101 Dalmatians
6 1996
A love action remake of the 1961 cartoon movie, A hundred and One
Dalmatians. Incredible performance by Glenn Close, she plays Cruella De Vil, a fashion czar who wants a dalmatian coat. The animals rebel. Lots and lots of dogs. Joan Plowright plays the granny/dognanny. Great kids movie.
102 Dalmations
8 2000
Sequal to 101 Dalmations. Curella De Vil (Glenn Close)is released from prision after completing "treatment" and when the treatment fails, decides she wants to make her coat of dalmation fur but now needs 102 dalmation puppies as she wants a hood on the coat. To avoid parole violation she seals puppies and goes to Paris. The best performance is by Waddlesworth, a green wing macaw parot who thinks he is a rotweiler not a bird. Incredible costume design and was nominated for an acadamy award and should have won.
1941
10
While this movie is considered producer Stephen Spielburg's flop, I
thought it was as funny as they come. Perhaps I had a father who was a pilot in WWII and I sort of wonder if over time, the war tales get bigger and bigger. While this was a box office flop by Spielburg's standards, it was extremely funny. Perhaps Speilburg couldn't put jurassic hype into a comedy.
2 Days in the Valley
7
Lives of ten people for 48 hours in The Valley. Somehow, at the end of the movie, they come together. Included are a policeman,a self centered art dealer and a vain hit man with a sexpot blonde girlfriend, Charlize Theron.
52 Pick-Up
4
In spite of weel known talent such as
Ann Margaret and Roy Scheider, this crime story comes up lacking. Plot is about a business executive who has an affair and is blackmailed by sick criminals who also do porn movies so there is a lot of nudity. Film seems almost amateurish.
54
9 1998
Sort of the story of Steve Rubell, (Mike Myers,) and his Studio 54 in its height of status as told by a teenager,
Ryan Phillippe, from New Jersey that wants to get out of N.J. and works his way up to bartender at Studio 54. He is
enamored by a girl forom N.J. who is on a soap opera, Neve Campbell and a girl,
Selma Hayek, who wants to be a disco singer. The wild times, drugs and
personal problems.
A Few Good Men
8
A high drama set to a court martial of a couple of Marines charged with
murder. Jack Nicholson plays a psycho C.O. and Tom Cruise and Demi Moore
play defense counsel.
A Kiss before Dying
8 1956
A college student,
Robert Wagoner, decides to mary money. However his rich fiance,
Joanne Woodward, gets pregnant so he kills her. Then he becomes engaged to her
sister, Virginia Leith. Will she learn in time.
Mary Astor plays the killer's mother.
A Kiss before Dying
7 1991
Remake of the 1956 with many changes and not quite the cast or as well
done. This time the the college boy (Matt Dillon) is a graduate who assumes
someone else's identity. He kills wealthy fiance Dorthy and then assume the
new identity and marries the other sister, Ellen. This time they are twins
and both roles are played by Sean Young. Much suspense as Ellen pursues
clues, will she learn in time that she is married to a killer?
A New Leaf
5 1971
Walter Mathau plays a man who runs thru his trust fund. He plots to
marry a rich woman (Elaine May). He does so but he resents her earthiness
and clumsiness and considers murdering her. Over time they learn to get
along.
A Night At The Roxbury
4 1998
Two looser brothers who live in Beverly Hills plot to get into a hip nightclub and have various misadventures. Their whining voices will make you want silent movies to come back.
Loni Anderson plays their cosmetic surgery loving mother.
A Night to Remember
8 1958 B&W
A HMS Titanic story, well told. People try to do their duty as the boat
sinks. Lots of very realistic scenes. Being B&W, it seems to especially
effective for night shots. Most of the movie is about the sinking, no extra
plots.
A Place In The Sun
5 b&W 1951
Poor young nephew (montgomery Clift) of wealthy industrialist gets job at
his factory. He gets poor factpry girl (Shelly Winters) pregnant but in the
mean time falls in love with beautiful Elizabeth Taylor. Beautifully
photographed and beautiful coctail party scenes. Winters drowns and Cliff is
executed. Raymond Burr plays a presecutor.
A Walk in
the Clouds
5 1995
Keanu Reeves gets married one day, goes to fight in WWII the next and
comes back 4 years later to see his bride. She hasn't bothered to read his
letters from war. He takes off and meets a woman on a bus. She says she is
pregnant and scared to meet her father unwed. He decides to pose as her
husband to meet her father. Her father meets them at gunpoint and acts
against them. He says they are traditional mexican but act Italian. They
fall in love. He gets his marriage annulled from his wife and goes to her.
Her father burns down the vinyard.
Afterglow
6 1997
Julie Christie plays the wife of Nick Nolte. She is a former actress and he is a handyman. The rules of their marriage is fooling around is OK. By chance they end up having affairs with both spouses of a young wealthy couple,
Lara Flynn Boyle and Jonny Lee Millre. He wants a trophy wife and she wants to get pregnant. Could have been a wonderful comedy or perhaps mystery but falls short as a drama inspite of incredible performance by Julie Christie which got her an academy award nomination for best actress.
Air Force One
8
A non stop, Harrison Ford action movie. Unfortunately, the action scenes are not Perfectly done and the plot is kind of thin.
All About Eve
1950 7 B&W
Story of a girl as she schemes and maneuvers her way up in the theater.
An Affair to Remember
8
Remake of the movie Love Affair but with a Vic Damonne song and filmed in color.
Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr star.
An American in Paris
10 1951
Gene Kelly plays an american who stays in Paris after WWII to be a
painter. Nina Foch does an outstanding job playing the wealthy woman who
loves and sponsors Kelly until he falls for a very young girl,
Leslie Caron.
An American President
3
Mostly a propaganda film to support the Clinton re-election which was a few months away when this film was released. Romantic comedy about a widowed U.S. President who falls for a beautiful young but politically active woman.
An Element Of Truth
8 1995
Beautiful con artist (Donna Mills) schemes for money and marries to aid her scheme. Interesting plot.
An Ideal Husband
6 1999
A play by Oscar Wilde set in 1895 London among the wealthy. A rich
gentleman, marries and becomes an up and coming politician. However his
wealth is from selling state secrets from a time before his marriage and the
mistress Julianne Moore of the buyer turns up insisting he go along with her swindle or she will expose him. Incredible costumes and palace intrigue. Some humor.
An Unfinished Affair
7 1996
If you liked Fatal Attraction, you'll like this movie. Man,
Tim Matheson, married to Leigh Taylor-Young, has an affair with
beautiful art student, Jennie
Garth, and ends it. She decides to get revenge. Many moves and counter moves.
Analyze This
4 1999
Billy Chrystal is a new york psychatrist who gets a mafia big shot
(Robert De Niro) as a patient or else.
Lisa
Kudro plays his fiance but as they try to get marrried, the mob has more important things for Crystal to do. Some good laughs. Sould have been a lot better.
Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna
9 1986
Made for TV movie based on the legend of Anastasia. Amy Irving plays the title role. Olivia De Havilland plays the Dowager Empress Maria. Susan Lucci plays the head of the New York part of the russian family. Many big stars but some in but a bit role.
Anatomy of a Murder
8 B/W
Jimmy Stewart plays a lawyer, who hurting for cash, takes a controversial murder trial. Set a small town in
the Upper Penensila of Michigan in the early 1950's. Dramatic performances
by Stewart, by Eve Arden as his secretary, by Lee Remick as the wiife of the
accused and George C. Scott as the Assistant Attorney General.
Anne of Avonlea
4 1987
Sequel to Disney's Anne of Green Gables. Anne becomes a writer
and teacher at a girl's college, where she has more misadventures. She has
many misadventures set before WWI. in rural Canada.
Another Stakeout
3
Cops stake out the apartment of woman in hopes an escaped convict will show up. Really dumb.
Another Time, Another place
5 1958 B&W
Lana Turner plays a reporter in London as the war ends. She fall for Sean Connery in one of his first movie roles. He anounces he is married and has a child as he leaves to cover the Axis surrender. He is killed in a plane
crash. Barry Sullivan plays Turner's rich boss and lover. Then Turner goes
to meet Conery's widow, Glynis Jones. Rather strange but shows Turner's
acting abilities anda different way of bringing someone back from the grave.
Another You
4 1991
Predictable Gene Wilder and Richard Prior movie. This time prior is a
con man who is doing community service and Wilder is a compulsive liar, just released from a mental institution. He happens to look like a missing
millionaire and assumes his identity.
Mercedes Ruehl plays the millionaire's wife. Of course the whole thing is a scam by an even bigger crook.
Apollo 13
10
A Ron Howard film of the Apollo 13 space emergency. Staring Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell, Howard filmed much of the movies in an airplane to create weightlessness and paid close attention to getting the details correct.
While you know they return safely, you are on the edge of your seat all the
time. Possibly the only movie filmed in weightlessness.
The Apartment
4 B&W
Stars
Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. Lemmon lets his boss (Fred
MacMurray) use his apartment to cheat on his wife. Shirley MacLaine plays a mistress that falls for Lemmon. Shows the gloomy side of life in the city.
Arch of Triumph
4 1985
Strange story set in Paris just before the NAZI invasion Anthony Hopkins plays a german physician who flees germany and the NAZIs and falls for a beautiful singer, Lesley-Anne Down. Possibly it was a beautiful fim once, but the video I saw showed much original film deterioration.
Armageddon
5 1998
Basic tale of an large space rock (the size of Texas) which will hit
earth. The governmwent tries to do something to deflect it, so they hire an
oil well driller
(Bruce
Willis) and his team to fly to it and drill an 800 ft. deep shaft to put
nuclear weapons in, to split it apart. Some real good special effects and
some real bad ones. The plot gets thin so the actors can hollar at each
other. Small side plot of a romance between the boss's daughter
(Liv Tyler) and one of his men.
The Arrival
6 1996
Charlie Sheen plays a radio astronomer who discovers an extra-terrestrial radio signal. When he reports it he's fired, the records are distroyed and his co-worker killed. Then he chases clues in what seems like a James Bond plot. Bad ending.
Arsenic and Old Lace
5 B/W and colorized
A comedy with
Cary Grant playing a bachelor who gets mixed up with two spinsters who poison people and buy them in their basement. Movie with the famous Cary Grant line, "Insanity runs in my family ... it practically gallops!"
As Good as it Gets
6
A great vehicle for Jack Nickolson as a psycho writer who meet waitress Helen Hunt. Many good one liners, put downs and some good gags.
The Astronaut's Wife
9
Johnny Depp as an astronaut and Charlize Theron as his wife. After a trip in space, he comes home a little different. Many simularities to Rosemary's Baby. Verry suspenseful and scarry.
Assassins
5 1995
Sylvester Stallone plays a hit man who wants to retire. Antonnio
Banderas plays a younger psycho hit man who challenges him. Julianne Moore plays the mark, a cat loving computer genius with stolen information. Lots of shootings.
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
5 1997
Mike Myers plays the hero and vilian. Lots of smutt.
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
5 1999
Sequel first spy spoof movie. Mike Myers plays the hero and vilian again. This time he time travels to the 60's. Lots of smutt. A few good gags.
The Avengers
3 1998
Movie from the BBC TV series. Mr. Steed and Mrs. Peel (Uma thurman) are on a mission to stop Sean Connery from destroying the U.K. by controling the weather. The plots too strange to be very enjoyable, except for the sets and costumes.
The Band Wagon
Barcelona
5 1994
Ted, an american salesman (Taylor Nichols) in Spain has his brother Fred, a navy officer drops in and then move in with him. He meets and falls for a girl (Tuska Bergen).
Mira Sorvino plays Fred's girlfriend. Many problems with two cultures and being hated because they are american. Some funny moments. Good music.
Basic Instinct
10 1992
Beautifully photographed murder mystery. Michael Douglas is the not so clean cop who investigates a murder and Sharon Stone is the beautiful blonde suspect with a interesting lifestyle. Jeanne Tripplehorn is a police psychologist. For much of the movie you can't tell who is chasing who or why. Very Hitchcock like in photography and mood. Many plot twists.
Battle of Britain
8
A movie about the critical battle in WWII. It tells the story
as well as it could be told in a two hour movie.
Bed of Roses
4 1996
Mary Stuart Masterson (left) and Christian Slater (right) star in a love
story. Pamela
Segall plays her girl friend she talks to. She however doesn't love. He
delivers flowers.
Bell, Book and Candle
10
Movie recreates the on screen team of Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak.
Jack Lemon plays her brother. The movie is a romantic comedy. If you liked
Bewitched, you'll like this. Also a great halloween or Christmas movie.
Beloved Infidel
9
Based on the allegedly true story of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sheilah Graham.
Incredibly beautifully photographed. Incredible performance by Peck.
Ben Hur
7
Grandest epic staring Charlton
Heston. Many incredibly large spectacles including a chariot race and a
naval battle. It runs over three and a half hours.
The Best Years of Our Lives
9 1946 B&W
Incredibly touching story of three vets (Dana Andrews, Frederic March, Harold Russell) returning from WWII to their small town. One married for 20 years, one married for 20 days and one who had a girlfriend. They struggle to adjust to a world that has changed. Russell won two Academy Awards for his part, the only time that has happened.
The Big Sleep
8
Humphrey Bogart plays
Phillip Marlowe the 1940 L.A. private eye.
Lauren Bacall
co-stars. Possibly the classic private eye movie.
Billy Elliott
8 2000
Set in the mid 80's in an impoverished mining town and set against a backdrop of extreme poverty and police a young bou takes ballet lessons and find he has a tallent for it against the wishes of his family. A few funny spots but mostly sorrow.
Bio-Dome
2 1996
A movie designed to be as revolting as possible. Two teens, that think
they are being cool, get locked in a one experiment in a bio dome. As they
say, "just because there in the bubble, doen't mean they can't cause trouble.
Really disgusting.
The Birds
9 1963
Staring
Rod Taylor,
Jessica
Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette, Veronica Cartwright and
Tippi Hedren as the Hitchock blonde. A classic film about when birds
attack people. Set in
Bodega Bay,
California.
The Birds and the Bees
10
Wonderful romantic comedy with Mitzi Gaynor
and David Niven as a father-daughter card shark team and George Gobel as the
clumsy scientist son of a wealthy family. Gaynor and Gobels fall in love
aboard an ocean liner. Beautifully photographed with beautiful costumes.
Black Widow
10
Suspense movie with Theresa Russell plays a beautiful suductress that
marries a series of wealthy men and kills them. Debrah Winger plays a
researcher for the Department of Justice who investigates mob deaths. After
two murders, she gets on her trai1, and chases her to Hawaii. Who will get
who? One "tasteful" nude scene to give it an R rating.
Blast from the Past
8 1999
In 1962, during the Cuban Missle Crisis, a brilliant but excentric
scientist and his pregnant wife beleiving that Los Angeles is under nuclear
attack and enter a secret fallout shelter for 35 years. There they have a
son who has no knowledge of the world except what they tell him. The 35
years is up and the boy goes out in search of supplies. Many good lines and
great gags. One good dance scene.
Blaze
10
Story of Louisiana governor Earl K. Long (brother and successor to Huey)
and his relationship to stripper Blaze Starr and his fight for civil rights
legislation. Incredible performance by Paul Newman as Earl Long.
blood and Sand
3 B&W 1922 silent movie
Clasic story of bullfighter Rudolph Valentino, who meets seductress Doa
Sol, (Nita Naldi). She destroys his marriage and then his life.
Blood
and Sand
10 1989 aka Sangre y arena
Remake of many other movies with Sharon Stone as the seductress Doa Sol.
Incredibly dramatic and emotional. The music really works well with the
movie. Story of a poor boy who wishes to become a bullfighter. He succeeds
but falls for a she-devil temptress and abandons his wife. Finally a bull
kills him while Stone watches with her next conquest of a rising bullfighter.
Seems to be a truly a Spanish movie.
Blow Out
7 1981
John travolta plays a movie sound man who is recording background sounds
when a car swerves into water. He pulls a woman (Nancy Allen) out of the
submerged car. He learns that a presidential candidate was killed in the car
and that on his sound recordings are the sound of a gunshot which caused the
accident. The suspense stats, will he get the evidence and release it before
they are killed?
Blue Skies
8
Set around 1960, Tommy Lee Jones plays the lomg suffering husband of free
sprit Jessica Lange. He is an army office involved in nuclear tests known as
Blue Skies. His wife is a sexpot who makes trouble. Incredible acting.
Blue Steel
4 1990
Sex, police, flashbacks and sick psycho violence. Jamie Lee curtis plays
a rookie policewoman who shoots a convenience stoor robber holding a man
hostage. The hostage, a wealthyman, turns out to be a psycho and the two
engage in a cat and mouse romance game. Somewhat corny.
Blues Brothers 2000
4 1998
Sequel to the Blues Broters. Dan Aykroyd is the only surviving member of
the original cast. Lots of car stunts, but the supernatural part seems to
rob it of the humor of the original. Mot of cameo appearances by famous
musicians.
Boogie Nights
1
While this may a R rated film, its a porn film about making porn films.
Burt Reynolds plays a porn film maker. Lots of explicit language and a lot
of explicit sex scenes. It is a real sick movie about real sick people.
