One new and lots of encores---

NEW TO ME:

Highly Dangerous (1950) Margaret Lockwood, Dane Clark, Marius Goring.  Germ warfare, lady scientists, and a brash American reporter.  Recruited to spy on secret facility in an European country, she is supposed to be investigating tourist sites for her company.   She gets a knock on the head and when she comes to, thinks she is a gal in a radio serial she has been listening to.  Her reporter tracker thinks she is okay and just foolhardy, but goes along on her scheme to infiltrate the germ lab.  Interesting and fun look at 1950's ideas about the subject.   Dane Clark is engaging and better than ever as he flirts and then tries to help her.  Lockwood is very pretty and charming.  But Goring, in a horrible mustache, is laughable.  7/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042553/combined

ENCORES:

The Lady Vanishes (1938) Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lucas, Dame May Whitty.  Early Hitchcock and delightful.  Has a great train and intrigue and mystery.  Redgrave starts as an ass but turns into a prince helping the ladies in distress.  9/10 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030341/combined

Bachelor Mother (1939) Ginger Rogers, David Niven, Charles Coburn.  Charming story of a shop girl who discovers a woman leaving a baby on the doorstep of an adoption agency and is mistaken for it's mother.  Department store owner gets involved and the mix-up continues until
Coburn has the great line "I don't care who is the father, I'm the grandfather."  Also has a great New Years Eve in Times Square scene.  8/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031067/combined


Three Little Words (1950) Fred Astaire, Red Skelton, Vera-Ellen, Arlene Dahl, Keenan Wynn.  One of my favorite musicals.  Story of the songwriting team of Bert Kalmer and Harry Ruby is given the Hollywood treatment and it is very entertaining.  One of the best for all the cast.  9/10
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043044/combined

Murder By Death (1976) All star cast spoofing all the great detectives of films.  My favorite bit is Alec Guinness as blind Bensenmum giving orders to deaf cook Nancy Walker as Yetta.  Always go into gales of laughter.  8/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074937/combined

Lethal Weapon (1987) Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Gary Busey.  Entertaining cops and bad guys story.  Too bad Gibson turned out to be even crazier than his cop role here.  Glover is fine as the adult in the room.  8/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093409/combined

Moon Over Parador (1988) Richard Dreyfuss, Sonia Braga, Raul Julia, Jonathan Winters. Funny spoof of mistaken identity films.  The last scene with Braga in her white evening gown and long scarf blowing in the wind of the plane with the huge moon behind her is marvelous.  As character Jack Noah says "what a moment - straight out of Casablanca."  8/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095654/combined

Tombstone (1993) Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Sam Elliott, Bill Paxton, Powers Booth.  The four Earp brothers just want to retire to Tombstone and run their saloon in peace.  But there are always bad guys shooting off their mouths and guns and what is a fella to do?  Good western.  8/10
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108358/combined

Evita (1996) Madonna, Anthonio Banderas, Jonathan Pryce.  Musical version of the Perons' of Argentina.  7/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116250/combined

Gosford Park (2001) Maggie Smith, Ryan Phillippe, Kelly Macdonald, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jeremy Northam, Clive Owen, Bob Balaban.  Murder at the mansion among the Lords and Ladies and their servants and upstart guests from 'over the pond'.  Lots of fun.  Maggie Smith is too too- and great as usual.   9/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280707/combined

Spy Game (2001) Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, Catherine McCormack.  Title says it all.  Redford is fine as the retiring C.I.A. team leader who has to manipulate the headquarters dumb guys in order to get his operative out of a Chinese prison.  I liked it even more this time so upped it a point.  8/10
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266987/combined

The Bourne Identity (2002) Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Clive Owen.  The one that started it all.  Great character who has amnesia and has to fight his agency along with all the bad guys.  9/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258463/combined

