hungarian though George Bernard Shaw could have had no idea of this when , in his original play he created a Hungarian pupil of Higgins who became so adept that he , too , ... |
408,844 | 2,567,136 | 45,569 | 8 | Goldilocks At Graveside | Irwin Shaw settled in Paris in 1951 and remained based there for two decades and it's fun to speculate that he saw this movie there and found the concept - during a funeral five people , the wife , son , daughter , mistress and a business associate of the deceased give their respective takes on his life - sufficiently ... |
409,223 | 2,567,136 | 45,592 | 8 | Call Me Bashful | In almost every way Sally Adams was the perfect role for La Merm ; brash , vulgar , strident , these were qualities she acquired seemingly in the womb and the role called for them all - in spades . It's also arguably the best of Irving Berlin's four ' Book ' shows - he was represented on Broadway several times but larg... |
409,220 | 2,567,136 | 41,763 | 8 | Carne ' At The Carney | This movie opens with the epitome of Noir ; EXT . Street . Night . Rain lashing down , light dappling the cobbles . A woman walking away from camera . Cut to : Man waiting up ahead . He takes out a gun as the woman approaches and puts a slug where it will do the most good . The woman crumples the man walks away . We st... |
409,487 | 2,567,136 | 112,769 | 8 | The Postwoman Always Shoots Twice | Isabelle Huppert picked up another ' Best Actress ' Cesar for her role here which cast her slightly against type as a sullen , resentful , postal worker with a built-in grudge against anyone more affluent . When Sandrine Bonnaire comes to work as a ' domestic ' at the local Gotrocks Manor it's only a matter of time unt... |
410,263 | 2,567,136 | 877,621 | 8 | Yentl Come Home | Don't see this if there are no subtitles and your French is sketchy at best to non-existent otherwise you'll drive yourself crazy trying to figure out if it's a fantasy or what . It's 1917 and the war is in full spate . In the North East of the country Sylvie Testud gets a Dear Jean letter and instead of murmuring phil... |
409,139 | 2,567,136 | 83,611 | 8 | Belleville Rendezvous | This is one of those realistic polars where you can't tell the cops from the hoods without a scorecard . The premise is simplicity itself ; the star balance ( informer ) of the Belleville district is assassinated in the first minutes leaving the local cops with a vacancy to fill . Their thinking turns to Dede ( Leotard... |
408,811 | 2,567,136 | 43,927 | 8 | Arsenic And New Lace | I'm a little bemused that some people have been beefing about Guitry's penchant for introducing his cast at the beginning of a film ; but this is what Guitry DOES and to complain about it is like complaining that Frank Sinatra performed I've Got You Under My Skin in each of his live concerts ( note to pedants : every l... |
408,987 | 2,567,136 | 41,735 | 8 | After You , Claude | Talk about referential : There's a moment very early on in which Ann Todd has just arrived on holiday from England and explores the hotel suite where husband Claude Rains will join her in a day or two . The suite is one of a pair with adjoining rooms and she walks out onto a balcony telling us in voice-over of an old l... |
409,578 | 2,567,136 | 101,324 | 8 | Two Yanks At Oxford | This was screened late last night on the BBC and provided another chance to see this excellent film written by and starring Michael Palin who based the story on his own great-grandfather who left Oxford to marry a woman he met whilst on holiday . Public School / Universities are , of course , something the British film... |
408,970 | 2,567,136 | 433,383 | 8 | Think Pink | Two newsrooms preserved in black and white 60 years apart ; two men who enjoyed power - albeit one considerably more than the other - who both thought it gave them the divine right to manipulate public opinion ; two exceptional ensemble acting teams . I doubt very much whether George Clooney knowingly set out to replic... |
410,198 | 2,567,136 | 65,179 | 8 | Pearl Choker | Andre Cayette arguably pioneered social comment in French cinema with his Are We All Murderers in 1952 , other film makers flagged down the bandwagon and hopped aboard but none perhaps more unexpectedly than Claude Lelouch who had himself cornered the market in chocolate-box cinema and whose films celebrated Life rathe... |