Boxing Helena
8 1993
Movie about a surgeon who is tormented by his mother and is obsessed by
the beautiful
Helena,
Sherilyn Fenn. When his mother dies and Helena refuses him, he cuts off
her limbs and puts her in a box to display with flowers as the statue of
Venus. Beautiful but strange film.
The Brady Bunch Movie
5
This movie is a little like the Adams Family. The Brady family is stuck
in the 60's in the middle of the 90's. Its both weird and funny.
Bram Stoker's Dracula
7
The clasic tale of the undead. This film is done with many top stars and
special effects and a a diffrent twist on the story. Produced by Francis
ford Coppola.
Brass Target
6 1978
Set just after V.E. Day, George Kennedy plays Gen. George S. Patton. 250
Million dollars of NAZI gold which was being shipped to Frankfort by train is
stolen and 59 G.I.s killed. The Russians are accusing the Americans of
stealing it. Patton wants to prove someone on Eisenhower's staff is
responsible. The thieves, Robert Vaughan, Patrick McGooham, hire a mob
killer, Max von Sydow to kill Gen. Patton. Sophia Loren
plays the girlfriend to anyone in power.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
5
Great vehicle to show off Audrey
Hepburn's beauty. Strange story of a kooky girl and a struggling writer
(George Peppard) who is supported by a married woman. Much changed from the
Truman Capote novel inspired by Doris Lilly. Interesting party
scenes. The Mancinni music is wonderful and includes Moon
River.
A Breath of Scandal
5 1960
Set in Austria in 1907. Beautiful sets and costumes of that period.
John Gavin is an american who fall for Sophia Loren,
a Princess who has been told to marry a Prussian prince. Maurice Chavalier
plays her father and Agnes Morehead plays her their enemy at court who wants
to create a Breath of Scandal to ruin the family.
Brigadoon
8
Excellent dance vehicle for Gene Kelly and Cyd Charissw. On a hunting
trip to Ireland Kelly meets Charissw and falls for her. He learns that she
is trapped in a bewitched village which appears one day every 100 years and
if she leaves, everyone dies. He returns to New York, breaks his engagement
and returns to Charissw. The New York scene should also be a classic of its
time too.
The Bridges of Madison County
10
Beautifully love story told after the deaths of the lovers. About a brief
affair, a married woman had many years ago. Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep
give incredible performances. Wonderful music and romance.
Bringing up
Baby
4 B&W
This Howard Hawks screwball comedy was a box office flop when it starred
Cary Grant(then 34),
Katharine Hepburn (then 31) and a leopard named baby. Movie has every
half witted gag. Movie was such a flop, Hepburn and Hawks were fired by RKO.
This is the movie with the collapsing brontosaurus.
Broken Arrow
6
John Travolta plays a cold as icewater and crazy as an Air Force pilot
who steals nuclear weapons. Many action scenes and very well done.
Buffy the
Vampire Slayer
6 1992
Self absorbed L.A. high school cheerleader (Kristy
Swanson) transforms into a vampire killer on a mission to save the world
from vampires. Many funny scheenes and gags. Movie developed a cult
following.
Bugsy
9 1991
Story of Ben "Bugsy" Segal (Warren
Beatty)and Virginia Hill (Annette Bening) and how as the visionary
mobster, Segal created Las Vegas, NV. Off screen there was the romance of
the two stars which resulted in their marriage.
Bulworth
2 1998
When his investments go sour, a senator from Calif.
Christine Baranski plays his wife who is having an open affair. He's
running for re-election,
(
Warren Beatty) gets $10 million of life insurance on himself and hires a hit man to kill him over the weekend. While waiting to be killed he goes on the campaign trail and says what is on his mind. Then his investments improve and he tries to cancel the hit. Then he tries to become black and falls for
Halle Berry who turns out to be the hit person. Lots and lots of
senseless profanity.
Cafe Society
9 1995
Incredible period movie. Story of a wealty playboy who becomes a pimp when his parents cut off his money because they don't like the girl
(Laura Flynn Boyle)
he is going out with. Supposidly based on a true story. Set in the early 50's and he setting and scenery are incredible. Watchoing the movie makes you think you are in the 50's.
Captain Blood
8 B&W 1935
A physician, Errol Flynn, is unjustly accused of treason and sentenced to be transported to the Caribbean and sold into slavery. He escapes and becomes a pirate. He keeps meeting his beautiful owner, Olivia De Havilland.
The Captain's Paradise
5 1953 B&W
British comedy with
Alec Guinness playing the captain of a ship in the Mediterranean with a wife at both ends of his route. Each with one half of the qualities a man would want in a woman. One a homebody who cooks and cleans, the other a beautiful party girl played by Yvonne De Carlo who has some interesting dance numbers. The fun starts when the wives reverse roles.
Casablanca
7 1942 B&W
Humphrey Bogart plays an american who falls for Ingred Bergman in Paris. The Germans invade and they flee, but she sends him a note she isn't coming at the last moment. He goes to Casablanca and runs a bar and then she and her husband show up with the Nazis after them. Very much a war film with much about the early war times, yet a love story.
Casino
10
A fantastic movie. Top stars playing excellent roles. Based on a true story of "Lefty" Rosenthal (played by Robert DeNero). A story told from two peoples perspectives. Must have cost an absolute fortune to make.
Sharon Stone was considered for an oscar for her role.
Casper
7 1995
Great screen adaption of the comic Casper the friendly gost. Good special effects.
Cast Away
4 2000
Very long tale of a Fed Ex employee (Tom Hanks) who hours after proposing to his girlfriend (Helen Hunt) is the sole survivor of a plane crash on a deserted island in the pacific where he spends four years which is about as long as the movie seems. Then he found and comes back to the US to learn his fiance has married and has a child.
The Cat's Meow
9 2001
Set aboard the Yacht of William Randolph Hearst in 1924. Billed as a who done it the film leaves little question as to who done it. The movie takes you back to 1924 and looks into the life of Hearst and the people who suround him.
The Cemetery Club
9 1993
Wondefully both sad and funny story that starts at another of Selma's
(Lainie Kazan) weddings. Three couples attend. Then the three husbands die and the three comfortable widows (Ellen Burstyn, Olympia Dukakis and Diane Ladd) met each week to visit their graves, hence the name the cemetery club. Then one of them (Ellen Burstyn) meets a guy (Danny Aiello) who is visiting his wife's grave and the movie gets going. Excellent music and gags and incredible sad.
Center Stage
10 2000
Story about several students who live and study at the American Ballet's school in New York. Really well done for a dance movie. Has some of the young people deciding what they want to do with their lives in conflict with the people who run the school and their fellow students.
Chicago
10 2002
Movie version of the stage play. Intersting use of song and dance to tell story.
Set in 1920's Chicago a woman is held for trial for shooting her lover and becomes a celebrity. A 1942 Roxie Hart with Ginger Rodgers was made of this trial along with the 1927 silent film Chicago.
Chicken Run
5 2000
English claymation film. Clay chickens in a concentration camp style chicken farm plot their escape before becoming chicken pies. Several good gags and remarkable claymation.
Chinatown
10 1974
Set in pre WWII L.A. Jack Nicholson plays former cop turned P.I. A
woman (Diane Ladd) comes to his office and asks that Nicholson find out if
her prominent husband is unfaithful. He catches the husband, but then the
real wife (Faye Dunnaway) turns up and she isn't the woman who hired him and she wants to sue. Then the husband turns up dead and there is a conspiracy. Movie lacks a good ending however.
Choose Me 1984
4
Eve,
Lesley Ann Warren, owns a bar called Eve's. Geneviève Bujold plays Dr. Love, a radio talk show psychologist who has never been in love. She moves in with Eve under a phony name and wants to talk to everyone. John Larroquette plays a waiter at the bar. Keith Carradine plays Mickey, who is just out of a mental home. He proposes to a lot of women.
Con Air
6 1997
A buch of convicts who take over an airplane.
Conspiracy Theory
6
Interesting but typical Julia Roberts action movie, with
Julia
Roberts playing a government attorney who is always being contacted by a crazy cab driver, Mel Gibson.
Contact
6
Story of dedicated and driven astronomer
( Jodie Foster) who fights government beauracracy and bureaucrats to try to make contact with an extraterrestrial inteligence.
The Corrupt Ones
7 1967 aka H"lle von Macao, Die aka Hell to Macao
Robert Stack is a photographer sent into Red China by a french magazine. He is given a medalion and everyone wants it, and people start dropping dead around him.
Elke Sommer is the glamorous blonde he meets. Nancy Kwan plays a crime boss out to kill them. In many way it is similar to Soldier of Fortune.
Countdown
7 1968
Made before the first moon landing. The space race and the cold war are hot. Russia might win the race to the moon so NASA tries a desperate one man, one way mission to land on the moon. James Caan plays the civilian astronaut chosen for PR reasons over the more qualified military astronaut played by Robert Duvall. This creates conflict along with his supportive wife (Joanna Moore) and a NASA dr. who are convinced the mission will fail. Incredible performances by Joanna Moore and Barbara Baxley as astronaut's wives who know that their husbands my die.
Cover Girl
8
Musical about a dance team (Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth) who love each
other. She is offered a great oportunity to go on her own by someone who
knew her grandmother. Wonderful supporting role by Eve Arden. Also has Phil Silvers.
The Cowboys
5
John Wayne as a rancher that when a gold strike takes away his help,
enlist some school boys to herd his cattle 400 nikes to market. Along the
way, the Duke is killed by a psycho (Bruce Dern) and the schoolboys finish
the trail drive.
The Craft
5 1996
Teen age girl (Robin Tunney) moves to town and is put in catholic high
school. She meets three other classmates (Fairuza Balk, Rachel True and Neve Campbell who are witches and need a fourth to complete their group. As they gain magical powers, they use it on people they hate in school, then turn against temselves.
Crimes of Passion
5 1984 aka China Blue
A career woman (Kathleen Turner) lives a secret life as a call girl at night. When the company she works for hires someone to investigate industrial espionage, the detective discovers her secret, but falls in love with her. Annie Potts plays his unloving wife.
Meantime a crazy preacher (Anthony Perkins) decides to kill her. There are
two versions, a R version and an unrated version. There is a lot of sex and violence.
Cross of Iron
5 1977
Story of German soldiers on the Russina front. James Coburn plays an
Iron Cross recipient who gets an aristocratic comander who is desperate to
receive the Iron Cross.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
4 2000 aka Wo hu zang long
Strange film made in China in Mandarin with English subtitles. Seems to be set in times past when warriors fight with sowards but are able to fly over rooftops and water. Lot of mattrial arts really speeded up.
Cruel Intentions
6 1999
Very rich psychopathic prep school step brother and sister engage in a
cruel bet. That he can seduce the headmaster's daughter. Set in New York in some of the homes of the ultra rich there. beautifully photographed. Very sexual theme but no nudity.
Cyrano de Bergerac
4 1950 B&W
Classic tale of the man who coud do anything but get a girl because of his ugly face. Jos, Ferrer won an oscar for the title role. The technical
quality of the film would seem to put it in the 20's, not the 50's. Much
monolugue. My favorite is, "I may stand not high it may be, but alone."
Damn Yankees
4 1958
Broadway stage play made into a movie. A musical comedy about a baseball
fan who sells his soul to the devil to beat the New York Yankees during the
time in which they are unbeatable. Looks like a play that was filmed more
than a movie.
Dancers
5
Story of balet dancers making a movie of the ballet Giselle with
Mikhail Baryshnikov as the principal dancer/choregrapher who has an affair
with a youg girl ballerina and an older dancer at the same time.
Dance With Me
10 1998
Great but different dance movie. Young man,(Chayanne), gets out of Cuban and comes to Houston Texas thru the efforts of a dance studio owner, Kris Kristofferson, who wishes to retire to fishing. He meets a dancer, Vanessa Williams, and they fall in love. But to be successful in dance she must dance with her former egotistical and obnoxious partner, Rick Valenzuela, who fathered her child.
Dantes Peak
8
A great disaster movie on a mountainous scale. Volcano expert (Pierce
Brosnan) isn't believed when he says a mountain by a small town will explode. It blows up and then the suspense is, how and how will they survive.
Das Boot
9 1981
Story of a german Submarine in 1942. There are several versioms with
diffrent running times. A 145 minute theatrical release and a 5 hour
mini-series. German film in german with english sub titles. Very
suspenseful.
Dave
5
Dave is a presidential imitator, he is hired by the Secret Service to
impersonate the Prez. for a night, but that's the night the Prez. has a
heart attack and goes into a coma. The first lady, who dislikes her husband,
loves Dave. Sort of a comedy.
Dead Again
9 1991
A private detective tries to learn about a woman
(Emma
Thompson) with no memory. Very much like Vertigo in it is a murder
mystery with a supernatural posibility. Robin Williams plays a great bit
part as a sicko psychiatrist.
Decameron Nights
8 1953
Based on a story of 14th century Italy by
Giovanni Boccaccio. The tale is of a storyteller who tells
several stories of great romance with the same cast,
(Joan
Fontaine, Louis Jourdan) in several roles. Includes a young
Joan Collins.
Dial M for Murder
8
Hitchock thriller with
Grace Kelly as the Hitchcock blonde. A tennis player, learns
of his wife's infidelity and plans to kill her with the aid of a schoolmate.
The plot goes wrong and wife kills her assailant, so he sets her up for
murder.
Dillinger
10
A little known movie based on the gangster's life, with the title role
being played by Warren Oates. Told from the viewpoint of Melvin Purvis played
by Ben Johnson. Michelle Philips plays Dillinger's girlfriend and Cloris
Leachman plays the lady in red. Richard Dryfus plays pretty boy Floyd. Well
done with top stars and enough action to keep interest but not too much.
Excellent sets and
story including what happened long after Dillinger was killed.
Dinner at Eight
4 1933 B&W
A comedy. Wife of wealthy busnessman plans dinner poarty for visiting
royalty. Everything goes wrong. Has big stars of the time and beautiful
costumes.
Dinner at the Ritz
9 B&W
A murder mystery set in europe before WWII. "Annabella" plays a girl who
searches over europe to find her father's killer who stole all the money from
his bank. David Niven plays the investigator who follows her. Many
wonderful scenes including a flying boat.
Dirty Work
8
A movie well described as an annimal house of the 90's. Two trouble
making kids grow up and decide to go in business of causing trouble as
Revenge Inc.
Dr. Doolittle
5 1998
Eddie Murphy plays a doctor, in the middle of selling his
practice to a big conglomerate, learns he can talk to animals. He then
starts to treat their illnesses.
Dolores Claiborne
8 1994
Based on the Stephen King novel. Crude New York reporter, Leigh Taylor-Young tries to help her mother,
Kathy Bates, a maid, accused of killing the hateful woman, J
udy Parfitt, she worked for.
Donnie
Brasco
10 1997
True story of a FBI agent, played by Johnny Depp, who sucessfully posed as a crook and joined a New York mafia family and stays with them for several
years. He is mentored by
Al Pacino,
an aging wiseguy who lives by the rules of the mafia and teaches them to Depp.
Incredible performances by both. Might be considered a mafia primer of the
time. Set during the 70's during disco. The story was written by the FBI
agent.
Double Cross
9 1994
Ex-con stockbroker moves to small town out west and falls into a murder
plot. Kelly Preston (Mrs. John Travolta) plays the femme fetalle. Great
plot which you never know which way it is going.
Double Jeopardy
7 1999
Ashley Judd plays a woman who is convicted of her husband's murder
although his body was never found. Years later she is released to a parole
office played by Tommy Lee Jones. She learns that her husband is alive and
his their child. She jumps parole to track them down and her parole officer
chases them. Lots of action scenes and incredible distortions of the law.
Drop Dead Gorgeous
Earthquake
The Edge
Elephant Walk
Emma
The Enemy Below
The English Patient
Event Horizon
Ever
After
Evita
Executive Decision
Exit to Eden
Extreme Measures
Eye for an Eye
5
Fail Safe
Fallen
The Fan
Fanny
Far and Away
Farewell my Lovely
Fatal Attraction
Father Goose
The
Fifth Element
Firestorm
First Kid
The First Wives Club
The Flintstones
Flubber
For the Boys
Forest Gump
The Forbidden Planet
8 1999
Comedy but made as a documentary of fictious small town beauty contest. Kirstie Allen plays the woman who runs the padgent and the mother of the girl who is favored to win. E movies
5
Charlton Heston stars as a builder in L.A. when the big quake hits. Many
big name stars in this disaster film. The question is: Who will live?
6 1997
Sometimes refered to as Jaws with Claws. Two men Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin are lost in the wilderness hundreds of miles from anyone. They battle a man-eating kodiak bear along with freezing and hungar for survival.
7
Incredibly beautiful and colorful movie. Elizabeth Taylor was a last
minute replacement for Vivian Leigh and supposedly some of the distant scenes
have Vivian Leigh in them. The plot, a beautiful girl who married a very
wealthy but alcoholic husband, gets a little strained. Set on a tea
plantation in Ceylon.
3
Beautifully photographed story set among the upper class in old
England society. Everyone talks in such formal verse, its hard to follow the
plot. Seems to be about Gwyneth
Paltrow (Emma) a matchmaker.
10 1957
Fictional duel between a U-boat and a destroyer in the South Atlantic
from the book with the same name. Robert Mitcheum
stars. Beautiful color and high drama.
