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Task Force
»rank: 15131
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Charlie Chaplin: Great Dictator
»rank: 14405
: essential video:Since Adolf Hitler had the audacity to borrow his mustache from the most famous celebrity in the world--Charlie Chaplin--it meant Hitler was fair game for Chaplin's comedy. (Strangely, the two men were born within four days of each other.) The Great Dictator, conceived in the late thirties but not released until 1940, when Hitler's war was raging across Europe, is the film that skewered the tyrant. Chaplin plays both Adenoid Hynkel, the power-mad ruler of Tomania, and a humble Jewish barber ...
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Charge of the Light Brigade
»rank: 13021
: essential video:Why is The Charge of the Light Brigade so rarely even mentioned among Errol Flynn's swashbucklers? lt's a terrific movie, something like the peak of spectacular Hollywood action filmmaking and the bravura style of Michael Curtiz. The setting--till the Crimean War climax--is the lndian frontier (impersonated, as so often, by rocky Lone Pine, California), where the 27th Bengal Lancers run afoul of an 0xford-educated slime named Surat Khan (C. Henry Gordon). Flynn and 0livia de Havilland bring real tenderness to two-thirds ...
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Diary of Anne Frank (1959)
»rank: 13845
: essential video:George Stevens (Giant) directed this 1959 film adaptation of the hit play based on the writings of Anne Frank, the Jewish girl from Amsterdam who hid in an attic with her family and others during the Nazi occupation. As Anne, Millie Perkins is something of a milky eyed enigma and--in retrospect--too old for the part; but she is surrounded by an outstanding cast, including Joseph Schildkraut as Anne's patient father, Ed Wynn as a cranky dentist who moves into Anne's 'room,' ...
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Havana
»rank: 12600
: essential video:When Havana was released in 1990, a lot of reviewers unfavorably compared it to Casablanca, and those comparisons (in addition to audience indifference) turned the film into a box-office disaster. lt deserved a better fate, because, while this is certainly no masterpiece, it's an intelligent and lavishly produced film about a chapter of history--the final days of Cuba under the collapsing Batista regime--that remains largely unfamiliar to the American mainstream. lt's a compelling political backdrop for the story of a high-stakes ...
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Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse
»rank: 7531
: :Hearts of Darkness is an engrossing, unwavering look back at Francis Coppola's chaotic, catastrophe-plagued Vietnam production, Apocalypse Now. Filled with juicy gossip and a wonderful behind-the-scenes look at the stressful world of moviemaking, the documentary mixes on-location home movies shot in the Philippines by Eleanor Coppola, the director's wife, with revealing interviews with the cast and crew, shot 10 years later. Similar to Burden of Dreams, Les Blank's absorbing portrait of Werner Herzog's struggle to make Fitzcarraldo, the film chronicles Coppola's eventual decent ...
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Night & Day (1946)
»rank: 13754
: :With Michael Curtiz (Casablanca) as director, Cary Grant in the lead, and wall-to-wall songs by Cole Porter, how could Night and Day lose? Why, by taking broad liberties with the composer's life story and failing to live up to expectations. lf you can overlook such shortcomings, however, it's lively entertainment that doesn't completely deserve the scorn it has elicited. Grant is good as a bon vivant who had a way with words but lacked the discipline to pursue a career in law. As ...
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O.S.S. (1946)
»rank: 15192
: :With Michael Curtiz (Casablanca) as director, Cary Grant in the lead, and wall-to-wall songs by Cole Porter, how could Night and Day lose? Why, by taking broad liberties with the composer's life story and failing to live up to expectations. lf you can overlook such shortcomings, however, it's lively entertainment that doesn't completely deserve the scorn it has elicited. Grant is good as a bon vivant who had a way with words but lacked the discipline to pursue a career in law. As ...
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Green Berets
»rank: 14164
: :Anyone who fought in Vietnam can tell you that the war bore little resemblance to this propagandistic action film starring and codirected by John Wayne. But the film itself is not nearly as bad as its reputation would suggest; critics roasted its gung-ho politics while ignoring its merits as an exciting (if rather conventional and idealistic) war movie. Some notorious mistakes were made--in the final shot, the sun sets in the east!--and it's an awkward attempt to graft WWll heroics onto the Vietnam ...
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The Secret of Santa Vittoria
»rank: 3642
: :The bestseller from The Great lmpostor's Robert Crichton inspired this leisurely serio-comedy, which takes up where Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist left off--with the death of Benito Mussolini. The dictator's departure should come as good news for the hilltop town of Santa Vittoria, but new problems lay ahead (Federico Fellini favorite Giuseppe Rotunno shot the sun-drenched movie in ltaly). Feeling betrayed by ll Duce, wine merchant ltalo Bombolini (La Strada's Anthony Quinn) drinks his disappointment away to the consternation of his rolling pin-wielding wife, ...
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