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491,751 | 3,280,905 | 43,879 | 10 | Another Noir triumph for Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino | It's funny how movie persona and real life are so different . Mr . William Henry Pratt , a quiet Englishman who liked cricket , turned into the master monster actor of the thirties to fifties , Boris Karloff , and found time to also be a leading spokesman for better contracts for movie people in the Screen Actors Guild... |
493,345 | 3,280,905 | 80,230 | 10 | First Rate Documentary Series on the Early History of the Movies | This 1980 series was made by Thames Television and then shown in the U . S . Narrated ( very urbanely ) by James Mason it told the story of the birth of motion pictures from 1895 to 1927 ( the entire silent film period ) . Episodes dealt with D . W . Griffith , the Westerns , Valentino , the Silent Comics , Fairbanks ,... |
493,169 | 3,280,905 | 62,994 | 10 | The Greatest Star | Few have been able to wake up one day and discover they are famous overnight . Lord Byron was one - he discovered that his poetry opened the floodgates to fame that his title had never opened ( Byron's family was prominent , but not of the aristocratic elite of the early 19th Century ) . For our purposes it was Barbara... |
492,562 | 3,280,905 | 26,174 | 10 | England and the Caribbean , 1685 - 1688 | This is remembered as Errol Flynn's great opening movie role - which is partly true . He had a nice career in Australian movies ( one a film about Fletcher Christian and the Bounty ) , but CAPTAIN BLOOD was his first Hollywood film as a star , and it was a brilliantly colorful opening role . Flynn plays Dr . Peter Bloo... |
492,499 | 3,280,905 | 68,156 | 10 | First rate musical despite the music - Great history lesson too | Despite a few historical errors ( one of which I will mention ) , 1776 is one of the best historical presentations on screen of the events leading to the creation of an important historical moment : the decision of the Continental Congress to go for American Independence by signing the Declaration of Independence . The... |
492,693 | 3,280,905 | 28,333 | 10 | Musically and Dancing Grand Viewing - But the old story about screenplays | Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were a wonderful , lively dance team - probably the best dance team in American film . And they are especially good here dancing to Jerome Kern's music . In particular two of my favorite pieces : A FINE ROMANCE and BOJANGLES OF HARLEM ( a unique event in the 1930s - a musical tribute to a... |
493,211 | 3,280,905 | 65,214 | 10 | The Last Real Men in a No-where's Land of Death | Recently my health took a turn for the worst , and on the 17th I ended watching two different films while recuperating . One was EXECUTIVE SUITE , and the other THE WILD BUNCH . Both were shown in commemoration of the birthday of Mr . William Franklin Beedle , one of the best movie actors of the period from 1940 and 19... |
492,090 | 3,280,905 | 54,345 | 10 | Superior Adultery Tale with a Sociological Bent . . . and Ernie could act well . | It is interesting to compare this drama of adulterous passions in the suburbs with a brilliant comedy of the late 1940s . In 1948 Cary Grant and Myrna Loy had problems getting a country house in MR . BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAMHOUSE . A dozen years later we have Ernie Kovacs approaching architect Kirk Douglas on buildin... |
492,946 | 3,280,905 | 75,883 | 10 | Iffy History at it's best | Franklin D . Roosevelt was the man , believe it or not , who coined the term " iffy history " . He was being disparaging - he did not care what would have happened if certain great events were prevented by chances that did not occur in reality . To him it was meaningless speculation - and many agree with him . Yet it a... |
492,003 | 3,280,905 | 37,008 | 10 | She Gave Her Very First Kiss To You - It's Laura . . . But She's Only A Dream . . . . | I guess LAURA will always make the top ten list of film noir because of it's wit and cast - in particular one actor who demonstrated a waspishness that had not been seen before in film except by his fellow homosexual actor Monty Wooley . I am speaking , of course , of Clifton Webb , who had been a great Broadway star o... |
493,086 | 3,280,905 | 45,810 | 10 | But Square-cut or Pear-shaped , These Rocks Don't Lose Their Shape ! | As pointed out the film GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES is really the first great movie role in the career of Marilyn Monroe . Given the brevity of her film career ( roughly a decade ) , one third of it passed without her being more than . . . well , let's face it " male eye candy " . Her sexiness and apparently " dumb blond ... |
492,255 | 3,280,905 | 275,375 | 10 | Again a gem I caught on You Tube | The Second World War may be over sixty years old , but it still is quite alive as one of the most photographed and recorded conflicts of all time . The pictures caught by newsreels of the Blitz in London are among the most powerful images of that conflict - and may have done more to solidify American public opinion aga... |
