1958

[6] Dorothy Malone and Errol Flynn play father and daughter John and Diana Barrymore, real-life members of Hollywood’s famous Barrymore family, both of whom suffered famously from alcoholism. Flynn is very good here in the final noteworthy role of his career. Malone, two years after her Oscar win for Written on the Wind, is hit and miss — less convincing as the younger Diana but …

[3] What a shitty Best Picture winner Gigi is. It’s a musical about an unhappy playboy (Louis Jourdan) and an unhappy debutante (Leslie Caron) who fall in love, but then out of love, and back in love, and out, and finally in again. Apparently neither one feels right playing by the rules of Parisian upper-crust society and doing what is expected of them, so they …

[8] Sinbad must rescue his wife-to-be from the clutches of an evil sorcerer who takes her away to an island full of dangerous monsters in this ebullient fantasy adventure from director Nathan Juran and pioneering effects artist Ray Harryhausen. Harryhausen’s stop-motion animation combine with Bernard Herrmann’s music to give this romantic adventure wings. You can see and hear the passions of both men in the …

[10] A young boy is orphaned and left in the care of his only living relative, an eccentric aunt who defies convention and encourages discovery. The pair endure challenge after challenge in an episodic narrative that ends in the boy becoming a man and getting married, a decision that threatens to finally tear them apart. It’s so rare for me to fall this much in …

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