5
Set before and at the end of WWII. A badly burned Englishman tells a
story of his love for a married woman in the deserts of North Africa to a
nurse who cares for him as he dies. Told thru a series of flashbacks. The
flashbacks make the story confusing.
6
A science fiction horror movie. Event Horizon is a space ship which was
designed to exceed light speed. It disappears for several years and
reappears. A team is sent to investigate the ship but horrible things start
happening. Initially, the special effects are excellent but as the movie
progresses it becomes a spine tingling horror film.
10 1998
This isn't your grandmother's Cinderella story. Set in 16th century
France. Drew Barrymore is a young girl, her mother died at her birth. Her
father remarries a woman, Anjelica Houston, with two children and then he
dies. She is raised as their servant. There is no fairy god mother or
magic, just a great movie.
8
The movie version of the opera. The movie is an opera as there is only
song and no dialogue. In spite of this unusual format for a movie, the movie
tells Evita's story well. Madonna may be very low class, but she can sing and
act, and this production is excellent and whoever dreamed up filming in
eastern europe was a genius. it looks realistic. You think you are there.
5
A high tech action movie about a hijacked 747 with nerve-gas aboard and
heading to the U.S. The Air Force comes up with a way to board the plane
while in flight. The special effects are lacking.
2 1994
One of the dumbest movies ever made. Dana Delany runs an island called Eden
for sex perverts to vacation. Rosie
O'Donneld and Dan Aykroyd play two L.A.P.D. detectives sent there to find
a diamond smuggler and hit woman there. Rosie dresses in leather
undergarments and a whip.
7 1996
Hugh Grant plays a dr. in a New York hospital that has a patient died
mysteriously. As he investigates, he is stopped by everyone at the hospital.
Gene Hackman plays the villain and Sarah Jessica Parker is the beautiful
nurse. Very suspenseful
6 1996
Kiefer Sutherland plays a rapest-murder who rapes and kills Olivia Burnette. When he is released, her mother, Sally Field, decides
to kill him. Ed Harris plays her supportive husband and Beverly D'Angelo plays her coworker and friend. F movies
John Travolta and Nicholas Cage as the good guy and terrorist. Travolta
captures Cage only to learn he has a high power bio weapon somewhere that
will go off. They then surgically remove Cage's face and put it on Travolta
so he can infiltrate the gang only Cage gets away and kills everyone who
knows of the operation and takes over Travolta's life. Lots of stupid shoot
outs.
10 B&W
High dram when something goes wrong and a squadron of Air Force bombers
is ordered to attack Moscow with nuclear weapons. Henry Fonda as the
President, tries desperately to stop them and prevent nuclear war. Walter
Mathau gives an interesting presentation about why power is sexy. To prevent
a lawsuit, the movie's release was delayed and its promotion was transferred
to another movie, Dr. Stranglove. That's why it never become a
classic.
5 1998
Policeman, Denzel
Washington, sends mass killer to the gas chamber. Then the cop finds
himself in pursuit of a deamon spirit which moves from host to host by touch
and seems to enjoy killing. Spooky.
4 1996
Robert De Niro is a psycho, a knife salesman who is laid off, hassled by
his ex wife and a he's great Giants fan. Wesley Snipes is a baseball player
sho signed for $40 million by the SF Giants. Ellen Barkin is a foul mouthed
sports announcer.
2 1961
A young frenchman, Horst Buchholz, wants to go to sea but he is in love
with Leslie Caron. If he marries her, he will have to stay ashore forever.
She tells him that she is going to mary another so he goes to sea then she
learns she is pregnant. Boring with strange accents, but being a french
movie it has Charles Boyer and Maurice Chevalier.
5 1992
Historical romance staring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, both with red
hair play an irish tenant farmer and his landlord's daughter go to Boston in
search of land and a better life and encounter misfortune along the way.
They end up in Oklahoma in the land races. Cruse has may fight scenes.
9 1975 color
Robert Mitchum plays 1940 L.A. private eye Ph
illip Marlowe Beautifuly photographed. He is hunting a
missing girlfriend for an oversize ex-con and people start dropping
dead. Charlotte Rampling plays the blonde bombshell and Sylvester
Stallone has a bit part.
9
N.Y. lawyer (Michael Douglas) with a wife (Anne Archer) and kid
has an brief affair with sexpot (Gle
nn Clos
e) while wife and kid are out of town. Wife returns but sexpot won't go
and become psycho. How far will she go? Incredible suspense. Some nude
scenes and foul language. Incredible performance by Close as the sexy
psycho.
6
Carry Grant
plays a very unglamorous drunk who at the outbreak of WWII, is coerced into
becoming a coast watcher on a pacific island. Fate puts a french governess
(Leslie Caron) and her seven girls on the same small island and they don't
get along. Many funny scenes.
5 1997
The Fifth Element is a science fiction/fantasy movie about good, (The
Fifth Element) versus evil 250 years in the future.
Milla Jovovich plays the
Fifth Element and Bruce
Willis plays the soldier turned cab driver who protects and saves the
universe.
7
Some smoke jumpers are fighting a forest fire and jump into a prison
break. Turns out the fire was set to aid the prison break. Lot of good fire
and action scenes.
5
Sinbad plays a former golden gloves boxer turned Secret Service agent
who is assigned to guard the president's son, a real brat. Some cute scenes.
3
While it is supposed to be a comedy, the movie teams three big stars with
a rather dumb plot. The three ex-wives all are separated from stereotypical
rich husbands who dump them for younger women. The comedy, if there is much,
is by accepting domestic violence and criminal acts as funny when committed
against men. My cousin, Wally has a bit but credited part with Goodie Hawn.
8
Non-cartoon movie from the TV cartoon series. Lot of props and gimmicks,
to make it stone age. Kids love it. John Goodman steals the show as Fred.
Elizabeth Taylor plays his mother-in-law.
6 1999
Robin Williams in this remake of the Absent Minded professor. Williams
invents flying rubber or flubber and tries to keep his foe from stealing his
fiance'.
7
Whether this is Martha Ray's biography is for the courts to decide.
Bette Midler and James Caan give excellent work. Some might call it a musical
too. Midler performs as an very old lady and Caan is hardly recognizable in
his character makeup as her acting partner.
4
Tom Hanks plays a slightly retarded man as he journeys thru life and all
sorts of horrible things happen to him, but he succeeds in spite of it all.
Some people call this a comedy, but there is so much tragedy I saw no humor
in it.
10
Probably one of the best sci-fi movies ever made. While the view of the
future was different in the 50's and the special effects less advanced, the
movie is still very entertaining. In the distant future, a spaceship lands
on a planet where the inhabitants have long been dead, but the machinery they
built is still working. Walter Pigeon and Leslie Nielsen star and a young Anne
Francis co-stars.
6 B&W
One of the funniest (black humor) lawyer movies. Jack Lemmon plays a
cameraman who is hit by a NFL player at a football game. Walter Mathau plays
a crooked lawyer who has him faking paralysis to win a large lawsuit or
settlement. Filmed in very, very wide screen.
Frantic
10
Harrison
Ford stars in this very well made mystery. An American doctor, goes to
a medical convention in Paris France with his wife, Betty Buckley. She dissapears and
after getting little help from the police, he goes looking for her. He teams
up with a young woman, Emmanuelle Seigner (wife of the writer and director,
Roman Polanski) who smuggles drugs.
Frequent Flyer
8 1996
Jack Wagner plays an airline pilot married to Shelly Hack in one city,
Joan Severance in another and then he marries Nicole Eggert in a third city.
All three move to one city and meet. Fireworks erupt.
From Here to Eternity
7 B&W 1953
Story of soap opera military life at Pearl harbor just before the
Japanese attack. The 1951 novel and this film were considered extremely
sensuous at its time. ?he scene with Burt Landcaster and Deborah
Kerr on the beach shocked audiences. Frank Sinatra won an oscar for
his performance an restarted his career. Montgomery Clift plays a private
who won't enter a fight after he accidently blinds his sparring partner. He
is cruelly mistreated. Donna Reed plays his girlfriend. Burt Landcaster
plays the First Sergeant who has a secret affair with Deborah Kerr, the
captain's wife. The army isn't prepared when the Japs attack. Many of the
men die and the women leave the island fearing an invasion.
The Full Monty
5
Out of work steel workers in Sheffield England, desperate for income,
decide to become a group of male strippers. Each has a diffrent problem that
forces him to strip.
Funny Bones
5
The son of a famous comic, fail at being funny and runs to Blackpool
England in search of good acts. Instead he finds his family history. Jerry
Lewis, Leslie Caron and Ruta Lee play spporting roles. Much location
scenery.
Funny Face
7
Audrey
Hepburn plays a young girl who is discovered by a photographer (Fred
Astaire) and becomes a model. Set in Paris. Includes the number, Think
Pink.
The Game
5 1997
Michael Douglas is a wealthy investment banker who becomes involves with
CRS, supposidly a recreation firm which turns out to be a crime organization.
Small role by Carroll Baker as the housekeeper.
Gaslight
6 B&W
Charles
Boyer and Ingrid Bergman star in her academy award winning role. What
starts out as a story of a wife going mad in London in the 1900's, becomes a
murder story. Angela Lansbury plays a young chambermaid.
The Gay Divorcee
8 B&W 1934
Adaptation of the Cole Porter sage play The Gay Divorce. Censors made them change the name and most of the songs were diffrent. First movie made for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
The General's
Daughter
5 1999
Daughter of a prominent general is murdered days before his retirement.
An Army Criminal Investigations Division team is asigned to find the killer
quickly but instead find the deceased lived a very strange and perverted life
and that the investigation is being controlled.
George of the Jungle
8
Excellent kids story about an awkward jungle dweller who comes to the US
and goes back to the jungle. The clumsy scenes are funny if you like kooky
stuff. Very popular with women.
Get Shorty
6
A mob tough guy (John Travolta), while attempting to collect a debt,
becomes a movie producer. Many big stars.
Gilda
8 B/W
The movie that made
Rita Hayworth a femme fatale. While it is a very dramatic movie and shows off Hayworth well, the story gets thin for such a big name movie.
Glenn Ford plays the other side in this tale of hurting love.
Gladiator
7 2000
The digital special effects meet 180 A.D. Rome. Slighly fractured story of a great general who is betrayed and sold into slavery by a corupt Caesar. Condemmed to the arena, he becomes a star and uses his fame to attack the Caesar and try to establish a republic. The movie is long on computer generated gore and hacked bodies along with computer generated architecture of ancient Rome which does not look very realistic. The movie is long on violence and death schenes. It also has some realistic political plots. It resembles Ben Hur but lacks its charm or effects and is much darker.
The Glimmer
Man
6
Action movie with Steven Segal plays a cool budest cop with a
past at the CIA who is on the trail of some serial killers.
Gloria
5 1999
Sharon Stone plays a gangster's moll. When a 7 year old child is an
important witness to a mob murder, the mobster orders the child killed.
Gloria takes the child and flees. Some good chase scenes. Some comedy about
the child vs. moll conflict.
GoldenEye
7 1995
Pierce Brosnan first plays James Bond in this spy tale in which a
defecting British agent, 006, gains contol of an orbital Russian ray gun
weapon. The usual gadgets, sex and violence. Includes a great tank-car
chase scene.
Godzilla
5 1998
A big screen tribute to the really dumb stories and special effect. If
you like bad movies, its great otherwise its dumb. Continues the holywood
description of the US military as bumbling fools. This time they have to get
the French army to save New York.
Going Hollywood the thirties.
5
Documentary about movies made in the 30's. Robert Preston narrates.
Grand Hotel
6 1932
Set in Berlin in 1932 at an expensive hotel. It has many characters who
stay at the hotel. Greta Garbo as a Russian ballerina and Joan Crawford as
a stenographer are the biggest starts.
Gray Lady
Down
8 1978
From the novel Event 1000. A nuclear submarine is rammed by a tanker and sinks. Will the survivors be rescued before they sufficat or slide to the
bottom of the ocea? Charlton Heston plays the sub commander and David
Carradine as the the man who tries to save them. Bit part by a young
Christopher Reeve. One of the few sub movies between WWII and the Hunt for Red October.
The Grass is Greener
6 1960
Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr play a 1960's Englih Lord and Lady who are
hapily married until
Robert Mitchum , an american millionaire wanders into their house and he
and Kerr fall in love instantly. Grant devises a scheme to make his wife not
want to leave by fighting a duel with pistols. Jean Simmons steals the show
as the wife's friend who plays a nut and if the marriage breaks up wants
Grant.
Great Expectations
4
Strange story of a boy from a weird poor family who meets a girl from an
even more weird rich family as they grow up and the boy becomes an artist.
Unusual performances by Anne Bancroft as a crazy, reclusive but wealthy old
lady and Robert De Niro as an escaped convict.
The Great Gatsby
9
Incredible adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel. Robert Redford is Gatsby and Mia Farrow is Daisy. Incredibly beautiful photography, costumes and music.
Great Indescretions
7 aka The Grotesque
Set between the wars in the English countryside. Sting plays a bi-sexual
butler who takes employment with a disfunctional family and then there is a
murder. Theresa Russell plays the Lady of the manor.
The Great Race
10
Comedy about an automobile race at the turn of the century. Incredible
Henry Mancinni music. The Sweetheart Tree is the theme. Tony Curtis
and Natalie Wood star.
The Greek Tycoon
5
Story of Onassis and Jackie Kennedy
(Jacqueline Bisset) with the names changed.
Green Card
6
Disney Screwball comedy. Beautiful girl maries Disney hunk with French
accent so she can get an exclusive apartment and he wants a green card so he
can stay in the U.S. The INS starts to investigate, so they start living
together and fall in love. Then the INS deports him. My cousin Wally has a
bit part as Grace, a party guest who is having a 40th anniversary.
The Green Glove
5 B&W 1952
American parachutes into France in WWII and sees a religious artifact.
Several years later he returns in search of it. Lot of similarity to The
Third Man or The Thirty-Nine Steps
Grosse Pointe Blank
5 1997
A professional assassin, John Cusack, mixes business with pleasure at his
10th high school reunion.
Grumpy Old Men
5
Walter Mathau and Jack Lemon play two widowers who have hated
each other since childhood. Their only desire is to die painlessly. Then a
glamorous widow, Ann Margaret
moves in next to them. Shot in the Minnesota in the winter and it
works around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Although there are many good gags,
the overall sadness takes away from the fun.
Grumppier Old Men
7
Lemon and Mathau and all the same characters are back in this
film set 6 mo. after the film Grumpy Old Men ended.
This time, the local bait shop is taken over by by Sophia Loren & her mother who
turn it into an Italian resterante' and gets rid of the fishermen. To save the
bait shop make the enemies allies. Burgess Meridith has a large role as
Lemon's 95 yr. old father.
Gypsy
6
Musical about the mother (Bete Middler) of famed stripper, Gypsey Rose
Lee (Cynthia Gibb). A lot of famous songs and Bob mackie costumes. Middler does
a great job as the abrasive, pushy, bossy stage mother in a role designed for
Ethyl Merman.
The Hand that Rocks the Cradle
8
A psychopathic widow who looses her child at birth, becomes a perfect
nanny
for a couple with two kids and plots to replace the wife and destroys
everyone
who learns of her plans. Very suspenseful but not horrid or gory.
Hanover Street
5 1979
Harrison
Ford plays a pilot flying a U.S. B-25 in England during WWII. He meets and falls for
, a married (to Christopher Plummer) nurse in
London. Then husband becomes a spy and is shot down with Ford and they go on a spy mission in France. Very unrealistic but beautifully photographed.
Heartbreakers
9 2001
Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt play a mother daughter con artist team. Their favorite MO is to get a wealthy man to mary the mother wile the daughter plays maid or secretary. As soon as the marriage is over the daughter has a an afair with the mark and then wife cleans up in divorce settlement. After going after some medium size scores, they go to Palm Beach in search of bigger game and target Gene Hackman who plays a retired tobacco executive. Lot of comedy when their plans don't go as planned and with the mother daughter conflict.
Anne Bankcoft has a recurring role as a con artist friend. Of course all through the movie you can't tell what the con is as everyone is conning someone.
Hopscotch
9 1980
Walter Matthau is a CIA agent who gets fed up with the incompetence at the CIA. He decides to write a most embarasing memoirs. He lets the CIA know this and they begin to chase him all over the world to kill him before he get them published. Incredile supporting role by Glenda Jackson as his girl friend. Set to opera music.
Hellfighters
9
John Wayne stars in a movie about putting out oil well fires all over the
world. Based on Red Adair, but the actors use fictitious names.
High Society
6 1956
Musical remake of the play and movie,
The Philadelphia Story with Grace Kelly, Bing Crosbey, Frank Sinatra, Celeste Holm, and Louis Armstrong. Best known for its music.
The
Hindenberg
8
Robert Wise movie of fictionalized adventures inspired by the Michael M. Mooney book. Stars George C. Scott and Anne Bancroft in fictional roles.
His Girl Friday
5 B&W
Comedy about a reporter and an ex-wife trying to cover an
execution. Cary
Grant, Rosalind Russell star.
Hit Woman, the Double Edge
10
While Susan Lucci plays two roles: A glamorous killer, and a
not so hot looking FBI agent who is out to get her. While both characters are
played by Lucci, you have to look at the credits to tell. The excellent plot
makes this a great movie. Robert Urich plays the ex-husband of the FBI agent character. Some listings show the movie titled The Double Edge.