492,593 | 3,280,905 | 37,017 | 10 | Hitchcock's best war movie , and the ambiguities of behavior in wartime | He called it ( as did the critics ) an allegory - and it is but it's characters are so complex that they rise above the normal stick figures of allegory . This is no PILGRIM'S PROGRESS with characters named " Christian " , " Faithfull " , " Talkative " , " Envy " , and " Mr . Worldly Wiseman " . The characters represen... |
491,628 | 3,280,905 | 32,701 | 10 | Possibly Bette's peak , or close to it . | If any film role of Bette Davis got permanently identified in the minds of the public with her career it was that of Leslie Crosbie in THE LETTER . For years , if people wanted to do a quickie " imitation " of Davis , they just had to say the line " PETER . . . GIVE ME THE LETTER ! ! " In actuality Davis does not say t... |
492,642 | 3,280,905 | 37,093 | 10 | Felix Aylmer's One Starring Turn | MR . EMMANUEL is the one example of a starring part for Sir Felix Aylmer . One of that group of delightful character actors who became so well known to American audiences from Britain in the 1930s - 1960s , they are best recalled for people like Alec Guiness , Peter Sellers , Peter Ustinov ( all of whom achieved real s... |
491,704 | 3,280,905 | 35,140 | 10 | The One With the Two Cigarettes Lit by the Man at the Same Time | This may be the best soap opera love film from Hollywood in it's golden age - it certainly is among them , and it certainly is Bette Davis ' best soap opera role : Charlotte Vale . From neurotic , overweight recluse to sophisticated traveler , to surrogate mother of the daughter of the man she loves but can't have . It... |
492,812 | 3,280,905 | 95,613 | 10 | I Am An Actor ! | This film proves with JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT that Alan King was capable of a good film career . The story here does not deal with secretive billionaires and their angry mistresses , but with a man who left his family in New York City decades before to pursue a career in Hollywood . But Abe has never been more than ... |
493,116 | 3,280,905 | 59,243 | 10 | For Mr . Laurel and Mr . Hardy | I wish I could answer this - THE GREAT RACE and THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES both came out in 1965 . It would be interesting to know who came up first with the idea of the car and / or the airplane film . Fortunately , aside from some brief cross-referenced scenes , THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN remained boun... |
492,586 | 3,280,905 | 23,943 | 10 | Stanlio and Ollio and " the Marquis of San Marco " | Laurel & Hardy could very easily have slid into musical comedies , as could the Marx Brothers . Hardy had a tenor voice , put to good use in WAY OUT WEST , and Stan ( while he was not as good a singer ) could talk sing quite nicely ( and was prepared to do comic singing - his change of voice in singing " In the Blue Ri... |
492,034 | 3,280,905 | 23,940 | 10 | Gilda , Tom , and George . . . . but not Max | Not all of the plays by Noel Coward have been put on the screen . PRIVATE LIVES was ( Robert Montgomery and Norma Shearer ) . So was BLYTHE SPIRIT ( Rex Harrison and Margaret Rutherford ) . So was CAVALCADE ( which actually won the best picture award in 1933 - but did it really deserve it ? ) . HAY FEVER has not popped... |
492,173 | 3,280,905 | 47,673 | 10 | Colorful , seasonal remake of HOLIDAY INN | This was one of the last successful projects involving Irving Berlin . In 1943 he had made the film " Holiday Inn " with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire , as song and dance partners who split when Crosby decides to leave the act , and Astaire tries to settle down with the woman in the act that both men loved . Crosby turn... |
493,158 | 3,280,905 | 734,563 | 10 | The Need To Remember . . . For All Of Us | I can't make up my mind about the best TWILIGHT ZONE episodes , but this one is up there . It was one of the few where Serling ( whose stories broke down the fourth wall of imagination and reality for his characters ) broke down a fifth wall ( if you will ) by explaining the need to remember , even if the item used to ... |
492,682 | 3,280,905 | 37,059 | 10 | The Louisiana Puchase Exposition of 1904 | This is a nearly flawless musical film by Vincent Minelli based on a series of writings by Sally Benson about her real life family from St . Louis , Missouri at the turn of the 20th Century . Although the most famous sequence ( and a real heart-breaker at one point ) deals with the current Christmas season , the film r... |
492,052 | 3,280,905 | 212,346 | 10 | What is the Value of the Modern Beauty Contest ? | A very funny film , with a first rate cast , MISS CONGENIALITY deals with examining the value of an American institution . When I was growing up one of the yearly television events I always recalled was the " Miss America " pageant ( as well as the other beauty pageant for " Miss Universe " ) . Watching Bert Parks ' si... |
492,861 | 3,280,905 | 23,948 | 10 | A Glorious Film About a Disastrous Dinner Party | This film was the follow-up to 1932's best film GRAND HOTEL . MGM had discovered that there was tremendous box office appeal if they had a film with a roster of stars in all the main roles . In this case the roles are played by Lionel and John Barrymore , Wallace Beery , Lee Tracy , Edmund Lowe , Philips Holmes , Jean ... |
