The French Connection (1971)

Two NYPD narcotics cops - Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider (from Jaws) - track down drug dealers and a shipment of heroin from France.

Spanish actor Fernando Rey plays the heroin smuggler they're after.

I didn't always understood why this movie won so many Oscars and Best Picture, and thought it might have to do with the famous car chase scene.

But watching other cop films that were made before this, I can see how different a film this is in comparison, and how it influenced later films.

I watched this film in college as part of a film appreciation course I took during my Senior year.

This film was followed by a second movie 4 years later, "The French Connection II", which I haven't seen. (Also a TV-movie "Popeye Doyle" was made in 1986 and starred Ed O'Neill).

Peter Boyle was originally cast to play the lead, but turned it down because his agent thought the movie was going to be a failure.

High Noon (1952)

President Bill Clinton's favorite movie (as he said on the AFI 100 Years...100 Movies special on CBS-TV)

On the verge of retirement, newly married lawman Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is forced to confront a murderer he once sent to prison who now seeks revenge.

Receiving no help from the townspeople, he bravely takes on the criminal and his gang.

Cooper won his second Academy Award for his portrayal of the brave hero.

With Grace Kelly, Lloyd Bridges, and Katy Jurado.

Battleground (1949)

Regarded as one of the best films made about WW2.

Most of the film takes place in the snowy woods of France. I liked the interplay between the soldiers. Ricardo Montalban plays a soldier from Los Angeles who's never seen snow before.

There's a great scene where the platoon meets up with some other soldiers in a jeep and they suspect them of being Germans in disguise. Van Johnson and the other soldiers drill them with questions about American culture, baseball, Terry and the Pirates
and the Dragon Lady, and Betty Grable's current romantic interests (Harry James now, not Cesar Romero).

James Whitmore was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor as the drill sergeant.  Also with Don Taylor, who was in Stalag 17.

The film was one of the biggest box office hits of 1949, according to the book Box Office Hits.

The movie won Oscars for Best Cinematography and Best Screenplay.

The Shootist (1976)

Wayne plays aging gunfighter who travels to a small town to visit an old doctor friend played by Jimmy Stewart who tells Wayne that he only has a few months to live.

Wayne decides to stay in the town to live out his last days.

He rents a room from Lauren Bacall who has a young son (Ron Howard).

Wayne's old enemies find out he's camping out in the town and decide to offer him one last challenge.

The movie is filled with some pretty cool shootout scenes, and gets rather bloody at times.

Kind of reminded me a little of Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, a better movie.

Also starring Hugh O'Brian, Scatman Carothers, and Gene Barry, who passed away on Dec 9 2009.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)

Hepburn and Tracy are liberal white parents whose attitudes and beliefs are tested when their daughter announces she's marrying a black physician (Sidney Poitier).

It's an important film of its time.

Tracey died within days of completing his part and Hepburn won her third Oscar for her performance.

This was Poitier's year: He also starred in 1967's Best Picture Winner "In the Heat of the Night".

Orson Welles' The Stranger (1946)

Welles is chilling as a Nazi fugitive posing as a professor in a small New England town.

He marries a sweet Loretta Young, but she soon starts to suspect him.

On his trail is detective Edward G. Robinson who uncovers some very disturbing things about his past.

The climax involves a chase up a clock tower.

Welles' character is really nasty. Excellent post-war psychological thriller. 

Read the Wikipedia post

Read Laura's review at her blog.

Morgan! (1966) starring Vanessa Redgrave, David Warner

Madcap comedy about a guy named Morgan (David Warner) trying to win back his ex-wife (Redgrave).

Morgan has a unexplained "mental condition", as referred to in the film, and is obsessed with Marx and communism.

Redgrave is set to marry a "higher-class" gentleman, but Warner wants to break it up. He spends much of the movie jealously obsessing over Redgrave and her lover. There's some madcap comedic sequences of him speeding around town on a bike in a gorilla suit and crashing the wedding, which is funny.

What's so interesting about this 1966 British film is that the lead character here is a communist and communist ideas are spoken of highly by characters, and rather non-chalantly. In American films, pro-communist dialogue was still not heard of much during this time period, when anti-communist films such as "Pickup on South Street" and "The Manchurian Candidate" were being made.

The film was never released on VHS, but was released on DVD in 2005. The DVD has a few good special features including a few versions of the trailer.

Vanessa's role is more of a supporting one to Warner's Morgan, but her performance left an impression with many that year for her to be nominated for Best Actress Academy Award (losing to Elizabeth Taylor in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?").

Her sister Lynn Redgrave, also had a good year - her film "Georgy Girl" was a hit as well, and she too was nominated for Best Actress.

The official, UK title of this movie is Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment.

Read another review from The Magnificent 60s (blog)

Viva Zapata! (1952)

OK movie about  Mexican Emiliano Zapata who led the fight to restore land taken from the people during the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz during the period between 1909 and 1919.

Starring Marlon Brando as Zapata, Jean Peters and Anthony Quinn (Oscar Winner - Best Supporting Actor). Directed by Elia Kazan.

I wish I could say this is a memorable film.

Otto Preminger's Skidoo (1968) with Jackie Gleason, Groucho Marx

Michael Constantine and Jackie Gleason

This is a bizarre comedy that must be seen to be believed; it's so strange and trippy. And features some legendary performers you wouldn't expect to see in a movie with pot-smoking hippies and tripping on LSD.