409,883 | 2,567,136 | 43,880 | 8 | St Louis-lite | Without checking out reviews of the time it's pure speculation whether this blatant rip-off of Meet Me In St Louis went undetected . It's possible that critics and / or viewers weren't so analytical back then but against that is the fact that less than a decade had passed before the Musical Queen of the Warner lot went... |
409,226 | 2,567,136 | 24,034 | 8 | Keeler Deeler | This is a joy for anyone with an active interest in songwriting in the first half of the 20th century because in addition to a vintage score yielding four standards we get uncredited appearances from not only the writers concerned , Harry Warren and Al Dubin but also Harry Akst . It's quite something when the first TEN... |
409,644 | 2,567,136 | 38,975 | 8 | The Silence Of The ( Sacrificial ) Lamb | Having just seen this - at a ' cinema du quartier ' in Paris that offers old black and white movies at 10 a . m . on Saturdays only for 3 euros - and noted the obvious symbolism I turned to this board under the impression that everyone would have made the same observations I did but no one in the dozen or so I read men... |
409,748 | 2,567,136 | 160,639 | 8 | Slaps At Sea | A wonderful time-capsule of a Europe on the brink of war - begun in 1939 and finished after the outbreak of war - and of the great liners at the end of their hey-day before they became troop carriers . The many-stranded plot contrives to pack some very representative actors of French cinema - Gaby Morlay , Jules Berry ... |
408,772 | 2,567,136 | 38,965 | 8 | Classy Nocturne | No one could say Mank didn't have a checkered career : In the 1930s he was castigated for daring to re-write Scott Fitzgerald ( in his capacity as Producer on Three Comrades , Scott's only solo writing credit , he felt obliged to ' tidy ' up several sequences ) and in the 1960s he was the guy brought in to re-write and... |
409,424 | 2,567,136 | 814,690 | 8 | Worth The Wait | Those who had a problem with Jerome Bonell's first film , Le Chignon d'Olga , aren't going to find this one any easier to sit through . Bonell is an observer rather than an innovator and he seems to aspire to bring a Chekhovian melancholy to rural France without necessarily going so far as Chekhovian plotting . Two of ... |
408,993 | 2,567,136 | 45,793 | 8 | Cultured Pearl | This has just aired on television some fifty-five years after the initial release so it has a license to appear dated yet it holds up surprisingly well . Burt Lancaster and Monty Clift would appear to be the only choices for the roles of Warden and Prewitt respectively ; if we consider who else was working in 1953 Paul... |
408,935 | 2,567,136 | 33,209 | 8 | Time Was . . . | . . . when a film by Julien Duvivier featuring heavy hitters Raimu , Louis Jouvet , Michele Morgan , Suzy Prim , Fernand Ledoux and Robert Le Vigan would not have disappointed my French friend quite so much . We tend to agree more than we disagree and are both great admirers of Duvivier but this time we differ slightly... |
410,060 | 2,567,136 | 37,094 | 8 | Dark Victory | As Boxed Sets go the one featuring Bette Davis in The Letter , Dark Victory , Now , Voyager and Mr . Skeffington has to be one of the best around - especially as HMV reduced it to £19 . 99 or £5 per film . I bought the set four days ago and have now viewed all four titles and in terms of Davis's acting there is little ... |
409,779 | 2,567,136 | 52,617 | 8 | Graham Cracker | This film seems to have been vilified above and beyond the call of critical duty at the time of its initial release and a couple of posters on this page have seen fit to heave the old harpoon at a very underrated film . Though far from an expert on Scott Fitzgerald I have a strong feeling that he was around forty when ... |
409,891 | 2,567,136 | 202,656 | 8 | That's Life | Thanks to the generosity of the guys in France and Norway I now own copies of arguably the three most significant films of writer-director Albert Valentin . Chronologically these are L'Entraineuse , Marie-Martine and this one . Unfortunately Valentin's self-esteem was weaker than his talent and when films of this calib... |
