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491,700 | 3,280,905 | 41,628 | 9 | Portrait of a Sociopathic Villain | It is an odd film , and the elements that made it are rather disjointed , but THE MAN ON THE EIFFEL TOWER is actually quite rewarding in the long run . When it was made in 1950 it was rare for any of the novels of Georges Simenon to appear in American or British productions . In particular the novels of Inspector Maigr... |
492,216 | 3,280,905 | 24,411 | 9 | Barrymore's Wonderful Life - But as " George Bailey " not " Potter " | This was the third of the rediscovered films that Meriam Cooper had taken out of circulation in a business deal with RKO back in the 1940s , that Turner Classic Movies showed on Wednesday , April 4 , 2006 . Of the three it is the best , mostly due to a strong story about a country doctor over the years who discovers in... |
492,350 | 3,280,905 | 74,330 | 9 | Good episode with Jack Cassidy , but Thayer David has best moment | Jack Cassidy appeared in Columbo episodes on three occasions , but my favorite one was this episode dealing with " the Great Santini " , his magician par excellence . Cassidy is starring at a nightclub / dinner club owned by Nehemiah Persoff . The club spotlights David Copperfield level magicians , and Cassidy certainl... |
492,347 | 3,280,905 | 27,693 | 9 | So Long Elmer . . . Gee We Want To See You Go | After the depressing late MGM films that Keaton did ( several in tandem with up-and-coming Jimmy Durante ) , after the divorce from Nathalie Talmadge , and a messy remarriage , and alcoholic binges , and an indifferent and vicious Louis B . Mayer , Buster hit probably the bottom of his career . But all things are relat... |
493,099 | 3,280,905 | 56,937 | 9 | A Story That Always Fascinates - No Matter How Many Versions We See Of It . | The tale of the last great ruler of Ancient Egypt , Cleopatra , has been the subject of many films . Theda Bara played her in 1917 . That version ( if it still exists ) is rarely seen - and if it were the broad gestures of early silent movies would probably strike us as funny . Nearly twenty years later , in 1934 , Cla... |
493,045 | 3,280,905 | 25,799 | 9 | Six Comedians in Clover , but the funniest line belongs to Bradley Page | It is not always certain that by mixing comedians together you will produce laughter . The comics involved have to actually like or admire each other , or be willing to put up with each other's crankiness . GO WEST with the Marx Brothers had Buster Keaton write the script as a gag man . Groucho did not think too highly... |
491,853 | 3,280,905 | 33,627 | 9 | I almost wish the film had ended slightly differently , but it is terrific | It is a very simple plot . A Nazi U-boat has been doing it's dirty work in the North Atlantic , but has to get supplies . It enters the northern part of Hudson's Bay , and the Nazis look at the Canadian landscape and spit . But they send a boat out to seek supplies and do some more damage . Unfortunately they are spott... |
492,914 | 3,280,905 | 65,657 | 9 | Bing's Darkest Character | It is Bing Crosby's acting swan song , and a worthy one . Except for his brilliant recovering alcoholic stage star in THE COUNTRY WIFE , and an occasional display of anger in his other films ( note his speech at Emperor Franz Josef about the puppies at the end of the THE EMPEROR WALTZ ) , Bing is always notable for his... |
491,596 | 3,280,905 | 45,296 | 9 | America's Favorite Foreign Revolution ? | The history of Mexico , our southern neighbor ( and sometimes victim ) is better known to American movie goers than the history of most countries . You begin with the Maya ( KINGS OF THE SUN ) , the conquest of Mexico ( THE CAPTAIN FROM CASTILE ) , then to the founding of Father Serra's missions in California ( SEVEN C... |
492,451 | 3,280,905 | 58,672 | 9 | Eric Ambler's Masterpiece ? | In the pantheon of fine thriller and adventure novelists of the 20th Century , Eric Ambler has always been in a shadow . He began writing in the 1930s , and continued turning out novels ( and screenplays ) until his death in the 1980s . With a few exceptions these novels were all quite good . But he was in the shadow o... |
491,759 | 3,280,905 | 104,452 | 9 | If One Has To Choose Between an Unpleasant Tasting Truth and a Moving Lie , Choose the Lie ! | It's not the most memorable comedy with either of it's two stars , nor did it get more than mediocre reviews when it came out , but HOUSESITTER is actually quite an interesting comedy . It certainly is much more than the one joke everyone who critiqued the film jumped on . At the start of the film , Newton Davis ( Stev... |
493,033 | 3,280,905 | 82,970 | 9 | A Fascinating Portrait of Turn - Of - The - Century - America | When RAGTIME was published in 1980 it was a big best seller , establishing E . L . Doctorow as a leading popular novelist , and also showing the way to Mr . Doctorow to future literary work set in other periods of American history . It was optioned for the movies , and became a hit of the 1981 film season . Guaranteein... |
