I can't recall if I've seen her in any other films, and she didn't deliver a stand-out performance here, but it was adequate. Maybe a 6 out of 10.

Anthony Hopkins delivers a top-notch performance as Adolf Hitler living out his final days in his bunker at the closing days of WWII. This was a movie made for TV, so there wasn't a poster made to promote it. The cast seemed to be British and American for the most part and their accents threw me off at first but the story and performances were good enough that it didn't matter much after a few minutes. The movie was a bit longer than usual but the 150 minute running time ended up seeming just about right.

A married man with a sick child, gets fired from his job as a used car salesman because his boss thinks he's too honest. Another used car dealer quickly offers him a job which ends up testing his honesty to the breaking point.

B&W crime film about a group of prison convicts who conduct a large-scale prison escape. The story focuses on a group of six of the convicts as they try to elude law enforcement while seeking a hidden stash of money which one of them buried before he was sent to prison.

Crime film about a member of an organized crime family who comes home from combat in WWII as a changed man. He decides to quit the organization to go into a legitimate business and become a law-abiding member of society and raise a family with his new wife. The head of the organization wishes him well but he soon finds out that there were unseen strings attached to his resignation.

B&W sci-fi/horror/comedy about a spaceship that lands in a wooded area of a small American town. Martians leave the ship and one of them is accidentally run down by a teenage couple driving down a back road. Disbelief, confusion, and comedy ensue. The special effects were mediocre and crudely done for the most part but the acting and directing was good and the writing was entertaining enough to make me laugh out loud a few times.

B&W crime thriller featuring Frank Sinatra in a starring role. A small town in California gets a surprise visit from the President of the United States and a trio of assassins who are aware of the impending visit and show up in town ahead of the President and his entourage. Good script, good acting, & good directing make this one well worth watching.

Not to break up the combo of classic cinema, but the last film I just watched was Ice Age III: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

Difficult to compare it to these films, but worth a watch at least once anyway, in my humble opinion. Good franchise I'd say.

Here's another one I watched a while ago...




Japanese sci-fi/horror flick from the 50's, filmed in color. A hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific Ocean, creates a gelatinous blob of radioactive goo which takes on a life of its own and absorbs any people in its path as it makes its way from the ocean to Japan. I watched the original Japanese release with English subtitles. The story was ridiculous but fairly entertaining and the color photography was gorgeous. One of those movies where I find myself being more interested in the period clothing, hairstyles, cars, and overall vibe, than the story itself.

That's one thing I like about older movies, especially older "B" pictures--the period detail is really good in a lot of cases. Call me nitpicky, but it's a bit annoying to see a bigger budget picture like Badlands (1973), which is set in the 1950s, feature a Texaco station sign that wasn't used until the 1960s.