409,864 | 2,567,136 | 65,234 | 8 | Omega Man | Despite a truly atrocious print badly dubbed into English and one that broke down four times during the screening , returning each time minus several frames the power of the film-making shines through . I'm not a political animal and don't make a point of seeking out political films but I am a great admirer of Yves Mon... |
410,008 | 2,567,136 | 43,809 | 8 | Hobohemia | If you have trouble suspending disbelief then this isn't for you . Consider : a woman already in late middle age finds a newborn baby in a cabbage patch and raises it as her own . Think about it ; she makes no attempt to locate the mother , who may well be a confused teenager in need of medical treatment and seemingly ... |
409,483 | 2,567,136 | 35,157 | 8 | Trumpet Blues | Hindsight is okay but we should keep an eye on it . For example hindsight allows us to speculate that Fox , having signed Glenn Miller and his orchestra to a two-picture deal and despite the fact that the band was arguably the best-known and most popular in the country , decided that for their first At Bat the band nee... |
409,422 | 2,567,136 | 420,548 | 8 | WHAT A Dog ! | Within thirty minutes I was thinking seriously of moving to Argentina or , as it's depicted by Carlos Sorin , Utopia-West . This is a country where a young and reasonably attractive girl can find herself stranded in the middle of nowhere and bask in the knowledge that she won't be raped or otherwise molested by the fir... |
408,926 | 2,567,136 | 309,872 | 8 | Culture Vultures | Having more or less proved himself as an actor Guillaume Canet tried his hand at Writing and Directing and the result is fairly respectable so that anyone seeing this in 2002 may well have predicted a solid future for Guillaume behind the camera and would have been proved right when Ne le dis a personne won him a Best ... |
409,224 | 2,567,136 | 792,981 | 8 | Father , Son And Wholly Boast | I've yet to see Jacques Gamblin give a bad performance and this is no exception . Gamblin is one of those actors who paint with a king-size palette and range through the spectrum at will often breathing life into cardboard cutout characters . Today he's Gabriel , one of life's losers who shows up out of the blue to mak... |
410,186 | 2,567,136 | 59,050 | 8 | Qui ne tue pas Bambi ? | Admirers of Yves Montand will always have a special affection for this one for without it we may never have had Cesar et Rosalie , L'Aveu , Le Cercle Rouge , Vincent , Francois , Paul et les autres , Police Python 357 , Le Choix des Armes , Le Sauvage , Garcon , Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources for it was here th... |
409,676 | 2,567,136 | 474,312 | 8 | I KNEW It Would Be Good | Jean-Pierre Darroussin has enhanced - and in some cases stolen - some seventy odd movies in the last 30 years , quietly racking up excellent character studies and when offered the chance to ' carry ' a major movie - Feux Rouges - he was more than up to the task and succeeded brilliantly . Now he has directed his first ... |
408,786 | 2,567,136 | 413,895 | 8 | Spin Doctor | There's a major hurdle facing anyone who contemplates adapting Elwyn Brook White into another medium ; they're tampering with the supreme Stylist ( he even co-authored the definitive work on the subject , The Elements of Style ) so it's no contest for the average Hollywood Hack , and Susannah Grant and Karey Kirkpatric... |
408,839 | 2,567,136 | 45,899 | 8 | Photo-Finish | With a little better screenplay this would have been a musical to rival any turned out by MGM . Quickly re-teaming Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds after Singin ' In The Rain and wisely jettisoning both Gene Kelly and Comden and Green the studio came up with a plot that fit where it touched then adorned it with some... |
409,103 | 2,567,136 | 429,227 | 8 | Cafe Society | This is a pleasant , feel-good movie that may not exactly set the world on fire but may warm a few hearts . Two families run two cafes one on each side of a Route Nationale where it runs through a small town and the families are deadly rivals . The highest profiles are those of mother / daughter Josiane Balasko and Syl... |