Holiday Inn
9 B&W
Irving Berlin musical comedy where Singer (Big Crosby), dancer
(Fred Astaire) and girl (Virginia Dale) split up when girl dumps Crosby
for Astaire, Crosby tries farming but because it is too hard work starts
Holiday Inn, a farm inn only open for holidays. Crosby finds new girl
(Marjorie Reynolds), but Astaire comes back when his girl
dumps him. and wants Crosby's girl. Has White Christmas, Easter Parade and Be Careful, That's my Heart and the dance routine where Astaire dances with firecrackers.
Hoodlum
7
Very good gangster biography of "Bumpy" Johnson and the Harlem
numbers racket during the depression.. The set design was incredible.
The House on Carroll Street
10 1988
Set in 1951. Beautiful (blonde) woman (Kelly McGillis) is fired from her job at Life magazine, and takes a job as a reader for an elderly woman. She notices something strange at the house next door. People start to die. She enlists the help of an FBI agent (Jeff Daniels) assigned to watch her for
unamerican activities. They learn that they are smuggling NAZIs in the
country. Has a chase scene across the dome of Union Terminal. Very good,very suspenseful, very much like a Hitchock film.
Houseboat
8
Widowed D.C. lawyer (Cary Grant) with three kids, meets beautiful
Sophia
Loren, who is the run away daughter of an Italian conductor father. He
buys a house which is being moved, but while being moved, the house is run
over by a train, so he is forced to live on a derelict houseboat. Loren becomes the children's maid. Many wonderful and funny scenes. This movie has the great 50's country club dance scene.
Hugo Pool
3 1997
Hugo pool is a pool service run by a young lady,
Alyssa Milano, who occasionally
gets help from her dysfunctional divorced parents, Cathy Moriarty and
Malcolm McDowell. The movie is one day following her around and the strange people she encounters as she cleans pools. In spite of a lot of big name stars, Robert Downey Jr., Sean Penn, Richard Lewis, Chuck Barris, this movie is a dud.
Hussy
5 1980
A D.J., (John Shea), that works in a London "Club" becomes
romantically involved with a "Hostess," Hellen Mirren, that works there.
Then her old boy friend shows up and he and She become involved in drug
smuggling. While the plot is forgettable, the nightclub stage dance scenes are
interesting.
I Love Trouble
5 1994
Cute "date movie." Nick Nolte and
Julia Roberts
play competing newspaper reporters on the trail of a story which turns
into a struggle to survive as a large Corp. tries to kill them when they
learn their new money making product causes cancer.
I Married a Strange Person
4 1998
A cartoon feature about a man who loves his wife but she doesn't
understand him. Meanwhile a corporation out to rule the world with its own army tries to get a lobe onthe back of his neck. Some good gags, but generally STRANGE.
In & Out
5
Comedy about an average high school english and drama teacher (Kevin
Kline) who has a former student win an academy award. During his acceptance speech, he thanks his former teacher and adds "and he's gay too." This is just a few days before the teacher's wedding. Unusual supporting role for Tom Selick as a gay TV reporter.
In Praise of Older Women
6 1978
Young man grows up in war torn Europe and then lives in Communist Hungary until the Russian invasion makes him flea to Canada. All the time he falls in love with a series of older women. Wonderful roles by Karen Black and Susan Strasberg
Indecent Proposal
8 1993
Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore are horibly cast as a couple in love but facing dificult financial times when both are laid off. They meet a
billionaire played by Robert Redford who offers them $1 million to sleep with Moore for one night. After agonizing over the question, she accepts and then their marriage breaks down and Redford pursues Moore. Very beautiful sets and haunting music by John Barry.
Independence Day
4
Unknown aliens attack earth to destroy all humans. While the
alien technology is overwhelming at first, the Air Force comes up
with a defense. Many great special effects including the blowing
up of the White House.
Indiscreet
5
Good vehicle for a not so young Ingrid Bergman to act with Cary
Grant. Its a comedy. She plays an actress having an affair with
a wealthy banker who claims to be married but isn't. Great
opportunity to show off beautiful clothes and lavish sets.
The Insider
5 1999
Story inspired by the 60 Minutes-Jeffrey Wigand incident in Louisville. The movie has little to do with the true incident but is a very dramatic story dealing with people's anguish.
Al Pacino plays a producer for 60 Minutes who works with Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer.) He plays the romantic journalist who works for truth and a great story against huge corporations and the management of CBS. Movie is long ( 160 min.) and the most excitement is a cell phone ringing and very little truth in it..
Intermezzo
5 B&W
A wonderful 30's romance story.
Leslie Howard plays a husband who leaves his family and
takes off with the beautiful
Intersection
9
A great pot boiler with Richard Gere as a sucessful architect,
Sharon Stone plays his wife of 16 years and business
partner. Lolita Davidovich plays his mistress. Interesting as all
three know about each other and interact. Told with flashbacks as
to how the three way relationship came to be. Great death scene.
It Happened One Night
5
Wealthy girl afraid of wedding, skips town and is chased by a
reporter for a story.
Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert star. The wedding scene has
an auto-gyro landing.
It's a Wonderful Life
5 B&W 1946
The classic Frank Capra Christmas movie staring
Jimmy Stewart and
Donna
Reed.
The Invincible Six
4
Group of on the run jewel thieves help protect a village from
bandits in 60's the Iranian desert. Very much of a "Magnificent
Seven" western set in the Iranian desert. The local police hangs
the bandit chief. The number two bandit must return his body so
that he may claim his European woman (Elke Sommer) and it turns out
that the deceased has a treasure map buried with him. Filmed in
Iran.
Jet Pilot
6 1957
Strange but beautiful Howard Hughes story of an U.S. Air force Colonel (John Wayne) and a Soviet jet pilot (Janet Leigh). Beautifully photographed but the plot is really strained.
Joe Versus the Volcano
9 1990
Tom Hanks plays a guy who is conned into believing he is going to die of a disease and that he should jump into a volcano. Meg Ryan plays a series of women. Very funny in a dumb way.
The Joy Luck Club
3
I couldn't follow this story about asian women which jumps from
China to the U.S. every few minutes. Seems to involve something
about mothers wanting their daughters to have a better life. Some
people really like this movie, but not me.
Julius Caesar
1970 6
Big screen version of the William Shakespeare play. All Romans have abritish accents and history is irrelevent. Incredable cast including Charlton Heston as Marc Anthony, Jason Robards as Brutus, John Gielgud as Julius Caesar. Also Christopher Lee, Robert Vaughn and Dianah Rigg trying to look Roman. If you like Big screen Shakespeare, you will like it otherwise you will think it is a lot of difficult to understand monologues.
Jungle2Jungle
4
Typical Disney film with Tim Allen stars as a commodities
trader. He and his wife split up and she goes to a jungle to work
with natives and doesn't tell him she had his son. When the child
becomes a young man, he has to see her about getting a divorce and
meets the son. He then takes the boy to the big city where many
mishaps occur to the boy and his bride to be.
Just Cause
5 1998
Law professor (Sean Connery) who opposes the death penalty,
proves a convicts innocence days before his execution. Upon his
release, he kidnaps the professor's wife and young daughter to
sexually abuse and kill them.
Kiss me Kate
10
Wonderful MGM musical of Cole Porter's re-making of
Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew into a musical. A feuding
divorced couple is reunited to be in the play. Ann Miller's
number, It's Too Darn Hot number is very famous. Howard
Keel and Kathryn
Grayson give incredible performances along with other major
stars such as James Whitmore as a singing and dancing gangster.
The movie is a very beautifully photographed, and its in 3-D which
is why they keep throwing things at the camera, and it's also very
funny.
Knock Off
3 1998
Set in 1997 during the hand over of Hong Kong to Red China.
The russian mafia attempts to plant tiny bombs in clothing, dolls,
and other counterfited items to distribute world wide. The C.I A.
tries to stop it. Strangely photographed and the plot is difficult
to follow, however there are a lot of shootings, explosions and
fights.
L.A. Confidential
8
Beautifully fillmed to recreate Los Angeles in the 50's. While
every frame is a beautiful picture, the dialogue is not. The
dialogue isn't from the 50's. Very complicated and difficult to
follow plot of cops, mobsters and reporters. Kim Bassenger plays
a Veronica Lake look alike call girl who sleeps with a cop when she
isn't working.
The Lady Vanishes
5 B&W 1938
Directed by Alfred
Hitchcock. Set on a train in europe. An elderly lady vanishes and only
one person on board notices. But no one believes her.
The Last American Virgin
3 1882
Three high school boys chase girls and seek sex, lots of sex and nude
scenes.
The Last Best Year
5 1990
Bernadette Peters is a single woman with no family who is dieing of liver
cancer.
Mary Tyler Moore is a psychologist who aids her in spite of unresolved problems with her father's death. A real tear jerker.
The Last Days of Disco
7
Story of several people who left or graduated from college, take jobs in
New York City and go to a disco in the early 1980's. Some have sucess and
others fail as disco dies out.
The last Time I Saw Paris
6 1954
Van Johnson is a writer who returns to Paris and remembers how he met sisters Elizabeth Taylor and Donna Reed as a correspondent with the
liberating forces, how he fell in love with Taylor and her death. Great
vehicle to show off Taylor and her costumes. Small but glamorous part by Eva Gabor. Has a haunting theme song. Movie seems to strike a nerve of sorrow and tragedy.
Lawrence of Arabia
7
Beautiful big screen story based on Lowell Thomas's book about
T.E.Lawrence. during WWI. Unfortunately the screen writers get
just about every fact wrong which keeps it from being one of the
great movie which it would have been if they followed the book.
Leap of Faith
9 1992
Steve Martin plays a traviling con artist preacher with a
traveling revival show. When his truck breaks down, he sets up in
a small town. Great performance and dancing by Martin. Debra
Winger plays his computer expert sidekick and Lolitta Davidovich
plays Martin's love interest in the small town.
Leaving Las Vegas
1
Depressing movie of a man who goes to Las vegas to drink
himself to death. He meets a prostitute and they co exist. A real
sick movie. Not fun to watch at all.
Left Behind II: Tribulation Force
2 2002
A movie written by a preacher about how the devil is about to take over the world and how christianity can save it and jews are wrong in their beliefs. Its a sequel to another similar movie. If you are a religous nut perhaps you will like it.
The Legend of Bagger Vance
9 2000
From the novel. Story told by Jack Lemon as he is lays dieing of a
heart attack on a golf course, of a depression era golf match between
Bobby Woods, Walter Hagen and a local boy (Matt Daemon) who after loosing his
company during WWI quit galf and most of life and is forced into the match
by the beautiful but nanipulative Charlize Theron, his former girl friend.
Out of the mist appears Bagger Vance (Will Smith) who becomes his caddy
and coach and talks him through the natch. Peautifully photographed and
directed by Robert Redford.
Legends of the Fall
4
Story of three brothers who love one woman. It's set in a
ranch in Montana and starts before WWI and goes into the
depression. Beautifully photographed but what story there is, is
real sad. The war section isn't believable, almost coney.
Lethal Weapon 3
4 1992
Mel Gibson and Danny Glover play two policemen who hunt for a former cop who traffics in weapons often stolen from the police dept. Joe Pesci plays a fast talking real estate agent and
Rene Russo plays an internal affairs police woman who is brought into the case. Everyone is mad at everyone else. Lots of predictable explosions and chase scenes. Millions of gunshots and no one gets hit.
Let's Make Love
7 1960
Musical comedy about making a play.
Yves Montand plays a billionaire playboy who falls for
Marilyn Monroe, who is in a play. To get her, he joins the cast. Tony Randall plays his sidekick. Milton Berle, Bing Crosby and Gene Kelly have bit parts as his teachers. Many wonderful musical numbers.
Liar, Liar
3
Disappointing comedy about a divorce lawyer who is placed under a spell where he cannot lie. It has a few good moment but generally is a bust.
However the publicity for the move is a gold mine of lawyer jokes.
Life is Beautiful
6 1999
Italian film with english subtitles. Set before and during WWII. Guino
is a fast talking con man who falls for a princess. Many comedy scenes which are almost Charlie Chaplin like. He marries the beautiful girl and instead of living hapily ever after, they end up in a NAZI concentration camp and the film turns from comedy to horor of life in the death camps. In the camp he cons his son into believing it is a game to save his life. The story becomes horrible. It is interesting that all the bad guys are German not Italian.
Little Ceasar
5 B&W
A classic Edward G. Robinson gangster movie. Made during prohibition it is a vehicle to call for the repeal of prohibition. Very good use of music to set the mood. Robinson is a unlikable thug who rises to the top of of a gang and falls to the bottom.
Live Wire Human Timebomb
2 1995 aka Human Timebomb
Tall tales of FBI agents with lots of unrealistic flights to Cuba, shoot
outs and kick boxing. Someting about a Cuban General power in Cuba by an assignation in a Miami conference. Unknow cast
The Long Kiss Goodnight
6
Action story of a woman with no memory who all of a sudden finds people trying to kill her. As her memory returns, she becomes another person, a killer.
The Longest Day
10 B&W 1962
Darrel Zanneck's epic scale movie of Cornelius Ryan's book about the
D-Day invasion. Every male star that was anybody in 1962 has a part in this
movie. The movie is about 3 hours long but the video version suffers from
being reformatted to the TV screen.
Looker
9 1981
Great Michael Crichton medical science fiction plot. Albert Finney, a
plastic surgeon WHO does facial work on several actresses. The end up dead. As the police investigate, the dr. decides to stay close to the last actress he worked on,
Susan Dey. He finds that all the actresses did commercials for one high tech firm owned by James Coburn and run by
Leigh Taylor-Young. Very suspenseful as to what is happening and who will live or die. Great plot but at times it almost seems amateurishly made.
Lost in Space
4
Based on the old TV series. Lots of elaborate models and special effects and a plot that is for the first part, just like the TV series. It is just
as unbelievable as the TV series. Some of the cast of the TV series play
cameo roles.
The Lost World
4
Sequel to Jurassic Park. While it had dinosaurs, it was not Jurassic
Park. The story line was real weak and the dinosaurs were not very lifelike.
Lot of people being horribly killed however.
Love Affair
10 B&W 1939
Wonderful but heartbreaking love story of two people (Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne) who fall in love on a ship and agree to meet in 6 mo. on the
Empire State building. As she goes to the building, she is struck by a car.
Not as famous as the remake An Affair to Remember. Wonderful music.
Love Affair
9 1994
Remake of the classic movie. Warren Beatty wrote, produced and starred in this movie and wife Annette Bening co-stars. This time they are on a L.A. to Sydney jet which is forced to land on a Pacific atoll and the only way off is by Russian cruise ship. Katharine Hepburn plays the elderly woman on the island. This time, they only wait 3 mo. before she gets run into by a car. Very good movie, but not quite the heart breaking emotion of its two famous predecessors.
Love Potion No. 9
7 1991
Two college biochemistry students,
Sandra Bullock and Tate Donovan, get a love potion from a gypsy, Anne Bancroft. Lot of good gags from the screwball things they do. Cute "date" movie.
The Loves of Carman
5
Rita Hayworth plays a gypsy in late 19th century Seville Spain. She's a seductive gypsey dancer who attracts and uses men. Glenn Ford plays a solider who falls for her and lives with the gypsy and tries to tame her. It is a violent relationship. Several good dance, fight and death scenes.
Madam X
8
Lavish big screen version of the play stars
Lana Turner as the wife of an aspiring politician (John Forsythe) from an old and wealthy family, His mother blackmails her into faking her own death and leaving the country. As time passes, she ends up accused of murder and defended by her son who does not know her as she will only give her name as Madam X. Excelent acting by Turner. Beautiful production.
The Madness of King George
8
Beautifully photographed and costumed story of what was happening to King George while the colonies were revolting. Interesting look at life at court.
MAFIA!
5 1998 aka Jane Austen's Mafia
comedy, Airplane style. Lots of good gags such as "Guard Sheep." Lloyd Bridges final film.
Christina Applegate (as President of the U. S.) and Olympia Dukakis co star. Includes extensive parody of Casino.
Malicious
1 1973 aka Malizia
Senseless Italian movie with unknown Italian cast. Wife dies but just before she dies she hires a maid thru an agency. Beautiful maid arrives after the funeral and widower thinks his late wife's spirit sent her and his sons chase after her too. Real dumb.
The Man with the Golden Arm
5 B&W
Frank Sinatra plays a dramatic role as a drummer, trying to fight heroin addiction.
Kim Novak plays the supportive, suffering girlfriend. The cold turkey scene was considered quite a performance of the time. The music, all instrumental, really makes the movie.
The Man who Knew to Much
10
An incredible plot with high suspense and climaxes in an incredible
assignation scene during an orchestra performance.
Jimmy Stewart plays a vacationing doctor. His small boy is kidnapped. It also was the movie where
Doris Day
playing the doctor's wife, first sang Que Sera Sera.
The Man who would be King
8
Screen version of the Kipling story. Great performances by Sean Connery and Michael Caine as two former british soldiers who travel to a far part of colonial India in search of wealth and get a kingdom. Beautiful and gigantic photography.
