54 - Black Narcissus - 7.5/10 - A group of nuns in the Himalayas start a school and hospital for the locals. A visiting British agent sparks jealousies and fantasies among some of the nuns, including one who eventually has a nervous breakdown. The scenery is very nice and overall the movie is pretty good.
55 - Black Panther - 8.5/10 - The movie was a little slow at times, but they made up for it the rest of the time. It was very well done and I enjoyed it a lot. The acting was excellent and the villain had realistic motivations.
56 - The Sorrow and the Pity - 8.5/10 - An excellent documentary about occupied France during World War II. It came out in 1969 and featured a mix of archival footage and numerous interviews with French civilians, collaborators, politicians and resistance members as well as some English and German citizens. I don't have much interest in documentaries normally, but this was very well done. It is also over 4 hours long for any interested in checking it out.
57 - Blood and Sand - 7/10 - Tyrone Power stars as an illiterate peasant who rises to stardom as a bullfighter only to fall back down due to poor choices. Linda Darnell and Rita Hayworth also star. The movie isn't bad, though isn't great either.
58 - Grand Prix - 7.5/10 - Great cinematography and racing action in this racing melodrama about a group of racers, including Pete Aron (Jim Garner) who is an accomplished driver, but gets fired due to an accident and then is later hired by a different team.
59 - The Sound Barrier - 6.5/10 - A British company is working on jets in an attempt to break the sound barrier. This push costs the life of more than 1 pilot. There were parts that were interesting and there were lots of shots of flying aircraft, but overall the plot seemed a bit thin and dull.
60 - Les Girls - 6/10 - A dancer writes a tell all book about her dance troupe days and is sued by her fellow dancers for libel. The story is told through flashbacks from the perspectives of the three principal dancers and the director (Gene Kelly). While stylish to look at, the movie seems kind of uninspired and familiar. I didn't really care about any of the characters. The courtroom scenes were probably the most fun, but they were mainly just a framing sequence.
61 - The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm - 7/10 - The story of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm is told here in this fictionalized biography mixed with adaptations of a few fairy tales. The brothers are working for a Duke on his family's history, but Wilhelm keeps getting distracted by searching out fairy tales. This leads to a number of problems for the brothers on their way to success. It was a fairly entertaining movie.
62 - Little Women (1949) - 8/10 - June Allyson, Janet Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor, Margaret O'Brien all star in this version of the classic novel. This is the third movie version I've seen and they have all been pretty good.
63 - Mystery Street - 8/10 - Ricardo Montalban plays a Boston detective who investigates the murder of a woman whose skeleton turns up on a beach about 6 months after she died. He enlists the assistance of a Harvard professor well versed in forensics and slowly cracks the case. Very entertaining.
64 - White Heat - 8/10 - Cody Jarrett is a criminal whose gang stages a train heist. With the heat on, he turns himself in for a short stretch in a state penitentiary to avoid federal charges. An undercover treasury agent befriends Jarrett in prison to try and discover the rest of Jarrett's organization. Cagney stars as Jarrett and does his usual nice job in the gangster role. It was a pretty good movie.
65 - Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets - 8.5/10 - Valerian and Laureline are 28th Century Special Operatives who are tasked with recovering rare objects in the hands of criminals. They uncover much more than a criminal organization, though. The special effects were great and I enjoyed the movie a lot. It has gotten bashed a lot in reviews, but I thought it was fun.
66 - Victoria & Abdul - 7/10 - Late in her reign, Queen Victoria became interested in an Indian man named Victor. She retained him as a servant and later he taught her Urdu and became her friend up until her death, though Victoria's family was much against this. The movie was decently acted, but it was also rather dull.
67 - Manhattan Melodrama - 7.5/10 - 'Blackie' Gallagher and Jim Wade have been friends since they were boys after they became orphans when a ship sank. Jump ahead 30 years and Blackie (Clark Gable) is now a prominent criminal while Jim (William Powell) is running for D.A., but they still remain friends. Eleanor (Myrna Loy) is Blackie's girlfriend, but decides to leave that life behind after meeting Jim, the man she eventually marries. There are some pretty prominent actors here (and a young Mickey Rooney too) and the movie is pretty entertaining.
68 - Dersu Uzala - 9/10 - This Akira Kurosawa film was a Soviet/Japanese co-production. It relates the story of a Russian explorer and his crew exploring areas in Siberia in the early part of the 20th Century. Near the beginning of their expeditions, they meet Dersu Uzala, a local hunter who ends up serving as their guid through much of their travels. It was very well done and Dersu is a very interesting character. The story is based on a book by the Russian explorer who led these expeditions.
