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![]() 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…
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Start with the end: Churchill on Rommel
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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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![]() 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 …
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Cécile De France: lithe object of desire
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![]() 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…
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Denzel on Devil In A Blue Dress
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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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![]() 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…
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Kibbutznick Extraordinaire
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![]() 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…
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Malkovich & Connelly make the movie
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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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![]() 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…
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Marilyn Monroe & Donald O'Connor: Sta...
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![]() 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… |