The Manchurian Candidate
9 B&W
A psycho thriller about a communist plot to use a brainwashed soilder to put their man in the white house. Angela Landsbury plays an unusual leading role as the evil incestous mother and Frank Sinatra plays the army officer who figures out the plot. Incredible performances by all. Movie had the first karate fight.
Marlowe
8
James garner plays Philip Marlowe but this movie is set in L.A. in the hippie 60's. Many big name stars, (Rita Moreno, Carrol O'Connor, Bruce Lee). A complicated plot with many people killed over photographs which ends up neatly. Moreno plays a stripper who is shot onstage as the final scene. Movie lacks the setting and understated dialogue that is characteristic of the
Phillip Marlowe films.
The Mask
8 1994
Jim Carrey plays a person who comes across an ancient mask that makes him a comic stip super hero.
Cameron Diaz plays the gangster's mall who falls for him. Many funny special effects.
The Mask of Zorro
6 1998
Zorro, (Anthony Hopkins) the masked cruser for the oppressed is captured, his wife killed and his daughter, (Catherine Zeta-Jones), taken by the evil govornor, (Stuart Wilson). After spending 20 years in prision, he escapes and meets a young man,
Antonio
Banderas, and trains him to become the new Zorro who fights for the
oppressed.
Mata Hari
8 B&W
Greta Garbo plays the title role. While Mata Hari was a minor footnote in WWI espionage, the tale and the movie have made her famous. The movies doesn't follow history to closely. The movie makes Garbo a sex goddess. Beautiful costumes, regretfully its not in color.
The Matrix
8 1999
Interesting sci-fi movie where life as we know it is a computer
simulation and reality is beyond that. Two hundred years from now, it is humans vs. Artifical Inteligent machines. Very convinvcingly told.
Maverick
7 1994
Western comedy based on the TV series. Mel Gibson plays Brett Maverick who spends the entire movie being cheated by Jody Foster, a beautiful gambler and con woman. Maverick is on his way to the poker game of the (19th) century on a St. Louis riverboat. There is a $25,000 entry fee and he is a few thousand short. As he tries to win it, collect debts and rewards and con to get the needed funds. James Garner plays a lawman he meets. Lots of good gags and lines.
Men in Black
4
I suppose this is a comedy, but while it has a few good laughs, it isn't Ghostbusters either. There were a lot of opportunities for laughs that they missed. I would call it disappointing. Based on a comic about secret agents who chase aliens who live in New York.
Meet the Parents
8 2000
Male nurse wants to mary a teacher but before he can, he must ask her father who lives far away and he has never met. Robert De Niro is the intimidating father who turns out to be a retired spy who thinks no man is good enough for his daughter. Every funny piece of bad luck happens to the poor groom want to be and much of the film's humor is from his misadventures, but in the end, the film turns romantic and the jokes end.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
8 1997
Perhaps best described as a 90's Breakfast at Tiffany's. Based on the
bestselling novel by John Berendt and produced by Clint Eastwood. Set in historic part of Savannah, Ga. A New York writer for Town and Country Magazine comes to town to cover a Christmas party and falls into a bunch of really strange people, murder, Voodo, transsexuals and a trial. Set to Johnny Mercer music.
Midway
9 1976
Well made and fairly accurate version of the Battle of Midway with almost every top actor. There are two versions of the movie. The home video movie version is just over 2 hours long and the TV movie version is about 4 hours long, has the Battle of the Coral Sea and Susan Sullivan.
Mighty Aphrodite
5
Written, directed and stared in by Woody Allen as Lenny. He and wife adopted a son. Lenny becomes obsessed with finding his real parents. When he finds that Linda (Mira Sorvino) is Max's real mother, Lenny is disappointed. Linda is a prostitute and porn star. On top of that, she is quite possibly the dumbest person Lenny has ever met. Interwoven is a bizarre Greek chorus linking the story with the story of Oedipus.
Mildred
Pierce
4 B&W 1945
Joan Crawford in the title role plays a "loving mother" who goes from rags to riches to provide for her spoiled daughter (Ann Blyth). Story told at the police station as Crawford confesses to killing her husband. Eve Arden plays the restaurant manager.
Milk Money
5 1994
Three little boys go to the big city and hire a hooker. Take her for a visual aid in sex education class.
Ed Harris is the schoolteacher/widower and Melanie Griffith is the hooker in this
Pretty Woman type story.
The Mirror has Two Faces
6
A story of a popular but not extremely attractive woman (Barbara
Streisand) who become very attractive. Many nice and funny scenes.
Miss Congeniality
8 2000
Ugly duckling FBI agent is forced into beauty contest because of a bomb threat. Very funny.
Mission: Impossible
3
Disappointing movie staring Tom Cruise as a secret agent who is framed for the death of his co-workers and must fight to survive. Some good scenes but a mixed up impossible to follow plot.
Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid
3 B&W 1948
Married man falls for mute mermaid while on vacation in the Caribbean.
Few good gags.
The Moderns
9 1988
A beautiful period movie. Set in 1926 Paris France, the movie makes
wonderful use of old black and white film clips and transition to color.
Keith Carradine plays a talanted american painter and his story revolves
around three women:
Geneviève Bujold, Geraldine Chaplin and
Linda Fiorentino.
Monte Carlo
8
Set during the start of WWII in Monte Carlo.
Joan Collins (executive producer) plays a glamorous singer who is also a spy. George Hamilton plays a has been writer who lives off his girlfriend played by Lauren Hutton. The film is disappointing in that it could have been much better produced. At times it almost sees an amateur production but it has a lot of charm.
Moon Shot
10
Documentary by Mercury 7 Astronauts Deke Slayton and Alan Shepard of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programs. Well told tale of the behind the headlines story of the trip to the moon. Many NASA and news films and the astronauts own home movies.
Mother Night
9
A story by Kurt Vonnegut. Nick Nolte plays an U.S, born playwright who is asked to spy for the U.S. on the eve of WWII. He is asked to make
pro-NAZI radio broadcasts with secret code in them. He survives the war, but his beloved wife
(Sheryl Lee) doesn't. He ends up in the U.S. where he is wanted by the american NAZIs to glorify and wanted by the Israelis to execute. All the time, he is tormented by the loss of his wife. John Goodman plays his U.S. spy master.
Mr. Lucky
5 B&W 1943
Comedy stars
Cary Grant as a gambler out to start up a shipboard gambling operation on the eve of WWII. To get start up money, he plans to con the local war relief office headed by wealthy Laraine Day. Probably made as a morale builder for WWII, with the theme, even the crooks are helping.
Mr. Magoo
6
Disney comedy based on the cartoon character. Leslie Nielsen gives a
wonderful physical comedy performance. Kelly Lynch plays a villianess who
can assume any identity and assumes may. Many good stunts, for a comedy.
Mrs. Miniver
3
A morale building film made during WWII about an english family's
sacrifices. With
Teresa
Wright, Walter Pidgeon, Greer Garson.
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
6 1994 B&W and color
A Robert Altman film about writer
Dorthy
Parker,
(
Jennifer Jason Leigh) and the group known as the Vicious Circle of the Algonquin Hotel. Also known as the Algonquin Round Table. One of the best movies for one liners, such as the one to a middle age actress, (Gwyneth Paltrow), that she should take care of her body because when it is gone she would have nothing. The movies is filmed in Black and White when it skips to the older alcoholic Mrs. Parker and in color when she remembers the times with her witty alcoholic fiends around the round table at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. Much of her poetry she reads.
Murder at 1600
5 1997
When the body of a murdered young woman is found in the White House, a D.C. homicide investigator,
Wesley Snipes, is called in by the Sec. of Defense, Alan Alda. He finds his investigation stopped by the Secret Service, but they assign him a liaison agent, Diane Lane, who is told to spy on him. Then they both find themselves in the middle of a mystery. Very suspenseful.
Murder on the Orient Express
6 2017
Remake of the Agathe Christie story. Not as good as the 1974 film. Lots of computer generated special effects that did not look real. Strange
camera angles.
Muriel's Wedding
6
Set in Australia. Story of a young girl who isn't attractive or
sociable, who dreams of getting married. She gets into trouble as does her
disfunctional family.
The Muse
10 1999
Wonderful commedy. Alnert Brooks as a screen writer who has a career downturn. To help him get over it, a friend recomends he get help from a muse played by Sharon Stone. Lots of good gags and lots of bit parts by numerous Hollywood big shots and shot at may promenent movie locations. Albert Brooks is extremely witty. One pointless sort of nude scene by Sharon Stone to make file PG-13 but its a good family film. Suprisw wnding.
My Best Friends Wedding
5
Cute but predictable comedy about Julia Roberts wanting to get back an
old boyfriend just before his wedding. Lots of predictable gag scenes. Women seem to like it more than men.
Cameron Diaz plays the good girl fiance. to Julia Roberts the evil jilted lover.
My Blue Heaven
7 1990
Steve Martin plays a slick New York mobster turned stool pigeon and Rick Moranis plays an FBI agen assigned to protect him. The mobster has to live in a small town. Martin can't quit his criminal behavior, but teaches
Moranis how to enjoy life. Lots of good laughs. Martin gives a great
merengue lesson.
My Favorite Martian
8 1999
A funnier updated version of the TV show. Incrediable special effects.
My Little Chickadee
2 B&W
Mae West and W.C. Fields both star and wrote the screenplay for this
cshowcase of their one liners. Set in the wild west, the two are in a sham
marriage.
My name is Bill W.
5
Story of the man who started Alcoholics Anonymous. A lot of good acting and good sets. However the subject is dismal at times. If alcoholism is of interest, this will probably be of great interest.
Mystery Science Theater The Movie
10
Very funny MST remake of This Island Earth using their talking
through a movie format.
Naked Gun 33
1/3: The Final Insult
6 1994
Leslie Nielsen stars as the bumbling police detective. Priscilla Presley
is the estranged wife, George Kennedy the boss policeman, O.J. Simpson is a cop and Anna Nicole Smith is the gangster's mall. Many big name stars make cameo appearances.
Nell
5 1994
An elderly woman with a partly paralyzed face lives by herself in a cabin
in a remote woods. When she dies the local sheriff takes the local dr. (Liam
Nelseen) there to investigate for foul play. He discovers that she had a
child, (Jodie Foster) who can not speak an understandable language. Some psychologists including Natasha Richardson think she will make an excellent research paper and attempt to capture her in their lab against the objections of the dr. who wants her to be free. Lots of conflict between those two and many nude scenes by Jody Foster.
The Night They Raided Minsky's
5 B&W and color 1968
Musical comedy about Pennsylvania Amish farm girl, (Britt Ekland) travels
to New York and gets a job at a burlesque theater. In spite of an excellent
cast the movie suffers from a confused plot probably due to a year of post
production editing.
Nine Months
5 1995
Hugh Grant gets his girlfriend,
Julianne Moore pregnant. Tom Arnold plays the loud and obnoxious friend and Robin Williams plays a Russian doctor/vet. who can't speak much english.
Nijinsky
3 1980
It's not about the horse. Biography of the dancer. Much of his homosexual affairs. Lots of gay conversations. How his marriage ends his career and he ends up in a mental institution for the rest of his life. Sick and sad movie. Many of his ballets are recreated and incredible pre WWI sets.
Nixon
4
An Oliver Stone film in which Stone tries too hard to rewrite history by
portraying Nixon as a drunk and J. Edgar Hoover as an overt homosexual.
While the performance by Anthony Hopkins as Nixon is great, the film is to
far away from the truth to be enjoyable. It is revolting at times.
North by Northwest
9
One of Hitchcock's best know films. Cary Grant plays the
man who happens into a cold war spy plot and Eva Marie
Saint plays the "Hitchcock blonde." The classic chase scene over Mt.
Rushmore and the airplane
chase scene are in this movie.
Notting Hill
5 1999
Romantic comedy with little comedy. Julia Roberts
plays a big time movie star and Hugh Grant plays the modest book store owner
who meets falls for her. Most of the comedy is about the ordinary people's
reaction to meeting a big shot star.
Nowhere to Hide
8
Good suspense movie. A wealthy mother learns the husband she is
divorcing is a mobster who puts out a contract to kill her. She enters the
witness protection program and falls for her FBI bodyguard. Quite a plot
twist towards the end.
Obsession
10 1976
Haunting and beautiful film. Cliff Robertson plays a Welthy businessman
in New Orleans. His wife, GeneviSve Bujold, and daughter are kidnapped and
die as the police attempt to capture the kidnappers. Sixteen years later, in
the church where he met his wife, he meets a girl who is identical to his
wife and they plan to marry.
Ocean's Eleven
5 1960
Rat Pack movie where a group of WWII army paratroopers rob five Las
Vegas casinos on new years eve.
Office Space
7 1999
A mid 20's software engineer working for a big uncaring software company
has many misadventures at work with a little detour to his pursuit of a
waitress, Jennifer Anniston. Some funny moments, some that aren't.
On A clear Day You Can See Forever
6 1970
Adapted from the stage play. Musical comedy where Barbara Streisand and
Yves Montand do the singing. Small part by Bob Newhart. Jack Nicholson as
a rich romantic hippie. Monstand is a research psychiatrist who hypnotizes
Streisand and finds she has lived previous lives. She also has ESP and can
make flowers grow overnight. Strange plot, but Streisand gets to wear 70's
garb, hippie garb and incredible glamorous period gowns. Some good songs
including the title and Come Back to Me.
One Fine Day
2
Predictable love story about two divorced parents taking care of their
kids who meet and try to get along in New York city. It gets too corny to be
fun.
One Night in the Tropics
7 B&W 1940
Abbott and Costello do many of their Vaudiville routines which are
seperated by song and dance. Their Who's on first routine and a young Bob Cummings. Some good singing too. Plot involves a love insurance policy.
One From the Heart
5 1982
Strange sad movie. Story of a couple's
(Terri Garr and Frederic Forrest) split up. Lots of really sad music, much sung by Crystal Gale. Lots of Terri Garr's beautiful anatomy and a couple of interesting dance numbers coreographed by Kenny Ortega. Lainie Kazan plays her friend. Nastassja Kinski plays the beautiful circus girl he picks up. Raul Julia plays the guy she picks up and takes off with. Set in Las Vegas. Incredible set design. Lots of bright lights and sparklers. Better music video than a movie.
The Oscar
10 1966
Stephen Boyd plays a rising actor in this lavish soap opera of his rise
to stardom and the people he meets and steps on during his rise to get the
oscar. Tony Bennet plays his sidekick and narrator to the story.
Elke Sommer plays his suffering wife and Eleanor Parker does a dramatic
performance as a woman of 42 who is too old for Hollywood.
The Out Of Towners
6 1999
Steve Martin and Goldie hawn play the married couple which visits new
York and everything that can go wrong, happens to them.
Out to Sea
10 1997
This Walter Mathau & Jack Lemon film is funnier than the grumpier old
men films, it's real funny and has a lot of big name stars. It also shows off
Dyan Cannon's figure well. Brent Spiner plays a sadistic bad guy cruse
entertainment director, in what was one of his roles, other than the Star
Trek TNG robot. In his words, "A song and dance man raised on a military
base." Olivia de Haven plays Jack Lemon's love intrest. Donald O'Conner and
Hal Linden play dance hosts.
The Palbearer
4 1996
A boy, David Schwimmer, out of school but unemployed, is asked to be a pallbearer at a classmate's funeral by the deceased' mother,
Barbara Hershey. Although he can't remember the deceased, he goes to pickup chicks including Julie,
Gwyneth Paltrow, the
deceaced's girlfriend. He ends up sleaping with both of them but their is a big blow up. Supposed to be a comedy.
Perry Como's
song Papa Loves Mambo is the best part.
Pacific Rendezvous
8 1942
Although set in WWII it shows code breaking of a WWI era. Does a nice job of telling about decription with a little
romance too.
Paris - When It Sizzles
4 1963
Really bad movies with William Holden and Audrey Hepburn.Holden plays a writer trying in Paris trying to write a movie script and Hepburn is his typest. Many stars make cameo appearances. Big thing is Hepburn's beauty, otherwise it dumb.
Patton
10
George C. Scott and Karl Malden play Gen. Patton and Gen. Bradley during WWII. Incredaibly photographed. This made Scott's career and Patton's reputation.
Paulie
9
A talking conyor finds that he gets in trouble for talking, but tells his story to a Russian janitor. Good film for all ages.
Payback
5 1999
Mel Douglas stars as a bad guy trying to get back $70,000 from the mob he stole. There are many big stars and no good guys in this movie. Just lost of people beating up and killing other people.
The Peacemaker
8
A high action movie which has George Clooney chasing nuclear weapons being stolen from the Russian Federation and going to terrorists. Good, non-stop action. The action is well done. A small love story in the background and a little music lesson.
Pearl Harbor
7 2001
Interesting yarn about two boys and a girl which happens to include The Battle of Britian, Pearl Harbor and The Doolittle Raid on Japan. While the facts of about everything the movie gets wrong, it does have a great emotional effect with the love story. The movie is a long three hours long with lots of unrealistic looking special effects.
A Perfect Murder
8 1998
Loosely based on
Dial M for Murder.
Possibly released under that title in 1997. A wife of 10 years,
Gwyneth Paltrow, has an affair. Her husband, Michael Douglas, confronts her lover, Viggo Mortensen, finds out his is an ex-con and hires him to kill his wife. The murder attempt fails. Will she learn or will he kill her first, that is the suspense.
