| Title | Year | Director | Starring | My rating | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top Hat | 1935 | Mark Sandrich | Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Edward Everett Horton, Helen Broderick | B+ | Singin', dancin', corny jokes -- they don't make 'em like this anymore. A romantic musical comedy with songs by Irving Berlin. "An atmosphere that reeks with class" indeed! |
| Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde | 1941 | Victor Fleming | Spencer Tracy, Lana Turner, Ingrid Bergman | C- | Spencer Tracy's and Lana Turner's accents stick out like sore thumbs in this retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson's examination of the duality of man's nature set in Victorian England. At least Ingrid Bergman tries to affect a Cockney accent in her portrayal of a barmaid, albeit badly. Tracy's very good at playing Hyde as a leering, creepy sexual bully. Check out the ancient special effects -- the morphing into Hyde; the hallucination scenes with Bergman and Turner turning into horses. |
| Maltese Falcon, The | 1941 | John Huston | Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Gladys George | B- | San Franciscan private detective, Sam Spade, is caught up in a search for a valuable, medieval statuette when a woman comes to him looking for help finding her sister who's run off with a man named Thursby. Lines: "The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter." "The stuff that dreams are made of." |
| Tall in the Saddle | 1941 | Edwin L. Marin | John Wayne, Ella Raines, Gabby Hayes, Audrey Long, Ward Bond, Elizabeth Risdon | B | Rocklin really shakes things up when he blows into Santa Inez and stumbles onto a rustling ring. Two gals get stuck on our hero: Arly, the hellcat who runs the Topaz Ranch; and Clara, the heiress from back East. Guess who he ends up with? |
| Now, Voyager | 1942 | Irving Rapper | Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Gladys Cooper, Janis Wilson | B+ | Charlotte Vale grew up in a Boston Brahmin household under the thumb of her crabby old bat of a mother. By the time she's reached middle age, a psychiatrist is called in and diagnoses her as having a nervous breakdown. After her recovery, she goes on a sea cruise to South America and falls in love with a married man. She returns to Boston and stands her own against her mother; she's set to marry another of Boston's elite when her true love turns up and then leaves again. Charlotte virtually adopts Jerry's troubled daughter in whom she sees a younger version of herself. Classic ending line: "Don't ask for the moon, we have the stars." |
| To Have and Have Not | 1944 | Howard Hawks | Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Walter Brennan, Hoagy Carmichael | B- | In this William Faulkner adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway story, Steve Morgan runs a charter fishing boat in Vichy-France-run Martinique in the Caribbean. Morgan gets drawn into a plot to pick up and deliver a Free Frenchman to the island. Lines: "Was you ever bit by a dead bee?" "You know how to whistle don't you Steve? You just put your lips together and blow." "Can I have a little one? Just enough to fill a hen's ear?" "Make it a short one. I want you rum-brave, I don't want you useless." "What are you trying to do, guess her weight?" Hoagy Carmichael does some musical numbers; Bacall sings one. |
| Back to Bataan | 1945 | Edward Dmytryk | John Wayne, Anthony Quinn, Fely Franquelli, Beulah Bondi, Richard Loo | C | The Japanese conquer the U.S. commonwealth of the Phillipines; the Duke heads for the hills to lead a rag-tag Filipino guerrilla unit. The guerrillas are a thorn in the Japs' (that's what they're called throughout this war-era flick) side; the Duke gets called to Australia, but returns to rally the resistance. You get to see real prisoners of war at the start and end of the film. |
| Big Sleep, The | 1946 | Howard Hawks | Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Martha Vickers, John Ridgely | C+ | Gen. Sternwood requires the services of private detective, Philip Marlowe, to stop being blackmailed. Things heat up when he tails the suspected blackmailer to his house . While on stake out, screams and shots ring out. Marlowe enters the bungalow to find a dead Geiger and a very high Carmen Sternwood, high-spirited party-girl daughter of the General. Top lines: "She tried to sit on my lap when I was standing up." "Go ahead and scratch." |
