Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Hear My Song (1991), Two Weeks in Another Town (1962), The Country Girl (1954), Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), But Not for Me (1959), Irma Vep (1996) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Failing Career movies.
Storyline: Frank Falenczyk loves his job. He just happens to be the hitman for his Polish mob family in Buffalo, New York. But Frank's got a drinking problem and when he messes up a critical assignment that puts the family business in peril, his uncle sends him to San Francisco to clean up his act. Frank is not a touchy-feely kind of guy, but he starts going to AA meetings, gets a sponsor and a job at a mortuary where he falls for the tart-tongued Laurel, a woman who is dangerously devoid of boundaries. Meanwhile, things aren't going well in Buffalo where an upstart Irish gang is threatening the family business. When violence erupts, Frank is forced to return home and with an unlikely assist from Laurel, faces old rivals on new terms.
Plot Keywords: hit man, uncle, mobster, sponsor, woman, amusing, dark ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A satirical thriller about L.A.'s real estate roller coaster. Jack Woodman (James Jurdi) is a slick and hotshot Los Angeles property broker and real estate agent who appears on top of the world. But after getting greedy with a shady real estate deal, he ends up fired from a top broker firm R.E.G. by real-estate mogul Ron Glass (Burt Reynolds) and framed by Ron's menacing, drug-addled son, Aaron. As a result, Jack ends up being the owner of a rundown apartment slum building. One year later, the disgraced Jack is approached by a mysterious power player named Frank Hunter (Rob Lowe) and his sultry wife Lana (Jessica Clark) with an offer to discreetly market and sell their Malibu villa. However, more double crosses, adultery, murder, mistaken identity, crooked deals and revenge ensue as the question is always "who is scheming, using, and double crossing who?"—Anonymous
Plot Keywords: real estate broker, man, woman, criminal, airy, amusing, suspenseful ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Critics and the public say Karen Stone is too old -- as she approaches 50 -- for her role in a play she is about to take to Broadway. Her businessman husband, 20 years her senior, has been the angel for the play and gives her a way out: They are off to a holiday in Rome for his health. He suffers a fatal heart attack on the plane. Mrs. Stone stays in Rome. She leases a magnificent apartment with a view of the seven hills from the terrace. Then the contessa comes calling to introduce a young man named Paola to her. The contessa knows many presentable young men and lonely American widows.—Dale O'Connor <daleoc@interaccess.com>
Plot Keywords: actress, husband, gigolo, countess, friend, sultry, bleak ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Mickey Moran, a talented singer and musician, is son of a veteran from show business. Mickey has a partner, Patsy Barton, a pretty girl and also a very talented singer. One day, a big opportunity arrives for Mickey, a big contract to set up his own show. However, things don't go well, and in order to avoid being sent to a work farm, he'll improvise a show in the country, despite the awful weather conditions. Patsy's in love with Mickey, he loves her, too, but for him the show must go on, and his big dream maybe will come true: to formally stage his play in a big scenario, with a huge production.—Alejandro Frias
Plot Keywords: singer, dancer, parent, girlfriend, lighthearted, charming, united states ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A sleazy Hollywood agent tricks one of his clients, a faded action star, into playing King Lear in an amateur charity production in England.
Plot Keywords: movie star, agent, client, actor, actress, landlady, amusing ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A movie musical centered on merrily befogged Merriweather's attempt to restore his career - all while reuniting with his three children (from his three alimony-seeking ex-wives!).
Plot Keywords: vaudevillian, ex-wife, daughter, widow, radio station manager, sponsor, campy ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Prizefighter Johnny is in love with his promoter O'Malley's daughter Pat. His best friend, sports reporter Rick, is also in love with her but knows that she loves Johnny. Lonely Rick takes up drinking and women (including Marilyn Monroe in nightclub bit part). Johnny knows his right hand is going bad and has to work fast to make real money.—Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>
Plot Keywords: boxer, manager, sports reporter, sister, mother, mexican-american, somber ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Tommy Wilhelm (Robin Williams) is a salesman. An honest, hard-working guy who has lost his job, his girlfriend, and left part of his sanity behind as he heads to New York to pick up the pieces of his life. He's always been able to sell, but caught in a downward spiral, he must, in addition, face the father who never really understood him, while trying to balance his newly precarious existence—monterey media/Learning in Focus, Inc.
