In the Hollywood tradition of the 1940's feel good cinema comes a non-Hollywood production that is just as charming. I will never get bored of this film, from the comic interludes to the hokey ending that was required of all movies in that era. Why, oh why, can't someone produce movies like this anymore? At every turn I, a 21 year old boy, simply thought, "Cool". A must see for anyone who appreciates old fashioned, cheese-ball cinema.
A stinker
One wonders why UCLA spent time and money to refurbish this clunker. Young Linda Darnell, however gorgeous, can barely act. Jack Oakie plays...well, Jack Oakie. Edgar Buchanan is wasted as a cop. Dick Powell, now shedding his dumb tenor roles in those Busby Berkeley films, is competent and does his best to make this unfunny movie at least palatable.
If you're into amateur theatre, you might like this. Otherwise, save your money.
A Satyrical but Charming Fantasy-Comedy
The great french master Rene Clair directed this movie when he was in exile in Hollywood. Dick Powell (who is slightly aged at this point; his haydays as a baby face was in the thirties) plays a news paper editor to whom, by some miracle, somebody put's the next day's paper in his pocket. In stead of telling this story as a fairy tale, Clair choses to direct it as a screwball comedy. And his sense of mad-cap comedy is as zany as in his more famous French films such as in Le Million, Les Belles de Nuit, making it a quite an enjoyable comedy with certain philosophical (but never serious) undertone. The tape is made from a beautiful print restored and preserved by UCLA Film-TV Archives. The black and white cinematography and the sets depicting New York at the turn of the century is also a joy to watch.
The most famous and sublime treatment of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, John Ford's My Darling Clementine is by any measure one of the most classically perfect Westerns ever made. Henry Fonda plays a hard, serious Wyatt Earp leading a cattle drive west with his brothers when a stopover in the wild town of Tombstone ends in the murder of his youngest brother. Wyatt takes up the badge he had turned down earlier and tames the wide-open town with his brothers (Ward Bond and Tim Holt), all the while waiting for the wild Clantons (led by Walter Brennan's ruthless Old Man Clanton) to make a mistake. Victor Mature delivers perhaps his finest performance as the tubercular gambler Doc Holliday, an alcoholic Eastern doctor escaping civilization in the Wild West. Ford takes great liberties... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Henry Fonda - Linda Darnell Director(s): John Ford DVD Release Date: Released the 06 January 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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George Cukor helped transform a moody Victorian stage melodrama (previously filmed in Britain in 1939) into a gothic Hollywood romantic thriller. Ingrid Bergman stars as a meek, uncertain heiress courted and married in a whirlwind romance by the debonair Charles Boyer, but when they move back into her childhood home she begins losing her grip on reality and becomes convinced that her husband is trying to drive her insane. Joseph Cotten, rather stiff and colorless next to the anguished Bergman and charming and lively Boyer, is the heroic Scotland Yard detective who becomes enamored of the skittish woman who is slowly succumbing to madness. The grand, glorious sets and elegant photography recall Hitchcock's Rebecca, another lush Hollywood gothic melodrama of a retiring young wife... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Charles Boyer - Ingrid Bergman - Joseph Cotten Director(s): George Cukor DVD Release Date: Released the 03 February 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Samuel Fuller's "Pickup on South Street" is easily one of his better films and as cynical and tough as crime dramas got in the 50's. Richard Widmark is excellent as a cocky pickpocket who swipes the wallet of sexy Jean Peters that contains microfilm of government secrets to be delivered to a Communist agency. Peters is unaware of the Communist angle and is only doing a "job" for her slimy ex-boyfriend Richard Kiley (who's also excellent). Getting mixed up in the mess to get back the microfilm is street peddler/police informant Thelma Ritter who sells information to whoever wants to buy it. The film is gritty and unsentimental and none of the characters are saints. New York City is depicted as a tough place to survive especially on the dirty waterfront where Skip McCoy (Widmark) lives and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Richard Widmark - Jean Peters Director(s): Samuel Fuller DVD Release Date: Released the 17 February 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Ranking No. 21 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American films, this 1940 classic is a bit dated in its noble sentimentality, but it remains a luminous example of Hollywood classicism from the peerless director of mythic Americana, John Ford. Adapted by Nunnally Johnson from John Steinbeck's classic novel, the film tells a simple story about Oklahoma farmers leaving the depression-era dustbowl for the promised land of California, but it's the story's emotional resonance and theme of human perseverance that makes the movie so richly and timelessly rewarding. It's all about the humble Joad family's cross-country trek to escape the economic devastation of their ruined farmland, beginning when Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) returns from a four-year prison term to discover... More Info about this DVD Director(s): John Ford DVD Release Date: Released the 06 April 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Even under the heavy censorship of 1946 Hollywood, Lana Turner and John Garfield's libidinous desires burn up the screen in Tay Garnett's adaptation of James M. Cain's torrid crime melodrama. Platinum blond Turner is Cora, a restless sexpot stuck in a roadside diner married to mundane middle-aged fry cook Nick Smith (Cecil Kellaway) when handsome drifter Frank (Garfield) blows her way. It's lust at first sight, a rapacious desire that neither can break off, and before long they're plotting his demise--but in the wicked world of Cain nothing is that easy. Garnett's visual approach is subdued compared to the more expressionistic film noir of the period, but he's at no loss when he films the luminous Turner in her milky-white wardrobe. She radiates repressed sexuality and uncontrollable... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Lana Turner - John Garfield Director(s): Tay Garnett DVD Release Date: Released the 06 January 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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