493,036 | 3,280,905 | 734,569 | 10 | Life inside an abstract prison | This is one of the classic TWILIGHT ZONE episodes , where with the simplest of situations the viewer was drawn into a seemingly symbolic conflict , only to find the solution surprising and strangely acceptable . Five figures are inside a container / prison : a Major , a ballerina , a bagpiper , a clown , and a tramp . ... |
492,598 | 3,280,905 | 26,205 | 10 | Nothing Ever Happens on a Steamer in the China Seas | The studios in the " Golden Age " of films loved to stick to successful formulas that worked for their actors and directors . Just go down the list of performers that you can recall : A fine actor like Basil Rathbone is either the heavy or villain , or Sherlock Holmes ( but not , as he wished , Rhett Butler ) . Jean Ha... |
493,013 | 3,280,905 | 32,762 | 10 | That Curse of Capistrano | I wonder when Johnston McCully wrote a short tale called THE CURSE OF CAPISTRANO he realized that he created a literary figure who would create a line of movie , television , and radio stories that are the equal of Tarzan , Sherlock Holmes , Batman ( a type of accidental spin-off , belatedly ) , and Superman . Add to t... |
493,175 | 3,280,905 | 63,385 | 10 | First the novel , then the straight dramatic film , then the musical - and the best picture " Oscar " | OLIVER TWIST was to have controversy as well as success following it after Dickens published it in 1837 . His picture of life in the urban ghettos was something shocking and new , and his making the central figures of the novel include criminals was another innovation . One day he was walking in London and passed a you... |
492,396 | 3,280,905 | 45,919 | 10 | The Duke's First Big Airplane Disaster Film | In the 1950s there were two first rate novelists who touched upon ( or concentrated on ) aviation as their theme . The Australian - English one was Nevil Shute ( Norway ) , who was an aviation engineer . His novel was NO HIGHWAY , made into a 1950 film with Jimmy Steward , Glynis Johns , Marlene Dietrich , and Jack Haw... |
492,417 | 3,280,905 | 19,777 | 10 | Great Marx Film - but we'll always regret " Always " . | Unless the legendary " HUMORISK " ever shows up , COCONUTS will have the honor of being the first Marx Brother comedy . It is set in Florida , during the 1920s land boom down there ( by the time the show opened in 1928 , a hurricane had destroyed the land boom ) . Groucho runs a seedy hotel , where Mrs . Potter and her... |
493,258 | 3,280,905 | 66,344 | 10 | A Reformation With Music | Again like the 1938 version with Reginald Owen , I like this version of " A Christmas Carol " , but I still prefer the two with Alistair Sim and with George C . Scott . This one is first rate as an entertainment , and it is nice to see not only Albert Finney but Alec Guiness and Edith Evans in a film based on Dickens T... |
492,008 | 3,280,905 | 65,292 | 10 | The Victor of Blenheim and his Spouse | The name most people think of as best associated with the term PRIME MINISTER OF ENGLAND is Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill . After all , he was the Prime Minister who was ( with FDR and Stalin ) the Big Three who won World War II , and he was also a man who was in the public eye as a political figure of the firs... |
493,109 | 3,280,905 | 41,598 | 10 | A Wonderful Case of Revenge | LONG-HAIRED HARE is one of a number of Warners Cartoon that made in the late 1940s and into the 1950s that spoofed high culture - the best being WHAT'S OPERA DOC ? But this one is also like several other Warner cartoons when Bugs confronted authoritarian types ( a floor walker in a department store , a magician named A... |
492,549 | 3,280,905 | 340,012 | 10 | Benning at her fun best | It is 1938 and the clouds are building up across the channel from Germany and Czechoslavakia . But we are aware of this , and yet are not concentrating on it . For Somerset Maugham is concentrating on his favorite world - where he made his first real mark . In his day Maugham was probably one of the top three or four B... |
492,160 | 3,280,905 | 41,587 | 10 | How dare he claim to be an expert on writing and not know " Myrtle Tippett " ! | This gem was shown twice last night on Channel 13 , and I caught the second viewing . Joseph Mankiewicz is a remarkably maverick director from Hollywood . Unlike many who concentrated on special spectacles and effects ( Griffiths , De Mille ) or on camera use and shots ( Welles ) or on genre mythology ( Ford ) or suspe... |
492,588 | 3,280,905 | 19,832 | 10 | Jean's torn dress , and " Von Stroheim " gets the treatment | Double Whoopie is recalled because it was one of two films where Jean Harlow and Laurel & Hardy crossed paths ( the other was " Bacon Grabbers " ) . It was only one sequence but it is done so perfectly that it remains memorable to this day . We are at a great city hotel , and they are expecting a leading European pri... |
493,232 | 3,280,905 | 37,135 | 10 | Grant's Coming of Age As An Actor - His " Nightmare Alley " | Throughout his career , Cary Grant tried to shake off the comic leading man - sophisticate roles that he fell into . He eventually did get parts in thrillers like NORTH BY NORTHWEST and CHARADES , or serious films like PENNY SERENADE and AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER showing a bit of edge , but up to his last film WALK DON'T R... |
493,224 | 3,280,905 | 41,509 | 10 | Be Elegant , Be Arrogant , Be Smart ! ! | Danny Kaye's films with Samuel Goldwyn established him as a leading movie comedian - singer from 1944 through the late 1940s . For a number of years after he continued his popularity without Goldwyn in films like " Knock on Wood " , " The Court Jester " and " Merry Andrew " . It is likely that " The Court Jester " is h... |
492,415 | 3,280,905 | 32,338 | 10 | It's not the coffee . It's the bunk ! | As the follow up to " The Great McGinty " Preston Sturgis returned to an old play of his that was written in 1931 and called " A Cup Of Coffee " . Sturgis , for all of his cynical slant in his comedies and screenplays , had a pretty accurate view of the American Dream . In " Christmas In July " the hero is trying to ma... |
491,862 | 3,280,905 | 32,339 | 10 | The Mysterious Disappearance and Reamergence of Lord Paddington | As mentioned earlier except for BLOCK-HEADS most aficionados might consider A CHUMP AT OXFORD to be the final great Laurel & Hardy feature length comedy . It's main weakness is it's structure - BLOCK-HEADS is a series of disasters rising to a crescendo from Stan to Ollie to everyone around them . A CHUMP is really two ... |
492,883 | 3,280,905 | 35,015 | 10 | How to Wreck a Masterwork - Hollywood Style | The story of the destruction of Orson Welles ' second " Mercury " film THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS is pretty well described in these remarks on this thread . Although it is extremely doubtful ( as doubtful as ever finding traces of the missing holy grail ) I too wish that a longer version that was similar to Welles ' vis... |
492,273 | 3,280,905 | 54,698 | 10 | Two drifters off to see the world | It's a little odd watching BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S and realizing that of it's main stars only Patricia Neal , Mickey Rooney , and Jose Luis de Villalonga ( who played the wealthy Brazilian in the movie ) are still alive , as is the director Blake Edwards . Audrey Hepburn , George Peppard , Buddy Ebsen , Martin Balsam , ... |
492,852 | 3,280,905 | 35,020 | 10 | Had it not been for these things . . . . | James Thurber is best recalled for his wonderful cartoons ( mostly printed in The New Yorker magazine in the 1920s through 1950s ) and his remarkably fine short stories and essays . He recently got an ultimate accolade ( posthumously ) by having a volume of his prose and cartoons published in " The Library of America "... |
492,590 | 3,280,905 | 87,692 | 10 | The Better Version of Stevenson's Classic | While nothing can approach reading the actual novel , this television film version of THE MASTER OF BALLENTRAE is far better than the 1953 film version . At the very least it managed to recreate the real personality problems that appear in that egoist James Durrie . Michael York is shown to be an amoral , selfish human... |
492,292 | 3,280,905 | 35,019 | 10 | Wilder's Directing Debut - " Su-Su you're a knockout ! " | Billy Wilder , like his contemporary Preston Sturgis , gained attention in Hollywood at Paramount Studio as a screen writer . And oddly enough both decided to become directors because of unfair feelings towards the work of director Mitchell Leisin with their scripts . Wilder did not like Leisin's work with MIDNIGHT , a... |
492,967 | 3,280,905 | 388,125 | 10 | A film both amusing and touching | I saw this film yesterday , and enjoyed every minute of it . Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette are sisters who have had a bumpy relationship . Their mother died in an auto accident years before , and their father married a shrewish woman who has always favored her own daughter over her step-daughters . Collette was able t... |
492,005 | 3,280,905 | 41,487 | 10 | Banking in Little Italy in the 1930s | Edward G . Robinson played many ethnic types in his career , including sinister Chinese types in THE HATCHET MAN and Greek seamen in TIGER SHARK . But he played many Italian - Americans , mostly involved in criminal activities . Best known is his Rico Bandello in LITTLE CAESAR , but he also did Remy Marko in A SLIGHT C... |
491,814 | 3,280,905 | 93,565 | 10 | As Promising as Moonlight in a Martini | I don't think that many films ( especially comedies ) have added memorable , quotable dialog like MOONSTRUCK . I won't illustrate it - you can see a remarkably long list of quotes on this thread - but any film that can make subjects like the defense of using expensive copper piping rather than brass for plumbing purpos... |
492,710 | 3,280,905 | 48,055 | 10 | Doings in Dawson in ' 96 | Anthony Mann's westerns with Jimmy Stewart are slowly gaining for that director a position with John Ford and Howard Hawks as the best film director in that genre . He certainly knows how to give dimension to nice guy Stewart - in Mann's films there is an edge to Jimmy that is slowly demonstrated to the audience . In W... |
