83% (2) Where Eagles Dare 158 min, PG, [Action, Adventure, War] [Brian G. Hutton] [12 Mar 1969]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 77%, Rotten Tomatoes: 90%, External Reviews
Awards: 1 win & 3 nominations.
Actors: Clint Eastwood, Mary Ure, Patrick Wymark, Richard Burton
Writer: Alistair MacLean (story), Alistair MacLean (screenplay)
External Links: Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English, German Country: UK, USA
Plot: During WW2 a British aircraft is shot down and crashes in Nazi held territory. The Germans capture the only survivor, an American General, and take him to the nearest SS headquarters. Unknown to the Germans the General has full knowledge of the D-Day operation. The British decide that the General must not be allowed to divulge any details of the Normandy landing at all cost and order Major John Smith to lead a crack commando team to rescue him. Amongst the team is an American Ranger, Lieutenant Schaffer, who is puzzled by his inclusion in an all British operation. When one of the team dies after the parachute drop, Schaffer suspects that Smith's mission has a much more secret objective.
Rotten Tomatoes: An expensive but enormously profitable war picture, Where Eagles Dare centers upon a daring rescue and even more daring escape. Disguised as Nazi officers, commandoes Maj. John Smith (Richard Burton), Lt. Morris Schaffer Clint Eastwood and six other courageous souls parachute behind enemy lines. Their mission: to rescue an American general, held captive in a supposedly impenetrable Alpine castle. Aiding and abetting the commandoes are Allied undercover agents Mary (Mary Ure) and Heidi (Ingrid Pitt). Also on hand is a British officer (Patrick Wymark), who masterminded the mission. Somewhere, somehow, someone amongst the Allies is going to turn out to be a traitor. There's also a neat plot twist in store when the commandoes manage to reach the American general -- which leads to yet another twist. The vertigo-inducing climax has made Where Eagles Dare one of the most sought-after of "early" Eastwood starring features. The film was written directly for the screen by espionage novelist Alistair MacLean. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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82% (2) Look Back in Anger 98 min, APPROVED, [Drama] [Tony Richardson] [09 Oct 1959]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 72%, Rotten Tomatoes: 92%, External Reviews
Awards: Nominated for 1 Golden Globe. Another 1 win & 4 nominations.
Actors: Claire Bloom, Edith Evans, Mary Ure, Richard Burton
Writer: John Osborne (play), Nigel Kneale (screenplay), John Osborne (additional dialogue)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: UK
Plot: Jimmy Porter is a loud, obnoxious man, rude and verbally abusive to his wife, Alison. Alison comes from an upper class family that Jimmy abhors and he berates Alison for being too reserved and unfeeling. Jimmy is college educated but works with a partner, Cliff Lewis, as a street vendor operating a candy stall. Cliff lives with Jimmy and Alison and is close friends with both. When Jimmy pushes Alison while she is at the ironing board she is burned. Alison visits her doctor where it is revealed that she is pregnant. She asks him if it is too late to do something about it but the doctor immediately tells her never to mention such an idea. When Jimmy leaves for work, Alison confides to Cliff that she is pregnant. She is frightened of Jimmy's reaction to this news, and has not told him. Jimmy is visited by his childhood nanny, Mrs. Tanner, whom Jimmy loves and calls "Mom." Alison tries to tell Jimmy of the pregnancy but is frustrated when Jimmy insults her for being cool towards Mrs. Tanner.. Alison tells Jimmy that her actress friend, Helena Charles, is coming to stay at the flat. Jimmy hates Helena. In his anger, he curses Alison for her cool demeanor, and wishes that she would have a child and that the child would die so she could feel anguish to break her cool demeanor. Helena arrives, and when she has had enough of Jimmy's bitterness toward Alison, she convinces Alison she should allow her to call Alison's father, Colonel Redfern, to take her to the family home and leave Jimmy. Jimmy then gets word that his nanny has had a stroke. Jimmy begs Alison to come with him to see her but Alison goes with Helena to church. Jimmy visits his nanny in the hospital and is convinced she is dying. Before Jimmy returns, Alison's father arrives and leaves with Alison. Helena stays in the flat. Jimmy returns and Helena tells Jimmy that Alison is going to have a baby. Jimmy says he does not care. When he calls Helena an evil-minded virgin, she slaps him. Then they kiss and make love, locking Cliff from the flat. Jimmy and Helena live for a while in the flat, apparently happy, with Cliff, while Alison stays at her family's home waiting to give birth. Cliff begins to feel out of place, having been close to Alison but not Helena. At the candy stall, Cliff tells Jimmy that he has decided to leave. He wants something better. Jimmy has decided to get out of the candy business, too. Cliff says good-bye to Jimmy at the train station and Jimmy tells him he is worth more to him than a dozen Helenas. Jimmy and Helena enter a train station pub where they find Alison seated at a table alone. Jimmy leaves and Alison tells Helena she lost her child in pregnancy. Helena feels that she has to leave Jimmy. Helena returns to the flat and tells Jimmy she is leaving him because she cannot stand the torment of their lives. Jimmy returns to the train station and finds Alison waiting to return home. They talk of the lost child and Alison tells him she can never have children. Jimmy and Alison reconcile.