Plot Keywords: salesman, wife, father, doctor, endearing, sad, brooding ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: One of three films made by Columbia circa 1936-37 based on behind-the-scenes film making with a "western" setting ("The Cowboy Star", "Hollywood Round-up" and "It Happened in Hollywood"), plus RKO weighed in the same year with George O'Brien's "Hollywood Cowboy." It had been done before, RKO's 1933 "Scarlet River", and would be done again, "Shooting High" from 20th Century-Fox and Republic's "Bells of Rosarita", among others with a western setting, but this Coronet production with Buck Jones may well be the best of the lot as it devotes more footage to actual film-making both on studio sets and locations. One out-of-the norm plot incident has the studio head Lew Wallace offering a job to a fading star Carol Stevens, with a semi-apology for casting her in what he calls an "outdoor special" and she calls a "horse opry", and this scene in a B-western leaves no doubt that the B-western and it people were near the bottom of Hollywood's pecking order. The stereotypes are there, with Shemp Howard's over-zealous "assistant director" (who does calm down and gets more real when he loses his whistle), the ego-ridden "star" in Grant Drexel, and the deserving-to-be-the-star relegated to stand-in and stunts Buck Kennedy, but the remaining crew and player roles are realistic (especially the real stuntmen playing stuntmen). Buck Kennedy is the stand-in and double for star Grant Drexel and is fired when he has a fight with the bullying Drexel over Drexel's treatment of leading lady Carol Stephens. The movie company is on location, and a group of gangsters led by Eddie Kane and Lester Dorr, posing as another movie company, come to the location town and talk the banker into letting them film a fake holdup in his bank, but the holdup is real and the out-of-work Buck, whom they hire as the fall guy to cover their getaway, is left holding the bag and jailed by town sheriff Slim Whitaker. Things get worse for Buck before they get better. A mid-point sequence has hotel clerk George R. Beranger, who dreams of being a western star, performing a twittering, ballet-slippering audition for the checking-in film company by quoting lines from a western and asking them to identify the film. Shemp Howard guesses "Little Women."—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>
Plot Keywords: actress, actor, director, gangster, concierge, stuntman, melodramatic ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Inspired by real events in the life of À bout de souffle (1960) star and French New Wave icon Jean Seberg, who in the late 1960s was targeted by Hoover's FBI, because of her political and romantic involvement with civil rights activist Hakim Jamal.
Plot Keywords: actress, fbi agent, black panther, activist, confident, gripping, passionate ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Adapted from the prize-winning Broadway play that featured two people and a four-poster bed, in which the couple enacts their marriage, from its day in 1897, until he dies, some time after she has died from cancer. It is a "love" that endured wars, an "other" woman, and the death of their favorite son. The episodes are bridged and linked by cartoon sequences done by UPA (United Productions of America.)—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>
Plot Keywords: junk dealer, son, jewel thief, inspector, criminal, gang leader, brooding ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A drama set in filmland, following the triumphs and heartaches of women who try to succeed in the movie industry.
Plot Keywords: reporter, extra, aspiring actress, young woman, gangster, publisher, melodramatic ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Once, he was on top of the world as a popular child actor on TV. Now, he's Hollywood's punchline about everything wrong with people who were famous as children. All Dickie Roberts wants to do is find that one gig that will restore his honor and everyone's love of him, so after learning that Rob Reiner's making an ambitious new movie destined to sweep the Oscars, Dickie's first in line to audition. He walks out having learned he certainly looks the part but can't act it... yet, owing to his very unusual childhood. To research the role, Dickie embarks on a bizarre scheme to live with a suburban family to see how the average American child lives, having them put him up as their "son". But once his gloves are off, Dickie discovers how great it is to be part of a true family, and whether he gets the part or not, his attempt at method acting will certainly change his life forever.
Plot Keywords: former child star, mother, father, sister, brother, friend, cheeky ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A girl returns from a failed Hollywood career to her West Texas home, to say good-bye to her dying mother, only to find an eccentric, ex-pro football player, selling postcards and singing to his horse, while taking care of a sister she never knew and past she tried to leave behind.
Plot Keywords: actress, woman, mother, sister, musician, eccentric, football player ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A well-meaning but misguided talent agent uses his paraplegic girlfriend's government compensation to fund his quest to resurrect a faded club singer's career.
Plot Keywords: agent, girlfriend, singer, young woman, chanteuse, ex-convict, amusing ...
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