409,266 | 2,567,136 | 110,963 | 8 | Thompson Does It Again | I can't recall ever being disappointed in a film written by Daniele Thompson who has gone on to prove herself a brilliant writer-director also . Nothing if not versatile she began with one of the biggest box-office hits in French cinema , La Grande Vadrouille , which is still being revived close to half a century later... |
409,984 | 2,567,136 | 815,092 | 8 | Stage Fright | There's a term paper waiting to be written on the distinction between French actresses who abandon acting in favour of writing / directing - Ann Fontaine , Toni Marshall , Diane Kurys , Coline Serrau , Vera Belmont , Danielle Dubroux , Jeanne Labrune , Marion Vernoux , those who continue to act - Valerie Lemercier , Ag... |
409,733 | 2,567,136 | 1,226,271 | 8 | United We Fall | If it does nothing else this film has already raised the age of target audiences in the modern cinema to something approaching half a century given that the main thrust is the six weeks in 1974 that Brian Clough was manager of Leeds United . Football and I have a tenuous relationship , I like it when Man U wins and Ars... |
409,653 | 2,567,136 | 66,318 | 8 | Truss Me , I'm A Cynic | By and large I can take or leave Chabrol but he has made a lot of films with Isabelle Huppert which is more or less how and why I began watching his stuff . Apparently he had a ' rich ' period around 1970 give or take a year or so either way and this entry was right at the heart of it . If he has a schtick it is subjec... |
409,771 | 2,567,136 | 35,001 | 8 | Summer Lightning | A cynic with a little culture under his belt may be tempted to dismiss this as Idiot's Delight With Spin but to do so is to reveal a shallowness not lacking in the film . Robert E Sherwood enjoyed a success with his play , Idiot's Delight , the subsequent movie adaptation was ho hum at best and several decades later th... |
409,426 | 2,567,136 | 189,163 | 8 | Buried Treasure | This is relatively late Guitry but no worse for that . There's a certain ' feel ' to a film by Guitry that's elusive and resistant to conventional methods of nailing it down but once you've encountered it you'll know it anywhere . Of course having stumbled on something of a signature - a penchant for introducing the ac... |
409,314 | 2,567,136 | 45,943 | 8 | From Bard To Verse | This is one of a handful of Mank titles that remain unavailable on DVD - at least in England - so it was good to catch up with it as part of a Brando cycle at the NFT albeit in a shoddy print with several frames missing at the beginning so that half a speech is missing . Mank was a writer himself , of course and though... |
409,137 | 2,567,136 | 330,702 | 8 | Vera Cruz | I've just finished reading what feels like a series of unqualified Raves for this movie and though I'm unable to add another neither do I feel able to trash it . This is what I knew about it before I saw it : 1 ) It was co-written and directed by Sergio Castellitto who also played the male lead and was adapted from a n... |
409,336 | 2,567,136 | 918,927 | 8 | All In The Mind | Over and above everything else this is a superb chamber piece , a string quartet in which each voice complements the others and the whole is equal to its parts . Clearly written originally for the stage the opening out though skilfully done is academic as is any moral , ethical stance given that writer director Shanley... |
409,332 | 2,567,136 | 50,419 | 8 | Tea And Empathy | If you put Fred Astaire in ANYTHING he's going to Style and Charm it to death ; if you put Audrey Hepburn in ANYTHING she's going to Enchant it to death so together they should be unbeatable ; and they almost are , BUT . One of the problems was that the original Broadway show Funny Face was part of an era where the ' B... |
409,012 | 2,567,136 | 28,438 | 8 | Bach To Basics | As a rule biopics of composers have a tough time pleasing everyone ; purists kvetch about chronological lapses , music lovers feel short-changed and the neutrals feel that less music and more story - fabricated or not - would be better all round . Having said that Abel Gance has made a very decent fist of Beethoven's l... |
410,052 | 2,567,136 | 836,700 | 8 | Last Summer | This is a haunting film that's difficult to classify combining as it does the melancholy of Uncle Vanya with background music by the Dave Brubeck quartet . The central metaphor may seem a tad labored but it's also effective : the film opens with a lyrical shot of a large , rambling country house in which young children... |