| Key Largo | 1948 | John Huston | Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Edward G. Robinson, Lionel Barrymore, Claire Trevor | C+ | A World War II vet stumbles into a den of gangster holed up in an out-of-the-way hotel when he goes to visit the widow of one of his war buddies. A hurricane makes the gangsters stay longer than they'd like. Claire Trevor won an Oscar for her portrayal of the washed-up songbird who's now partial to boozing and playing the ponies. |
| Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The | 1948 | John Huston | Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt | A | Two down-and-outers meet an old prospector in a Tampico, Mexico, flophouse. The three team up to dig for gold in the rugged mountains and soon find themselves turning greedy and suspicious of one another. After being joined by another prospector who wants to join them, offering three options, they're attacked by bandits. |
| African Queen, The | 1951 | John Huston | Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Robert Morley | B | Unbknownst to English missionaries in German East Africa, World War I has begun. Soldiers raid their mission and put it to the torch. After the minister dies, his sister flees down river with a hard-drinking Canadian machinist on a launch used to transport supplies. |
| Rebel Without a Cause | 1955 | Nicholas Ray | James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim Backus, Ann Doran | C- | 1950s juvenile delinquents in suburban Los Angeles get into switchblade fights and chickie races. Natalie Wood wears tight sweaters and does a lot of bad acting. Look for the incestuous undertone between Wood's character and her father (the dude who played the private eye in "Perry Mason") and the homo-erotic between Dean's and Mineo's characters. |
| Night of the Iguana | 1964 | John Huston | Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Sue Lyon | B | The Rev. T. Lawrence Shannon (he's not defrocked, but on the lam from a charge of fornication and conduct unbecoming a man of the cloth) leads a tour group into Mexico and runs afoul when he's seduced by a tourist's underage neice. Some good lines: "If paramour means what I think it does, you're gambling with your front teeth." "I'll make 'im a Manhattan with two cherries in it so's he'll live through lunch." And this lovely poem: How calmly does the olive branch |
| Battle of the Bulge | 1965 | Ken Annakin | Henry Fonda, Robert Shaw, Telly Savalas, Dana Andrews, Robert Ryan | C- | U.S. Lt. Col. Kiley is the only one who believes Nazi Germany has one last major offensive left in it during December, 1944. The Germans have a 50-hour timetable based on a weather forecast calling for conditions that will make the Allies superior air power impotent. Why does Western Europe look like Southern California during the assault on the fuel depot? A lot of stuff gets blown up in this one! |
| Cool Hand Luke | 1967 | Stuart Rosenberg | Paul Newman, George Kennedy | C | It's a prison flick. Some good lines like: "Callin' it your job don't make it right, boss." and "What we have here is failure to communicate." You also get the "Plastic Jesus" song and the eating of fifty hardboiled eggs. What you also get is a bunch of sweaty men using scythes and bush hogs. |
| Downhill Racer | 1969 | Michael Ritchie | Robert Redford, Gene Hackman, Camilla Sparv | D | The U.S. ski team tries to tame Dave Chappellet, a maverick from Idaho Springs, Colorado. Not much of a plot; lots of ski scenes with "Wide World of Sports"-like voice-overs; some smoochin' with the girl-back-home and a German (Swiss? French?) chick. |
| Sterile Cuckoo, The | 1969 | Alan J. Pakula | Liza Minnelli, Wendell Burton | C | Motormouthed wacko, Pookie Adams, goes away to college and immediately gloms onto the first boy she sees. She reels him in during the first weeks of the fall term and may or may not be pregnant before Christmas. Why are there leaves on the trees after Christmas break? Why is the ivy gone orange in spring? They play the theme song, "Come Saturday Morning," THREE times! |
| They Shoot Horses, Don't They? | 1969 | Sydney Pollock | Gig Young, Jane Fonda, Michael Sarrazin, Susannah York, Red Buttons | B | This is what people watched before reality TV. Follow the contestants in a Depression-era dance marathon contest in Santa Monica. The dancers torture themselves with sleep deprivation and sore muscles so the spectators can feel superior... all for $1,500. Depressing -- and not in a good way. |