492,110 | 3,280,905 | 91,757 | 9 | A Delightful Pirate Romp with an atypical Matthau | Walter Matthau played many villains in his career , but his performance of the greasy , dirty , thoroughly charismatic Thomas Bartholemew Red is one of the best . Pulling out all stops ( presumably with the blessings of director Roman Polanski ) Matthau acted as the personification of guile and greed . He is seen float... |
492,894 | 3,280,905 | 394,965 | 9 | Interesting shortened form of the play and the movie . | Andy Griffith made a name for himself in the play NO TIME FOR SERGEANTS on Broadway . It , combined with his devilishly good performance as the anti-hero in A FACE IN THE CROWD established him as a star . And like Lonesome Roads , he turns to television for stardom - soon to crystallize in THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW . But ... |
493,102 | 3,280,905 | 25,681 | 9 | Love Takes A Holiday - And Grows Up A Little | After making four relatively minor films as sound movies , Douglas Fairbanks Sr . concluded his career with a good film . No ROBIN HOOD or THE BLACK PIRATE perhaps , but THE PRIVATE LIFE OF DON JUAN managed to give a coda to his career as screen presence , by giving him the role of a legendary lover who discovers that ... |
492,218 | 3,280,905 | 24,484 | 9 | Six " Lost " Films Revived | It is a happy moment when something that has been absent for awhile returns in good shape . On Wednesday , April 4 , 2007 Turner Classic Movies ( hosted by Robert Osborne ) played ( for the first time in sixty years ) three of six films that had been out of circulations due to some complicated court settlements involvi... |
492,399 | 3,280,905 | 60,908 | 9 | If the world is an asylum , with lunatics running it , can those in asylums be sane ? | I saw this at my college over thirty years ago , and remember it fondly . Made in the late 1960s , it became a hit with American audiences in the grips of our madness called " Vietnam " . British soldier Charles Pumpnick ( Alan Bates ) is ordered in a typical screw-up to go into a French village to defuse a large bomb ... |
493,350 | 3,280,905 | 113,211 | 9 | A Touching Drama From Truman Capote | THE GRASS HARP was a novel by Truman Capote , based ( in part ) on his a youth , living with a pair of aunts in a southern town . Here his narrator hero is orphaned at an early age , and he is raised by his father's cousins ( Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie ) . Spacek is the actual head of the family , running four prosp... |
492,932 | 3,280,905 | 39,811 | 9 | Politics and the 1948 Election | Melvin Ashton is a U . S . Senator . He is also a blithering idiot , who feels that we should help the American postal worker by making their loads easier to lug . How ? By hiring more workers and cutting down the average load that way ? No . Everyone should write on tissue paper . It is lighter than current stationary... |
492,770 | 3,280,905 | 31,867 | 9 | He Used To Be A Big Shot | It is not as centrally dynamic as THE PUBLIC ENEMY nor as Freudian as WHITE HEAT , but THE ROARING TWENTIES is a leading gangster film for Jimmy Cagney as it details the rise and fall of a gangster Eddie Bartlett . The product of World War I and Prohibition , Eddie rises to great power as the head of a gang , always tr... |
492,680 | 3,280,905 | 92,148 | 9 | Slightly Superior Remake of a Clever Television Mystery | In 1976 Jack Klugman , James Franciscus , and Elizabeth Ashley made a clever television mystery , ONE OF MY WIVES IS MISSING , which is about a weird extortion scheme by an impostor . It was remade ( in my opinion slightly better ) in 1986 with Elliot Gould , Mike Farrell , and Margot Kidder in the lead roles . I say b... |
492,006 | 3,280,905 | 29,940 | 9 | Boy Meets Girl , Boy Loses Girl , Boy Gets Girl . . . | That is the philosophy of J . Carlyle Benson ( Pat O'Brien ) , fast talking screen writing hack at Monumental Pictures , a Hollywood dream creating factory run by C . Elliott Friday ( Ralph Bellamy ) . Benson constantly insists that is the simple formula for every film script he and his partner Robert Law ( James Cagne... |
492,804 | 3,280,905 | 47,550 | 9 | Somewhat curious love story plot for the 1950s . . . and Powell's last acting part | It must have been in the air at the time , though why in the Eisenhower Years ? In the 1950s several films ( two by Billy Wilder ) had successful marriages between young women and middle aged men . Wilder's two films were SABRINA ( where Audrey Hepburn falls for Humphrey Bogart ) and LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON ( where Hepbu... |
492,645 | 3,280,905 | 71,877 | 9 | When Agatha Christie Finally Came Into Her Own Cinematically | Agatha Christie lived long enough to enjoy something few of her contemporaries could claim . Movies based on Christie's novels and stories were being made back to the 1930s . One early one with Charles Laughton as Hercule Poiret so turned her off that she was hesitant about future productions of her work . But they wer... |
491,911 | 3,280,905 | 507,795 | 9 | A Tragedy Foretold ? | I liked this particular episode of ONE STEP BEYOND because it happened to be based ( unlike some of the others that had historical deaths or disasters involved ) on material I had actually been aware of - indeed that most students of the Titanic Disaster were fully aware of ever since the classic study by Walter Lord ,... |