409,556 | 2,567,136 | 39,420 | 8 | Ghost-Writers In The Sky | It's a wonderful conceit - though no one seems to have noticed it - to have a bona fide ghost dictate a book to a bona fide mortal who then publishes it under her own name and cleans up , giving at once a new meaning to and putting spin on the term ghost-writer , a term applicable mainly to volumes of memoirs / autobio... |
409,664 | 2,567,136 | 39,416 | 8 | Borcht Circuit Blues | This film has been available on DVD for a couple of years but I've resisted buying it having seen it on TV several years ago and aware that ' message ' movies seldom stand up in later years . Actually I was pleasantly surprised although I do agree with several of the points made by other posters here ; yes , there is a... |
410,111 | 2,567,136 | 35,019 | 8 | Major League | Let's hear it for the NFT . At LAST they're mounting a season of well-made , sophisticated , accessible films that appeal to a WIDE audience and not the usual half dozen academics augmented by the best of Rent-A-Pseud . During November and December it will be possible to view every film that Billy Wilder directed but n... |
409,757 | 2,567,136 | 338,427 | 8 | Brief Encounter | Credit where it's due , please , knockers . The title surely says it all . It's not so long ago that ' shopgirl fiction ' was a forerunner of today's ' airport ' fiction and / or Aga-Sagas . It was also commonplace to hear references to ' shopgirls ' in movies , in terms of the Cinderella stories allegedly the reading ... |
408,752 | 2,567,136 | 41,487 | 8 | Lear On Mulberry Street | There are , of course , as we are constantly reminded by pedants , only seven basic plots and the trick is to apply spin and disguise the original as best you can . For this one Mank - who virtually wrote the entire screenplay without credit - took a handful of pages from Jerome Weidman's I'll Never Go There Anymore an... |
409,783 | 2,567,136 | 405,422 | 8 | Nice Little Film , Shame About The Title | This is the kind of title that in most cases I wouldn't even bother reading reviews for but in this case several people actually told me it was worth seeing so I checked the reviews and figured there may be something in it . All I can say is I'm glad I did . I notice that the bulk of the reviews on the first page of th... |
409,417 | 2,567,136 | 26,564 | 8 | Spanish Flies | After sixty years what is still most striking about this film are the evocations of Flemish Art from the opening scene in a market place crowded with Brueghel figurines to the subsequent groupings of the good burghers of Boom in the style of Rembrandt and the Rubenesque womenfolk . Charles Spaak turned in his usual rel... |
409,887 | 2,567,136 | 47,944 | 8 | Eat Your Heart Out Spiderman | Students of irony will turn up lots of grist for their mill in this one . Minnelli , for example , was celebrated for his skillful use of color so cognizant of that the accountants forced him to shoot in Eastman Color , a pale imitation of the old three-strip Technicolor which was still available at the time but more e... |
408,846 | 2,567,136 | 39,215 | 8 | Ticket To Ride | There's a school of thought that makes a case for Pyshka as the finest adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's short story Boule de Suif . Directed by Mikhail Romm and starring Galina Sergeyava this was also the last silent film produced in Russia but I'd have to ask another Galina , a valued friend , for more information on... |
409,886 | 2,567,136 | 41,705 | 8 | A Night To Remember | In 1942 it was all too easy to interpret any movie set in the distant past ( Les Visiteurs du soir ) or in a dreamscape as here as a metaphor for avoiding the present and / or commenting obliquely on the Occupation but be that as it may both the Carne-Prevert ' Visiteurs ' and this entry from Marcel L'Herbier more than... |
409,142 | 2,567,136 | 301,414 | 8 | The Greener Grass | Bear with me as I take you back to the 1960s . You're a mogul with the power to Green Light a property and I've got 60 seconds to ' pitch ' to you . Okay , an Amtrak pulls in to Buffalo Crap , Iowa and Charles Bronson gets off . His eyes , slits in a pillbox at the best of times , narrow even more as he surveys Nowhere... |
