FanFare

Look, you get to stare at Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner for almost two hours, what more do you need? But fine, fine: you get a boxing movie, a heist movie, star-crossed lovers, a noir detective movie, betrayal, and amazing costumes. [more inside]
posted by The corpse in the library on Mar 25, 2023 - 9 comments

As the Allied forces approach Paris in August 1944, German Colonel Von Waldheim is desperate to take all of France's greatest paintings to Germany. He manages to secure a train to transport the valuable art works even as the chaos of retreat descends upon them. The French resistance, however, wants to stop them from stealing their national treasures. The station master, Labiche, is tasked with scheduling the train and making it all happen smoothly -- but he is also part of a dwindling group of resistance fighters tasked with preventing the theft. He and others stage elaborate ruses and more to keep the train from ever leaving French territory. JustWatch listing; leaving Amazon Prime in the US at the end of today, Nov 30.
posted by brainwane on Nov 30, 2022 - 10 comments

Run Silent, Run Deep is a 1958 American black-and-white war film starring Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster, based on the 1955 novel of the same name by Commander (later Captain) Edward L. Beach Jr. [more inside]
posted by valkane on Feb 16, 2022 - 4 comments

At a U.S. Army base in 1941 Hawaii, a private is cruelly punished for not boxing on his unit's team, while his commanding officer's wife and top aide begin a tentative affair. [more inside]
posted by Carillon on Dec 29, 2021 - 6 comments

Mac (Peter Riegert), an ambitious mid-level executive at a Texas oil company is selected — mainly because his name seems Scottish — by his eccentric boss (Burt Lancaster) to travel to Scotland on a two-pronged mission: 1) to negotiate the purchase of Ferness, a remote fishing village with a beautiful beach that happens to be the perfect location for building a refinery to process North Sea petroleum, and 2) to keep his eyes peeled for anything unusual happening in the night sky. [more inside]
posted by theory on Apr 11, 2021 - 10 comments

Ned Merrill has been away for most of the Summer. He reappears at a friends pool. As they talk, someone notices that there are pools spanning the entire valley. He decides to jog from pool to pool to swim the whole valley. At each pool, Ned stops and chats with his neighbors, each stop revealing more and more about Ned's life journey until he reaches his final destination. [more inside]
posted by rhizome on Apr 2, 2017 - 9 comments

United States military leaders plot to overthrow the President because he supports a nuclear disarmament treaty and they fear a Soviet sneak attack. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb on May 4, 2016 - 3 comments

A renegade USAF general, Lawrence Dell, escapes from a military prison and takes over an ICBM silo near Montana and threatens to provoke World War 3 unless the President reveals details of a secret meeting held just after the start of the Vietnam War between Dell and the then President's most trusted advisors. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb on Apr 15, 2016 - 2 comments

Powerful but unethical Broadway columnist J.J. Hunsecker coerces unscrupulous press agent Sidney Falco into breaking up his sister's romance with a jazz musician. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb on Feb 7, 2015 - 5 comments

I'm wondering if there is appetite for a series on films (especially the lesser-known films) made by the American auteurs of the 1960's and 1970's: Altman, Kubrick, Rafelson, Friedkin, et al. [more inside]
posted by Sheydem-tants on Aug 3, 2014 - 3 comments