Singin’ in the Rain, 1952, is an American musical romantic comedy film directed and choreographed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, starring Kelly, Donald O’Connor, and Debbie Reynolds and featuring Jean Hagen, Millard Mitchell and Cyd Charisse. It offers a lighthearted depiction of Hollywood in the late 1920s, with the three stars portraying performers caught up in the transition from silent films to “talkies”.

The film was only a modest hit when it was first released. O’Connor won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, and Betty Comden and Adolph Green won the Writers Guild of America Award for their screenplay, while Jean Hagen was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. However, it has since been accorded legendary status by contemporary critics, and is often regarded as the greatest musical film ever made, as well as the greatest film made in the “Freed Unit” at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It topped the AFI’s Greatest Movie Musicals list and is ranked as the fifth-greatest American motion picture of all time in its updated list of the greatest American films in 2007. In 1989, Singin’ in the Rain was one of the first 25 films selected by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. In 2005 the British Film Institute included it in its list of the 50 films to be seen by the age of 14. In 2008, Empire magazine ranked it as the eighth-best film of all time. In Sight & Sound magazine’s 2012 list of the 50 greatest films of all time, Singin’ in the Rain placed 20th.

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City Lights, 1931, is an American pre-Code silent romantic comedy film written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin. The story follows the misadventures of Chaplin’s Tramp as he falls in love with a blind girl (Virginia Cherrill) and develops a turbulent friendship with an alcoholic millionaire (Harry Myers).

Although sound films were on the rise when Chaplin started developing the script in 1928, he decided to continue working with silent productions. Filming started in December 1928 and ended in September 1930. City Lights marked the first time Chaplin composed the film score to one of his productions and it was written in six weeks with Arthur Johnston. The main theme, used as a leitmotif for the blind flower girl, is the song “La Violetera” (“Who’ll Buy my Violets”) from Spanish composer José Padilla. Chaplin lost a lawsuit to Padilla for not crediting him.

City Lights was immediately successful upon release on January 30, 1931, with positive reviews and worldwide rentals of more than $4 million. Today, many critics consider it not only the highest accomplishment of Chaplin’s career, but one of the greatest films of all time. Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance believes “City Lights is not only Charles Chaplin’s masterpiece; it is an act of defiance” as it premiered four years into the era of sound films which began with premiere of The Jazz Singer (1927). In 1991, the Library of Congress selected City Lights for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.[4][5] In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked it 11th on its list of the best American films ever made. In 1949, the critic James Agee called the film’s final scene “the greatest single piece of acting ever committed to celluloid”.

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Some Like It Hot, 1959, is an American romantic comedy film directed, produced, and co-written by Billy Wilder. It stars Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and features George Raft, Pat O’Brien, Joe E. Brown, Joan Shawlee, Grace Lee Whitney, and Nehemiah Persoff in supporting roles. The screenplay by Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond is based on a screenplay by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan from the 1935 French film Fanfare of Love. The film is about two musicians who dress in drag in order to escape from mafia gangsters whom they witnessed committing a crime (inspired by the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre).

Some Like It Hot opened to critical and commercial success and is considered to be one of the greatest films of all time. The film received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Actor, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, winning for Best Costume Design. In 1989, the Library of Congress selected it as one of the first 25 films for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. It was voted as the top comedy film by the American Film Institute on their list on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Laughs poll in 2000, and was selected as the best comedy of all time in a poll of 253 film critics from 52 countries conducted by the BBC in 2017. In 2005, the British Film Institute included this film on its list of “Top fifty films for children up to the age of 14”. In the 2012 Sight & Sound polls, it was ranked the 42nd-greatest film ever made in the critics’ poll and 37th in the directors’ poll. In the earlier 2002 Sight & Sound polls the film ranked 37th among critics and 24th among directors. In 2010, The Guardian considered it the 3rd-best comedy film of all time. In 2015, the film ranked 30th on BBC’s “100 Greatest American Films” list, voted on by film critics from around the world.

The film was produced without approval from the Motion Picture Production Code (Hays Code) because it plays with the idea of homosexuality and features cross-dressing. The code had been gradually weakening in its scope since the early 1950s, due to greater social tolerance for previously taboo topics in film, but it was still officially enforced until the mid-1960s. The overwhelming success of Some Like It Hot is considered one of the final nails in the coffin for the Hays Code.

William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman co-wrote the screenplay. In 1997, the U.S. Library of Congress deemed the film “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant,” and added it to the National Film Registry.

Parts of the original, unreleased 1945 cut were significantly rescripted and shot to take advantage of the public’s fascination with “Bogie and Bacall”. The original 1945 version was restored and released in 1997.