The Philadelphia Story
5 1940 B & W
Movie version of the stage play
The Philadelphia Story. Stars Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart and Katharine Hepburn.
Picnic
10
Beautiful dramatic movie from the late 50's. It has William Holden as the leading man and Cliff Robertson as the villain. It shows everyone wanting what the other person has and not appreciating what they have.
Kim Novak plays the beautiful sister both men want and she hates being beautiful and wants to be smart like her sister. The smart sister doesn't want to be smart but wants to be beautiful. Rosalind Russell plays a spinster schoolteacher who doesn't care about anything but "having a man." Her monologue on this would make a nice small play.
The haunting song, "Moonglow" is the movie theme.
Pillow Talk
10 1959
Beautiful romantic comedy with Rock Hudson, Tony Randall,
Thelma Ritter and a very glamorous
Doris Day.
A true classic with just the right mixture of everything.
Pleasantville
4 1999
A science fiction.fantasy movie about a boy who gets trapped in
a 50's black and white imaginary perfect world and how he upsets it.
Pocahontas
5
Disney full length musical cartoon movie. I think the first
sign it isn't historically accurate is when the trees talk, but a wonderful love story nonetheless.
Pollock
6 2000
Biography of painter Jackson Pollock. Ed Harris plays the mad painter and his bizarre actions and bouts with the bottle. From the book, JACKSON POLLOCK: AN AMERICAN SAGA by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. Marcia Gay Hardin plays Lee Krasner, his wife and promoter for which she received the 2001 oscar for supporting actress.
The Poppy is Also a Flower
7 1966 aka
Poppies Are Also Flowers
Made as an anti drug film with lots and lots of big name stars,
this adaptation of an Ian Fleming is introduced by Princess Grace and follows two UN agents on the trail of some opium. A lot of pieces from James Bond plots.
Power
9 1968
Richard Gere plays a top campaign manager who works for the highest
bidder. Julie Christy plays his ex-wife a reporter. Gene Hackman plays the man who taught him the ropes. A longtime client and incumbent U.S. Senator (E. G. Marshall) tells Greer that he won_t run again and out of nowhere someone turns up to hire him. Set to Sing, Sing, Sing. Excellent performance by his assistant, Kate Capshaw.
Practical Magic
5 1998
Movie spans 30 or so years of the life of
Julia Roberts
and
Nicole Kidman
are sister witches. How they are taunted as children for being different to their disastrous loves. Great performance by
Stockard Channing as their aunt, an older witch.
Pretty Woman
5
Romantic comedy about a multi-millionaire (Richard Gere) fall for
prostitute (Julia
Roberts). This is the movie which made Julia Roberts career. Some gag scenes.
Pretty Maids all in a Row
5
Unusual murder mystery movie. More Tand A than mystery, The movie was produced by Gene Roddenberry who also did the screenplay from a noven by
Francis Pollini. It was directed by Roger Vadin during the time he was married to Jane Fonda. The movie would be called soft porn today. As part of
the promotion of the film they had many of the cast members pose in Playboy magazine. There are many great stars in this movie like Angie dickinson,
Rock Hudson, Roddy McDowall, Keenyn Wynn, and James dooham. The costumes are by William Ware Theiss who did the costumes for Star Trek. There is a
lot of Star Trek in this movie but no space of science fiction.
Pricilla, Queen of the Desert
2
Strange movie about a bunch of drag queens that travel accross the
Austrailian Outback in a buss called Pricilla, Queen of the Desert.Won
academy award for the costumes which are incredibly strange.
Primary Colors
7
From the book which is supposed to be the inside story of Bill Clinton's presidential race told from the point of view of a campaign staffer who believed in him. John Travolta plays the womanizing Clinton and Emma Thompson plays Hillary. Lots of moves and counter moves and strategy while Clinton shoots himself in the foot by sleeping around.
The Prince of Tides
6
A Barbara Streisand movie where she plays a sexy psychiatrist
who investigates the history of a very disfunctional family. When her
patient (the disfunctional sister) attempts suicide, she interviews her
disfunctional brother (Nick Nolte) and as Streisand learns of the family's horrible past, she falls in love with him as her marriage becomes unbearable. After a short fling, he goes back to his wife and kids.
PT 109
7 1963
Romantic version of the adventures of Lt.(j.g.) John F. Kennedy, USN, in comand of PT 109 during WWII. Stars Cliff Robertson as JFK.
Queen of
Outer Space
6 1958
American astronauts land on Venus. Discover Zsa Zsa Gabour.
The Quiet Man
3
John Wayne plays an american who moves to rural Ireland. I
turns out that although he talks like John Wayne, he is supposed to be Irish.
Then he pursues a woman
(Maureen O'Hara) and has to contend with the crazy irish customs and then
it turns out he was a successful fighter who quit when he killed a man in the
ring. Then he has to fight his brother-in-law. Really strange movie and
strange role for John Wayne.
Rage in Harlem
3
Set in mid 50's with an almost entirely black cast. A gang of
crooks rob some gold in Mississippi, then travel to Harlem to sell it. A
gangster's mall (Robin Gibbins) in the gang befriend an account of a Harlem
funeral parlor and gets him into trouble, then she splits. To find her, he
turns to his con artist brother, Gregory Hines, who he hasn't spoken to for
many years. Regretfully, the language is from the 90's gutter, not the 50's.
Much of the movie was filmed in Cincinnati. Much of the movie seems almost
amateurish.
Raging Bull
5 B&W with a few minutes of color
Biography of fighter Jake la Motta played by Robert De Niro.
Joe Pesci plays Joey, his kid brother and manager. Lots of good prize fight
scenes along with disfunctional family life. Cathy Moriarty began her film
career as the beautiful Vicki La Motta.
Raid on Rommel
4 1971
Richard Burton plays a british comando who frees some british POWs and
attacks german shore defenses. Far fetched and reportedly uses much footage
from another movie, Tobruk.
The Rainmaker
6
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Story of ambulence new lawyer (Matt
Damon) who becomes partners with a 6 time bar exam failing, dumpster diving
Danny DeVito. Towards the end, he gets involved with a married woman who
kills her husband and launches a crusade against an insurance co. When this
happens the laughs stop.
Ransom
5 1996
A Ron Howard film. Mel Gibson and Rene Russo play
wealthy parent and their young son Sean is kidnapped. The FBI botches the
ransom drop.
The Rat Pack
10 1998
Story of Frank Sinatra and the Kennedys during the late 50's and early
60's. How Sinatra helped Kennedy fix the election and how Sinatra and his
pals, carried on. The dilemma that this put Sinatra in between his friends
the Kennedy and his friends in the mob.
Ready toWear
5 1994 aka Pr^t-.-Porter
A Robert Altman commedy about a fashion show. Large number of big stars
including: Marcello Mastroianni, Sophia Loren, Kim Basinger, Julia Roberts,
Tim Robbins, Lauren Bacall, Lyle Lovett, Tracey Ullman, Sally Kellerman, Teri
Garr, Christy Turlington, Andr, Penvern, Harry Belafonte, Cher, Elsa Klensch,
Naomi Campbell, David Copperfield (II), and Claudia Schiffer. A famous
fashion designer chokes to death on a donut in Paris, but everyone thinks it
was a murder.
The Real McCoy
7
Kim Basinger plays a bank robber who gets out of prision and is
forced to rob a very high security bank due to her son being held hostage.
Val Kilmer plays her get away driver and friend.
Rear Window
10 1954
Jimmy Stewart plays a photographer
who is in a body cast and confined to his apartment due to an accident. To
pass the time, he watches the apartments around him with binoculars and gets
to know his neighbors thru their "rear windows." Over time he becomes
convinced that one of his neighbors has killed their wife but he has trouble
convincing a war buddy who is now a policeman.
Grace
Kelly plays his beautiful (Hitchcock blonde) girlfriend who helps him
investigate from his wheelchair. The single room scene would make this an
excellent vehicle for a limited budget play but I've never heard of this
being made into a play.
Rear
Window
9 1998
A remake of the 1954 movie.
Christopher Reeve plays an architect who can't move anything below his
neck due to a car wreck. He becomes acquainted with policeman who
investigates the accident. While watching out his window, he sees a pattern
of domestic violence and believes that a murder has occurred.
Daryl Hannah plays his glamorous blonde sidekick. There is no body however. Will the killer kill Reeve before the police get him?
The Relic
5 1997
Beautiful evolutionary biologist
(Penelope Ann
Miller)and Chicago cop are chased through a huge museum by monster as people are eaten by it.
Remains of the Day
5
Set before and after WWII. Story of an english butler that dedicates his
life to service. His love with the housekeeper is ignored for this service
as is his father's death. A background plot about attempts to pacify and
negotiate with the NAZIs to prevent war.
Renaissance Man
4 1994
Penny Marshall feel good film. Danny DeVito plays an advertising man who looses his job and can't get another. The unemployment office gets him a job teaching army recruits. Gregory Himes plays the drill Sgt. opposed to him. He decides to teach them Hamlet. A very few laughs and gags.
Restoration
6
Set in 1663 London, during the rein of Charles II. Physician who enjoys
wenching, saves the king's dog and is admitted to court to care for the dogs.
The king orders him to marry (in name only) one of the king's mistress and
the king sends them to Suffox. Beautiful pictures of the decadence of the
english court. He falls in love with his wife and the king takes everything
from him and he takes refuge with quakers. There he meets a beautiful
Lunatic (Meg Ryan.) The plague comes. He has to cut a baby from his wife
and she dies. London burns down.
The Return of Elliot Ness
10 1991
While Robert Stack plays Elliot Ness, it isn't a 30's gangster movie.
Set in the late 40's and Ness is retired, but he comes out of retirement to
find out who murdered a friend and runs into some bad guys. The whole movie
is excellent, the plot is spellbinding, enough action to keep you on the edge
of your seat and even the music is great!
Reversal of Fortune
10
Movie by Alan Dershowitz (played by
Ron Silver)about his appeal (and reversal) of the Claus von Bulow
conviction of attempted murder of his wife Sunny von Bulow (
Glenn
Close).
Christine Baranski plays von Bulow's obnoxious girlfriend. Best lawyer
movie I've seen. Perhaps a big screen tribute to Dershowitz's ego.
Richie Rich
5
Story of a wealth boy, who wants friends and then makes some of ordinary
kids. When his parents are kidnapped, he and his friends try to save them.
Many cute gags. Was released with a Road Runner cartoon preceeding it.
The Right Stuff
9 1983
From the Tom Wolfe book with the first chapter omitted. Sam Shepard
plays test pilot
Chuck Yeager
and
Barbara Hershey plays his wife Glennis. Story of his first supersonic
flight and that of the Mercury 7 astronauts. Ed Harris plays John Glenn and
Dennis Quaid plays Gordo Cooper.
Road to Bali
3
This 1952 film was the next to last Road picture. While it is one of the
Crosby, Hope and
Lamour
road pictures, it is not outstanding and the next one would be 9 years later.
Road to Hong Kong
7 B&W
The last and one of the less famous of the road picture, it is quite
entertaining. Made in 1961 during the early days of the space race and
during the heyday of the spy movies.
Joan Collins plays the main female sexpot role with
Dorothy Lamour having only a bit part. Reportedly Lamour made such a ruckus that she had almost no part in the film, that her part was enlarged to a minute or so. Surprisingly, in this movie, Joan Collins is not a slut.
Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves
4
The legendary tale of Robin Hood (Kevin Costner). Made with a lot of
dirt, squallor, screaming, torture and blood.
The Rock
7
A fast paced action film about a prisoner (sean Connery) who escaped from
Alcatraz Island, being released to break into it covertly when someone steals
nerve gas rockets and use the former prison as a base. A lot of action and
stunts.
The Rocketeer
8 1991
A Disney film made from a 30's sci-fi comic strip,
The
Rocketeer.
Nice clear cut heros, villains (NAZIs) and a
beautiful
girl (Jennifer Connelly) to be rescued. Beautifully photographed with
many antique airplanes. Great music.
Roman Holiday
5 B&W 1953
Audrey Hepburn won an
academy
award for her role as princess who sneaks off to be a commoner.
She meets
Gregory Peck a reporter who is torn between getting a once in a
lifetime story and his love for her.
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
8 1961
Middle aged actress (Vivien Leigh) looses her husband and ends up in Rome. Becomes involved with young Italian giggalo played by Warren Beatty who does a poor job of playing an Italian but a great job of being a jerk.
Romy and
Michele's High School Reunion
5 1997
Two beautiful but unconvincingly dumb girls
(Mira
Sorvino and Lisa
Kudro) plot to impress their
classmates at their high school reunion. Some good laughs and some touching
moments and lots of reminders of how horible high school was.
Rope
8 Technicolor
Hitchcock film set entirely in a New York apartment, Plot based on the
Leopold-Loeb murders. Two young men, thinking they are superior to everyone, kill (by stangling with a rope) another man because they think it is their
right and that murder is an art form. To celebrate the murder, they have a
party and one of the guests (Jimmy
Stewart) becomes aware that something is wrong.
Runaway Bride
8 1999
Richard Greer plays a USA Today columnist who writes an article about a
woman (Julia Roberts)
who dumps men at the alter. So he decides to meet her in search of a bigger
story to vindicate his last story and get his job back. Lots of good gags
but not enough of them. Predictably, they end up falling in love.
Rush
Hour
6 1998
The tag line is the fastest hands in the East meet the biggest mouth in
the West. In Los Angeles, the Chinese counsel's daughter is kidnapped. The
Chinese government send Chan. The FBI, not wanting him around assign a LAPD big mouth to try to keep him out of the way. The plot and gags are so bad, they are funny.
Sabotage
4 B&W 1936
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Made in pre WWII England. A movie theater owner carries out sabotage and is pursued by Scotland Yard. The photography is not good, the sound is poor with difficult to understand accents and the plot is difficult to follow.
Sabrina
B&W 1954
Audry Hepburn plays the chauffeur's daughter. Humphrey Bogart and
William Holden play the wealthy brothers chasing her.
Sabrina
5 1995
Remake of a 1954 romantic-comedy of the same name. Harrison Ford plays a rich bachelor who loves the chauffeur's beautiful daughter and so does his less than hardworking brother.
St. Ives
4 1976
Charles
Bronson plays a writer who falls into a series of murders.
Jacqueline Bisset
displays her charms, but you don't know where she is going until the end.
Salome
5 (1953)
Big screen religious epic. John the Baptist preaches in the open as
those loyal to Rome plot to kill him. When King Harrod's wife discovers she
can use her beautiful dancing daughter
(Rita Hayworth)
against her husband, she does. Beautifully photographed.
Sands of Iwo Jima
7 B&W
John Wayne in his classic role as a Marine Corp Sergeant in charge of a
rifle company which attacks Tarawa and Iwo Jima in this classic WWII movie.
Saturn 3
8
Science fiction story of Farrah Fawcett and Kirk Douglas as the only two
people on a agricultural colony on a moon of Saturn. They are sent a robot
and pilot/technician to assist them but a criminal replaces the
pilot/technician and the robot goes mad and becomes obsessed with Fawcett.
Great sci-fi movie just before digital special effects.
Saving Private
Ryan
5 1998
The plot is two of the four Ryan brothers are killed on D-Day and another
is killed the same day in the Pacific. Gen. Marshall orders that the fourth
brother be brought home. However he parachuted behind enemy lines and in the
confusion no one has an idea where he is.
Tom Hanks is ordered to find him and bring him out. Filmed in an off color resembling
faded color film. The props are somewhat phoney. The Omaha Beach scene
doesn't look much like the history books. The plot is very predictable.
Some gore is added in unusual places for no reason.
The Sea Chase
10
John Wayne stars in an unusual role for him, as a german freighter
captain during WWII. He has to elude the Royal Navy and get the ship, the
crew and a lovely passenger
(Lana Turner) back home to Germany from the other side of the world.
The Sea Hawk
5 B&W 1940
Set in 1585, just before the Spanish armada. Errol Flynn is the handsome
swashbuckler. Brenda Marshall is the beautiful senorita love intrest.
Probably made by Warner brothers to bolster moral of the english in early
WWII as the story is the defeat of an invasion of England.
The Sea Wolves: The Last Charge of the Calcutta Light Horse
5 1980
Supposedly based on a true story during WWII when a group of military
retirees take over a ferry and attack a german freighter. Very many top
british male stars including
David Nivin
The Secret War of Harry Frigg
5 1968
WWII Comedy with
Paul
Newman plays an escape artist army private who is promoted to Major General so that he may break out five Brigader Generals being held as POWs in an italian castle. The castle is owned by a beautiful countess
Sylva Koscina. Once he meets her, he doesn't want to leave either.
The Seduction
5 1982
Morgan
Fairchild plays a TV anchor who is admired by Andrew Stevens. Vince
Edwards plays a policeman who investigates.
Sense and Sensibility
5 1995
A Jane Austen story of life in the upper class of jolly old England. A
woman's success is in who she marries is the theme. Many big name stars.
Se7en
5 1995 aka Seven
Det. Morgan Freeman is going to retire in seven days. A young detective
(Bradd Pitt) is assigned as his replacement so he has but seven days to learn
the job. Then there is a serial killer about the seven sins which is an
excuse for lots of gore.
Gwyneth Paltrow plays
Pitt's wife.
