Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971)

I thought this movie was OK. Dustin Hoffman plays a folk musician/songwriter.

He deludes into a depression, then completely breaks down, becoming reclusive, anti social, and un emotional. Then some eerie sequences of people floating through the air with close up and fades. All the while he's tormented by an unknown, unexplained man - the titular Kellerman - spreading lies about him.

Barbara Harris (who later went on to star in Freaky Friday and Nashville) is in a few scenes; she plays one of his lovers who wants nothing to do with him.

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

This film is often considered the definitive screwball comedy.

Cary Grant plays the uptight anthropologist.

Determined to win him over, Katherine uses her brother's pet leopard Baby to get his attention.

Directed by Howard Hawks.

Great comic performances by Grant and Hepburn.

Dark Victory (1939)

First watched in 2006. Bette Davis plays a young socialite with a passion for living life to the fullest. (The trailer declares: "She's everything a woman can dare to be!")

Her main passion is horse riding, and there are some great stallion riding sequences. Some of her friends include Ronald Reagan, Humphrey Bogart, and her best friend Geraldine Fitzgerald, who encourages her to see a doctor after she experiences a series of headaches.

Her vision also begins to deteriorate gradually. Bette Davis's performance is great, and emotional. It's a demanding role.

She's supported by her friends and the brain specialist who treats her, played by George Brent, who becomes her lover, though Humphrey Bogart later reveals he's loved her for years. This is definitely Bette Davis at her best. Directed by Edmund Goulding.

This is a favorite movie of blogger KC of A Classic Movie Blog.

A Little Romance (1979)

As the title implies, this is a romance between a couple of kids. I guess it may have been the "My Girl" of its day. It's not a comedy, but there are some elements of humor. For the most part it has a serious tone.  At the film's center is Lauren, a rich American girl played by 14-year old Diane Lane. She and her parents (mother is played by Sally Kellerman) live in Paris because of her dad's job. She attends a boarding school and develops a romance with a young Parisian teen.  They spend their time watching movies and discussing capitalism, Heidegger, and existentialism. One day they literally bump into an elderly Parisian gentleman played by Laurence Olivier, in a small role, and one of his last movies. He ends up giving them some advice about life and love and inspires them to to travel to Italy to kiss on a gondola on the River Seine. As the young couple run away throughout Europe, the furious parents send out a search party, while Olivier sits back and sighs. Georges Delerue won an Oscar for his music score. The ending is touching and heartbreaking. I'd like to see a reunion movie with the two stars as adults. Diane Lane was a pretty good performer at this age. As an additional bonus, there is a cameo by Broderick Crawford (Oscar winning Best Actor for 1949's "All the Kings Men")

Claudia (1943) starring Dorothy McGuire

Not a very well-remembered movie. But one that features Dorothy McGuire in a leading role. The story of Claudia was originally a series of Redbook and Good Housekeeping magazine stories by Rose Franken. The stories were popular enough to be adapted for radio and eventually for the stage on Broadway, where it ran for 722 performances and starred McGuire. And she portrays the character onscreen for the film adaptation, once again playing a young, confused wife (married to Robert Young). The couple live out on a small farm. Claudia is very unhappy and wants to live closers to her mother in the city. Desperate to make some changes, she sells the farm and tries to break up her marriage by having an affair with a neighbor. Matters get complicated when she discovers she's going to have a baby and her mother falls ill. I dont' remember what happens at the end.

Read Laura's review of this movie from her blog Laura's Miscellaneous Musings.

The China Syndrome (1979)

While doing a series of reports on alternative energy sources, an opportunistic reporter (Jane Fonda) witnesses an accident at a nuclear power plant. She's determined to publicize the incident but soon finds herself entangled in a sinister conspiracy to keep the full impact of the incident a secret. With Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas, and Wilford Brimley. A pretty good thriller, which was released a few days before the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania.