cato's - Favourites List

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Since the time of Sir Francis Drake, English lads have come to Brookfield School as frightened boys ... and emerged years later as able young men ready to shoulder the burdens of Empire.

The best of England is the Brookfield tradition - a tradition embodied by the aging headmaster affectionately known as Mr. Chips. In his Academy Award-winning performance, Robert Donat portrays a stiff, unpopular schoolmaster converted by love into an inspirational molder of lives. Greer Garson makes her Oscar-nominated movie debut as the lady whose zest for life schools the schoolmaster. The lesson sticks. So does this timeless, affectionate movie. All who treasure the memory of a beloved teacher will treasure Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

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Mel Gibson delivers an electrifying performance in directors Peter Weir's compelling story of friendship and adventure between two Australian soldiers in 1915.

They cross continents and great oceans, climb the pyramids and walk through the ancient sands of Egypt to join their regiment at the fateful battle of Gallipoli. The echoes of history blend with the friends' compelling destiny as they become part of a legendary World War I confrontation between Australia and the German allied Turks - a battle that is to Australians what the Alamo is to Americans.

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Cynical and rebellious ex-army sergeant Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) has been blackmailed into working for Britain's security service.

Hot on the trail of a kidnapped scientist, Palmer finds himself enmeshed in a sinister conspiracy involving horrifying brainwashing techniques, murder and treachery that reaches up to the highest levels of the security service itself.

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Janos (Péter Andorai) and Katalin (Ildikó Bánsági) are strangers but forced to pose as husband and wife to hide their links to the anti-Nazi resistance in Budapest 1944.

The intensity and intimacy of this relationship forces them to passionately confront their past, challenging what they believe and in whom they can place their trust.

Sweeping and visually resplendent, 'The Mission' is a powerful action epic about a man of the sword (Robert DeNiro) and a man of the cloth (Jeremy Irons) who unite to shield a South American Indian tribe from brutal subjugation by 18th Century colonial empires.

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Based on the true story of Resistance fighter Andre Devigny, who was imprisoned and sentenced to death by the Nazis during the Second World War, the film reconstructs his actual cell at the Lyons fortress of Montluc, and follows his meticulous plans for escape.

This totally involving and thrilling tale of courage and faith is all the more authentic for its use of non-professional actors and Bresson's spare style.

Feature is an extraordinary portrait of a resourceful teenage girl struggling to find her way in a tough world.

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Arts patron Mrs. Claypool (Margaret Dumont) intends to pay pompous opera star Lassparri (Walter Woolf King) $1,000 per performance.

Hey, maybe that's why they call it grand opera! Grand comedy, too, as Groucho, Chico and Harpo cram a ship's stateroom and more than wall-to-wall gags, one-liners, musical riffs and two hard-boiled eggs - all while skewering Lassparri's schemes and helping two young hopefuls Rosa and Riccardo (Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones) get a break. To save the opera, our heroes must first destroy it. And they must also gain ocean passage as stowaways, pull the wool (if not the beards) over the eyes of City Hall, shred legal mumbo-jumbo into a Sanity Clause, pester dowager Claypool and unleash so much glee that many say this is the best Marx Brothers movie. Seeing is believing.

Episodes Comprise: - Pack Up Your Troubles (b/w) - Pack Up Your Troubles (colourised) - Their First Mistake (b/w) - Their First Mistake (colourised) - Putting Pants On Philip (b/w, Silent With Musical Score)

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Petty crook Nick Bianco (Victor Mature) is arrested at the scene of a robbery and takes the rap without squealing. When he learns that his accomplice has betrayed him, he decides to go against the criminal code and become an informant.

But when his testimony against psychopathic killer Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark) puts his family in danger, Nick is forced to take matters into his own hands.

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This sparkling comedy was Oscar nominated for its script in which Polly Parrish (Ginger Rogers) a clerk at Merlin's Department Store, is mistakenly presumed to be the mother of a young child who is not looked after by the hardworking mother.

Outraged at Polly's unmotherly conduct, David Merlin (David Niven) becomes determined to keep the single woman and 'her' baby together in this wonderful comedy of errors. Ginger Rogers, David Niven and Charles Coburn achieve intense comic chemistry under the direction of Garson Kanin with hardly a dull moment in this stylish and breezy 'department store' romance in which Ginger gives as good as she gets!

This Is Spinal Tap is Rob Reiner's directorial debut that is often named as one of the funniest films ever made. A fly-on-the-wall look at the comeback tour of the world's loudest heavy metal band.

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This dramatisation of John Le Carre's novel proved a landmark in British Television. It received supreme critical acclaim for the screenplay by Arthur Hopcraft, the star Alec Guiness and the camerawork of Tony Pierce-Roberts.

In Alec Guiness's first major TV role he plays George Smiley, a retired agent who is secretly brought into 'the Circus' (the code name for British Secret Intelligence Service) to root out a top-level mole. Gradually piecing together the story, the weary but determined Smiley trawls through the murky waters of Cold War espionage and his own past.

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Set in the mid '50s, Ray's often humorous story of conflicting social values in India's lower-middle class stars Madhabi Mukherjee as housewife Arati Mazumdar.

Finding it difficult to make ends meet on her husband's salary alone, Arati takes up a job as a sales woman and finds that she revels in her new-found freedom. But Arati's independence and burgeoning confidence alarms her traditionalist family and threaten to throw her life into chaos.

Jennifer Jones plays Hazel Woods, a beautiful young English Gypsy girl who loves animals and in particular her pet fox. She is hotly desired by Jack Reddin (David Farrar) a fox-hunting squire who vies for her affection and pursues her even after her marriage to the local pastor.