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
4
Musical with Howard Keel (Adam) and Jane Powell (Milly). Set in the
frontier, the movies is just too corney. Seven Brothers, all with red hair
and red beards seek brides for doing chores. None of the songs are really
great.
Scruples
9 1980
From a TV mini series of the of the Judith Krantz novel. Story of
Lindsay Wagoner as she goes from young adult, to the young wealthy widow of Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. to dress shop owner, and the beautiful people around her and their relationships.
Many big name stars including Connie Stevens and
Gene
Tierney as the elderly fashion magazine tyrant. Lots of interesting
fashion from the beautiful people of 1980. Lots of double knit, leather
pants and big hair.
Sex on the Run
4 1976 aka Casanova & Co. aka Some Like it Cool
Italian movie dubbed in english. Tony Curtis plays dual roles of Casanova and a petty thief. Casanova becomes necessary to secure an important trade agreement for Venice, both he and the thief excape prision and skip town. Tony Curtis dresses as a woman and both Sylva Koscina and Britt Ekland have parts wearing red wigs. Lots of nudity.
The Shadow
9
Last of many
Shadow
movies. While the plot is kind of thin, this movie is beautifully
photographed in the pre W.W.II New York glamour era. The plot is not easy to follow. It is a great vehicle for
Alec Baldwin and
Penelope Ann
Miller to show off.
Shadow of a Doubt
5 B&W
"Uncle Charlie" drops in on his relatives in a small California town. So
do two detectives and the suspicion that "Uncle Charlie" (Joseph Cotton)
killed three women. Excellent use of shadows. The Merry Widow Waltz
runs as a connecting theme. This is the Hitchcock film with the, throwing
the girl from the train ending.
Shall we Dance
10
This film is very funny. It is about an upper middle class japanese
family man who also loves to dance. The movie is really funny because it
shows the bizarre rules the japanese live under. If you see it with someone
who has been to Japan and better still someone who danced in Japan, they can
explain the customs better. The humor results from the absurdity of Jappanese
customs.
S*H*E
6 1980
A low budget 60's super spy movie set in 1980 with disco. Lots of spy
gadgets. Cornelia Sharpe plays a beautiful N.A.T.O. spy in many glamorous
disguises, in Italy sent to find an international conspiracy. She sees Omar
Sharif to make contacts. Anita Ekberg plays an overweight aging mad
scientist who both sees her as competition for Sharif. Robert Lansing plays
a super villain.
She's All That
5 1999
Pygmalion set in a California high school. When the beautiful girlfriend
(Jodi Lynn O'Keefe) of the hip class
president (Freddie Prinze Jr.) dumps
him, he makes a bet that he can make anyone they chose prom queen. They
choose Rachael Leigh Cook.
Shock
5 B&W
Vincent Price plays a psychiatrist who murders his wife. By chance, a
woman witnesses the crime and comes under his care. The Dr. plans to kill
her using insulin shock.
The Siege of Firebase Gloria
9 1989
R. Lee Ermey plays a hardened Marine MSGT who takes over a Army firebase in Vietnam which is attacked by Viet Cong and a move counter move game ensues. Lots of guesome war scenes.
Siesta
4 1987
Ellen
Barkin stars as a American woman who finds herself in Monterey, Spain
with no memory wearing a dress covered in blood, and thinking she has killed
someone.
Gabriel
Byrne plays the man she leaves her promoter husbad,
Martin Sheen, to be with.
Isabella Rossellini
plays his jealous wife.
Jodie Foster plays a
bi-sexual lover she encounters as she goes searching for her past. Many big
stars in a film with a confusing plot and some R-rating. Some clues are
there if you can find them.
Signs
6 2002
Not sure if this is a sci fi movie or a religion movie. Mel gibson plays a priest that gives up his priest hood when his wife is killed horribly. He raises their chiildren on a PA farm. Then space aliens come and they have a horor schene which reminds me of
The Birds.
Not a lot of science fiction in this movie.
Singin' in the Rain
10
Released following
Gene Kelly's
success in An American in Paris, It's considered the greatest musical ever.
Gene Kelly's
dance to the title song is probably the most famous dance routine ever
and probably second is Donald O'Conner's incredible performance in "Make 'em
Laugh." Cyd Charissw became a big star after being partnered with Kelly in
the
"Gotta Dance" number. Rita Moreno has a several bit parts. Debbie
Reynolds sings "You are my Lucky Star" and "Good Morning." The 1995 MGM video release has a major number that was cut from the movie release.
Sink the Bismarck
9 B&W
The story of the Bismarck is probably second to the Titanic story as a
naval tale. This movie was based on the British desperate efforts to sink
the German Battleship Bismarck on her maiden voyage. The outcome of the war
may have hinged on sinking this single ship and Britain committed all its
resources to it. It was probably the last strategic battleship battle in
history. Within a year battleships would go from being the strategic weapon
to a sideshow. While the movie is high drama, the producers try to add a
little bit of romance by having
Dana Winter
play a female role. Kenneth Moore stars.
Six Days Seven
Nights
5 1998
aka 6 days 7 nights. Screwball comedy with city girl and simple life
pilot being stuck (plane crash) on an uninhabited island in the pacific,
somewhere. Although the movie had some good laughs, the props, makeup and
special effexts were so bad, it took the fun out of it. Unusual role for
Harrison Ford, that of
the drunk pilot. Great performance by
Jacqueline Obradors as his roomate girlfriend.
Sleeping with the Enemy
5 1991
Predictable domestic violence thriller starring
Julia Roberts. She
runs from her psycho husband and he chases her down.
Sleepless in Seattle
7 1993
Romantic commedy with Tom Hanks as a widower with a small boy and Meg Ryan as a woman on a husband hunt who becomes infatuated with Hanks when she hears his boy on the radio. Trouble is they live on opposite coasts.
Sliding
Doors
5 1998
Unusual movie in which in one split second, a woman both gets thru the
sliding doors onto a train and also doesn't get thru the doors and misses the
train. Because of this her life goes in two directions. Many funny scenes. Both directions show off
Gwyneth Paltrow. Excellent supporting role by
Jeanne Tripplehorn
as Lydia, the evil mistress.
Sliver
9
Great thriller. Sliver Heights is an exclusive high tech apartment
building. When a tenant is killed,
Sharon Stone gets her apartment. After moving in, she learns she is a dead ringger for the deceased tennant. Then she first
flirts with and then falls for the landlord, William Baldwin, who has put TV cameras in all the apartments. Many provocative and suspenseful scenes.
Smash up,
the Story of a Woman
3 B&W 1947
Susan
Hayward plays a nightclub singer who quits to mary. As her husband's
career takes off she begins to drink which destroys her.
Snake Eyes
5 1998
Nicholas Cage plays a corrupt cop who attends a prize fight where the
Secretary of Defense is assignated. He his investigation proceeds, he is
torn between his guilty friend and an inocent girl.
Snow dogs
6 2002
Cute Disney movie. One day, a young Miami Beach Fla. dentist (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) learns that he is adopted and his biological mother lived in Alaska and has died and he travel into the Alaska bush to find out about his biological parents. He learns his bio-mother keep dog sled dogs and the dogs are the stars of the movie. Great supporting roles by James Coburn as his bio-father and Nichelle Nichols in a non Star Trek role of his adoptive mother.
S.O.B.
4 1981
Standard Operational Bullshit (S.O.B.) Blake Edwards Comedy about making a movie. Like any movie about making a movie, it is dumb. a few good gags and many top stars. A movie big shot, (Richard Mulligan), makes a flop and to save it, he decides to make it dirty and gets a well knows G rated star (Julie Andrews) to perform topless and she does. Some laughs but mostly dumb.
Soldier of Fortune
7 aka 1955
Incredibly beautifully photographed movie set in Traditional british Hong
Kong. The title has no connection to the plot. I believe this type of movie
was called a pot boiler.
Susan Hayward plays a very glamorous woman in search of her husband (Gene Barry) who is held in Red China. Clark Gable plays mobster she gets to help get him out. Both sizzle.
Solyant Green
8
Charlton Heston plays a New York City policeman in 2020 investigating a
murder. The world has warmed and the populatuion as increased and is
hungary.
Some Like it Hot
7 B&W
Two out of work musicians (Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis) in 1929 Chicago witness a gang murders. To avoid being killed, they dress as women and join an all girl band heading to Florida. Marlyn Monroe plays the dumb blonde band singer who likes to drink, who wants to marry a millionaire. Of course there is a gangster convention in Florida and there is another masacre and
again they are witnesses wanted dead by the mob.
Someone to Watch Over Me
7
Young married cop makes detective. That night there is a murder and he
is asigned to protect the only eyewitness, an attractive and wealthy woman.
So you have both sex and shootouts.
Something to Talk About
10
A film which glorifies domestic violence and considers it entertaining if the victim is male. The movie has some good scenes and my cousin,
Wally, plays a leading role as Aunt Rae. Much of the movie reminds you of the thoroughbred business around Central Ky., however it was filmed in Virginia. After attempting to kill her husband with poison, then using their daughter as a bargaining chip in their divorce, the wife, played by Julia Roberts, decides to reconcile with her husband because he is such a good dancer.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
5 1983
Walt Disney Horror movie from the novel by Ray Bradbury. Set in a small town after the turn of the century. A strange carnival comes to town and two young boys learn it is evil. One boy's father (Jason Robards) finds out they are able to take control of people by offering to grant their wishes such as making people young again. The other boy's mother (Diane Ladd) is seduced by their power. The leader, Mr. Dark, learns of them and tries to destroy them.
The Sound of Music
5
Its a wonderful musical if you know nothing about the "rest of
the story." The tale is of a convent reject who becomes a nanny for an
Austrian sea captain children. She marries him and they escape the NAZIs as
they come to power. The Captain Von Trapp was really Lt. von Trapp and he was a U-boat commander. Leland Hayward bought the rights from Baroness von Trapp and the reason he did was it became an excuse to go to Europe and dump his wife "Slim" to marry Pamela Churchill, the ex-wife of Winston Churchill's
son. She slept with anyone with money but had decided she was getting older
and wanted to marry rich. Eleanor Parker plays a wonderful but brief role as
the rejected fiancé. Edelvise, generally credited as coming from that
movie, yet documentaries show Hitler singing the song.
Space Cowboys
8 2000
Clint Eastwood movie about a group of retired test pilots NASA has to get to repair a Russian spacecraft because it used stolen Skylab parts and no one knows how to repair them as they are so obsolete. Eastwood puts together a team and afterr many fights with the NASA they get into orbit and then everything goes wrong which they have to try to both fix, survive, re-enter and land. Could have been much more realistic. Has a lot of gags, some good.
The Specialist
9 1994
Sylvester Stallone plays a ex CIA hit man who is asked by,
Sharon Stone, to kill the drug dealers who killed her parents. She then becomes the
gangster's mall. Lots of sex, violence and double crosses.
Spellbound
5 B&W 1945
Ingrid Bergman plays Dr. Constance Peterson who does psychoanalysis in
Green Manor, a mental institution.
Gregory Peck plays Dr.Edwards who joins the staff to replace retiring Leo G. Carroll. She falls for him and finds out he is an imposter. He runs and she chases after him and learns he has no memory. They try to find out who he is before the police catch them.
Spencer's Mountain
4 1963
Henry
Fonda stars as the head of a large family in the North West. Maureen
O'Hara plays his wife. Sort of a Waltons in the 50's.
Sphere
7
If you like terror, you'll like this film. The premise is the navy
discovers a half mile long spaceship, 1,000 feet below the ocean and it has
been there 300 years. When they enter it, they learn it was made in the
U.S.A. Dustin Hoffman heads a team that enters the craft. Huey Lewis of
Heuy Lewis and the News plays the helicopter pilot. Sharon Stone doesn't
take her clothes off.
Spitfire
9 1942 B&W
Released as The First of a Few in 1942 in Britan as a war film, it was released in the US as Spitfire in 1948. It is the romantic story of British aircraft designer R.J. Mitchell and hw he came to design the spitfire. Stars Leslie Howard as Mitchell and David Niven. Lots of great films of older airplanes.
Split Infinity a gift from the past
6
Story of a 90's high school girl who is obsessed with making money who
goes back in time to 1929 just before the stock market crash and learns that
there are things more valuable than money. Enjoyable family movie.
Splitting Heirs
10 1993
Great Comedy, an heir to an English fortune is swapped. One, Eric Idle, plots to kill the other, Rick Moranis. Many great gags and one liners, such as "I've got to go throw up, it's a diet thing." Wondeful set and costume design. Great performances by Catherine Zeta-Jones as the duke's greedy girlfriend/wife and
Barbara Hershey as the nymphomaniac mother.
Spy Hard
7 1996
Slapstick spy commedy staring
Leslie Nielsen. Many big stars and comedy routines based on many well known movies. Theme by Wierd Al Yankovic. Well done if you like this type of parody movie.
The Spy Within
8 aka Flight of the Dove
Theresa Russell plays a NSA spy (Dove). Her NSA job is a prostitute.
She is being hunted by her renegade boss. She meets a demolition expert
(Scott Glenn) who has fallen on bad times. Together they try to stay alive
and escape. Several sex scenes and a lot of violence and torture. Katherine
Helmond plays her shrink. Very suspenseful.
Stalingrad
6 1993 German with english subtitles
Story of a company of german soldiers in the battle of Stalingrad. It is from the producers of Das Boot. Portrays the soldiers as tragic heros in the war. Incredible gore and suffering some realizm, but not near as terrible as the actual battle.
Station Six Sahara
4 B&W
Group of men at a remote oil pumping station in the desert, have a
beautiful girl,
Carroll
Baker, crash into their already stained existence. Great vehicle for
Baker as a sex-kitten to strut around in the desert in high heels, a little
black dress, or less.
Star Trek III: The Search For Spock
7 1984
Third Star Trek movie. In this one, Captain Kirk steal the Enterprise in
an attempt to bring his friend Spock back from death while attacked by
Klingons.
Star Treck First Contact
7 1996
A science fiction movies based on the TV series Star Treck The Next
Generation. The Borg launch a time weapon which transports the Enterprise to the 2050s AD when humans make first contact with aliens. The Enterprise crew must prevent the borg from preventing First Contact and of course the person to make first contact is a drunkard.
Star Trek Generations
6 1994
Movie features both Patrick Stewart and William Shatner as captains of
the enterprise who must work together to defeat a mad scientist, Malcolm
McDowell.
Star Wars Episode I The Phantom Menace
4 1999
A juvinile plot and third rate special effects make this movie one for
only those who like hype. It is not near the movie of its predicessors.
Real corney at best.
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
5 B&W
This Barbara Stanwyck movie has the famous line where a man (Van Heflin) and a woman
(Lizabeth
Scott) are driving in a convertible and as she turns around he says to
her, "Don't look back baby, don't ever look back." Kirk Douglas plays an
unusual role as a scholarly scared little boy, who's district attorney.
Because he is so scared he misuses his power and makes a big mess.
Stepmon
5 1998
Billed as a comedy between wife # 1 (Susan Sharandon) and wife # 2 (
Julia Roberts) with kids between them. It isn't very funny at first, then turns even more depressing as wife # 1 starts dieing of cancer and she starts getting wife #2 to take over.
Ed Harris plays a great supporting role as the husband.
Stepping Out
6
Wonderful vehicle for Liza Minnelli as a tap dancer. She plays a woman who teaches tap dancing in a church to seven people, all are a little
eccentric. Token black, token man, token jew, token nurse, token
clean-a-holic, the ultra shy girl, token flirt wife, token pregnancy. Of
course they have their problems and of course, they get a great opportunity
to perform. Shelly Winters plays the cranky old piano player.
The Stork Club
4 B&W
Set and made immediately after the end of WWII. Set around the Stork Club which was so famous in the 30's. Comedy about a beautiful hat check girl and singer, Betty Hutton. Her boyfriend, a marine, comes home from the pacific and brings his army band friends with him to perform in New York. She's the singer. They need a job at the Stork Club. She saves a rich man from drowning who gives her money but the boyfriend believes she is a kept woman.
The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle
10
A historicly accurate movie about the dance team with little
about Vernon Castle war record, but quite a love story. This movie lost
$50,000 because Astaire's insistence on accuracy and therefore became the
last movie with the dance team of Astaire and Rodgers. Quite a heartbreaker.
Suddenly!
5 B&W and colorized
Frank Sinatra plays an assassin out to kill the President in the little
town of Suddenly Californa. Sterling Hayden plays the small town sherriff.
Suddenly, Last Summer
6 B&W 1959
Montgomery Clift plays a 1937 psychiatric surgeon who is pressured by his colleges to do a lobotomy on a young girl, Elizabeth Taylor, at the
insistence of her wealthy aunt, Katherine Hepburn, who promises the hospital
huge funding if the operation is done. In spite of pressure from the
hospital he questions whether the operation is needed. Incredible dramatic
acting.
The Sun Never Sets
3
English movie made as a moral booster during WWII. About a
family, the members of which are sent all over the world by the British
foreign service. Much is supposidly set in the Gold Coast of Africa. Really
low budget.
Sunset
9
Great yarn by Blake Edwards of the old west meets Hollywood.
Bruce Willis plays an actor who is to play Wyatt Earp in a silent movie.
James Garner plays Wyatt Earp who is hired as a technical advisor. Of course people start dieing and they solve the mystery.