408,851 | 2,567,136 | 457,655 | 8 | Danish Blue | It seems that France isn't the only country in Europe where female directors turn out classy movies . Susanne Bier , a new name to me , hits one out of the park with this Art House entry . It takes its time in getting where it's going and there are those who may find the top-and-tail Indian sequences superfluous and le... |
410,258 | 2,567,136 | 47,956 | 8 | Ground Forces | For a film about the armed forces with virtually no action , no love interest and over half its running time set in a court room this is strangely effective . Prior to Jack Lemmon's emergence on the scene in the early 50s no one did ' decency ' as well as Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper and that being the case Cooper cou... |
408,932 | 2,567,136 | 246,278 | 8 | Mais oui | Despite the international success of Les Choristes Gerard Jugnot remains virtually unknown in England . Of the 92 movies in which he has acted - 16 of which he wrote and 10 of which he directed - only seven have been shown in England and in two of them ( Le Juge et l'assassin , Que le fete commence ) he was uncredited ... |
409,219 | 2,567,136 | 47,969 | 8 | Love From Julie | I've never been much of an admirer of Lesley Caron but it's undeniable that she does possess the required ingenuousness for the role of an orphan doubling as Cinderella . Jean Webster's novel has been adapted many times not least as a stage Musical , Love From Judy , in the late forties . The natural warmth , charm and... |
408,912 | 2,567,136 | 487,485 | 8 | You Caan Go Home Again | Blame Roger Kahn . As a fledgling reporter Kahn was assigned to ' cover ' the Brooklyn Dodgers in the early fifties , which meant he travelled with the team , roomed with them from Spring Training through to the end of the season . Thirty years later he thought it might be interesting to find out what had become of the... |
409,389 | 2,567,136 | 156,517 | 8 | Ring-A-Ding-Ding | Edmond T . Greville had almost 40 films on his Director's CV but is probably remembered only for The Hands Of Orlac which is a great pity as he proves himself here to be a fine craftsman . During the several years he spent making films in France Erich Von Stroheim played many diverse characters but never , to my knowle... |
409,286 | 2,567,136 | 202,433 | 8 | Dog Watch | I don't really understand the approach that some people bring to commenting on a given film . I'm speaking specifically of what appears to be what I can only describe as resentment that a given actor - Duke Wayne is a prime example - appears to play himself in every film when that aberration is the very thing that has ... |
408,960 | 2,567,136 | 34,862 | 8 | No Reservations . . . | . . . about recommending this to anyone with eyes and ears capable of homing in on Charm , Style , Song and Dance . It is , in fact , one of the better original musicals scored by Irving Berlin possible because it is not so reliant on his back catalogue . Astaire and Crosby play more or less Hope and Crosby , i . e . p... |
409,147 | 2,567,136 | 415,978 | 8 | Is EV'RYbody Happee ? | At a superficial level this is a modern take on ' Marty ' , the Paddy Chayefsky / Delber Mann Oscar Winner of 1955 which centred on a romance between a plug-ugly butcher , Ernest Borgnine and a ' homely ' schoolteacher , Betsy Blair . This time around the ' homliness ' is supplied by writer-director Miranda July and th... |
409,581 | 2,567,136 | 28,567 | 8 | It's All In The Mind | Erich Von Stroheim had three ' French ' periods , the late 30s , late 40s and late 50s and this is from the first period - roughly 1937-1940 . It would perhaps be foolish to equate it with two other films from that first period , Les Disparus de St Agil and La Grande Illusion , but neither is it chopped liver . Pierre ... |
409,842 | 2,567,136 | 487,469 | 8 | Chance Is A Fine Thing | This movie is a loving valentine to the wonderful Danielle Darrieux who will turn 90 on May 1st of this year and already has two further films in the can . Those who have seen Darrieux - who has been in show business for 75 years - in her youth ( she appeared in Billy Wilder's first directorial effort , Mauvaise Graine... |
