Cinema Essentials

Five Favorite Films of the '50s is a nice straightforward blogathon run by the Classic Film & TV Cafe, to coincide with National Classic Movie Day on 16th May. As the name suggests, writers are invited to choose their five favourite films of the 1950s and say a bit about their choices. So, as you probably guessed, these are my five picks.

A screen legend, Michael Caine has made over 100 films spanning more than 60 years. In amongst those are plenty of solid gold classics, including Zulu (1964), The Ipcress File (1965), Get Carter (1971) and The Man Who Would be King (1975). Admittedly, there are quite a few not very good ones too, including stinkers like The Swarm (1978), Jaws - The Revenge (1987) and Bullseye! (1990).




But in between those two extremes there are plenty of Michael Caine films that get unfairly overlooked. As Gill from Real Weegie Midget Reviews has brought back the Michael Caine Blogathon, I've decided to take a look at some of those films. For this article, I have chosen twelve Michael Caine films that I think are underrated, unfairly maligned or just need some more love.

Renowned Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov) is called in by a London insurance company when wealthy industrialist Sir Horace Blatt (Colin Blakely) attempts to have a cheap piece of costume jewellery insured for £50,000. Puzzled by this very wealthy man attempting to perpetrate such an obvious fraud, Poirot is sent to meet him on his yacht in the south of France.

When the two men meet, Sir Horace tells Poirot that the jewel was a gift to a mistress, former actress Arlena Marshall (Diana Rigg), who has obviously had the original jewellery replaced with a fake. Poirot heads to an exclusive hotel on a small island in the Adriatic to meet Arlena and to investigate.

While there he encounters an assortment of wealthy guests, including Arlena and her husband Kenneth (Denis Quilley), her lover Patrick Redfern (Nicholas Clay) and her former associate Daphne Castle (Maggie Smith), who now runs the hotel. Also present are waspish gossip columnist Rex Brewster (Roddy McDowall), Redf…

Ah, the 1980s. It's long enough ago now that we can all get nostalgic about the decade, and while the '80s produced a lot of dross, there were some great films in there too. Here are 25 famous films from the 1980s. How many can you name?

Of all the heroic figures to have been created by World War II, and to be immortalised by a Hollywood biopic, Erwin Rommel has to be one of the most unlikely.

Rommel was a German General who fought the Allies in Europe and North Africa and loyally served Hitler, at least until it became clear that Germany was losing the war. But his reputation in the North African campaign, where he was untainted by allegations of serious war crimes, and his alleged involvement in the July Plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944, helped to turn him into an acceptable figure of non-Nazi German soldiery in the years after World War II.

Like the American General George Patton and Britain's Bernard Montgomery, Rommel's antagonist in the desert, Rommel was also an adept self-promoter, something that helped to make him the best known German General of the war. His skill as a military commander was demonstrated in North Africa, where he fought against the British. He earned the enduring respect of his op…

Following the success of the all-star murder mystery Murder on the Orient Express (1974), that film's producers, John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin, followed up with another lavish Agatha Christie adaptation, 1978's Death on the Nile.

As with Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile assembles a group of mostly wealthy travellers taking part in an exotic journey, in this case a steam boat trip along the River Nile in Egypt in the 1930s. Among the passengers on board are a honeymooning couple, wealthy American heiress Linnet Ridgeway (Lois Chiles) and her new English husband Simon Doyle (Simon MacCorkindale), as well as the latter's jealous ex-fiancée Jacqueline (Mia Farrow), who appears to be stalking them wherever they go.



Linnet is later murdered while on board the boat, shot at close range with a pistol. Unfortunately for the murderer, the famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov), is also on board. When he investigates, with the aid of an old asso…