Kathleen Quinlan
plays their girl Friday. Mariel Hemingway plays the girl in distress. Dance scene with Miranda Gsrrison.
The Swan
6
A story of an european royal family that ruled a small country
until Napoleon. Set just before WWI, it has beautiful sets and costumes.
Grace Kelly plays a beautiful daughter who's mother schemes to get her married to the crown prince. Who is loved and adored by her teacher played by Louis Jourdan. Beautiful sets but the plot gets tin.
Takin' it off
3 1985
Soft porn movie. Plot is a stripper (Kitten Naividad as Betty Bigones)
is offered a movie deal if she can loose 3 inches of her chest size. Some ofthe dumbest movie lines ever, so dumb they are funny.
The Talented Mr. Ripley
8 1999
Basicly a murder/suspense movie set against Italy in the 50's. Some
incredibly beautiful scenery. Matt Damon plays a bi-sexual man who aided by both luck and talent takes over the identity of a wealthy playboy.
Incredibly well photographed and very suspenseful. A remake of the 1960 movie Purple Noon.
Gweneth Paltrow plays the beautiful girlfriend of the deceased.
Cate Blanchett keeps poping into the film at various places which creates much suspense.
Tango
5 1999
I found 85 tango movies, but if you call this one Death Squad Tango,
people will know which one you are talking about. It is a movie about making a movie of a dance as in
Dancers
and as such the plot suffers to the point of almost being lacking.
The visual effects are stunning. As to dancing, it is more modern and
interperative dance than tango but it is very dramatic as the principle actor
trys to tell his story thru dance. Some of the scenes are spectacular and
some are sick and morbid. Most tango movies tell of imigrants from Italy
coming to Argentina to live in slums, but this movie continues into the very
recent past with modern dance and line dance to tell of the political
repression in Argentina, this movie tells of such horrors with a death squad
tango.
Tequila Sunrise
5 1988
Mel Gibson plays a drug dealer who is trying to go straight. Kurt
Douglas plays the policeman who is supposed to investigate him, but has known him since they were kids. Michelle Pfeiffer plays the beautiful blonde.
That Happy Feeling
6 1958
Curt Jurgens plays a successful but retired actor who raises horses.
Debbie Reynolds plays the ordinary, but well dressed, girl who meets him all
the time she is pursued by Troy Donahue. Some funny scenes and very
beautifully photographed. Very strange ending. Perhaps the ending was added to counter concerns about an older man and a young woman romance.
That Old Feeling
That's Dancing!
9
1985 Documentary by Gene Kelly of the recorded history of dance with some of the best and most famous dance routines on film or TV along with some of stories behind them.
That Touch of Mink
6 1962
Comedy with Doris Day as a working girl who meets bachlor millionaire
Cary Grant. Audrey Meadows costars as her roomate and Gig Young plays his assistant.
There's Something about Mary
7
Unusual comedy about a girl Mary,
(Cameron Diaz)that guys become obsessed with. The old buddy from high school, the insurance investigator, the pizza delivery guy, the pro football player and the psycho. All become obsessed with Mary. The movie stops periodically for a folk singing duo to sing about the story and there are parts that if they weren't funny would be called hard core porn. Some really funny dog scenes too.
They All Laughed
4 1981
Four private investigators are hired to tail an old
Audrey Hepburn's cheating husband but one (Ben Gazzara) ends up cheating with her, another (John Ritter) becomes involved with his girlfriend (Dorthy Stratten) then he becomes engaged to another's roomate. Difficult plot to follow, but John Ritter plays a klutz wonderfully.
The Thin Red Line
4 1999
Strange story about soldiers in WWII at Gudalcanal. Many big name male stars making a few seconds appearance.
The Third Man
6 B&W
Set in Vienna, just after W.W.II. A writer tries to solve a murder but
the military police won't help.
Orson Wells plays a mysterious blackmarketeer who is involved in a killing. Perhaps the poor Black and White photography and zinter music adds to the gloom that surrounds the terrible circumstances of the people in Vienna at that time. This is the Hitchcock movie with Orson Wells in the ferris wheel scene where the large ferris wheel has small rooms and there is suspense as to who might get thrown out. Classic song played on a zither.
The Thirteenth Floor
9 1999
An unusual film about a firm which creates a city (L.A. in the 30's)
inside a computer with each simulated person believing it is a real being.
When the owner of the company turns up dead, his partner enters the
simulation only to learn that his world is a simulation.
The Thirty-Nine Steps
6 B&W
Hitchcock suspense which in which an ordinary man is wrongly accused of murder which he knows that it is part of a spy plot but the police won't listen and hunt him. Exciting chases over the countryside of Scotland.
Many similarities to the plot of North by Northwest.
The Thomas Crown Affair
10 1999
Insurance investigater
Rene Russo chases
biliionaire Pierce Brosnan who steals a painting for a thrill. A cat and
mouse game results. A remake of the 1968 movie only this time
Faye Dunaway plays a psychiatrist who somewhat narrates what is going on in Crown's head. Includes
glider
footage over fall foliage.
The Three Musketeers
6 1993
The classic tale by Alexandre Dumas. Very beautifully done and with some commedy.
Till the Clouds Roll By
10
The biography of Jerome Kern. Whether you call it a musical or a
biography is unimportant. it is wonderful with a lot of big (Sinatra,
Garland, Shore, Lansbury) stars making short appearances, usually for a song.
Titanic
9 1998
Tale of underwater treasure hunters in search of a valuable diamond they believe is on the Titanic on the bottom of the North Atlantic. They recover a safe and instead of a diamond, they find a drawing of a nude girl wearing the diamond. They then bring the girl
(Kate
Winslet) in the drawing, now 102 years old, aboard their recovery vessel and she tells an incredible tale of what happened to her starting when she boarded the Titanic, which was her involvement with a boy and her abusive fiance' who gave her the diamond in question. The first billion dollar movie. The most expensive movie to make ever as it was filmed in a water set, lot of action, some romance, a nude scene and the classiest death scene ever. Lacks some suspense as you know what the outcome will be. Not at all like its predicessor,
A Night to Remember. Incredible use of computer generated special effects which are not noticable including computer generated extras.
The Toast of New York
4 1937
Group of hustlers hit it big on Wall Steet in the 1870's. One of them falls for Frances Farmer. Great supporting role by Cary Grant.
To Catch a Thief
8
Story of an american,
( Cary Grant) who lived in France. Before WWII he was a cat burglar. During the war he was a hero with the resistance and as this movie begins, he is running from the police as another cat burglar uses his methods, and his parole is rescinded. He sets out to catch the other thief before the police catch him.
Grace Kelly plays the Hitchcock blonde.
To Die For
7
Story told in an unusual documentary, interview style about a beautiful woman obsessed with being a TV news personality. Of course there is a murder.
Tom & Viv
6 1994
Touching story of T.S. Elliott and his wife Vivian (Miranda Richardson). From their elopement to when he has her committed. Great performance by Richardson. Very sad but touching story.
Tomorrow Never Dies
7
Pierse Brosnan plays James Bond. his opponent is a wealthy media owner who has decided to create news and tries to provoke a war between China and the U.K. which will put his puppet leader in charge of China. Many well done stunts including jumping a motorcycle over a hovering helicopter.
Top Hat
7 B&W 1935
Irvin Berlin's musical comedy with Fred Astaire sings and dances while Ginger Rodgers gets mad at him and stomps around. Of course there are mixups and everything turns out O.K.
Topaz
5 1969
Topaz is a French spy in the French government. Set in 1962 while the Cuban missile crisis is going on. It seems to be a series of loosely connected spy stories until the last. Apparently Hitchcock shot two different endings and released two different versions of the movie.
Tora! Tora! Tora!
9 1970
A big screen documentary of the Dec. 7, 1941 attack of Pearl Harbor. Includes many of the diplomatic events and the internal problems and screw ups in both the Japanese and U. S. military and government. The models and recreations are fairly realistic. About half the movie is in English and the other half is in Japanese with English subtitles. Apparently part of the movie was produced in the U.S. with U. S.producers and actors and part was made in Japan with Japanese producers and actors and it all fits together.
Torn Curtain
7 1966
Paul Newman plays a nuclear scientist who defects to East Germany to get information. Julie Andrews plays the
Hitchcock (his) blonde fiance who follows him. This movie has the scene with the fight with the German man who is finally killed by sticking his head in an oven.
Touch of Evil
8 B&W 1958
Dramatic Orson Wells movie with him in the role of the heavy and very dramticly photographed. Charlton Heston plays a Mexican policeman. Wells plays a corrupt police chief in a border town. Janet Leigh plays Heston's new bride. To get the movie released, Wells had to cut out a great bit of the movie. There is a reedited version of the movie released in 1998. Bit parts by Zsa Zsa Gabor and Marlene Dietrich.
Traffic
7 2000
Filemed in semi documentary style using grainy and overexposed photography the movie is a bunch of little stores about big time cocane trafficing from Mexico to California. Movie flows fast and the pieces are not in order but comes together somewhat in the end if you can remember all the faces.
The Trouble with Harry
3 1955
An unusual Alfred Hitchock film. Harry is corpse. Everybody bumps into Harry and nobody cares, but a lot of them think they killed him. Real strange and it has no suspense. Perhaps it is a comedy. The first performance by Shirley McLaine in a movie.
The Truth About Cats and Dogs
6
Comedy with Janeane Garofalo playing a vetenerian who has a radio talk
show of the title name. She helps a caller who wants to meet her. She
substitutes her glamorous neighbor (Uma Thurman) for herself.
Tulsa
5 1949
Set in the 20's in Tulsa OK.
Susan Hayward plays a woman who sets out to fight big oil and becomes one herself and her success overwhelms her. A Jacqualinne Suzanne type story long before she could write.
Turbulence
4
Typical and predictable airplane disaster film. Condemmed criminal takes over 747, kills the crew and guards and wants to crash the plane so he can go out in a blaze of glory. Stewardess played by Laureen Holly, has to fly the plane while criminal tries to rape and kill her while the FBI tries to shoot the plane down. Very low realism and seems like all they do is run up and down an empty airplane which is decorated for Christmas.
Twilight
9
L.A. detective movie. Paul Newman stars as the not very successful
Private Eye, however James Gardner plays the bad guy. Very well done with
Gene Hackman, Susan Sharandon and Stockard Channing co-staring. Very well made and well acted movie.
Twister
10
Non stop action movie about scientist chasing a movie. Film packs many lifetimes of tornadoes into two hours. Non stop edge of the seat xcitement. Best car chase scene of any movie.
Two Much
5
Antonio Banderas plays a fast talking art gallery owner. He meets
Melanie Griffith while trying to hide from mobsters. Turns out, she is the
mobsters ex-wife and she insists he marry her. To hide, he pretends to be
his brother and falls for her sister Daryl Hannah who he likes. So he has to
be two places at once, engaged to the wrong girl and tries to dodge the mob.
U-517
8 2000
Great fictional WWII action yarn about an american attempt to capture a disabled german U Boat and its secret intelligence codes. When the plan goes wrong, the americans find themselves ttrying to operate a U Boat and hide from the German navy. Very well filmed.
The Unsinkable Molly Brown
3
Strained screwball musical comedy about a Colorado miner and a poor
Colorado girl who leaves home in search of a rich husband. The title comes
from her surviving the Titanic disaster.
U.S. Marshalls
5
A sequel to The Fugative. Again Lt. Gerrard is chasing an escaped fugative. Many great stunts. Complex plot which you can follow easily due to the use of B&W flashbacks. Of course there is an incredible plot to figure out.
Volcano
5 1997
Big budget box office flop. Disaster film about a volcano starts in Los
Angelos. Has Tommy Lee Jones instead of Charlton Heston in the lead.
Co-stars Anne Heche as a geologist.
Wag the Dog
8
Tale of a team of presidential aids who make up a phony war to overshadow a sex scandal the president is in aa few days before the election. Many stars and many funny gags.
The War Lord
4 1965
Charlton Heston plays an emissary of a Duke sent to control part of
Normandy in medieval times. Richared Boone plays his second in command. He meets a girl, (Rosemary Forsyth) and problems occur.
Waterworld
2
Bizarre movie supposedly set in the distant future when the world is
flooded Kevin Costner stars as a part man, part fish. It was the most
expensive move ever at its time and was a box office disaster.
"We Dive at Dawn"
2
Totally unrealistic submarine film made during WWII to I suppose boost morale.
We Were Soldiers Once...
9 2002
Mel Gibson plays Lt. Col. Hal Moore in this romantic combat story about the first engagement between North Vietnames and US forces. Told from both sides. Highly dramatic and an incredible performance by Gibson.
The Wedding Singer
7
Set in 1985 at the end of disco. Rock singer turns to entertaining at
wedding receptions so his fiance' decides to leave him standing at the alter.
Then he falls for a waitreess who is engaged to a rich guy. Lots of good
laughs and fairly suitable for family entertainment.
What Women Want
8
Mel Gibson plays a womanizing ad executive. As he goes to accept his promotion, his boss gives it to a "Bitch on Wheels" played by Helen Hunt. By the movie magic of a hair dryer falling into his bath tub he aquires the ability to read womens minds. With the aid of his therapist, Bette Midler, he uses it to get an advantage with women. However as he learns what women want he becomes effeminate. Movies has many funny moments and includes a dance scene with Gibson doing a Gene Kelly impersination to Frank Sinatra music. Many top stars in small roles.
White Christmas
10
Wonderful musical, set just after WWII at Christmas time. Two army
buddies (Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye) try to help out their wartime C.O. when buys a ski lodge in Vermont. Many great numbers including White Christmas, The best things Happen while your dancing and Count your Blessings. Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen play singing sisters on the run from creditors.
White Mischief
10 1987
Beautiful move Based on the book White Mischief the Murder of Lord Erroll by James Fox. Very Beautiful movie. This is the story of the murder of
the Earl of Erroll in 1941 in Africa. This is quite a tale of the excesses of the wealthy who have fled WWII England for Africa and their wild ways.
There is a murder and a murder trial and an aquittal. But this leaves the question who did it. While the book went to great lengths exploring all the
possibities the movies changes the story and having the accused kill himself.
Who Murdered Joy Morgan
7 1981 aka Killjoy
Kim Basinger plays the spoiled daughter of the chairman of a hospital. The dr. who marries her, will be the next chief of staff. So one dr. makes up a ficticious Joy Morgan to break up her and the dr. she plans to marry. Robert Culp co-stars. Production quality is lacking.
The Wild, Wild West
4 1999
Remake of the 60's TV show of two high teck (in 1869) sevret agents who save the world. Some good parts but having a black leading man in 1869 is not going to work.
Wind
10
Fictionalized account of America's Cup races. Spectacularly photographed in the boat race scenes. Unusually produced. Edge of seat races. Little romance story on the side.
The Witches
7 1990
While made as a Jim Hensen childrens film, it may not be suitable for young children. A elderly woman and her grandson go to a resort on the English Coast. They find themselves in a witches convention. The Grand High Witch,
Anjelica Huston, plans to turn all the children of England into mice with a potion. She turns the boy into a mouse. He escapes and tries to stop the witches as a mouse. Incredible use of masks to transfor actors to creatures.
With a Song in My Heart
8 1952
Musical biography of Jane Froman starring
Susan Hayward. The songs are sung by Jane Froman. Many beautiful songs. Mostly her story around WWII. Great supporting role by Thelma Ritter.
Witness to the Mob
8
Story about the rise and fall of Mobster John Gotti as told by "Sammy the Bull," his 2nd in command. Well done with unknown actors except
Abe Vigoda in a rare appearance outside the "Fish" role on Barney Miller.
The Women
6 1935 B&W with a short color of fashion show
From the Clare Luce Boothe all woman play of the same name. There are no men in the play at all. Wealthy Women spend all their time saying how distrustful and sneaky men are, all while they knife, undercut and backstab each other.
Norma Shearer is happily married until her girlfriends tell her that her husband is going out with salesgirl
Joan Crawford. With their help, she ends up going with many of her friends including
Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, to Reno, NM for a divorce. She stays with many of them at a dude ranch until her divorce is final. Then Crawford marries her now ex-husband. She still loves him. Back in New York she learns from her girl that Crawford is seeing some one else and so she proceeds to expose the affair so she can get him back. Apparantly in making the film, the fights over who got what billing were tremendous.
The Woman in Red
10
Beautiful comedy about a Married man (Gene Wilder) with kids who becomes infatuated with a beautiful model
(Kelly LeBrock). Co-worker Gilda Radner thinks he is pursuing her. Many great gag scenes such as the surprise birthday party given by wife while he is with model.
The World is Not Enough
8 1999
Pierce Brosman as James Bond. He follows up on the kidnapping of the daughter of a wealthy businessman.
The Wreck of the Mary Deare
9 1959
A mystery at sea. Hitchock pulled out of directing this movie for
another project, just as it was to begin. Charlton Heston plays a mariner who is literally sideswiped by a ocean going ship and appears to be derilict. But when he gets aboard things get stranger and stranger. Then he finds he must help the captain (Gary Cooper) prove that the ship was used to smugle jet engines to Red China.
Xanadu
10
Wonderful musical set in 80's California. Stars Gene Kelly and Olivia
Newton-John as a roller disco "muse." Some of the best numbers in decades.
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