Despondent over a painful estrangement from his daughter, trainer Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood, who also directs) isn’t prepared for boxer Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) to enter his life. But Maggie’s determined to go pro – and to convince Dunn and his cohort (Morgan Freeman) to help her. This multiple Oscar winner picked up acting honors for Swank and Freeman as well as statues for Best Director and Best Picture.
Jul 272010
Sixteen-year-old wrangler Charlie Railsberg (Melissa Gilbert, in her film debut) sees an unconquerable spirit in a wild horse she names Sylvester. Most everyone else (including tough stockyard boss Richard Farnsworth) see the nag as nothing but trouble. But they’re proven wrong when Charlie takes Sylvester all the way to the National Equestrian Trails Championship and the race of a lifetime.
Jul 262010
This 1968 film retells the classic children’s story about a young girl named Heidi (Jennifer Edwards), who’s taken from her beloved grandfather (Michael Redgrave) and forced to live with her uncle. Soon, Heidi struggles to become friends with Klara (Zuleika Robson), a young girl confined to a wheelchair, and must also deal with the girl’s nanny (Jean Simmons). But all Heidi really wants to do is find her way back home to her grandfather.
Jul 212010
Steve Bradford (James Cagney) is a successful, older businessman who has made his fortune in the steel industry. As he gets older, he comes to regret many of the decisions that he made while he was a young man – especially abandoning a young woman who was pregnant with his child. Determined to make amends and find his long-lost heir, Steve returns to his college town and tries to persuade the head of the orphanage, Ann Dempster (Barbara Stanwyck), to reveal the name and location of his illegitimate son. Ann refuses to give the information to the brash Steve, despite all of his efforts to win her over. As Steve tries to change her mind, he becomes more involved with a young [...]
Jul 202010
When tempestuous Mary Lennox (Margaret O’Brien), born in India to wealthy parents, is orphaned by a cholera epidemic, she is sent to live with her reclusive and embittered Uncle Archibald Craven (Herbert Marshall) and her ill-behaved, bedridden cousin Colin (Dean Stockwell) at their desolate and decaying estate known as Misselthwaite Manor. Dickon (Brian Roper), the brother of one of the house maids, tells her of a garden secreted behind a hidden door in a vine-covered wall. When a raven unearths the key, the two enter and discover the garden is overgrown from neglect since Craven’s wife died there in an accident. They decide to keep their discovery a secret, and begin to restore it to its original grandeur. Under the influence of the Secret Garden, [...]
Jul 192010
Steve Everett (Clint Eastwood) is on the brink of ruining his marriage and journalism career with his alcoholism and womanizing when he’s assigned to write a human-interest story about a death-row inmate (Isaiah Washington) – and learns the conviction was built on shaky evidence. Now, with 12 hours left until the execution, Everett embarks on a quest to save a man he’s convinced is innocent. James Woods and Denis Leary co-star.
Investigator Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney) is heading home aboard the Orient Express when a fellow passenger, American businessman Samuel Ratchett (Richard Widmark), is found murdered in this all-star whodunit by director Sidney Lumet, based on a novel Agatha Christie. Widely despised for his role in the kidnapping and death of a baby, Rachett had many enemies, so Poirot must sift through an eccentric group of suspects to find the killer.
Jul 102010
Devoted Philadelphia Eagles fan Vince Papale (Mark Wahlberg) has just lost his wife and his job as a substitute teacher. But by impressing his favorite NFL team’s coach in open tryouts and winning a place on the field, he turns a terrible year into a winner. Greg Kinnear and Elizabeth Banks co-star in this inspirational, fact-based drama from the producers of the similar but baseball-themed The Rookie.
Jul 032010
After he is discharged from the Marines, twenty-one-year-old Cliff Harper (Guy Madison) returns to his home in Los Angeles. Everyone seems excited to have him home, but Cliff just cannot get readjusted to being out of the military. He doesn’t want to return to school, he doesn’t want to work, the only thing that he does want is war widow Pat Ruscomb (Dorothy McGuire). But Pat is going through her own difficulties adjusting to life after the war – a life that she never envisioned for herself. Can these two lost souls move on and find a life together?
Marty (Ernest Borgnine) has a problem. Middle-aged and trapped by a smothering mother (Esther Minciotti), his future looks bleak. But when this butcher from the Bronx meets a lonely schoolteacher (Betsy Blair), suddenly everything is possible. Marty swept the Academy Awards in 1955, winning a Best Actor Oscar for Ernest Borgnine and a Best Screenplay award for Paddy Chayefsky (Network), as well as Best Picture and Best Director Awards.
Jun 242010
John Carteret (Brian Aherne) has long been depressed and lonely, because, at his wedding years ago, his bride, Moonyean (Jeanette MacDonald), was murdered. He accepts into his house Kathleen, the 5-year-old orphaned niece of Moonyean, and she quickly grows up to look just like her aunt. Kathleen (Jeanette MacDonald) meets and falls in love with a mysterious stranger from America, Kenneth Wayne (Gene Raymond). When John hears of this he is furious, and we learn that it was Kenneth’s father, Jeremy (Gene Raymond), who had killed Moonyean years before. John carries his grudge against Jeremy to the new generation, and threatens to ruin his niece’s happiness, but he softens in the end.
Jun 222010
Dorothy McGuire shines in Invitation (1952), a soapy tearjerker in which her emotionally fragile character comes to realize that her husband of less than a year (Van Johnson) only married her because her doting father (Louis Calhern) paid him to do so. Calhern had concocted the scheme in order to give his daughter a final year of happiness, as he knew that she has a medical condition which will eventually prove fatal. Johnson, however, claims to now really be in love with her…