492,447 | 3,280,905 | 60,522 | 9 | The Caper of the Cellini Venus | This is a charming comedy that is solely to entertain the audience . It's cast certainly helps the story immensely . Historically Benvenuto Cellini is remembered as the author of one of the classic autobiographies of all times . But he was also a great gold and silversmith - but tragically only one or two of his wonder... |
492,032 | 3,280,905 | 550,297 | 9 | Cribb's Social Problems , and 19th Century Pugilism | This novel-turned-to-television play is set in the late 1870s . At that time pugilism , which was about to be organized by the Marquis of Queensbury's rules , was turning away from the old fashioned style of boxing called " bare-knuckled " boxing . Before one boxed with boxing gloves the boxers hit each other without a... |
492,752 | 3,280,905 | 550,294 | 9 | Chief Inspector Jowett's big moment in the " Cribb " Series | David Waller was a familiar face in British television and movies in his career - never a big name character actor but a dependable one . His best recalled performance ( to me ) was as that master politician Stanley Baldwin ( in EDWARD AND MRS . SIMPSON ) forced to manipulate a foolish monarch off the throne ( he does ... |
493,042 | 3,280,905 | 67,848 | 9 | The Romantic versus The Realistic in the Modern World | With his roman nose profile and height , and before he put on weight , George C . Scott was a natural looking actor to essay the role of that greatest of fictional detectives Sherlock Holmes . But for some reason he never got the nod to do a film on Holmes or Conan Doyles stories . Instead , he did get to play a pseudo... |
492,835 | 3,280,905 | 100,395 | 9 | The Pressures of Hollywood Names and Talent | POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE is based on the novel by Carrie Fisher which has certain traces from her own family background with her mother ( Debbie Reynolds ) and her father ( Eddie Fisher ) . Ms Fisher has had a good career in movies , best for the original Star Wars Trilogy ( as Princess Leia ) , but in other films , suc... |
492,115 | 3,280,905 | 25,948 | 9 | Johnny , what ' d I do wrong ? | Wallace Beery was a complicated man . He was ( from what I have read of him ) a nasty customer in many ways - he skirted the edge of the law on several occasions . But he was an entertaining performer , in both drama ( CHINA SEAS , THE CHAMP ) or comedy ( DINNER AT EIGHT , A DATE WITH JUDY ) . Although his Oscar ( in t... |
491,974 | 3,280,905 | 629,242 | 9 | Adam Schiff : " Where did these people learn ethics ? " Jack McCoy : " Law School " Adam : " Of course ! " | This is certainly one of the sharpest written and twisty Law and Order episodes , because of the secret at the base of it all . A marriage councilor is murdered in her office , and soon Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Rey Curtis ( Jerry Orbach and Benjamin Bratt ) are investigating how the killer got into her office in a... |
492,929 | 3,280,905 | 28,108 | 9 | Lincoln's advice | After the failure of " The Crusades " at the box office , Cecil B . DeMille stopped doing films about non-American history . His films for the next thirteen years were about our history from Jean Lafitte to World War II ( Dr . Wassell ) . The first in order of production was this film , starring Gary Cooper as Wild Bil... |
493,248 | 3,280,905 | 35,417 | 9 | The Law and Life : Striking a Perfect Balance | Cary Grant has a curious role in this film - he is a labor agitator . He has been stirring up matters in his native town against the local big business factory , owned by Charles Dingle . Then , there is a fire at the factory - an arson fire . Grant is suspected and arrested for the arson ( and subsequently for the mur... |
491,905 | 3,280,905 | 22,058 | 9 | Poor Charley Hall ? | In the pantheon of character actors that supported Laurel and Hardy over the years Charley Hall is second to Jimmy Finleyson as their constant foe ( or victim ) . Hall was a good journeyman comedian , and appeared in many shorts besides those with the boys . Inevitably they irritate him ( which may be why Finn is somew... |
493,152 | 3,280,905 | 14,358 | 9 | Not His Best - But His Second Best is Better Than Most People's Best | I regret giving THE PILGRIM a " 9 " . It is so well done it deserves a " 10 " but one so wishes it had more scenes to it one's disappointment makes it lesser than say THE GOLD RUSH or CITY LIGHTS or MODERN TIMES . Chaplin was trying to get away from his classic tramp figure , but public love of the character forced him... |
493,263 | 3,280,905 | 28,138 | 9 | Nifty little comedy thriller | Somehow , when thinking of movie couples in the golden age of film , Carole Lombard's partnership with Fred MacMurray gets overlooked . Not as glamorous as Tracy and Hepburn , Hepburn and Grant , Grant and Dunne , Eddy and MacDonald , MacDonald and Chevalier , Bogart and Bacall , it still got tremendous mileage in come... |