492,599 | 3,280,905 | 65,399 | 10 | An American Auschwitz ? | Based on a Broadway play , THE ANDERSONVILLE TRIAL was a made for television production directed by George C . Scott with a number of major performances , led by William Schatner as the Union Prosecutor , and Jack Cassidy as the Southern born defense counsel for Confederate Captain Henry Wirtz ( Richard Basehart ) . Th... |
492,174 | 3,280,905 | 45,866 | 10 | The World's Oldest Chorus Boy | Frequently in Bob Hope films he portrays inept stage artists . In MY FAVORITE SPY he's a third rate burlesque comic , Peanuts White . In FANCY PANTS he is Arthur Tyler , who has learned too much about cue lines in plays ( he keeps jumping slightly ahead of them - which is pretty bad usually , but worse in a stage melod... |
492,413 | 3,280,905 | 87,718 | 10 | Is Polygamy the Answer ? | Dudley Moore is a television news reporter married to lawyer Anne Reinking ( Micki ) . They are in love - deeply in love - but she is committed to her legal career . This means working overtime on her cases and briefs . So Moore is unhappy about seeing so little of her . He needs to be in a closer relationship with his... |
492,856 | 3,280,905 | 26,424 | 10 | Sturgis showing his comic abilities - but still in the wings | Before " Christmas In July " and " The Great McGinty " Preston Sturgis was a screenplay writer - one of the two great screenplay writers of the 1930s who graduated into very respectable directorial careers ( the other being Billy Wilder , of course ) . Oddly both men cut their abilities at Paramount , not MGM . And bot... |
493,411 | 3,280,905 | 39,224 | 10 | Hume Cronym's Best Remembered Role Before Old Age | Tonight Turner Classic Films were showing five films in honor of actor writer Hume Cronym ( whose birthday is July 18 ) . Cronym has only been dead now for five years , but he was an impressive character actor in comedy and in drama . I was lucky twenty years ago to see the Broadway production of THE PETITION a two per... |
492,009 | 3,280,905 | 66,495 | 10 | Welcome to Marx , Engels , Lenin , Stalin , and TXXXXsky Street | It is the forgotten Brooks movie . Probably because it has the most controlled script story , and had the least wild , satyric inventiveness of any of his films . After he wrote and directed the original THE PRODUCERS , Brooks did not do another film for a few years . The second one was this one set in the post-Russian... |
492,909 | 3,280,905 | 41,716 | 10 | The Bronx is Up and the Battery's Down . . . | This is a really great musical , and that is an odd thing to admit . Because , for a great musical it has little in the way of great music . The reputation of Leonard Bernstein as a composer is one of the stickiest points about his career to discuss among lovers of American music and musicals . Bernstein was a great co... |
491,834 | 3,280,905 | 151,568 | 10 | Their Masterpiece Operetta | In 1884 William Schwenk Gilbert came up with the idea for a new operetta which he took to his partners Richard D'Oyly Carte and Sir Arthur Sullivan . It was about a lozenge or a drink which if taken could change the party digesting it into any person he or she wanted . Gilbert had ideas about how to develop this idea i... |
492,280 | 3,280,905 | 28,597 | 10 | The problem was that things seemed to be same but they looked different . . . but things can return to normal if she accepts a little difference ! | Leo McCarey's " The Awful Truth " is among the best of the " screwball " comedies of the 1930s . It is also one of the simplest in plots and screenplays , because it does not require any attempts at conspiracy or hidden identities or mystery ( say as in the comic mystery " The Thin Man " , or in " His Gal Friday " - wh... |
491,935 | 3,280,905 | 87,621 | 10 | Mean " Joe Green " - Superstar of his team ! | The two dominant opera composers in the middle years of the 19th Century were Richard Wagner of Germany and Giuseppi Verdi of Italy . There are hardly two men who were less like each other in temperament . Wagner , the arrogant genius who used " friends " left and right for his own purposes . Verdi the quiet , thoughtf... |
493,251 | 3,280,905 | 39,220 | 10 | An Early Green Masterpiece About Pure Evil | It was written by Graham Greene in the 1930s , shortly after a notorious murder case ( or cases ) in 1934 wherein two women's bodies were found in trunks in the Brighton Railway Station . One of the women was identified , and her lover / husband Tony Mancini ( who accidentally killed her in a freak accident during an a... |
492,592 | 3,280,905 | 26,406 | 10 | A Scottish Canterville Ghost Story | Robert Donat was capable of being a humorous actor - in THE THIRTY NINE STEPS he does the impromptu campaign speech for a man he knows nothing about , introducing the character as " McCrockodile " because he can't see the man's name upside down , and then recouping his error by saying that is the candidate's nickname i... |