| Ned Kelly | 1970 | Tony Richardson | Mick Jagger, Clarissa Kaye | D | A shoot-'em-up in the Outback is the backdrop for a Waylon Jennings soundtrack. |
| The Godfather | 1972 | Fracis Ford Coppola | Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall | B+ | A gang war between the Corleones and Tattaglias breaks out in post-WWII New York. Don Corleone's golden-boy son, Michael, whacks a police chief and a rival mob's don; he then lays low in Sicily, falls in love and marries. Luca sleeps with the fishes; Sonny can't pay the toll; Mike's wife goes BOOM. Barzini's the brains behind the war. Tessio's the traitor. People drop like flies during the baptism. Carlo, Michael's brother--in-law set up Sonny. |
| The Godfather Part II | 1974 | Fracis Ford Coppola | Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, John Cazale, Robert De Niro | A | Back fills Vito Corleone's life from the time he left Sicily as a nine-year-old. He becomes the Man after whacking Fanucci; makes a return trip to Sicily to revenge his mother's, father's and brother's deaths by knifing Don Cicci. Meanwhile, the story picks up from The Godfather. The Corleones have made the move to Nevada. |
| Right Stuff, The | 1983 | Philip Kaufman | Dennis Quaid, Sam Shepard, Ed Harris, Scott Glenn, Fred Ward | B+ | Follows the U.S. space program from its test-pilot origins through the Mercury 7 astronauts. The movie's over-long -- read the book by Tom Wolfe instead. |
| Zwei Frauen (aka Silence Like Glass) | 1989 | Carl Schenkel | Jami Gertz, Martha Plimpton | C- | A ballet dancer gets cancer. Martha Plimpton does some good cussing. |
| Grifters, The | 1990 | Stephen Frears | Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, Annette Bening | C | A story about three scam artists: Roy, Lilly and Myra. The action heats up as Lilly is sent from Baltimore to La Jolla by her bookie employer to jigger race-track odds and misses a big race when she takes her son, Roy, to the hospital to treat internal bleeding resulting from a beating given to him by someone he tried to fleece. Myra, Roy's girlfriend, observes Lilly stashing money in her car that she's skimmed from the bookie. When Roy refuses to get into the long con game with her, she goes after Lilly's money stash. |
| Quiz Show | 1994 | Robert Redford | Ralph Fiennes, Rob Morrow, John Turturro | C- | Dramatization of the 1950s scandal over the rigging of the TV game show, "Twenty-One," for ratings. |
| Trainspotting | 1996 | Danny Boyle | Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller | B+ | "Take the best orgasm you've ever had, multiply it by a thousand and you're still nowhere near it." That's Mark Renton's description of getting high on heroin. There's a few chuckles amid all of the squalor surrounding the junkies and losers: The "worst toilet in Scotland" is a comic gross-out. A speed-fueled Spud on a job interview's a giggle. Another gross-out when Spud shits the bed and brings the soiled sheets to breakfast. Renton overdoses, goes through withdrawal and relocates to London. Just as he's making a go of it, all his dodgy Edinburgh mates start showing up and moving in. Choose life! Based on the novel by Irvine Welsh. |
| Gods and Monsters | 1998 | Bill Condon | Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser, Lynn Redgrave | B | Aging homosexual film-director, James Whale of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein fame, has flashbacks and hallucinations after suffering a stroke; his experiences during WW I define his work in movies. Whale tries to seduce his hetero gardener whilst having him pose for sketches. |
| Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels | 1998 | Guy Ritchie | Jason Flemyng, Dexter Fletcher, Lenny McLean, Jason Statham, Steven Mackintosh, Nick Moran, Steve Sweeney, Vas Blackwood | A | A laugh riot. Gangs of Eastend London crooks rob Peter to pay Paul. The violence is so over the top as to be cartoonish. The swearing is top-notch! |
| 200 Cigarettes | 1999 | Risa Bramon Garcia | Martha Plimpton, Brian McCardie, Ben Affleck, Nicole Parker, Angela Featherstone, Christina Ricci, Gaby Hoffmann, Courtney Love, Paul Rudd, Jay Mohr, Kate Hudson, Dave Chappelle | C | Wacky hijinx lead up to a 1981 New Year's Eve party in Greenwich Village. A great New Wave and Disco soundtrack; anachronistic dialog; a lot of male bashing. See who wakes up with whom the next day. |