492,092 | 3,280,905 | 14,341 | 9 | Buster tales on the " chivalric " south | Not quite up there with THE GENERAL , THE NAVIGATOR , SHERLOCK JR . and STEAMBOAT BILL , JR . , OUR HOSPITALITY gives us encouraging signs of Keaton as film creator and thinker . He had done historical films before it - the film just before this was the amusing THE THREE AGES , which was somewhat influenced by the stru... |
493,085 | 3,280,905 | 44,981 | 9 | In The Wake of Quartet , Trio , and Encore | William Sydney Porter was a citizen of North Carolina who ( following the period of Reconstruction ) moved to Texas . He married and worked in a bank . His wife became very ill . Now he was charged with embezzlement ( presumably for his wife's medical bills ) . He fled the U . S . to Latin America , and then returned w... |
491,613 | 3,280,905 | 44,928 | 9 | An Unexpectedly Nice Inverted Thriller . | I have only seen this film once , and that was over two decades ago . Channel 9 in New York , one August , decided to show only British movies all month , and I happened to see this one . I wish it was revived on cable or Channel 13 , but it is relatively obscure - unfairly so . Herbert Lom has been romancing Eileen Mo... |
493,131 | 3,280,905 | 25,301 | 9 | The Height of Racial Realism in 1934 | One can make a case that this film about the African - American racial realities of the New Deal period is the equivalent of " House Of Rothschild " , a contemporary movie regarding Jews and anti-Semitism . Both movies are very well-intentioned for their day , but are somewhat appalling for the present day . " House Of... |
492,779 | 3,280,905 | 64,030 | 9 | A matter of delayed , bad timing | I have mentioned elsewhere that the Tudor family ( particularly those two main pillars : Henry VIII and Elizabeth I ) are the most popular British reigning family in Anglo-American films . Only Charles II ( of the follow-up Stuart family ) , Henry V ( of the Lancastrian Plantagenets ) , Richard III ( of the York Planta... |
491,995 | 3,280,905 | 45,053 | 9 | A Colorful but lesser Ruritania | The Stewart Granger - Deborah Kerr movie version of Anthony Hope's THE PRISONER OF ZENDA is an entertaining film , but it comes off second best to it's 1937 predecessor with Ronald Colman and Madeleine Carroll . The fact that the film was in Technicolor ( Colman's was in black and white ) is odd but possibly part of th... |
491,822 | 3,280,905 | 49,656 | 9 | One of the two wickedest crimes | It has been suggested , over the years , that only blackmail / extortion approaches kidnapping as the most evil crime in the book . Not that this excuses murderers for their crimes , but there is an additional twist of the knife when the victim is missing or taken from the midst of their loved ones , or when the victim... |
492,473 | 3,280,905 | 197,270 | 9 | The first Philosopher we all tend to recall the name of . . . | He is the first and best known philosopher , as his pupils Plato and Xenophon would have wanted it , but he is also the only " great " philosopher who never wrote anything or constructed his own theory . In fact , Socrates ( fascinating man that he was ) was really the inventor of a method of inquiry , and the man who ... |
492,641 | 3,280,905 | 49,470 | 9 | Hitchcock's remake of 1956 : What Will Be Will Be | THE original film of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH was made in 1934 , and was about a bunch of foreign agents ( led by Peter Lorre ) who kidnap a little girl to force her parents to keep their mouths shut about an assassination plot they are planning at London's Albert Hall . Hitchcock took this story to develop his memori... |
493,445 | 3,280,905 | 46,754 | 9 | A Talky Film , But Highly Compelling For All That | I have always felt that if Humphrey Bogart had not died in 1957 he would have gradually left the lead roles of his greatest films to pick up very juicy character roles , and the film that convinces of this is THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA . His Harry Dawes is not the hero of this tragedy - there is no hero , just a heroine who... |
492,913 | 3,280,905 | 48,705 | 9 | The Limits of the Joys of the Swinging Single's Life | When Frank Sinatra's real film career ( the one that starts with MEET DANNY Wilson and FROM HERE TO ETERNITY and SUDDENLY ) got started , his comedies generally improved . Instead of playing the eternally naive heartthrob that the bobby-soxers supposedly enjoyed ( but is actually quite annoying in films like ANCHORS AW... |
493,276 | 3,280,905 | 29,442 | 9 | A Colman - Selznick triumph | Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins was a successful London barrister , who got his measure of permanent fame as the author of several novels . Some were quite popular in their day , like " The Dolly Dialogues " and " The Man In The Car " ( which bases it's central figure on Cecil Rhodes ) . But it is his two " Ruritanian " Roman... |
493,100 | 3,280,905 | 31,647 | 9 | Cinderella with an opportunistic streak | This is one of the films at Paramount ( with EASY MONEY & REMEMBER THE NIGHT ) that Mitchell Leisin was criticized by the screenwriters ( Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett , and Preston Sturgis ) for altering the pacing or direction of the screenplays . He didn't . Leisin was never as cynical as either Wilder or Sturgi... |