Rotten Tomatoes: Archetypal British "angry young man" Jimmy Porter (Richard Burton) is a college-educated bloke who can't seem to get any better job than working in a candy store. Jimmy's relationship with his wife Alison (Mary Ure) alternates between hugs and kisses when he's feeling good and verbal abuse when he's down on himself, which is often. Alison's best friend Helena Charles (Claire Bloom) advises Alison to escape her injurious marriage. Left with no one for a punching bag, Jimmy romances Helena. Having suffered a miscarriage, Alison returns, and Helena walks out of Jimmy's life. In keeping with its depiction of the dead-end existence of most of England's working poor in the late 1950s, nothing is truly resolved in Look Back in Anger. Playwright John Osborne (at that time married to Mary Ure) uses Jimmy Porter as a spokesman for Osborne's own spleen-venting harangues against the British government and class system. Not only did Look Back in Anger spawn a new genre of British social-protest films, but it also inspired two remakes, both filmed for television. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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74% (2) Sons and Lovers 103 min, [Drama] [Jack Cardiff] [22 Jul 1960]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 73%, Rotten Tomatoes: 75%, External Reviews
Awards: Won 1 Oscar. Another 7 wins & 16 nominations.
Actors: Dean Stockwell, Mary Ure, Trevor Howard, Wendy Hiller
Writer: Gavin Lambert (screenplay), T.E.B. Clarke (screenplay), D.H. Lawrence (novel)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: UK
Plot: Jack Cardiff received a 1960 Oscar Nomination as Best Director for this lush, engaging film starring Trevor Howard, Dean Stockwell and Donald Pleasence, which was adapted from D.H. Lawrence's classic novel. A young man with artistic talent who lives in a close-knit, English coal-mining town during the early 20th Century finds himself inhibited by his emotionally manipulative, domineering mother.
Rotten Tomatoes: The Motion Picture Production Code was still in effect (albeit weakly) when Sons and Lovers was filmed in 1960, so don't expect a thoroughly frank and faithful adaptation of the D.H. Lawrence novel. Set in an English mining town, the film focuses on Paul Morel (Dean Stockwell), the sensitive son of a roughhewn, alcoholic miner (Trevor Howard) and his gentle, repressed wife (Wendy Hiller). Intent on becoming an artist, Paul is not above depending upon the financial kindnesses of the young women of the town. Many of the girls carry a torch for him, but his strong bonds to his mother leave him emotionally sapped. Freddie Francis's evocative, grimy industrial-town cinematography won him an Academy Award. Despite censorial restrictions, this admirably captures the essence of the dour Lawrence original. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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41% (2) Custer of the West 143 min, G, [Biography, Drama, History] [Robert Siodmak] [24 Jan 1968]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 58%, Rotten Tomatoes: 25%, External Reviews
Actors: Jeffrey Hunter, Mary Ure, Robert Shaw, Ty Hardin
Writer: Bernard Gordon, Julian Zimet
External Links: Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: UK, France, Spain, USA
Plot: The story of U.S. Army commander George Armstrong Custer, a flamboyant hero of the Civil War who later fought and was exterminated with his entire command by warring Sioux and Cheyenne tribes at the battle of Little Big Horn in 1876.
