MovieSorter

loading Title loading Tws summary loading Trust ▲ loading Year Viewable
The Desert Fox:...
Really Great 66 Points 1951

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel – the Desert Fox – was Nazi Germany’s national hero, their military icon. Hitler needed him, couldn’t kill him, so he had Rommel kill himself. Absolute evil, thy name is Hitler.

That and more make The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel a touchstone World War II movi…

Full Review »
WikChip Video Start with the end: Churchill on Rommel
The Lady Eve
Great 66 Points 1941

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…

Full Review »
WikChip Image The Lady Eve dress by Edith Head
A Secret
Really Great 66 Points 2007

More a wartime romantic mystery than anything, A Secret is nonetheless as fine a Holocaust picture as you’ll find. Being French, it’s also a sensual love story, or two.

Let’s start at the beginning even though the movie starts in the middle. A supremely athletic and thoroughly assimilated …

Full Review »
WikChip Image Cécile De France: lithe object of desire
Devil In A Blue...
Great 66 Points 1995

Devil In A Blue Dress is a twofer: a damn good neo-noir movie and an excellent 1940s L.A. period piece, from an African-American POV. Throw in a prime Denzel Washington performance and you’ve got a great movie, one that stands the test of time. Pity they never made a sequel.

Taken from Walte…

Full Review »
WikChip Video Denzel on Devil In A Blue Dress
Hail the Conque...
Very Good 66 Points 1944

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…

Full Review »
WikChip Image Demarest turns Bracken into a hero
Judith
Great 66 Points 1966

Judith features Gentile moviestars playing Jewish freedom fighters during Israel’s War of Independence. It’s amazing how glamorous a story centered on early kibbutz life at the end of the British Mandate can be.

To that end, Judith is a fabulous Sophia Loren movie. The great Loren stars a…

Full Review »
WikChip Image Kibbutznick Extraordinaire
Mulholland Falls
Good 66 Points 1996

Glamorous L.A. noir from back when real men wore fedoras makes Mulholland Falls a high calorie treat. A sultry Jennifer Connolly cavorting with John Malkovich and Nick Nolte makes it a guilty pleasure. Cheesy dialogue makes it a bit tough to swallow.

Should this luxo crime thriller be bett…

Full Review »
WikChip Image Malkovich & Connelly make the movie
The Palm Beach ...
Good 66 Points 1942

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…

Full Review »
WikChip Video Now this is a trailer. Personality, i...
There's No Busi...
Really Great 66 Points 1954

There’s No Business Like Show Business and there was no show business phonier than vaudeville, till movies. So an overtly phony movie about vaudeville makes for a phony convergence. It was perhaps the last of the musical extravaganzas, a calorically rich compendium of Irving Berlin’s showstoppi…

Full Review »
WikChip Video Marilyn Monroe & Donald O'Connor: Sta...
Morituri
Really Great 66 Points 1965

Morituri is a terrible title for a movie, now and in 1965 when this Brando-Brynner warhorse premiered. If that wasn’t bad enough, Marlon Brando refused to do publicity, limiting himself to one line of perverse grandiosity. The movie bombed. So they renamed it The Saboteur: Code Name Morituri

Full Review »