493,044 | 3,280,905 | 23,027 | 9 | Whatever it is , he's against it ! | HORSE FEATHERS , the fourth of the five Paramount Marx Brother Movies , is one of their best - tackling the world of higher education in America . Groucho is the latest of the Presidents of Huxley College , which is doing very badly ( apparently ) not because of poor scholastic standards but due to not having a success... |
492,747 | 3,280,905 | 31,322 | 9 | Without Hal Roach | In 1939 - 1940 Laurel & Hardy's long contractual relationship with Hal Roach was coming to an end . The boys actually never had a joint contract with Roach - Stan and Babe had signed up in the 1920s at different times . Stan's contract was ending first , but Babe's would be finished within a year . Most people assume t... |
492,655 | 3,280,905 | 58,100 | 9 | Wells ' Other Space Novel | One year after arranging for the near destruction of the Earth by invaders from Mars ( 1898 ) , H . G . Wells turned the story around and had humans invade another heavenly body - the moon . THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON , written in 1899 , created a bit of controversy when it appeared . Jules Verne was still alive , and h... |
492,007 | 3,280,905 | 86,667 | 9 | The first two volumes of THE CHRONICLES OF BARSET | Anthony Trollope's position as a leading British novelist is established today in a way that would seem odd to our grandparent's generation of 1900 - 1930 . He seemed so quaint and old hat , having little of the fire and exuberance of Dickens , the passions of the Bronte sisters , the intellectual realism of George Eli... |
492,048 | 3,280,905 | 768,324 | 9 | How to Raise Sale Revenues ? | Business is bad at Grace Brothers , and Mr . Rumbold ( Nicholas Smith ) calls for a meeting of the staff to discuss ways of bringing business into the store . Besides the initial problem of getting the women's and men's wear department people in at some point , the meeting finds a depressing lack of ideas , except for ... |
493,446 | 3,280,905 | 529,606 | 9 | Hoss as a would-be fiddle virtuoso | One of the joys of watching BONANZA was that ( unlike GUNSMOKE and other major western television shows ) it did not take itself very seriously . Every now and then there would be purely comic episodes involving the major characters , usually Hoss and Little Joe , but frequently Ben Cartwright as well . And what made t... |
492,780 | 3,280,905 | 44,687 | 9 | A Charming Film about Family Life in Quebec | I saw this film only once forty years ago , but I really enjoyed it . Charles Boyer is the head of a Quebecois family who has to face normal problems of his son's growing up , his brothers ( Kurt Kazner and Louis Jourdan ) and their problems . It was very heart warming . An example of this is towards the end when Boyer... |
492,768 | 3,280,905 | 44,789 | 9 | Oh , What a Tangled Web We Weave . . . . | If you examine any major film or novel or play defects pop up . If the work is worth watching or reading you won't mind them - and if you are considering directing or producing a version of the written work you will find a way to overcome the defect . Most film noir plots do have defects in them . Given how he has roma... |
492,299 | 3,280,905 | 25,489 | 9 | Sidney Kingsley Pulitzer Prize Winner | Given all the hoopla against the film ( due to it's abortion theme ) it is funny to note that the film was produced by Cosmopolitan Pictures - the production company run by William Randolph Hearst out of MGM . Perhaps he was one of the few figures in Hollywood that could ( at that date ) afford to buck the system for t... |
493,162 | 3,280,905 | 42,579 | 9 | A Very Nice , Moody Thriller | A lot of movies just are not shown frequently as they should be . I was first aware of this obscure movie by Fritz Lang when I was at my college in the early 1970s , and was reading a book about his films . Then I finally saw it about five years ago on channel 75 in New York City , in a series of movies for a City Coll... |
492,933 | 3,280,905 | 33,852 | 9 | The name's Willoughby , Ward Willoughby . . . | Although two of the " Thin Man " films , and " I Love You Again " usually have their fans as the best Powell-Loy romp , this one is in that select bunch . Powell never did another film with a drag scene in it - and what a scene ( his fake breast slowly collapses when it is snared on a record player ) . The scenes with ... |
493,302 | 3,280,905 | 38,363 | 9 | It was not old Mrs . Plunkett who was summoned | Rex Harrison is Charles Condimine , a prominent novelist whose first wife Elvira ( Kay Hammond ) died of flu-type illness ) . His second wife , Ruth ( Constance Cummings ) is planning to assist his research into the occult for a new novel . This includes a dinner party where a local medium ( Madame Arcati - Margaret Ru... |
493,035 | 3,280,905 | 734,607 | 10 | From the age of Grover Cleveland to the Age of Eisenhower | This is a clever episode of TWILIGHT ZONE that was comic rather than strange or tragic . Buster Keaton is Woodrow Mulligan , a janitor from 1890 America , works in a laboratory . He is constantly griping about the life problems around him : meat is too expensive ( it's like $1 . 00 / lb . Unheard of ! ) . He is always ... |
