Movie Recommendations

The epitome of kung fu movies. Bruce Lee infiltrates a martial arts order to uncover a plot about…oh, who cares? It’s all about the fight sequences.

Another offbeat charmer from Bill Forsyth; oil magnet Burt Lancaster sends Peter Riegert to buy a sleepy Scottish fishing town.

Delicious Ian McKellen rendition of Shakespeare’s crooked spider has the eponymous monarch creating a Fascist state after murdering his rivals to the throne.

The fun-loving and recently deceased Kerbys (Cary Grant and Constance Bennett) decide they won’t be free to shuffle off the mortal coil until they help their stuffy banker acquaintance Topper lighten up.

First-rate comedy/western about a soft-spoken lawman who doesn’t want to use his guns, even though he’s the son of a famous gun-wielding lawman. Jimmy Stewart is at his aw-shucks peak, and Marlene Dietrich has never been better—especially when she sings the show-stopper See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have.

Though not as perfect as Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels or The Lady Eve, this effort comes close. Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert are wonderful as the faltering marrieds, but you’ll never forget the Ale and Quail Club, the Wienie King, Rudy Vallee, and Mary Astor.

Another winning Alec Guinness/Ealing Studios combination. This time Guinness is a bank clerk with a seemingly foolfproof plan to rob a fortune in gold. (Audrey Hepburn’s film debut, as Chiquita.)

As Dennis Weaver drives along a near-deserted California highway to get to work, an 18-wheeler inexplicably tries to kill him. Early Spielberg TV movie has all the suspense of his big-budget thrillers.

Screenwriter Aldous Huxley takes remarkable liberties with Austen’s novel, but Greer Garson, Laurence Olivier, Edna May Oliver, and the rest of the cast make it eminently watchable.

Searing examination of racism and how cooperation can break down that boundary. Sidney Poitier is arrested on suspicion of murder as a black man passing through a small Southern town; Rod Steiger won an Oscar for his protrayal of the sheriff.