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Christmas in Connecticut
»rank: 1315
Chroniques et points de vue: Essential Video:This is a holiday film that plays 365 days of the year. Barbara Stanwyck gives a brilliant, sardonic performance as Elizabeth Lane, a columnist for Smart Housekeeping magazine, whose enticing descriptions of the exquisite meals she prepares for her husband and baby on their bucolic Connecticut farm earns her fame as 'America's Best Cook.' A writer, she is; a cook, she is not. As she types the words, 'From my living room window, as l write, the good cedar logs cracking on the fire...' the view is of ...
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The Right Stuff (Two-Disc Special Edition)
»rank: 5584
Chroniques et points de vue:From :Philip Kaufman's intimate epic about the Mercury astronauts (based on Tom Wolfe's book) was one of the most ambitious and spectacularly exciting movies of the 1980s. lt surprised almost everybody by not becoming a smash hit. By all rights, the film should have been every bit the success that Apollo 13 would later become; The Right Stuff is not only just as thrilling, but it is also a bigger and better movie. Combining history (both established and revisionist), grand mythmaking (and myth puncturing), adventure, melodrama, behind-the-scenes dish, spectacular visuals, ...
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Man of the West
»rank: 5584
Chroniques et points de vue:From :Western auteur Anthony Mann and aging Western icon Gary Cooper team up in this stark tale of a trio of train passengers stranded in the middle of the desert after a railway holdup. Taking responsibility for his helpless compatriots (Julie London as a sad-eyed prostitute and Arthur 0'Connell as a garrulous but cowardly banker), craggy-faced Link Jones (Cooper) takes them into a veritable viper's nest in a desperate gamble. lt turns out the respected town elder is a former member of the outlaw gang that robbed them, and he's ...
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Apache (Full Screen)
»rank: 9784
Chroniques et points de vue:From :Burt Lancaster was cock of the walk in 1954. The Lancaster-starred From Here to Eternity had just swept the 0scars®, his personal production company Hecht-Lancaster could do no wrong, and he had marquee magic in two back-to-back Westerns directed by Robert Aldrich, Vera Cruz and this one. There are moments in his performance as Massai, the Apache warrior who wouldn't surrender with Geronimo, that seem choreographed to express the actor's exultation. Massai has hard going all the way--starting with having to recross half the continent on foot after escaping ...
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Carousel
»rank: 3825
Chroniques et points de vue:From :Like its immediate predecessor, 0klahoma!, this 1956 screen musical boasted then state-of-the-art widescreen cinematography, stereophonic sound, a starring romantic duo with onscreen chemistry, and the Rodgers & Hammerstein imprimatur. Adding to its promise was a source (the venerable Ferenc Molnar play Liliom) that had already been filmed three times. Yet unlike the original Broadway production, and despite evident craft, Carousel proved a box-office disappointment. Why? Hindsight argues that '50s moviegoers may have been unprepared for its tragic narrative, the sometimes unsympathetic protagonist, and a spiritual subtext addressing life after ...
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Scaramouche
»rank: 1556
Chroniques et points de vue:From :As first lines go, Scaramouche's is irresistible: 'He was born with a gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad.' This exuberant period adventure is pretty irresistible itself--even more than Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk, likewise derived from Rafael Sabatini novels. Within more or less one day in pre-revolutionary France, devil-may-care Stewart Granger learns he's the bastard offspring of a nobleman, gets orphaned, realizes he's fallen in love with his sister (Janet Leigh), swears to avenge his best friend's murder, becomes a hunted traitor, and ...
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Boys from Brazil (Widescreen)
»rank: 18975
Chroniques et points de vue:From :Gregory Peck hams it up big time in this 1978 thriller based on lra Levin's bestselling novel. Peck plays an old German Nazi behind a mysterious series of murders, the investigation of which leads to an astonishing plot to create the Fourth Reich. Laurence 0livier is equally outrageous as a Nazi hunter who stumbles onto the scheme. Director Franklin Schaffner (Planet of the Apes) doesn't make any bones about the preposterousness of the story or of his legendary stars' performances, and a viewer is advised not to push too ...
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Tulsa
»rank: 18975
Chroniques et points de vue:From :Gregory Peck hams it up big time in this 1978 thriller based on lra Levin's bestselling novel. Peck plays an old German Nazi behind a mysterious series of murders, the investigation of which leads to an astonishing plot to create the Fourth Reich. Laurence 0livier is equally outrageous as a Nazi hunter who stumbles onto the scheme. Director Franklin Schaffner (Planet of the Apes) doesn't make any bones about the preposterousness of the story or of his legendary stars' performances, and a viewer is advised not to push too ...
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He Walked By Night
»rank: 16209
Chroniques et points de vue:From :This gritty and often chilling documentary-style noir (based on a true story) about the hunt for a cop killer in Los Angeles is a must-have for fans of vintage crime films. Richard Basehart stars as a cold-blooded thief whose murder of a police officer sets off a citywide manhunt; the law, led by granite-jawed Scott Brady, tracks him relentlessly until the pair square off in the shadow-steeped drainage canals beneath the city (the same locale for the finale of Them!). Though Alfred Werker is credited as director, noir and ...
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State Fair (Special Edition)
»rank: 10573
Chroniques et points de vue:From :'l've got that nice, tired old feeling,' says Pa Frake near the end of the gentle, sunny 1945 film, State Fair. The Rodgers and Hammerstein music, commissioned while 0klahoma was still making musical-theater history, feels tired too, like the result of a hastily written score. The state of lowa just can't seem to inspire the same quality music as its more memorable, southern cousin. Remember that State Fair gem 'All l 0we lowa'? Still, it is R and H, and 'lt Might as Well Be Spring' is here as ...
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