Actors such as Mickey Rooney, George Raft, Frankie Avalon, Carol Channing, and Jackie Gleason. Gleason was memorable as Minnesota Fats in The Hustler and from his image from 1950s television, but in this movie he goes on a full-on acid trip, which is actually pretty funny. Groucho Marx is part of the trip too.

Not on DVD, not on video. I don't really even hear this film called a "cult classic", so it seems like a forgotten film.

It showed in Chicago in September 2007 at the Music Box theater (Part of a Otto Preminger series) and everyone in the theater seemed to enjoy it. A very unusual film from Preminger, who usually made more serious films.

The Miniver Story (1950)

Filmed on location in England, 8 years after the original "Mrs. Miniver".

The director, HC Potter brings us the continuing story of the Minivers (Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon).

It's not as good as the first movie, in my opinion.

As the film opens, it's VE Day. We hear an actual radio address by Winston Churchill announcing the news.

Clem returns home from service. But we also see Mrs. Miniver going to the doctor's office, which doesn't appear to be a good sign right from the start.

There is no mention of Vincent, their son from the first movie. Did he die at war? Suicide? The writers could have at least given us just a little bit of info. It's a much sadder film than the original.

And missing is a character like Henry Travers' in the original, who provided some comedic lighthearted relief, which would have been nice to see in this film, in my opinion.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)

The title of this disturbing film is taken directly from the 1935 novel; Jane Fonda's character Gloria, is a young, jobless, depression-era woman who at times just wants to be shot and put out of her misery.

Her character travels to Hollywood, leaving behind a miserable life and hoping to become an actress.

Struggling for work, she ends up entering a dance marathon with her new friend Robert, who is also struggling to find work in Hollywood.

I didn't know this, but during the depression, dance marathons were a craze, where people would dance hour-after-hour for a cash reward.

The marathon portrayed in the film is a fictional one, and goes on for several weeks. Every night there is an elimination race in which the couples speed-walk around a track, and the last-place couple is eliminated. The ruthless promoters generate sleazy publicity stunts as the contestants become increasingly exhausted physically and emotionally. People die in this movie that you don't want to see die.

Fonda's desperate character is one you want to root for, but she becomes increasingly disenchanted as she's trapped with the others in the claustrophobic dance hall.

This was Fonda's first breakthrough movie, and she was nominated for her first Oscar. Gig Young won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as the sadistic master of ceremonies, which in my opinion is one of the most heartless and cruel characters ever.

Depressing ending.

Directed by Sydney Pollack. Co-starring Michael Sarrazin, Susannah York, and Red Buttons, who is great and was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor.

Read Roderick's great post on this movie.

Films in the Andy Hardy series

I don't know how MGM churned out so many films, but they did. Here's a complete list of films in the series, all staring Mickey Rooney as Andy Hardy. I wish these were on DVD!


1. A Family Affair (1937)
2. You're Only Young Once (1937)
3. Judge Hardy's Children (1938)
4. Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938)
5. Out West with the Hardys (1938)
6. The Hardys Ride High (1939)
7. Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever (1939)
8. Judge Hardy and Son (1939)
9. Andy Hardy's Dilemma: A Lesson in Mathematics... and Other Things (1940)

(Short Subject)
10. Andy Hardy Meets Debutante (1940)
11. Andy Hardy's Private Secretary (1941)
12. Life Begins for Andy Hardy (1941)
13. The Courtship of Andy Hardy (1942)
14. Andy Hardy's Double Life (1942)
15. Andy Hardy's Blonde Trouble (1944)
16. Love Laughs at Andy Hardy (1946)
17. Andy Hardy Comes Home (1958)

Citizen Kane (1941)

Orson Welles' great film about Charles Foster Kane, a wealthy media mogul who amassed fame, fortune and material goods, only to discover it failed to bring him happiness.

One of my favorite movies of all time.

With Joseph Cotton, Agnes Moorehead and Ruth Warrick as Kane's first wife.

Watched this movie in the summer of 2005 in Grant Park, Chicago.

Becket (1963)

Peter O'Toole is great as King Henry II, who ruled England from 1154 to 1189.

When the Archbishop of Canterbury dies, he appoints his old drinking buddy, Thomas Becket (Richard Burton) to the post.

This is an intense, emotional drama that probes the changing relationship between two young men - between two close friends bound together by similar pride of flesh and spirit who become deadly enemies as they pursue their separate destinies: that of king, and that of saint.

Nominated for 12 Academy Awards.

In High School, I had to write a report about this film and play for extra credit.

- A post about Becket here at the Critcaretro blog 

The Rose Tattoo (1955)

First watched in 2004. Takes place in an Italian neighborhood on the gulf coast in Louisiana.

This was Italian actress Anna Magnani's first English-speaking film. She is wonderful as Serafina, a single parent and strict Sicilian Catholic who begins to withdraw from the world after her husband's death; she later learns of her husband's infidelities. Daughter (Marisa Pavan) starts to see boys, to her mother's disapproval.

Her mourning leads to depression but she begins to come out of it when she meets another Italian man named Alvaro (Burt Lancaster) a handsome truck driver with a rose tattoo on his chest. He brings a little zest into her life, though she's still tormented by her past.

In October 2009, one of my favorite blogs, European Film Star Postcards, did a great piece on Italian-born actress Marisa Pavan, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for "The Rose Tattoo". Check out the post.