493,121 | 3,280,905 | 89,838 | 10 | The . . . err . . . underside of the occasion in ROYAL WEDDING | One day some clever movie club organizer will realize that he could make a very enjoyable evening of two films dealing with an event from 1947 . They are ROYAL WEDDING and A PRIVATE FUNCTION . Both deal with events tied to the marriage of Philip Mountbatten ( today Prince Philip ) and Princess Elizabeth Windsor ( today... |
492,902 | 3,280,905 | 23,775 | 10 | She's got the cutest , little baby face . . . . | BABY FACE is one of the better of the " forgotten " films before the code . It was shown last night after the 1931 version of WATERLOO BRIDGE on the TURNER CLASSIC NETWORK , so I was able to watch the film as it is now with four plus minutes of it restored . Stanwyck is living in East St . Louis ( where she may have kn... |
493,143 | 3,280,905 | 14,945 | 10 | Boy with the Dog Biscuits box & Girl with the Cracker Jack box | This particular film was shown on TMC tonight with several other Harold Lloyd films which are being sold in new DVD form . The new film DVDs have full scores that were composed for them . And , at the start of this film ( unfortunately just the first five minutes ) there is an attempt to show hand tinting of the scene ... |
492,728 | 3,280,905 | 37,248 | 10 | Out of the Past | Of the last Universal films in the Sherlock Holmes series , only THE HOUSE OF FEAR and SHERLOCK HOLMES FACES DEATH have better plots than THE SCARLET CLAW . If you go to seeing all three films for the first time , the solutions really surprise you . The first two manage keep a degree of the surprise in reviewing them ,... |
491,933 | 3,280,905 | 112,966 | 10 | Building a Mountain From a Molehill ? | This film is like THE LADY VANISHES and SO LONG AT THE FAIR - it is a film based on a story that has some plausibility and has been told many times , but may be legendary . In 1917 two Englishman come to a Welch village . They are doing surveying work for the government to look over the mountains of Wales The village i... |
493,082 | 3,280,905 | 89,853 | 10 | The Slim line between reality and falseness | Mia Farrow is the wife of an unemployed bully and womanizer Danny Aiello . She works in a diner , and when she tries to forget her lousy life in the Depression she turns to the movies . Currently she is seeing a " B " feature again and again called THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO , about a bunch of bored socialites ( Edward H... |
492,772 | 3,280,905 | 47,985 | 10 | Clickety - Clickety - Clickety - Click | The original THE DESPERATE HOURS is one of the best true suspense films that were ever made . The incident happened in upstate New York in 1953 , when three escaped convicts invaded a private home , and then terrorized the family until they were captured and killed by the police . In fact , the story became a successfu... |
492,684 | 3,280,905 | 39,190 | 10 | Dudley saves the Christmas Values | Starting about 1946 the tradition of doing specialized films about Christmas really began to occur in Hollywood . There had been the 1938 version of Dickens ' " A Christmas Carol " with Reginald Owen as Scrooge , " Christmas In Connecticut " in 1944 , and a major sequence in " Meet Me In St . Louis " in 1944 , but no w... |
492,326 | 3,280,905 | 70,364 | 10 | A Classic Novella about American Patriotism | In 1863 Abraham Lincoln was plagued by a growing peace movement led by political opponents who said the war was a failure , and we should recognize the Confedrate States under Jefferson Davis . The leading spokesperson for " Copperheads " was one Clement Vallandigham , an Ohio Congressman who was a gifted public orator... |
491,841 | 3,280,905 | 93,660 | 10 | The Greatest Star at a Sanity Hearing | NUTS was a play that was turned into this film that has a first rate cast headed by Barbara Streisand , including Richard Dreyfus , Maureen Stapleton , Karl Malden , Eli Wallach , Robert Webber , James Whitmore , and Leslie Nielson and a top director ( Martin Ritt ) . But it has not gotten the notice it's deserved amon... |
493,079 | 3,280,905 | 266,425 | 10 | Why it is so pleasant to hear about his assassination in Czechoslovakia | There is a moment of ironical comedy ( with a bitter aftertaste ) that I always liked in Stanley Kramer's JUDGMENT AT NUREMBURG where the whole matter of the organized death known as the " Holacaust " is brought up against the defendants for the first time . After all , the four jurists helped speed along the death of ... |
493,136 | 3,280,905 | 56,756 | 10 | Bring Back the " Midget - Widgett " Motor Car Company | It lasted only one season , but FRACTURED FLICKERS was one of the funniest series ever put on television . The accounts given here on the thread are mostly lauding it , but I will add a few I recall . 1 ) A television history program that is pompously mis - announced as " FROM HYPOCRITES TO EINSTEIN . " Then a small , ... |
493,068 | 3,280,905 | 17,664 | 10 | Stan , Ollie . . . and Lou ? | The title of this comedy is based on the situation at the beginning : Stan's boxing match ( Ollie is his manager ) against Noah Young ( the heavy they shared with fellow Hal Roach alumnus Harold Lloyd ) . In 1927 the American sports loving public was fully aware of what was " the battle of the century " . It was a refe... |
