Movies

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Rusty
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317 - The Secret Society of Second Born Royals - 7/10 - Sam is the younger daughter of a tiny European nation. Her father died a decade earlier and her older sister is about to turn 18 and become Queen. Sam doesn't really want to be part of the monarchy, preferring to play in a band with her best friend. She discovers that she has super powers as do other second born members of royal families and starts training with her powers. I thought this Disney+ movie was fun.
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318 - Between Heaven and Hell - 6.5/10 - Robert Wagner stars as a sergeant serving in the Philippines during WWII who has been busted down to private for striking an officer. Instead of a court martial, he is sent into the hills to join a unit of misfits. His backstory is told in flashbacks. I didn't think it was very good, though it had a few good moments.
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319 - My Best Friend's Wedding - 6.5/10 - Julia Roberts plays a woman whose best friend is a man (Dermot Mulroney) she has known for many years and had lots of experiences with. When he calls her to invite her to his wedding, she realizes that she is in love with him and tries to break the couple up with underhanded tricks. Cameron Diaz plays the bride to be. It wasn't that great a movie, but it was watchable.

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320 - Weathering With You - 8/10 - Hodaka runs away from home and heads to Tokyo where he gets a job and makes a couple of friends. Tokyo has been suffering from excessive rain for some time, but Hodaka meets a girl named Hina who is able to pray the rain away for a time. I thought this was a pretty good movie, though I liked Your Name more.
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321 - Mediterraneo - 7.5/10 - A group of hapless Italian soldiers end up stranded on a Greek island in 1941. The inhabitants hide from them, but decide that the soldiers are harmless and go back to their daily lives. The men of the village had been taken away by the Germans earlier and the soldiers gradually blend into village life for the rest of the war. I thought the movie was pretty good and am surprised that it was one of the movies that Roger Ebert walked out on.

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322 - Carmen (1983) - 7/10 - A flamenco adaptation of Carmen is being staged and the choreographer falls in love with the young woman chosen to play Carmen. Their real life relationship plays out in a similar way to the story they are staging. It wasn't bad, but I wasn't that enamored with it.

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323 - Three Men and a Cradle - 7.5/10 - Jacques, Pierre, and Michel share an apartment and also a partying lifestyle. When Jacques heads to Asia for a month of work for the airline he works for, he mentions to his roommates to expect a package a friend said they would drop off. Pierre and Michel are surprised to find a baby left at their door with a note that the mother is off to the States for six months. Their single lifestyle is turned on its head. I haven't seen the American version since it came out, but I enjoyed this one quite a bit. It's not a great film, but is fun.

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324 - Get Out Your Handkerchiefs - 7/10 - This is kind of a strange movie, though one that has a pretty nice soundtrack. Raoul and Solange are married, but he is unhappy because his wife never smiles or laughs, is subject to fainting spells, and only seems to want to knit and clean. He enlists a stranger in a restaurant to sleep with her in an attempt to get her out of her unhappy state, but it doesn't work. The only person who can get to her is an intelligent, but bullied 13 year old boy. I thought the ending was pretty funny and there were other humorous parts, but much of it just seemed a bit off.

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325 - Strawberry and Chocolate - 6.5/10 - In Havana in 1979, a university student named David who is devoted to the communist cause becomes friends with a gay artist named Diego who is fairly flamboyant and outspoken, but doesn't fit in well in Castro's Cuba. Their relationship is platonic, though Diego clearly wishes otherwise. I didn't really buy their relationship, especially because of how it began, so this movie didn't really work for me. If the two had started out as childhood friends, perhaps I would view it differently.
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326 - A Rage to Live - 6.5/10 - Suzanne Pleshette stars as Grace Caldwell, a woman who gains a reputation as a teen for being a tramp, even if she doesn't deserve it. She later gets married and has a happy life until an old flame returns and she gives in to temptation. I didn't care for the movie that much. The men lying about her and then other people believing it could happen, I suppose, but it didn't resonate with me.
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327 - The Devil Strikes at Night - 8/10 - This West German film takes place in 1944 where a wounded company commander has been named as a police inspector. He takes an interest in the murder of a waitress by strangulation and realizes that a serial killer is on the loose. He pursues the case, but is met with opposition from the Gestapo. This noir film is based on the true case of Bruno Lüdke and was very good.