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Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1975, is a British comedy film reflecting the Arthurian legend, written and performed by the Monty Python comedy group (Chapman, Cleese, Gilliam, Idle, Jones and Palin), directed by Gilliam and Jones. It was conceived during the hiatus between the third and fourth series of their BBC television series Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

While the group’s first film, And Now for Something Completely Different, was a compilation of sketches from the first two television series, Holy Grail is a new story that parodies the legend of King Arthur’s quest for the Holy Grail. Thirty years later, Idle used the film as the basis for the musical Spamalot.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail grossed more than any British film exhibited in the US in 1975. In the US, it was selected in 2011 as the second-best comedy of all time in the ABC special Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time. In the UK, readers of Total Film magazine in 2000 ranked it the fifth-greatest comedy film of all time; a similar poll of Channel 4 viewers in 2006 placed it sixth.

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Going in Style, 1979, is a caper film written and directed by Martin Brest. It stars George Burns, Art Carney, Lee Strasberg, and Charles Hallahan. It was Brest’s first commercial feature film.

Joe (George Burns), Al (Art Carney), and Willie (Lee Strasberg) are three senior citizens who share a small apartment in Queens, New York City. Their days are spent on a park bench, and Joe is desperate to break the monotony. One day Joe suggests that they go on a “stick-up”. They have no experience as criminals, but after some reluctance the two others agree.

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A Room with a View, 1985, is a British romance film directed by James Ivory with a screenplay written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and produced by Ismail Merchant, of E. M. Forster’s novel of the same name (1908). It stars Helena Bonham Carter as Lucy and Julian Sands as George, and features Maggie Smith, Denholm Elliott, Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench and Simon Callow in supporting roles.

Set in England and Italy, it is about a young woman named Lucy Honeychurch in the final throes of the restrictive and repressed culture of Edwardian England, and her developing love for a free-spirited young man, George Emerson. The film closely follows the novel by use of chapter titles to distinguish thematic segments.

A Room with a View received universal critical acclaim and was a box-office success. At the 59th Academy Awards, it was nominated for eight Academy Awards (including Best Picture), and won three: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Art Direction, and Best Costume Design. It also won five British Academy Film Awards and a Golden Globe. In 1999, the British Film Institute placed A Room with a View 73rd on its list of the Top 100 British films of the 20th century.

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The Hunt for Red October,1990,

is an American submarine spy thriller film directed by John McTiernan, produced by Mace Neufeld, and starring Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones, and Sam Neill. The film is an adaptation of Tom Clancy’s 1984 bestselling novel of the same name. It is the first installment of the film series with the protagonist Jack Ryan.

The story is set during the late Cold War era and involves a rogue Soviet naval captain who wishes to defect to the United States with his officers and the Soviet Navy’s newest and most advanced nuclear missile submarine, a fictional improvement on the Soviet ICBM-capable Typhoon-class submarine. A CIA analyst correctly deduces his motive and must prove his theory to the U.S. Navy before a violent confrontation between the Soviet and the American navies spirals out of control.

The film was a co-production between the motion picture studios Paramount Pictures, Mace Neufeld Productions, and Nina Saxon Film Design. Theatrically, it was commercially distributed by Paramount Pictures and by the Paramount Home Entertainment division for home media markets. Following its wide theatrical release, the film was nominated for and won a number of accolades. At the 63rd Academy Awards, the film was honored with the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing, along with nominations for Best Sound Mixing and Best Film Editing. On June 12, 1990, the original soundtrack, composed and conducted by Basil Poledouris, was released by MCA Records. The Hunt for Red October received mostly positive reviews from critics and was the 6th top-grossing domestic film of the year, generating $122 million in North America and more than $200 million worldwide in box office business.

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La La Land, 2016, is an American musical romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Damien Chazelle. It stars Ryan Gosling as a jazz pianist and Emma Stone as an aspiring actress, who meet and fall in love while pursuing their dreams in Los Angeles. John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt, Finn Wittrock, and J. K. Simmons also star.

Having been fond of musicals during his time as a drummer, Chazelle first conceptualized the film alongside Justin Hurwitz while attending Harvard University together. After moving to Los Angeles in 2010, Chazelle wrote the screenplay but did not find a studio willing to finance the production without changes to his design. Following the success of his 2014 film Whiplash, the project was picked up by Summit Entertainment. Miles Teller and Emma Watson were originally slated to star, but after both dropped out Gosling and Stone were cast. Filming took place in Los Angeles from August to September 2015, with the film’s score composed by Hurwitz and the dance choreography by Mandy Moore.

La La Land premiered at the Venice Film Festival on August 31, 2016, and was released in the United States on December 9, 2016 to critical and commercial success. It received widespread acclaim, with overwhelming praise directed at Chazelle’s screenplay and direction, Gosling’s and Stone’s performances and chemistry, the musical score, musical numbers, cinematography, and production design; the film grossed $448 million worldwide against a production budget of $30 million. The film went on to earn many accolades and nominations. It won a record-breaking seven awards from its seven nominations at the 74th Golden Globes and received eleven nominations at the 70th British Academy Film Awards, winning five, including Best Film. It also received a record-tying fourteen nominations at the 89th Academy Awards, winning in six categories, including Best Actress for Stone and Best Director for Chazelle, making him the youngest winner in the category at 32.

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