493,299 | 3,280,905 | 79,875 | 10 | The Rise of a future Presidential Candidate | THE SEDUCTION OF JOE TYNAN is really the follow up to the Robert Redford - Peter Boyle film , THE CANDIDATE . There a well-meaning , wishy-washy liberal college teacher ( whose father was a famous Senator - ironically played by Melvin Douglas in that movie ) , is glitz-ed up and prepped in a political campaign against ... |
491,912 | 3,280,905 | 50,212 | 10 | Madness , Madness | Let's face it - war is organized madness , and although the stakes in World War II were tremendous for whichever side lost , the individual effects of the war on the men and nations involved caused madness on several levels . Pierre Boule's short novel brilliantly discusses the madness in the crazy situation that sweep... |
492,079 | 3,280,905 | 34,936 | 10 | The Prototype For Philip Roth's " The Plot Against America " | Of all the films done by Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy ( except , possibly , " Sea Of Grass " and their last film , " Guess Who's Coming To Dinner - the latter for a different reason ) , " Keeper Of The Flame " was the great downer among the Hepburn - Tracy romps . " Sea Of Grass " has a portrait of a ruthless we... |
493,156 | 3,280,905 | 93,690 | 10 | A " Buddy " Gal Film For A Change | This film is a pretty good example of turning the " buddy " movie into a film about two women who discover a common friendship . Shelley Long is a woman who has spent years studying for a stage acting career . As pointed out in another review on this thread , her character her is like " Diane Chambers " in CHEERS , exc... |
492,421 | 3,280,905 | 76,095 | 10 | Another successful Simon " Odd Couple " story | Neil Simon is consistent . He loves to use and reuse the " ODD COUPLE " plot with variations in one play or another : in the original ODD COUPLE , it's female version ( shown in the early 1990s ) , the sequel film with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon , the play ( and movie ) THE SUNSHINE BOYS - where the apartment is a ... |
491,760 | 3,280,905 | 93,693 | 10 | Goldie gets drenched and reborn | This comedy was quite a fun one , and so far ( except for THE ONE AND ONLY GENUINE , ORIGINAL FAMILY BAND ) the only one she has made co-starring with her life partner Kirk Russell . Goldie is Joanna Stayton , the ultimate rich bitch . Her huge yacht is in port , and she requires closets for her shoes . A local carpent... |
492,808 | 3,280,905 | 32,484 | 10 | The Road To War - Hitchcock Style | If one would look at the late British films that Hitchcock made , such as THE THIRTY NINE STEPS , THE LADY VANISHES , and SABOTAGE , one can see that Hitchcock was aware of foreign elements that were anti-British and that his nation had to confront and fight . Foreign spies attack England from within in THE THIRTY NINE... |
492,004 | 3,280,905 | 427,229 | 10 | She whines to conquer | Sarah Jessica Parker originally seemed doomed to play " the other woman " . Remember THE FIRST WIVES CLUB , where she was Daniel Hedaya's toy girl friend , who replaced Bette Midler because Midler was too middle aged for Hedaya , and he wanted to be ( at least in his own mind ) a young stud with Jessica . There she beg... |
493,343 | 3,280,905 | 208,197 | 10 | The Final in the Series of Brownlow produced tributes to the Silent Films | Starting with Hollywood in 1980 ( which was produced in the late 1970s ) Kenneth Brownlow had gathered material on the great silent film period that led to four documentary series . Hollywood was followed by THE UNKNOWN CHAPLIN , then one on Buster Keaton , and then ( in 1989 ) HAROLD LLOYD ; THE THIRD GENIUS . As an i... |
493,029 | 3,280,905 | 23,694 | 10 | More than just zombies | The ULTIMATE ZOMBIE flick ? Actually I would think NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD or one of it's sequels was that . WHITE ZOMBIE is an intelligent movie dealing with the world of the zombies - but it actually is considerably more than that . Bela Lugosi's career in Hollywood did not begin with a flourish in Dracula . He had ... |
492,602 | 3,280,905 | 41,625 | 10 | Post war problems in Colorado | Colorado was a large , booming territory in 1865 . It did not enter the union until eleven years later , and as the only new state to get admission in 1876 it has the right to remain our " Centennial " State ( for the centennial of the Declaration of Independence ) . In the Civil War there were few engagements in Color... |
491,639 | 3,280,905 | 43,465 | 10 | The Devils Inside a " Good " Cop | Kirk Douglas was in the forefront of a set of movie stars in the post war period ( with Montgomery Clift , Marlon Brando , James Dean , Burt Lancaster , and ( a little later ) Paul Newman ) who had more emotional problems than initially appeared in their characters . Douglas looked competent and able in every part , bu... |
493,253 | 3,280,905 | 39,556 | 10 | The End of the Boston Brahmin World According to Mr . Marquand | John Marquand is another of those authors who were once incredibly popular who now are barely recalled - and sometimes to our loss . If England gave us James Hilton and Joyce Carey , and France the Catholic novelist Georges Bernanos , the U . S . had ( among others ) John P . Marquand , who was a chronicler of the rich... |
