Three Broadway Girls – a comedy about a trio of money hungry women who all have sugar daddies who keep them in the lap of luxury, even as they drive the men crazy. Each woman represents a different personality type, from sensitive, to kind-hearted, to difficult and untrustworthy. Set in the age of jazz, the twenties come roaring back with immorality and in-fighting.
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The drama Rio Bravo is one of the great Westerns – Sheriff John Wayne is determined to get a murderer to trial, but the man’s rich brother is determined to prevent that at all costs …
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Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday clean up Tombtone by taking on the Clanton gang at the O.K. Corral. Meanwhile, Earp becomes smitten with a pretty Eastern lady as Holliday romances a saloon girl in My Darling Clementine.
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It’s a Wonderful Life is a wonderful film, and a perennial classic at Christmas time. It’s the story of a man named George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) at the end of his rope. He’s about to commit suicide. He feels that his life has been worthless. An angel named Clarence shows him what the world would have been like if he hadn’t been born. He inspires George to not give up, and George returns to his family – on Christmas Eve. Only to find out just how much he’s worth to his community.
In The Quiet Man, a tired American ex-boxer returns to his native hamlet in Ireland to win the hand of a spirited young woman. He’s confronted by strict local customs and the woman’s belligerent brother. Set in the verdant Irish countryside, this lively film has beautiful scenery, brilliant repartee, and local charm.
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Sergeant York is the story of World War I hero who captured German position single-handedly. It begins with his early life, and conversion, and his inner conflict over going to war.
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There are a great many positive things to say about The Fighting Sullivans. It’s set against the backdrop of World War II. But at it’s heart it’s the story of a loving Irish Catholic family. As they raise five young boys and a daughter. Five very energetic, healthy, American boys, whose childhood the audience gets to share. As well as when they become young men, and volunteer for service in the Navy shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse is a stylish, often amusing crime drama, this 1938 feature revolves around a central, improbable plot twist that consciously serves its casting against type: as the eponymous doctor, Edward G. Robinson, who had helped define the Warner Bros. style for gritty gangster sagas, jettisons his signature snarl in favor of a plummy, vaguely English accent that underlines his urbane sophistication. Dr. Clitterhouse is a creature of privilege who embarks on a criminal life not out of desperation, but rather through intellectual curiosity; instead of slouch hats and suits, he has marcelled hair and first appears in white tie and tails. He begins pulling off “perfect” jewel thefts as research into the criminal mind, but his gradual immersion in New York’s shadowy demimonde of thieves and fences eventually finds the good doctor between those two worlds.
A very funny Bob Hope movie, set in the American old west, with Bob Hope playing an inept insurance salesman. He’s sold a life insurance police to Jesse James, and now needs to keep him alive. But Jesse James has other plans …. Culminating in a big gun battle with cameos from virtually every western star of the day
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DVD review of John Huston’s production of The Maltese Falcon — starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre
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