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328 - The Given Word - 8/10 - A man in Brazil has carried a large wooden cross for more than 20 miles from his home to a city where he plans to deliver the cross to the Catholic church there in honor of St. Barbara on her feast day. He is carrying the cross to fulfill a promise he made to St. Barbara to heal his injured donkey. He is accompanied by his wife and they reach the church early in the morning. Matters get complicated and start to spin out of control when the Catholic priest refuses the man entry and denounces him as a heretic, a newspaper man sees a way to sell papers and writes a sensationalist story, and the local people take an interest on one side or the other. A carnival like atmosphere eventually develops and the poor man just wants to keep his promise and deliver the cross. I thought the film was very well done.
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329 - Mon Oncle D'Amerique - 7/10 - This film mixes together four stories, three fictional and one more of a documentary. Henri Laborit, a french surgeon and neurobioligist discusses the development of life and the brain in people and animals. The three fictional stories center on an actress who later becomes a fashion designer, a man who works in radio, and another man who is an executive in a textile factory, but has to move away from his family due to a company merger. The fictional stories interact at times. The first half hour didn't work for me, but fortunately it became more interesting and I enjoyed the rest of it.

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330 - Gervaise - 8/10 - Maria Schell plays a laundrywoman in this adaptation of the Emile Zola book. Gervaise has two young sons with her lover, but he abandons her to go away with another woman. She eventually marries a roofer and things are going well until he is injured on a job. He becomes an alcoholic and things progressively get worse for Gervaise. This is a pretty good film, though not a particularly happy one.
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331 - Clouds - 8/10 - Zach Sobiech was diagnosed with osteosarcoma at age 14 and learned that it was terminal when he was 17. During his final year, he formed a band with his best friend and recorded a song that gained millions of views on Youtube and millions of downloads. The movie covers the last year of his life as he and his friends and family struggle with his illness and try to keep as normal a life as they can. I thought it was very well done and is definitely moving at times.
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332 - The Climax - 6/10 - Boris Karloff stars as the doctor for a Royal Theater Company who murders the woman he 'loves' because she is a famous opera singer and he doesn't want to share her voice with anyone else. Ten years later, he encounters a young woman whose voice reminds him (and others) of his former beloved and he is intent on silencing that voice. Unfortunately, the doctor seemed rather one dimensional to me and I thought that the movie lacked substance. I didn't hate it, but didn't think much of it either. It was originally intended to be a sequel to Phantom of the Opera, but went another route.

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333 - The Music Teacher - 8/10 - Early in the 20th Century, an aging opera star retires to the countryside. He takes on a young woman and a young man as pupils. Their talents develop and relationships form between the three. I thought that this was a very good movie with pretty good acting. There is plenty of singing, but the relationships are the focus.
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334 - Betty Blue - 8/10 - Zorg is a handyman at a beach house community on the French Mediterranean coast. He is an aspiring writer with a gorgeous 19 year old girlfriend who takes an interest in his writing and tries to get it published. However, she is subject to occasional fits of madness that seem to become worse as time goes by. This madness causes the couple a number of problems and Zorg does his best to get them out of trouble. Béatrice Dalle is gorgeous here and does a great job in her role. She is very convincing as the unstable young woman. Jean-Hugues Anglade is also pretty good as Zorg, but it is Dalle who is the most captivating here.

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335 - Casanova 70 - 7.5/10 - Marcello Mastroianni stars as Andrea, a NATO officer who loves women and seduces them with ease, but is impotent unless there is some danger involved. He finds himself breaking into hid girlfriend's apartment, calling husbands while he is with their wives and other stunts to give him the ability to perform. He gets himself into all sorts of crazy situations. I thought it was a pretty funny movie.
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336 - Coup de Torchon - 7.5/10 - Lucien is the bumbling police chief in a small city in French West Africa in 1938. He is pushed around by two local pimps, his wife brought her lover to live with them, and he is treated with disrespect by many. One day, though, he snaps and decides not to take it any more. I enjoyed this one. It starts out as a comedy, though it gets a bit more serious later on.