491,608 | 3,280,905 | 44,008 | 10 | God Bless Us . . . Everyone | Of all the most popular Dickens ' novels and stories , none has been so done or redone in the movies , on television , on radio , and on stage , as A Christmas CAROL . Written in 1843 , it proved to be an instant winner - which is what Dickens needed after an apparent drop in popularity with MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK , T... |
492,106 | 3,280,905 | 33,045 | 10 | Jimmy Stewart's Other Christmas Film Masterpiece | It would be of interest to study the dramatists of late 19th Century through 20th Century Hungary . The only one who has left a lasting imprint to most theatergoers in the U . S . and England ( and the English - speaking world ) is Ferencz Molnar , best recalled for LILLIOM and THE PLAY'S THE THING . But Ernst Lubitsch... |
492,353 | 3,280,905 | 284,064 | 10 | The First of The Best Series of Nero Wolfe Stories | Rex Stout , the master mystery novelist who created " Nero Wolfe " ( and his assistant " Archie Goodwin " ) was a firm believer in the Bill of Rights . That is an admirable quality . But in the 1950s it was a dangerous one , as the forces of reaction took over the Federal Government for awhile and the era of Joseph McC... |
492,270 | 3,280,905 | 45,659 | 10 | Eric Ambler and the Sea | Five years before he adapted the non-fiction classic A NIGHT TO REMEMBER for the screen , Eric Ambler wrote this screenplay for THE CRUEL SEA , based on the book by Nicholas Monserrat . If , as many still claim , A NIGHT TO REMEMBER is the definitive film about the Titanic Disaster , THE CRUEL SEA is regarded as the de... |
492,899 | 3,280,905 | 52,561 | 10 | Preminger's Anatomy of a Rape Murder | ANATOMY OF A MURDER was Otto Preminger's attempt to relate a subject hinted about in motion pictures , but rarely gone into great detail . The subject was rape and it's consequences , and how the rape victim frequently found herself under attack in our law courts when the issues of the case hinged on her moral innocenc... |
491,819 | 3,280,905 | 33,038 | 10 | Bijou and her men | Declared " box office poison " in the middle 1930s with such inept film figures as Katherine Hepburn and Fred Astaire ( one would like to know what happened to the idiot that wrote the advertisement about " box office poison " in later years - did he find nobody listened to his opinions anymore ? ) , Marlene Dietrich m... |
491,985 | 3,280,905 | 778,617 | 10 | Another chance to see a rarity from You Tube | While going through You Tube I came upon this ten minute Foxtone short , one of the earliest sound films . It was made in 1927 and it is wonderful that it exists today for us to hear and see it . The subject was only three years away from his own death . He was a world class figure for his literary and other endeavors ... |
492,755 | 3,280,905 | 73,803 | 10 | To Say Nothing About the Dog | There was a time that the name Jerome Klapka Jerome ( his middle name was in honor of a Hungarian war hero ) was one of the best known writers in Great Britain . Not only for this novel , and it's comic sequel THREE MEN ON THE BUMMEL , but for his successful West End plays . The most notable one that has survived ( tho... |
492,305 | 3,280,905 | 73,802 | 10 | One day a limousine will drive up and a friend will be inside . . . . | This is possibly the only first rate spy thriller , whose most classic set of dialog lines ( spoken by Max Von Sydow ) became the basis of a very funny moment in a " Seinfeld " Episode . Originally published as SIX DAYS OF THE CONDOR , the film title took a reduction of days to three . Robert Redford is working in what... |
493,170 | 3,280,905 | 32,554 | 10 | The Truth About the American Democratic System | The 1940s saw the appearance of four major American directors : Orson Welles , John Huston , Billy Wilder , and Preston Sturgis . They had careers of varying degrees of success . Welles is usually seen as the great talent done to death by the jackals of the Hollywood system and his own personality quirks . Wilder and H... |
493,097 | 3,280,905 | 32,553 | 10 | The Difference of Four Days in One Month in One Year | April 1889 is significant for two births that occurred within four days of each other . The births were of two men who would leave their marks , for better or worse , upon the 20th Century . On April 16 , 1889 Charles Spencer Chaplin was born to poor parents in London , England . On April 20 , 1889 Adolf Hitler was bor... |
492,457 | 3,280,905 | 56,406 | 10 | The Movie Version of the " Playhouse 90 " Classic | The film version of REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT had some major differences from the television version made five years earlier . To be fair the television version is better because it has a more positive push than the film does - but somehow one senses that in the real world " Mountain " Rivera would have been doomed to ... |
