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England expects that every man will do his duty The famous words of Lord Nelson just before the Battle of Traflager—and also in the movie depicting the affair and romance between Nelson and Lady Hamilton, That Hamilton Woman. Laurence Olivier (Lord Nelson) strikes many a pose as England’s...

Miss Dashwood. Mr. Ferrars. Ah how romance blooms in 18th century England, especially as depicted by Jane Austin in her novel and by Ang Lee in the movie of the same name: Sense and Sensibility. As befits a major costume drama this production has an all star cast with Emma Thompson...

Do not awake a sleeping tiger. Doctor Han Suyin (Jennifer Jones) warns correspondent Mark Elliott (William Holden) about developing their (then) difficult, interracial relationship in 1950s Hong Kong in Love is a Many Splendored Thing. While the theme and its treatment seems dated today...

Where’s my radium? Asks Madame Curie after long years of work in the movie of the same name. An above average, but typical bio of the 40s, the movie never seems to decide if it is a romance or the story of an obsession to discover scientific truth—or both or neither. Even with somewhat of...

I've met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you? You're 20 minutes. An assessment of Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas) in Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole/The Big Carnival. Tatum is a down and out, big city, big newspaper reporter, reduced to working in Albuquerque, where big news is a...

… tell them to go out there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper. That quote is one reason to watch Knute Rockne All American. The Notre Dame Victory March and some of the film clips are two others.

Thanks, Adam—good point on Doubt—which is on my re-watch list. I’ll consider the similarities and differences at the time.

They came home. And with them, my life of details. And that is the problem with The Bridges of Madison County: despite Meryl Streeo’s subtle and outstanding performance, the audience must listen to the dialogue. The last 30–45 minutes where Streep and Clint Eastwood discuss the meaning of...

Ratings for the AFI top 10 animated movies: :star: :star::star::star: Fantasia Shrek Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs :star::star::star: Bambi Beauty and the Beast Cinderella Finding Nemo Lion King, The Pinocchio Toy Story

Young man, are you sure you're trying it on the right foot? The evil stepmother in Cinderella tries in vain to get one of her daughters married to the prince. But virtue (and with help from the various animals) wins the day and the prince for Cinderella. An absolutely charming animated...

Run Scar’s advice to his nephew, Simba in The Lion King, Disney’s animated tale of despair, guilt, growth and return. The music in this feature is alone worth the price of admission, making the animation, story and humor just icing on the cake.

Ratings for the AFI musical list where 4=masterpiece, 3=must-see, 2=worth seeing, 1=has redeeming features. :star::star::star::star: My Fair Lady Show Boat Singin' in the Rain West Side Story Wizard of Oz, The :star::star::star: Top Hat All That Jazz Beauty and the Beast...

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, a young prince lived in a shining castle. The beginning of fairy tales and also of Beauty and the Beast, the Disney animated film of the familiar story and the one that returned Disney animation to that level that adults will enjoy as well as children...

Warms my black heart to see you so concerned about us minority folks. John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) is as smart-mouthed and cynical as any PI from any movie about Private Eyes, the main difference is that the early 70s saw an explosion of genre movies, now populated by blacks...

I’ve never been as good as I was with you. The Big Chill is full of nostalgia of that type—remembrances of those better days, when everyone was close, full of optimism and love and when the future was open and clear. Seven close college friends meet at the funeral of an eight, who though...

Goodnight, Mister Roberts The best-selling novel, smash-hit Broadway play and award-winning movie, Mister Roberts is as funny (and as sad) today as it was 50 years ago. This time watch James Cagney, perfect in the role of the self-important, crazed captain.

You're the only one who ever took me seriously, Pete. Pete’s accidental death provides the motivation for Rudy (Sean Austin) to leave his job at the steel mill, move to South Bend and preserve his lack of physical stature and high school grades to the point that he is both accepted at Notre...

Why do you hate me when all I ever did was like you? Tony (John Travolta) struggles with girls and life in Saturday Night Fever a fairly routine dance, trouble teen movie that is lifted above the ordinary by Travolta’s extraordinary performance. Plenty of flaws, but some of the scenes...

I don't need no Okie from Muskogee—I can get that right here. An Officer and a Gentleman is a finely crafted movie, on the surface about love, but the arc is about growth, especially of Officer Candidate Zack Mayo (Richard Gere) the class insubordinate loner. The 13 weeks of training under...

Houston, we have a problem The understated quote of James Lovell (Tom Hanks) that has come into the lexicon summarizes Apollo 13 as the Ron Howard movie manages to tell the story of that mission without too much schmaltz. Watching this made me break out my copy of For All Mankind and wonder...

…just like Easy Rider. Therein lies the joke as David Howard (Albert Brooks) compares driving a new Winnebago after dropping out of the ad game in a fit of pique to his supposed favorite movie. But David and his wife Linda (Julie Hagerty) in Lost in America can’t handle life without their...

I agree with the set piece where CD comes up with 20 different insults abut his nose, each one funnier than the last.

He could never have seduced me, Charlie. Roxanne (Daryl Hannah) tells off CD (Steve Martin) in Martin’s take on Cyrano de Bergerac wherein Martin gets to play the soulful loner with all his typical sight gag bells and whistles. Much is pretty amusing, but the end seems to me to be both...

You know I love listening to you talk. I hate living with you but your conversation is first rate. Neil Simon dialogue to be sure, this time in The Goodbye Girl, a typical (and better than his average) Simon script, this one with Richard Dreyfuss and Marsha Mason as reluctant roommates...

Go Ahead—make my day! Again we meet Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) aka, ‘Dirty Harry’, this time in a movie directed by Eastwood, Sudden Impact. All action (mostly due to payback) and no plot or character development, but in the case of Dirty Harry, this may be a good thing. After all the...

My ratings for the AFI 10 Courtroom movies. 12 Angry Men:star::star::star: Anatomy of a Murder:star::star::star: Cry in the Dark, A:star::star::star: Few Good Men, A:star::star: In Cold Blood:star::star::star: Judgement at Nuremberg:star::star::star: Kramer vs. Kramer:star::star: To...

Dingo took my baby! This is the famous cry of the baby’s mother, Lindy Chamberlain in A Cry in the Dark, titled Evil Angels in Australia and based on the book of the same name. Even twenty years after the fact, the topic of Lindy’s guilt or innocence is still a part of Australian dinner...

You have no repentance! You're bad! Through and through, bad! The family patriarch labels Cal (James Dean) in East of Eden an Elia Kazan movie taken from the John Steinbeck novel of the same name. Both Steinbeck and Kazan transport the Biblical tale of Cain (Cal) and Abel (Aron in the...

I mean we're not stuck in the goddamn middle ages here. I mean we've got TV. We've got Family Feud. We're not stuck in Leave It To Beaver land here. Referring to the obscure, small Midwest town that is the setting of Footloose, placed on an AFI list because of the title song, along with...

It's not that they're stupid, it's just they don't know anything. I knew about Jaime Escalante of course—the East LA, high school math teacher who proved that students from the barrio could master calculus to the point of passing the AP test. Stand and Deliver, which I had not seen, tells...