Movie Recommendations

Lightning-fast screwball comedy of Berlin-based Coca-Cola executive Jimmy Cagney frantically trying to cover up his daughter’s marriage to a Communist.

Dustin Hoffman personifies the 1960s’ generation breaking away from their parents.

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.

The film that defines noir. Barbara Stanwyck is outstanding as an amoral wife who wants out of her marriage and will use anyone to help her. Fred MacMurray at first refused to play her lover and accomplice, fearing it was too great a departure from his romantic comedy roles and would hurt his career; instead,…

One of the two most powerful antiwar films ever made (the other being Renoir’s Grand Illusion—interesting that both deal with WW I). Kirk Douglas is understated and most effective as the officer assigned to determine whether three soldiers named by a general as cowards for failing to fulfill his idiotic battle orders should be court-martialed and…

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.