491,900 | 3,280,905 | 56,412 | 10 | The Final Appearance Film of Two Screen Titans | There is a mystique about last films , or films that are really sign-off movies ( even if the star appears in a few minor films before the end ) . Most actors don't leave with flags flying and sky ablaze . It is rare for that perfect last film to show up : Tracy and Hepburn together for the last time in GUESS WHO'S COM... |
492,081 | 3,280,905 | 43,983 | 10 | A Clever , If Gimmicky Romantic Musical | In 1947 Britain was looking forward to the marriage of the heir to the throne , Princess Elizabeth , to Philip Mountbattan . The marriage would be a lasting one ( it still is going on ) and a fruitful one ( producing three sons and a daughter . This film , made four years later , is set during the period of the wedding... |
492,677 | 3,280,905 | 212,415 | 10 | The rise and fall of a Jewish-American Brooklyn Family in the 1930s Depression | In the history of the golden age of American Drama from about 1915 to 1955 , while the names of Eugene O'Neill and George F . Kaufman and Moss Hart are still well known many have entered into a kind of netherworld we just do not think about . One that has declined is Clifford Odetts . Odetts was from a lower middle cla... |
493,344 | 3,280,905 | 158,310 | 10 | The Follow - Up To Hollywood | When the series Hollywood was made in the late 1970s , it's producers had more than enough material for a series of over 10 episodes ( as it was shown ) . Especially the material dealing with interviews of silent film period survivors . The producers decided to do several follow-up documentaries . Three eventually were... |
493,292 | 3,280,905 | 39,040 | 10 | Leisin directs De Haviland to her First Oscar | TO EACH HIS OWN is in that category of woman's films dealing with a mother who loses her child for social or economic reasons . So it is in the same group as MADAME X ( in all it's versions ) or STELLA DALLAS . But it is little better than a superior weeper . Mitchell Leisin was a director with taste and ability , freq... |
492,445 | 3,280,905 | 36,891 | 10 | Let's Give Everett The Air | In a wonderful series of films between 1940 and 1948 Preston Sturgis rewrote the idea of film satire in Hollywood , taking apart political and business sacred cows , and showing a remarkably realistic view of sex in America despite the continued use of the so-called Hays Office and the moral code . HAIL THE CONQUERING ... |
492,702 | 3,280,905 | 47,849 | 10 | The Japanese - American Homefront in World War II : Part II | In his last film in 1966 Spencer Tracy tried to tackle ( with Katherine Hepburn and Sidney Poitier ) the problems of African-American acceptance in the United States in the issue of mixed marriage . Whatever the viewers feeling of the resulting film GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER that is the theme . It was not the first ... |
492,295 | 3,280,905 | 50,658 | 10 | A Wonderful Romantic Comedy - despite a casting error of sorts | It is the forgotten gem of Billy Wilder's film career . Coming in that string of successful films of the late 1940s - 1961 , LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON is probably less well known to modern audiences than SABRINA or STALAG 17 . Yet SABRINA has a similar casting error . There Audrey Hepburn played the love interest between W... |
491,649 | 3,280,905 | 52,607 | 10 | Thurber's THE CAT BIRD'S SEAT - moved to Scotland | Just like the criticism from feminists that Laurel & Hardy rarely paint a realistic picture of a wife , girlfriend , or woman in their films ( Mae Busch is certainly one tough customer against them ) , the writer - cartoonist James Thurber was also accused of misogyny . His female characters are eccentric , blasé about... |
491,854 | 3,280,905 | 30,637 | 10 | Shaw's One Academy Award | George Bernard Shaw was very wary about allowing his movies to be filmed . He had seen movies by other famous writers and dramatists thoroughly rewritten for the screen , and thoroughly wrecked as a result . So the greatest English speaking dramatist of the 20th Century held off from any involvement with motion picture... |
493,135 | 3,280,905 | 36,969 | 10 | Charlotte Bronte's Byronic Hero | If you remember any novel at all of Charlotte Bronte , it is JANE EYRE , her romance of a struggling governess who falls in love with a wealthy , mysterious land - owner whose ward needs an educator . It is the story that has been filmed most often of all of Bronte's novels ( three films and a series , as opposed to on... |
491,660 | 3,280,905 | 36,962 | 10 | Is Knowing the Future Really Worth It ? | A sort of fantasy counterpart of the contemporary Ernst Lubitsch film HEAVEN CAN WAIT , while parts of IT HAPPENED TOMORROW are set in the 1940s , at a vast family get together for the 50th Anniversary of patriarch Dick Powell and matriarch Linda Darnell , the bulk of the film is set in the same 1890s setting as the Lu... |
493,416 | 3,280,905 | 734,685 | 10 | Entering the Twilight Zone in the Dead of Night | This was one of those episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE that were shown on Friday , July 4th on the Science Fiction Station . The episode dealt with a classic horror tale that keeps going around the world as urban myth , and will probably still be doing so 100 years from now , along with the alligators in our urban sewers ... |