| American Pie | 1999 | Paul Weitz | Jason Biggs, Shannon Elizabeth, Alyson Hannigan, Chris Klein, Natasha Lyonne | D+ | A gross-out sex comedy. High school seniors make a pact to get laid before the prom. |
| Being John Malkovich | 1999 | Spike Jonze | John Cusack, Catherine Keener, Cameron Diaz, John Malkovich, Orson Bean | A | As strange a fall down the rabbit hole as Alice's was. Everything you'd want in a gender-bending, puppeteering, immortality flick. |
| Breakfast of Champions | 1999 | Alan Rudolph | Bruce Willis, Nick Nolte, Glenne Headley, Albert Finney, Barbara Hershey, Lukas Haas | C- | Dwayne Hoover's cracking up. Sex, drugs, television advertising, Kilgore Trout -- it all might make more sense if you read Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s book first. |
| Cider House Rules, The | 1999 | Lasse Hallström | Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, Michael Caine, Paul Rudd, Delroy Lindo | B | Tobey Maguire sleepwalks through his role as the orphan, Homer Wells. Michael Caine pulls off a good New England accent as the ether-huffing, abortion-performing Dr. Wilbur Larch. You get to see the naked backside of Charlize Theron. |
| Dogma | 1999 | Kevin Smith | Linda Fiorentino, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Chris Rock | A | A comedic fantasy about Christianity. Two fallen angels have a plan to gain re-entry into heaven. They set out for a Catholic church in New Jersey to make it happen -- wacky hijinx and much first-class cursing ensue. |
| Limey, The | 1999 | Steven Soderbergh | Terence Stamp, Peter Fonda, Luis Guzman, Lesley Ann Warren | C- | I don't know who creeps me out more -- Fonda or Stamp. |
| Notting Hill | 1999 | Roger Michell | Julia Roberts, Hugh Grant | B+ | A romantic comedy where a movie star (Roberts) slowly falls for a bookseller (Grant). Grant's scruffy Welsh flatmate steals the show. |
| October Sky | 1999 | Joe Johnston | Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Owen, William Lee Scott, Chad Lindberg, Chris Cooper, Laura Dern | B | The October, 1957, launching of the Soviet satellite, Sputnik, inspires four West Virginia high schoolers to take up rocketry. Best scene: Homer, having to give up school to bring some money into the household after his father's been injured, looks skyward and sees Sputnik pass overhead while he's standing on the elevator that's about to deliver him into the darkest depths of Coalwood's coal mine. |
| Runaway Bride | 1999 | Garry Marshall | Julia Roberts, Richard Gere, Joan Cusack, Hector Elizondo, Rita Wilson | C- | A reporter gets fired for playing fast and loose with the facts in a story about a woman who's left three grooms at the altar. The reporter leaves New York for Maryland where he intends to get the true story about the woman who's about to go down the aisle for the fourth time and falls in love with her in the process. ...I didn't buy it. |
| Sixth Sense, The | 1999 | M. Night Shyamalan | Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni Collette, Olivia Williams, Donnie Wahlberg | A | It sure as hell fooled me. |
| Story of Us, The | 1999 | Rob Reiner | Bruce Willis, Michelle Pfeiffer | C- | A couple of chuckles isn't worth it for all of the screeching you'll endure. |
| Tea With Mussolini | 1999 | Franco Zeffirelli | Cher, Lily Tomlin, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright | B+ | The stormclouds of WW II gather over the British colony in Florence, Italy. Keep duckin', baby -- they're not comin' for us! |
| Coyote Ugly | 2000 | David McNally | Piper Perabo, Adam Garcia, Maria Bello, John Goodman, Melanie Lynskey, Bridget Moynahan | D+ | A young pizza parlor waitress who aspires to be a singer/songwriter goes to the Big Apple to hit the Big Time and winds up working in a rowdy bar. |
| Filth and the Fury, The | 2000 | Julien Temple | Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Glen Matlock, Paul Cook, Steve Jones, Malcolm McLaren | B | A documentary about the Sex Pistols. |
| High Fidelity | 2000 | Stephen Frears | John Cusack, Jack Black, Ben Car, Lisa Bonet, Joelle Carter | B | The book captured the three males whose personalities were arrested in adolescence better. |
That's 44 movies I've seen.
Last updated: Monday, February 4th, 2002, at 11:55:47 a.m. EST.