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337 - Il Generale Della Rovere - 8/10 - Bardone is a small time gambler and con man in Italy during WWII is arrested by the Nazis and given a choice of being executed or getting a reduced sentence by cooperating. They want him to impersonate a general who was one of the leaders of the resistance, but who died during capture. The con man will be sent to a prison where other resistance members are housed, including the overall leader, but the Nazis need help in identifying this leader. The first half of the movie involves Bardone's various attempts to get money to pay off a debt and the rest involves his prison stay. I thought it was a very good film.
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338 - Noce i dnie (Nights and Days) - 8/10 - This sweeping historical epic starts during the first world war when the elderly Barbara Niechcic is forced to flee her wartorn Polish city. As she is traveling, she reflects back on over 50 years of her life, starting shortly after the failed January Uprising in 1863. She thinks of the man she loves, the man she married, her children, the land they worked and managed, and many ups and downs. At over four hours, there is quite a bit here and I thought it was a pretty good film. There is a 10 hour television version that is apparently still shown in Poland regularly and remains popular.
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339 - The Old Guard - 8/10 - I read the second Old Guard trade yesterday so I thought that it was time to finally watch the movie. Four immortals travel the world helping where they can while keeping their secret from the world. A fifth immortal is 'born' in Afghanistan and they track her down. They are also being hunted down by a corporation who wants to learn how their immortality functions. I thought it was a pretty good adaptation as well as an entertaining film. Hopefully they make sequels.
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340 - With Byrd at the South Pole - 7.5/10 - This documentary follows the Byrd expedition to Antarctica in 1928-1930. It is mostly silent with an opening speech by Byrd and narration later in the film. The cinematography was pretty good and the movie itself was interesting.

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341 - The Medium (1951) - 7/10 - Marie Powers and Anna Maria Alberghetti star in this short opera about a woman who gives fake seances with the aid of her daughter and a mute servant boy. Madame Flora is terrified when a real presence seems to appear at one of these seances. Alberghetti plays the daughter and was only 15 when the movie came out, but she holds her own with Powers, a much more seasoned performer. It was a decent film with pretty good acting.

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342 - No Time for Love - 7.5/10 - Claudette Colbert stars as a talented photographer for a New York magazine. She is engaged to the publisher, but becomes involved with a construction worker (Fred MacMurray) at a tunnel site. He is crude and rather direct and a number of comic bits come from this. This is definitely not one of Colbert's best, but is still a fun movie to watch.

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343 - Psych 2: Lassie Come Home - 8/10 - Lassiter is in a nursing home after being shot. Shawn and Gus try to solve the crime while Jules is also working the case separately. I thought that this was a lot of fun and seemed like vintage Psych. I hope that they make more of these movies.
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344 - Heartbeeps - 7/10 - While awaiting repair, two robots fall in love and go off on an adventure together, accompanied by a robot who delivers one liners. They are pursued by a malfunctioning crimebuster robot. Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters star in this movie which I actually enjoyed, even though ultimately it is kind of a dumb movie.

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345 - It Started With Eve - 8/10 - Johnny Reynolds (Robert Cummings) arrives home to find that his wealthy father Jonathan (Charles Laughton) is near death, but wants to meet Johnny's fiancee before dying. Johnny goes to his fiancee's hotel, but she is nowhere to be found. Desperate, he convinces a young hotel employee named Anne Terry (Deanna Durbin) to come with him and pretend to be his fiancee in order to grant his father's last wish. The next day, the father is miraculously much better which causes a number of problems for Johnny and his real fiancee. Laughton is hilarious as the father and Durbin is very good as Anne. I thought the movie was very good.
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