69 - Antonia's Line - 7.5/10 - On Antonia's last day, she reflects on her life from returning to her home village with her daughter after World War II through her daughter's pregnancy and raising of a granddaughter and later the birth and youth of her great-granddaughter. Some of the other villagers lives interact with them for good or bad. The movie is a bit of a fantasy and has a fair amount of humor as well. It is an off movie, but I enjoyed it.
70 - Beach Red - 7/10 - A group of soldiers land on a Pacific island during World War II and find themselves in a tough battle with the Japanese soldiers who hold the island. The opening scene is similar to the opening in Saving Private Ryan and the Japanese are shown in a sympathetic light as people. The acting wasn't great and the flashback scenes were a bit odd, but it was interesting at times as well.
71 - The Red Turtle - 8.5/10 - An animated film about a man who is shipwrecked on an island. Each time he tries to escape the island on a raft he has made from bamboo, a red turtle destroys the raft and forces him to return to the island. Later, the turtle transforms into a woman and the two grow old together and eventually have a son. The movie is beautiful, has great music and no words. Very well done.
72 - Bite the Bullet - 7.5/10 - Gene Hackman, James Coburn and Candice Bergen are among the stars of this western about a 700 mile horse race in the early 20th Century. There's treachery, competition, a love of horses and a fairly entertaining movie.
73 - Begin Again - 8.5/10 - A talented songwriter whose ex-boyfriend is now a successful singer is down on her luck when she meets a music executive who just lost his job but sees a lot of promise in her work. They form a relationship that helps both of them rise up. I thought this was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the music as well. Keira Knightley does a great job as the songwriter, Gretta. Mark Ruffalo also does a nice job as Dan, the music executive. To me, this ranks right up there with Sing Street and Once, also from director John Carney.
74 - Kapó - 8.5/10 - A Jewish teenager is taken with her parents to a concentration camp where they are separated. The girl gets help to avoid being labeled as a Jewish prisoner and eventually agrees to have a relationship with an SS officer in exchange for food and privileges. This leads to her becoming a kapó, one of the prisoners who oversees the other prisoners. When the end of the war nears, she befriends a Russian soldier who has recently been captured. This movie gives a pretty bleak view of life in concentration camps, but is very well acted and is very good.
75 - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow - 7/10 - Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni star in three different roles in this Italian anthology film. My favorite was the first one where they are husband and wife. She is threatened with jail for not paying a debt incurred when purchasing furniture. She finds that the police will not arrest her when she is pregnant, though, or for 6 months after giving birth so she and her husband contrive to have her become pregnant each year shortly before her grace period is over. The other two segments were less interesting - a short vignette while driving in a rolls royce a wealthy woman and her lover get into an accident - a prostitute has a young man fall in love with her while he is visiting his elderly grandparents nearby. She enlists the help of a client to get him back to the path he left behind where he planned to enter the priesthood. I didn't care that much for the last 2/3 of the film, but did like the first part.
76 - My Night at Maud's - 8.5/10 - A Catholic man is introduced to a divorcee by a mutual friend and they spend the night discussing love, religion and philosophy. After the night is over, he runs into a young woman he has seen at his church and they start a relationship. This was a very thoughtful film and I liked it quite a bit. There were a number of discussions about Blaise Pascal as well which I enjoyed, too.
77 - Immortal Love - 8/10 - In 1932, a young Japanese woman is waiting for the young man she loves to return home from China where he is serving as a soldier. The son of a wealthy landowner returns home from the war first with an injury that forces him to limp or use crutches. The woman is forced into marrying this man even though she despises him. The film jumps ahead to 1944 then 1949, 1960 and finally 1961. Her enmity toward him and his actions toward her have poisoned their lives since the beginning of their relationship. The lives of their children are impacted quite a bit along the way as well. The movie was well acted and pretty good.
78 - Ghost World - 7.5/10 - Enid and Rebecca are best friends who have just graduated from high school, but don't really fit in with the rest of their peers. They are pretty cynical about many things and don't have firm plans for their future. Enid starts a relationship with an older man who they view initially as a dork. She also has to take a remedial art class. Thora Birch and Scarlet Johansson both do a nice job as the teens and Steve Buscemi plays the man that Enid befriends. It was a fairly entertaining film, though also pretty low key.
79 - The Thing - 7.5/10 - An alien entity crashes in Antarctica and starts taking over the bodies of animals and people at a remote camp. I'm not much into horror movies, but this movie was okay.
80 - Drive - 7.5/10 - A stunt driver in the movies also works as a mechanic at a garage and doubles as a getaway driver for hire, When a job involving his neighbor's husband goes bad, he finds himself having to evade a number of thugs who are out to get him and reclaim what was stolen. It was very downbeat at times, but I thought it was a good movie and certainly had plenty of action.
