Romantic comedy about a group of Britons flying to Paris for the weekend.
deGaulled the war, France was a mess — an agricultural economy with a bad reputation world-wide because of near universal collaboration with the Nazis. America resolved to rebuild Europe and part of the plan was to cast Paris as a romantic place. The instruction went...
In 1941 Hawaii, a private is cruelly punished for not boxing on his unit's team, while his captain's wife and second in command are falling in love.
The Rule of Threes own estimation is that this is a pretty poor movie cinematically, with the exeption of the then-shocking juicy exuberance of the beach scene. But it is crackling good storytelling and that overcomes the wooden direction and uninspired acting. I’m a believer in the...
A Broadway artiste turns a faded film star's comeback vehicle into an artsy flop.
42nd Street in the Rain colour musical film is a strange beast. Hollywood explored many of its possibilities. And people did buy lots of tickets. But until very recently, musicals were all but dead. That’s because they were never able to create a self sustaining...
When a wealthy business man is found dead reporter Philip Trent is sent to investigate. Against the police conclusions, he suspects the assumed suicide is really a murder, and becomes highly interested in the young widow and the dead man's private secretary.
Hidden should be a superb movie in the mystery tradition. It has a truly complex plot that has several reveals, and a suitably Holmes-like detective. The problem is that we see the detective working things out like a Poirot would. But we learn absolutely nothing...
Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.
Bad Kurosawa what a curse to be a genius! Here we have a nearly perfect film, perfect in all the ordinarily engineered respects. It is rather haunting, and if you choose to watch it you will find it memorable. But Kurosawa is not merely a...
Man-woman team of investigators uncover a gang whose mad scientist leader has developed an invisibility chemical and plans to build a mercenary army of invisible men.
Commies! actual story of this as it develops is so ordinary that it is a waste of time: one fist fight after another. The situations are indefensibly unimaginative. It is the premise of the thing that’s interesting. I’ll give it to you here so you don’t...
From the moment she glimpses her idol at the stage door, Eve Harrington is determined to take the reins of power away from the great actress Margo Channing. Eve maneuvers her way into Margo's Broadway role, becomes a sensation and even causes turmoil in the lives of Margo's director boyfriend, her playwright and his wife. Only the cynical drama critic sees through Eve, admiring her audacity and perfect pattern of deceit.
Fabrications admit, I find the story of the Mankiewcz brothers to be one of the most interesting in all filmdom. Part of the allure is their experimentation in narrative perspectives and the nature of fabrication. Here, the fabrication is extra sweetly dimensional. We have a movie...
Enchanted by the idea of locating treasure buried by Captain Flint, Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey and Jim Hawkins charter a sailing voyage to a Caribbean island. Unfortunately, a large number of Flint's old pirate crew are aboard the ship, including Long John Silver.
Two Heads, One Leg is rather hard to appreciate in the sea of movies we have now, but once upon a time the world of imagination was owned by books, and this was a king among them. Stevenson invented the modern notion of pirates: the...
A study of an amoral and sleazy defense lawyer who suddenly tries to "go straight" when he finds out that his tart wife is cheating on him; as well as the similarities he has in life with one of his clients.
See Evil, Do Ambitious Evil usually seek out detective movies from the early 30s because this is before the film narrative found short cuts and experimentation was the norm. After ‘Kane,‘ the narrative stance changed, and while novel forms got more radical, they are harder...
Anabel Sims is determined to find the perfect husband. She thinks she's found her man in Madison Brown, a handsome pediatrician. She then prepares an elaborate scheme to trap him into marriage
Audrey a wonderfully flexible this thing is, cinema. Within it, one can structure all sorts of things that can reach us. Probably the two that are the most profound are how movies define fate and sometimes in the breath, love. This is one that deals with both....