Thursday, January 3, 2019

Thursday Movie Picks #234: Place Name in Title



This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This week, the theme is movies with a place name in the title, which isn't all that difficult. So I decided to go with a theme within a theme in picking my three movies this week:

The Man from Laramie (1955). James Stewart plays a man who shows in a small town in Apache territory, where everything is owned by cattle baron Donald Crisp, his evil son Alex Nicol, and adopted son Arthur Kennedy. He doesn't let on that he's looking for the people who sold guns to the Apaches, guns that were used to kill his brother. Along the way, he gets involved in the family disputes within Crisp's family and gets the people in town who are afraid of Crisp to change their ways.

The Man from Snowy River (1982). Tom Burlinson plays a young man in the Australian outback in the 1880s who has to take a job on a ranch owned by Kirk Douglas after his father is killed in an accident and their horses are lost. Burlinson falls in love with Douglas' daughter which causes all sorts of problems. The other problem is that Douglas' ranch owner character has a brother he hasn't seen in years (Douglas in a dual role) living up in the mountains where Burlinson and his dad lived. The young man can redeem himself by rescuing a bunch of horses.

That Man from Rio (1964). Jean-Paul Belmondo plays a French soldier on leave whose girlfriend (Françoise Dorléac) gets involved in international intrigue when she's kidnapped by people looking for the location of a statuette her archaeologist father dug up. He follows her from Paris to Rio de Janeiro, and then around Brazil. The original French title, L'homme de Rio, probably ought to be translated at The Man from Rio, fitting it into the theme-within-a-theme, but as it is it's close enough.

5 comments:

Sonia Cerca said...

Nice theme within theme. I haven't seen any of these, but I really want to see The Man from Laramie as I like Stewart.

Often Off Topic said...

I haven't seen any of your picks but I love your theme within a theme!

Brittani Burnham said...

I haven't seen any of your picks but I can always appreciate a theme within a theme.

Birgit said...

Love your theme within a theme and I have seen 2 out of 3...of course i have seen the Jimmy Stewart film although it has been a long time but it is a great western. Snowy River was a hit when it came out..a sleeper hit if i remember but I saw it only a few years ago and it is quite good. I know of the 3rd but I don't think I saw this film. I am not sure but i may have seen it dubbed into German way back in 1982 when i was visiting my Aunt in Graz. This is the same time I saw bonanza in German...hilarious!

Ted S. (Just a Cineast) said...

I saw Mommie Dearest and Psycho in German when I visited my relatives in Bavaria.

I've been kicking myself for not watching The Web since it never shows up on TV in the US.