410,281 | 2,567,136 | 43,577 | 8 | Catwalk | He walks through walls and she's a cat-burglar ; as winning parleys go that has to be up there with Sinatra , Crosby and Cole Porter in High Society . Director Jean Boyer will always have a special place in my heart because of the films he made with Arletty , okay , they were bread-and-butter entries but French bread a... |
410,096 | 2,567,136 | 487,505 | 8 | Thanks But No Thanks | This is a slightly disturbing film for a Francophile like me bearing as it does distinct overtones of intolerance for individual rights . Accountant Gilbert Melki , upright law-abiding citizen , in a stable ten-year marriage with cab-driver Sandrine Kiberlain is stopped my an official as he leaves the Metro smoking a c... |
409,450 | 2,567,136 | 47,880 | 8 | Cliffhanger | Cliff Odets was one of the finest American playwrights of the 20th century and several of his plays have been adapted for the screen with varying results . This is one of the best . Odets made his name with the Group Theatre in the mid thirties where one of the actors was Jules Garfinckle . Hollywood knocked that out o... |
409,233 | 2,567,136 | 462,667 | 8 | Hold That Tiger | Transposing a TV series to and / or for the big screen is not unlike expanding a short story into a novel i . e . why bother ; the obvious answer in the case of the former is money ; couch potatoes who enjoyed the series may venture to the local Multiplex and the strictly cinema audience probably missed the TV series .... |
409,939 | 2,567,136 | 106,632 | 8 | Kitchen Privileges | This was the first collaboration of the great writer-actor team of Agnes Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri ; it was a huge success on the stage and paved the way for their second play-and-subsequent-film Un Air de famille after which they concentrated on writing directly for the screen ( On Connait le chanson , Smoking / No ... |
410,224 | 2,567,136 | 487,503 | 8 | Eve In B-Flat | Clearly Denis Dercourt likes to do things the hard way ; a fine classical musician himself he seems bent on a way of combining his twin passions of classical music and film-making in a way that will render them palatable to a mass audience . Having got it right in his first At Bat , Les Cachetonniers , he didn't do qui... |
409,282 | 2,567,136 | 478,087 | 8 | Aces , Hi | Kevin Spacey really is a card ; apparently there is no movie job he won't stoop to if it subsidises his real job of running and acting at The Old Vic in London . Here he plays scammer turned Math Professor who grooms a team of MIT students to rip off the Vegas casinos by legitimately mastering the art of ' counting ' t... |
408,778 | 2,567,136 | 1,139,797 | 8 | Low Blood Count | Horror and even excessively violent movies don't even approach my radar but this multi ( albeit at minor festivals ) Award winner was so well reviewed that I decided to give it a whirl - in the same way , I did something similar a few years ago when Crouching Tiger , Hidden Dragon garnered the same sort of ecstatic Pre... |
408,969 | 2,567,136 | 66,498 | 8 | Ear ? Here ? Fear ! Cheer | It's not all that often that I for one come across a movie totally unknown to me and written , directed and performed by people who are just names albeit names worthy of respect in their own country . Ucho is one of those films from a country we used to call Czechoslovakia - Billy Wilder had a lot of fun with the name ... |
408,880 | 2,567,136 | 61,138 | 8 | Quality Street | Claude Lelouch tended to make chocolate-box films and this is certainly out of the right box of Quality Street . Today we - or at least me - are used to seeing a craggy , lived-in face on Jean-Louis Trintignant and it's something of a revelation to realize that forty years ago he was actually handsome , but then I gues... |
408,877 | 2,567,136 | 93,664 | 8 | Best Of Breed | Whether this movie is based on , inspired by or just bears a passing resemblance to Chekhov's The Lady With The Little Dog is ultimately academic because what really matters is the movie as it stands , is it good , bad or ho-hum . It's actually rather good if anybody asks you . Sure , there are things that verge on hat... |
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