492,502 | 3,280,905 | 25,746 | 10 | The Making of A Great Empress | Josef Von Sternberg thought very extensively about the effects he wanted in THE SCARLET EMPRESS . He wanted to push the cinematic effects to show the huge Russian Empire and to show the spirituality of the Russo Orthodox Church . Therefore the visual effects of THE SCARLET EMPRESS are quite striking , as is the anachro... |
493,083 | 3,280,905 | 637,531 | 10 | A Race To Get The Claim in First ! | This was possibly the most memorable of THE LUCY - DESI COMEDY HOUR episodes , as it actually had a central situation that was really funny . As pointed out in the other review currently on this thread , the Ricardos , the Mertzes , and guest star Fred MacMurray get involved in a claim jumping chase . As pointed out it... |
492,176 | 3,280,905 | 324,852 | 10 | Excellent series to see the many sides of a complex hero | THAT HAMILTON WOMAN is the 1941 version of the scandal that punctured the totally heroic and gallant figure of Vice Admiral , Lord Horatio Nelson . Laurence Olivier's Nelson is a brilliant figure who has a sense of history ( notice his speech about the great figures of the 18th Century - he includes George Washington !... |
492,536 | 3,280,905 | 39,566 | 10 | A Film about Patent Medicines , Ceramic Pug Dogs , Household Economics Lessons , Hooray ! | I have always liked this movie . Clarence Day was the son of Clarence Day Sr . and Vinnie Day . His childhood ( with three brothers ) was a privileged one , as his father was a successful broker in New York City during the Gilded Age . Day became a humorist and autobiographer , writing three books that remain very ente... |
492,438 | 3,280,905 | 80,889 | 10 | One of the Sharpest Late Cold War Comedies | After their success in HOUSECALLS ( 1978 ) Glenda Jackson and Walter Matthau got re teamed again in this marvelous spoof of the world of spies . Matthau has been one of the best trained CIA operatives in the field , but he is aware that the atmosphere where he blossomed is being tainted by a new chief - Ned Beatty . Be... |
491,927 | 3,280,905 | 37,415 | 10 | Can an unseen presence physically threaten a human being ? | Without question THE UNINVITED is one of the finest ghost story movies that Hollywood has created . It does have flaws ( all motion pictures have flaws if you look for them ) , but the main portions of the film work . Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey are a pair of siblings from London , who are looking for a house in Cornwa... |
492,327 | 3,280,905 | 41,329 | 10 | Is there such a thing as to love too much and too well ? | MGM looked for a bankable star to handle the role of Arnold Boult ? It could only be Spencer Tracy , their finest actor with a recognizable face and name , So Robert Morley did not play his self-created dream part , but Tracy inherited it . Fortunately Tracy was fully able to give the role it's best spin if it's creato... |
491,630 | 3,280,905 | 69,901 | 10 | One Fanatical Wine Lover | Donald Pleasance plays one of his best television roles as Adrian Carsini , owner ( with his brother Gary Conway ) of a fine vineyard that has been turning out superior products ( due to Pleasance's standards ) for decades . But he finds Conway ( who owns half the vineyard ) wants to sell his half to a competitor ( who... |
492,378 | 3,280,905 | 27,698 | 10 | Damn Good for a Film Biography of a Theatrical Giant | I suspect that had Dashiell Hammett never written a successful comic pot boiler detective story called THE THIN MAN , William Powell's best remembered role would be as Florenz Ziegfeld in THE GREAT ZIEGFELD . Here he captured that brilliant showman's vision and drive with just the right degree of sophistication . I can... |
491,641 | 3,280,905 | 83,090 | 10 | Free Speech v . Hate Speech | In Danny Kaye's career ( despite what is said on this thread ) he made two dramatic and one half dramatic performances in movies . The half dramatic performance was in the film ME AND THE COLONEL , a comedy with Curt Jurgens based on a play by Franz Werfel , JACOBOWSKI UND DER OBERST ( JACOBOWSKI AND THE COLONEL ) abou... |
491,930 | 3,280,905 | 98,627 | 10 | Klane and Kotcheff succeed where Hitchcock failed | There is really nothing funny about a dead man and his corpse . Yet occasionally corpses happen to be the subject of humor . There was the amusing film ( based on a Robert Louis Stevenson novel ) THE WRONG BOX , which was elegantly done , and was quite good . There was Alfred Hitchcock's attempt at a totally funny blac... |
493,216 | 3,280,905 | 41,239 | 10 | I Want To Be Champ ! | The apocryphal line in the " Summary Line " is usually shot out ( with appropriately gritted teeth and pressured , angst filled tones ) by mimics pretending they are doing Kirk Douglas . But it does convey the character of Midge Kelly pretty well . From the first we realize that no matter how skillful a boxer he is , M... |
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