The Bourne Legacy (2012) Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton.  The latest in the series with a new guy instead of Bourne.  We are introduced to Aaron Cross.  The opening scenes, filmed in a western Canadian National Park subbing for Alaska, are spectacular in HDTV on a 55 inch screen.  Must have been blinding in a theater.  Watch it often just for that and the new team of Renner and Weisz.   9/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1194173/combined

Week Of New & Old

NEW TO ME:

The Long Night (1947) Henry Fonda, Barbara Bel Geddes, Vincent Price, Ann Dvorak.  Great cast in a murder story and why he done it.   7/10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039581/combined

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Sydney Pollack.  Showing on IFC this month, I decided to give it a try.  Really quite boring.  But does have the two stars at their most gorgeous.  See he is a doctor and she is an art something or other.  They go to parties all dressed up and she gets hit on by dancing partner and then he goes to see patients and then they have an argument or something and he walks the streets and gets involved with a costume whatever, and then he returns the costume he rented and then he goes home and he and wife talk and go shopping and and and, Jaysus in a handbasket!  I guess the nudity and sex scenes are what every one gets off on, but it is sooooooooo boring.  Really??   4/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120663/combined  

The Beach (2000/I) Leonardo DiCaprio. Tilda Swinton.  
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0163978/combined

Somewhere (2010) Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning.  Sofia Coppola directs a film about a successful actor in Hollywood who suddenly is visited by his young daughter.  They do stuff together.  The eat ice cream in the middle of the night.  They visit Italy where he is getting an award.  But she goes off to camp and he is sooooo bored that he takes his great car and parks it beside the highway in the desert and goes walking off into ------?  5/10  ww.imdb.com/title/tt1421051/combined

This Means War (2012) Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, Tom Hardy, Chelsea Handler.  7/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596350/combined

Silver Linings Playbook (2012) Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Robert Di Nero, Jackie Weaver.   Lawrence won Best Actress Oscar, and practically everyone and every other thing was nominated.  My question is why?  I sat a waited for the good stuff and waited and waited.  A film about mental illness should at least be real and interesting.   Pat (Cooper} has been in an institution for eight months and diagnosed bipolar, and having an episode in which he almost beats a guy to death.  Like a lot of mental illness patients, he stops taking his meds as soon as he is released.  We see his manic side at the beginning of the film.  Just as suddenly he is into a relationship with a strange woman (Tiffany-Lawrence) he meets at a dinner with his best friends family.  She  is also a mental wreck and she agrees to act as a go-between and deliver a letter to his ex-wife in exchange for him acting as her partner in a dance contest.  They have practice sessions and then are at the contest and do quite well.  The End.  Mental illness looks like fun and it is not.  It is devastating to families.   My score - 6/10.  Ordinary and untruthful, in every way.   http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1045658/combined

ENCORES:

The Littlest Rebel (1935) Shirley Temple, John Boles, Bill Robinson, Karen Morley, Jack Holt.  Shirley and Bill dance up and down the stairs and win our hearts.  7/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026641/combined

Confession (1937) Kay Francis, Ian Hunter, Basil Rathbone, Jane Bryan.  The great Kay suffers wonderfully and goes to prison for her child.  8/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028737/combined

Die Hard 2 (1990) Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia.  John McClane is at it again, this time at the air port in a snow storm.  8/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099423/combined

Pride And Prejudice (1995) Jennifer Ehle, Colin Firth.  Four part mini-series on TV.  Great version of this classic story.  9/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112130/combined

Gladiator (2000) Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Neilsen, Oliver Reed.  Great film and great score.  9/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0172495/combined

The Ugly Truth (2009) Katherine Heigl, Gerard Butler.  Enjoyable battle of the sexes comedy.  8/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1142988/combined

4 New; 13 Encores:

NEW TO ME:

Bitter Tea Of General Yen (1933) Barbara Stanwyke, Nils Asher, Walter Connelly, Toshia Mori. A young woman comes to Shanghai during a civil war, to marry her fiancee who is a missionary. Before they can be married, they are separated while rescuing children from a school.  She is captured by General Yen and taken to his palace.  He becomes more and more taken with the naive young woman and she falls under his spell.  His mistress becomes jealous and betrays him to the rebels.  Before the palace falls to the rebels, the General drinks his bitter tea and dies.  Early Stanwyke and she is good, but it is Asher who takes the acting honors.  He is mesmerizing.   Strange tale directed by Frank Capra.  7/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023814/combined

Loss Of Innocence (1961) Susannah York, Kenneth More, Danielle, Darrieux.  On a trip to France with their mother, who becomes ill and hospitalized, the four children end up in an elegant hotel run by a hard, elegant woman and her lover.  The man becomes smitten with the teenage girl (York) who falls for him.  But he is illusive and she becomes suspicious of his trips to Paris.  York is very good, as is More.  Beautiful scenery.  7/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055098/combined

The Seventh Dawn (1964) William Holden, Susannah York, Capucine, Tetsuro Tanba.  Story begins and the end of WWII as three fighters in Malaya's underground part ways.  The American Ferris and his mistress, Dhana, stay together.  He becomes a large land owner and she a teacher. The British are about to turn over governing to the Malayans, but rebels begin a guerilla war, with their former friend, Ng, as a leader.  The British commander's young daughter becomes involved with Ferris and is eventually captured by the rebels and Ferris hacks his way through the jungle to try save her.   He and Ng eventually fight to the death.  Meanwhile, Dhana has been arrested for a bombing in the city, for which she is innocent.  Powerful story and stunning scenery of Malaya.  8/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057813/combined

Beautiful Girls (1996) Timothy Hutton, Natalie Portman, Matt Dillon, Lauren Holly, Rosie O'Donnell, Mira Sorvino, Uma Thurman.  Pianist returns to his hometown for a class reunion. Reconnects with all his old friends and becomes smitten with his folks 13 year old neighbor girl played by Portman.  She is an "old  soul" and the best thing in the film.  His girlfriend arrives to visit also, and he sadly decides he must move on.   7/10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115639/combined

ENCORES:

Libeled Lady (1936) Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy.  Favorite screw ball comedy.  Funniest fishing scene ever filmed.   Nominated for Best Picture Oscar.  8/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027884/combined

Singing In The Rain (1952) Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Conner, Jean Hagen.  Great musical, perfect in every way.  Hagen as Lina Lamont saying "I ain't just anybody!  I'm a shining star in the firmament.  It say's so - right here!", as she taps the newspaper, is so delicious it is a joy to watch her.  10/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045152/combined

Mister Roberts (1955) Henry Fonda, James Cagney, William Powell, Jack Lemmon.  Filmed version of Fonda's stage hit.  About a tub of a ship in WWII with a crazed captain and his first officer who shows no respect but tries to make life tolerable for his crew.  Lemmon won Best Supporting Actor Oscar.   9/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048380/combined

While The City Sleeps (1956) Dana Andrews, Sally Forrest, George Sanders, Rhonda Fleming, Vincent Price, Howard Duff, Thomas Mitchell.  Great cast in a newspaper story about covering,  and helping to catch, a serial killer loose in the city.  8/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049949/combined  

On Dangerous Ground (1952) Ida Lupino, Robert Ryan, Ward Bond, Ed Begley.  Intense police officer beats up one to many suspects and his commanding officer sends him to a remote town to help them with a murder investigation.  There he meets a lonely woman. who is blind, living in an isolated farmhouse.  It is her brother the local authoritives and the murdered girls father want to question.  Very atmospheric with cold snowy landscapes to match the big city cops feelings.  But as he becomes more involved the widow, he regains some of his humanity.  Nicholas Ray directs. 7/10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043879/combined

All That Heaven Allows (1955) Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Agnes Moorehead.  
Drama of a widow with grown children falling for her much younger gardener, to the dismay of her country club friends and children.  Beautifully shot film, but to todays audience, very old fashioned. Even to me, who first saw it in 1955, some of the dialog is laughable.  Still I watch and enjoy.  8/10
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047811/combined

