griggs's - Roger Ebert's Great Movies List
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Safe their picturesque chateau behind the front lines, the French General Staff passes down a direct order to Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas): take the Ant Hill at any cost. A blatant suicide mission, the attack is doomed to failure. Covering up their fatal blunder, the Generals order the arrest of three innocent soldiers, charging them with cowardice and mutiny. Dax, a lawyer in civilian life, rises to the men's defense but soon realizes that, unless he can prove that the Generals were to blame, nothing less than a miracle will save his clients from the firing squad. - Director:
- Stanley Kubrick
- Cast:
- Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, Adolphe Menjou
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Patton (1970)Patton: A Salute to a Rebel
A critically acclaimed film that won a total of eight 1970 Academy Awards (including Best Picture), 'Patton' is a riveting portrait of one of the 20th century's greatest military geniuses. One of its Oscars went to George C. Scott for this triumphant portrayal of George Patton, the only Allied general truly feared by the Nazis. Charismatic and flamboyant, Patton designed his own uniforms, sported ivory-handled six-shooters, and believed he was a warrior in past lives. He outmaneuvered Rommel in Africa, and after D-Day led his troops in an unstoppable campaign across Europe. But he was as rebellious as well as brilliant, and as 'Patton' shows with insight and poignancy, his own volatile personality was one enemy he could never defeat. - Director:
- Franklin J. Schaffner
- Cast:
- Paul Frees, George C. Scott, Karl Malden
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Peeping Tom (1960)Face of Fear
Mark (Carl Boehm), a focus puller at the local film studio, supplements his wages by taking glamour photographs in a seedy studio above a newsagent. By night he is a sadistic killer, stalking his victims with his camera forever in his hand trying to capture the look of genuine, unadulterated fear - an obsession that stems from his disturbing and terrifying childhood at the hands of his scientist father. Mark slowly becomes enamoured with Helen (Anna Massey), who lives with her blind mother (Maxine Audley) in the flat downstairs, but how long before he turns the deadly gaze of his camera towards her? - Director:
- Michael Powell
- Cast:
- Karlheinz Böhm, Anna Massey, Moira Shearer
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Le Samouraï (1967)The Godson / The Samurai
In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him. An elegantly stylized masterpiece of cool by maverick director Jean-Pierre Melville, 'Le Samourai' is a razor-sharp cocktail of 1940's American gangster cinema and 1960's French pop culture - with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology. - Director:
- Jean-Pierre Melville
- Cast:
- Alain Delon, François Périer, Nathalie Delon
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Ace in the Hole (1951)The Big Carnival
In one of the most powerhouse performances in American screen-acting, the great Kirk Douglas stars as Chuck Tatum, a newspaper reporter who stumbles upon a potentially career-making story in Albuquerque, New Mexico. When Tatum begins to influence the story's outcome, a descent begins that finds more than one man caught between a rock and a hard place. An electric narrative that stands as one of Wilder's tautest and most (melo)dramatic plots (penned with Lesser Samuels and Walter Newman), 'Ace in the Hole' plays today as both a prescient examination of the modern media landscape, and the public appetite for the disastrous news-story that leads to toxic wish-fulfillment. - Director:
- Billy Wilder
- Cast:
- Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Robert Arthur
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