492,468 | 3,280,905 | 32,599 | 10 | Her Guy Walter | Charles McArthur and Ben Hecht met when both were reporters in Chicago during the 1920s . They created two of the funniest farces in American drama , TWENTIETH CENTURY ( about theater people ) and THE FRONT PAGE . The latter was based on their experiences as news reporters in those crazy days in Chicago , where the new... |
492,165 | 3,280,905 | 23,858 | 10 | First Rate Laurel & Hardy With Minimum of Story | Some comedians rely on plot and screenplay - such as the Marx Brothers , who have to have sharp dialog for Groucho and Chico , and some social target to aim at . So did W . C . Fields . But Laurel & Hardy were frequently at their best when they had a simple story line and just expanded the situation without words . IN ... |
491,612 | 3,280,905 | 54,412 | 10 | A Shattering Dissection of a Scottish Regiment | It is hard to say anything new about this marvelous film - possibly the last great film Alec Guiness had the starring role in ( although some STAR WAR fans may disagree with that assessment ) . Guiness as Major Jock Sinclair is a man's man , and the popular head of a Scottish army regiment . Since the war ended he has ... |
492,393 | 3,280,905 | 130,121 | 10 | An Englishman among the Mafiosi | Hugh Grant is in someways a modern version of a comic actor who I have had problems with in viewing : Charles Butterworth . Butterworth would hem and haw , afraid of making some social faux pas while pursuing whatever business occupied his activities on screen . This diffidence while mildly amusing could get tedious af... |
491,961 | 3,280,905 | 43,915 | 10 | Not if you stand on tippy toe on the tallest mountain in the world . | In talking about Joseph Mankiewicz one has to notice the highly excellent dialog he writes . He is one of the most literate of all major directors , best shown in LETTER TO THREE WIVES and ALL ABOUT EVE . The same can be said for this unusual Cary Grant film , made in 1951 at the height of the McCarthy Era , One has to... |
492,722 | 3,280,905 | 19,504 | 10 | A Lovely Day's Drive ? | TWO TARS has gotten a deserved reputation as being one of the funniest of the Laurel & Hardy short comedies ( and certainly among the best of their silent comedies ) due to the last half of the film . Initially Stan and Ollie are on furlough from the navy , and meet two young ladies ( Thelma Hill and Ruby Blaine ) . Af... |
492,367 | 3,280,905 | 43,924 | 10 | In the eddies and wakes of a boat on Big Moose Lake | In 1906 there resided in upstate New York a young man named Chester Gillette . Mr . Gillette was good looking and ambitious , and hoped to better his social and financial situation by family connections and a socially advantageous marriage to a wealthy young woman . But Gillette had been dating Grace Brown , a farmer's... |
492,194 | 3,280,905 | 63,227 | 10 | One King's Family : 1183 | It is very rare to find an actor who has played the same historical figure twice . Charleton Heston was Andrew Jackson in THE PRESIDENT'S LADY and THE BUCCANNEER ( 1958 ) . Edward Arnold was Diamond Jim Brady in DIAMOND JIM and LILIAN RUSSELL . Reginald Owen was Louis XV in VOLTAIRE and MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE . Raymond Mas... |
492,420 | 3,280,905 | 73,766 | 10 | The Final " Voyage of Discovery " of Lewis and Clark | Neil Simon's THE ODD COUPLE set up a model for many of his later plays . Felix Unger and Oscar Madison were the unsuitably paired roommates in the original , the former being picky and neat , the latter being slovenly and loose . Simon would rewrite ( less successfully ) the play in the 1990s as THE NEW ODD COUPLE , wi... |
493,107 | 3,280,905 | 112,749 | 10 | A " House Divided " Literally : Apartheid in South Africa in 1948 | I read CRY , THE BELOVED COUNTRY in high school , and was quite impressed by it's dignified and somber retelling of the tragedy of modern South Africa under the apartheid system that was in place at the time . Alan Paton had a literary and political career in the Union of South Africa , and was opposed to the system th... |
492,638 | 3,280,905 | 68,130 | 10 | One of the four great geographic races of the 19th Century | There are only two major motion films ( as of January 2006 ) about the events involved with the search for the Nile River's sources . One is THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON , which detailed the collapse of the friendship and partnership of explorers Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke . The collapse was due to thei... |
491,662 | 3,280,905 | 21,873 | 10 | Curious mixture of dated and advanced great newspaper film | First , why do I say it is dated ? It is a matter of acting tastes . While several of the leads ( the always good Robinson and Karloff , Aline MacMahon , and H . B . Warner ) give strong performances ( witness Warner's last three minutes in the film as the strain of his wife's tragedy finally destroys him ) , there is ... |
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