Legal Eagles, (1986) Robert Redford, Debra Winger, Daryl Hannah, Brian Dennehy.  Muddled drama about lawyers, artists, and crime.  7/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091396/combined

From The Hip (1987) Judd Nelson, Elizabeth Perkins, John Hurt, Darrin McGavin, Nancy Marchand.  Young attorney gets a client of his law firm what he wants and is sought out by other clients, much to the dismay of the partners in the firm.  So they assign him a no-win murder case with an awful man as the client.  Nelson and Perkins are great and funny as a couple, and John Hurt is chilling in his cold-blooded psychotic peacock role.  8/10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093051/combined 

Apollo 13 (1996) Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise, Bill Paxton, Kathleen Quinlan.  Marvelous story of an explosion on the space craft, and mission controls efforts to get them safely back to earth.  Cast is great.   Sinise is marvelous as Ken Mattingly, who goes to work getting a way worked out to use just what the guys up there have to use so they can make it back.  Tense and real every time I watch.  9/10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112384/combined

Persuasion (2007) Watched again on Ovation TV.  Very good and I have upgraded my score to 7/10.   http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0844330/combined

The Hurt Locker (2008) Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty.  Won 6 Oscars, including best director for Kathryn Bigelow, and best picture.  Renner was nominated for best actor.  Story of a bomb squad's daily missions to disarm and defuse bombs in Iraq.  Tense and riveting look at a group of men who just want to get through their last month or so and are not happy with their newest member who just arrived to take the place of a soldier who was killed.
He seems reckless to them.  8/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0887912/combined

True Grit (2010) Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin.  Remake of the original by the Coen Brothers.  I'm sorry, it is not nearly as entertaining as the John Wayne version.  And Hailee is no Kim Darby, the original Matty.  The charm is just not there.  The Coens may be favorites of some film buffs, but I think they gloomed up a really good story of frontier life.  7/10
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1403865/combined

Trouble With The Curve (2012) Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams, John Goodman, Justin Timberlake.  Favorite of 2012.  Baseball minor league scouts getting ready for the major league draft.  A daughter hot shot lawyer comes to visit her father who's eyes are failing.  She meets a former pitcher who wants to become the voice of his former team.  Charming film.  8/10
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2083383/combined

A General, a Prince, girls, guys and train robbers---

NEW: 

The Bitter Tea Of General Yen (1933) Barbara Stanwyke, Nils Asher, Walter Connolly, Toshia Mori.  American girl comes to China to marry her missionary fiancee, but in the confusion of war they are separated and she is rescued by General Yen.  Taken by train to his palace she is treated well and meets his American financial advisor.  A strange story of two worlds and relationships colliding.  7/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023814/combined

Beautiful Girls (1996) Timothy Hutton, Natalie Portman, Matt Dillon, Mira Sorvino, Uma Thurman.  A small town's high school reunion is the sorting out of the lives of friends.  7/10
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115639/combined

ENCORES:

The Prince And The Pauper (1939) Errol Flynn, Mauch Twins(Billie and Bobby), Clude Rains. Charming Mark Twain story of the pauper boy and the son of Henry VIII, who look just alike. One dark night, the poor urchin falls asleep under a bench on the palace grounds and is found by the prince, who takes him into the palace.  They change clothes and the prince goes out and is thrown of the grounds.  Eventually he is befriended by Miles Hendon(Flynn) and alls well that ends well.  8/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029440/combined

About Last Night (1986) Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Jim Belushi, Elizabeth Perkins.   Young  people in Chicago, their loves and lives.  8/10  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090583/combined 

The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (2007)  Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Jeremy Renner, Sam Rockwell, Mary Louise Parker.  Slow, moody version of the outlaws last years with his relationship to the Ford brothers as the focal point.     6/10 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443680/combined#comment