Rotten Tomatoes: Robert Shaw plays General George Armstrong Custer in this historically inaccurate, low-budget western filmed in Spain. The storyline has Custer's troops backing the Cheyenne Indians into a position where attack is their only alternative. The Sioux were the actual tribe harassed by the real-life, glory seeking Custer. The inaccuracies continue as Custer is portrayed as a victim of government policy that is in dire need of reform. Mary Ure plays Libby Custer, with Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Benteen, Ty Hardin as General Reno, and Lawrence Tierney as General Sheridan. Robert Ryan plays Mulligan, an army deserter who is stricken with gold fever. Despite the fine cast assembled, the players can do little with the implausible script. The screenwriters were definitely remiss in their research of the subject matter, but when has that stopped anyone in Hollywood from making a film?
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71% (1) The Luck of Ginger Coffey 100 min, [Drama] [Irvin Kershner] [12 Nov 1964]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 71%, External Reviews
Awards: 1 win.
Actors: Liam Redmond, Mary Ure, Robert Shaw, Tom Harvey
Writer: Brian Moore (novel), Brian Moore (screenplay)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: Canada, USA
Plot: James Francis "Ginger" Coffey has no luck finding a job in his native Ireland and him being a dreamer, he decides the place to find a job is Canada. He moves his wife, Vera, and 14-year old daughter, Paulie, to Montreal in hopes of a better life. After six months nothing has changed and his family despise their new surroundings. The Coffey's do have one thing in their favor: a rich friend named Tom who lands Ginger a job at a Newspaper. It's a dream come true for Ginger who always fancied himself a journalist and he waltzes in expecting a reporting gig and a by-line on his first day. The blow to his pride is almost too much for him when he discovers the job is as a proofreader but he accepts it begrudgingly. The job does not pay enough and Ginger is forced to take a second job as a delivery man for a diaper-laundering service. Just when things are going well, Ginger's pigheadedness and unfounded self-importance cause him to make poor choices and his life begins to spiral downward again.
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66% (1) The Mind Benders 99 min, [Drama, Thriller] [Basil Dearden] [25 Mar 1963]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 66%, External Reviews
Actors: Dirk Bogarde, John Clements, Mary Ure, Michael Bryant
Writer: James Kennaway (original screenplay)
External Links: Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: UK
Plot: A British scientist is discovered to have been passing information to the Communists, then kills himself. Another scientist decides that they might have brainwashed him by a sensory deprivation technique, but he doesn't know if someone really can be convinced to act against their strongest feelings. So he agrees to be the subject in an experiment in which others will try to make him stop loving his wife.
Rotten Tomatoes: A scientist's attempts to clear the name of a friend nearly destroy his life in this intelligent science fiction drama. Prof. Sharpley (Harold Goldblatt) is a research scientist from Oxford University working with the British government on experiments in sensory deprivation. One day, Sharpley suddenly and shockingly commits suicide by throwing himself under an oncomming train while holding a briefcase stuffed with cash. While investigating the death, the police present the theory that Sharpley was a double agent, perhaps allied with the Communists, and that the death was the final result of his shame over betraying Great Britain. However, Sharpley's friend and associate Dr. Henry Longman (Dirk Bogarde) strongly disagrees, and he speculates that Sharpley's death had something to do with his research. In hopes of clearing Sharpley's name with police investigator Maj. Hall (John Clements), Longman begins subjecting himself to sessions in a sensory deprivation tank in order to prove that use of the technique can make one unusually suceptable to brainwashing or hypnotic suggestion. Longman emerges from the chamber frightened and disoriented, and in Long's presence one of his associates is able to convince Longman that he no longer cares for his wife Oonagh (Mary Ure). The doctor returns home displaying a callous and distant attitude toward his pregnant wife, and his personality begins to display an increasing number of deeply troubling changes. James Kennaway adapted the screenplay from his own novel.
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63% (1) Storm Over the Nile 107 min, [Adventure, Drama, Romance, War] [Zoltan Korda, Terence Young] [22 Jun 1956]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 63%, External Reviews
Actors: Anthony Steel, James Robertson Justice, Laurence Harvey, Mary Ure
Writer: A.E.W. Mason (novel), R.C. Sherriff (screenplay), Lajos Biró (additional dialogue), Arthur Wimperis (additional dialogue)
External Links: Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: UK
Plot: A CinemaScope remake of The Four Feathers (1939).
Rotten Tomatoes: When an aristocratic British soldier is branded a coward, he struggles to prove the charges false and restore his good name. This remake of the Korda's 1939 classic features footage from their first version.
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