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![]() A glamorous take on the gangster who gave us modern Las Vegas, Bugsy was Hollywood legend Warren Beatty’s last great role, complemented in no small measure by the potent chemistry he achieved with future wife Annette Bening. Though a commercial disappointment, the movie has aged well, full of … |
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![]() French musical sensation Serge Gainsbourg explains himself in this surreal biopic. Largely unknown here in America, Gainsbourg was a cross between Dylan, Sinatra and Leonard Cohen in France. The women he squired – including Brigitte Bardot during her superstar heyday – comprise a good part of h…
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Musician's Beauty: Gainsbourg & Bardot
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![]() Preston Sturges made RomComs that are funny, sexy, glamorous, clever and sophisticated. The Lady Eve proves the point. It still works three quarters of a century later, especially with the proto-modern Barbara Stanwyck as the minx in the middle of a screwball con-game extraordinaire. Modern…
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The Lady Eve dress by Edith Head
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![]() The Palm Beach Story hasn’t aged well. A Preston Sturges’ classic, funny and loaded with iconic style, its heavy-handed comedy sometimes clanks. No? Sue me. I’m into romantic comedies mostly for the comedy, albeit not those with too many pratfalls. More egregiously, the use of "colo…
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Now this is a trailer. Personality, i...
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![]() Hail The Conquering Hero is a welcome stop on the Tour de Sturges, even if not one of the best. The Greatest Generation dealt with challenge differently than we 2nd Millenniums do, to put it mildly. Preston Sturges made Hail The Conquering Hero during World War II, right after the Marines…
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Demarest turns Bracken into a hero
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![]() Stately to a fault, reverential to an extreme, The Grandmaster is kung fu cinema elevated to formal art. Stodginess aside, it no doubt lingers in the mind’s eye of hard core kung fu fans, let alone for the legendary Ip Man’s disciples. For the rest of us – focused on the Bruce Lee connection …
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Hey, isn't that little Bruce Lee?
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![]() A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. The sugar: a terrific love story. The medicine: the wanton cruelty and dehumanization endemic to the nascent Soviet Union. Director David Lean – King of the Epics – reunited with Omar Sharif and several essential crew members from "Lawrence of Ar…
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They don't make 'em like they used to.
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![]() Closed Season’s home-front Holocaust drama gets amplified by delving into some serious sexual intrigue. Result? A great movie, one that’s titled Ende der Schonzeit in its native Germany. Google translates that as “End of the grace period”. Hmm, besser in Deutsch. A near feudal German…
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"I need you to impregnate my wife here."
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![]() Grey Gardens is a fascinating biography of Jackie Kennedy’s aunt and cousin as they descend from high society to seedy eccentricity. The movie’s hardly worth seeking out, but eminently watchable for those interested in the lifestyles of the rich and famous, the Hamptons, or all things Kennedy. …
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The real Beales.
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![]() Tesla stands alone: the most mystical, the most gifted, the most freaky of the great industrial magnates, e.g., Edison, Westinghouse & J.P. Morgan, who also appear in this biopic of the Serbian-American inventor. From Zagreb, it presents as a bizarre movie where people’s mouths don’t match what’…
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Tesla meets J.P. Morgan. Edison fumes.
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