Double Indemnity (1944), All About Eve (1950), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Paper Moon (1973), Out of the Past (1947), The Big Clock (1948), Old Acquaintance (1943), Jackie Brown (1997) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Sharp Dialogue movies.
Storyline: In 1938, Walter Neff, an experienced salesman of the Pacific All Risk Insurance Co., meets the seductive wife of one of his clients, Phyllis Dietrichson, and they have an affair. Phyllis proposes to kill her husband to receive the proceeds of an accident insurance policy and Walter devises a scheme to receive twice the amount based on a double indemnity clause. When Mr. Dietrichson is found dead on a train track, the police accept the determination of accidental death. However, the insurance analyst and Walter's best friend Barton Keyes does not buy the story and suspects that Phyllis has murdered her husband with the help of another man.
Plot Keywords: film noir, crime, mystery, drama, murder, insurance fraud, betrayal ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Eve (Anne Baxter) is waiting backstage to meet her idol, aging Broadway star Margo Channing (Bette Davis). It seems innocent enough as Eve explains that she has seen Margo in EVERY performance of her current play. Only playwright/critic DeWitt (George Sanders) sees through Eve's evil plan, which is to take her parts and her fiancé, Bill Simpson (Gary Merrill). When the fiancé shows no interest, she tries for playwright Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe), but DeWitt stops her. After she accepts her award, she decides to skip the after-party and goes to her room, where a young woman named Phoebe has sneaked into her room and fallen asleep. This is where the "Circle of Life" now comes to fruition as Eve will get played like she played Margo.
Plot Keywords: drama, classic, hollywood, black and white, theater, female lead, fame and fortune ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: J.J. Hunsecker, the most powerful newspaper columnist in New York, is determined to prevent his sister from marrying Steve Dallas, a jazz musician. He therefore covertly employs Sidney Falco, a sleazy and unscrupulous press agent, to break up the affair by any means possible.
Plot Keywords: film noir, drama, crime, media, power, corruption, new york ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Set in the midwest of the depression-era, Paper Moon follows Moses Pray and Addie Loggins - one a con artist, the other, the young girl who's the daughter of a woman who's just passed away. The pair meet when 'Mose' stops by the sparsely-attended funeral in Kansas of a woman he once knew (we never see her). In attendance, is the woman's young daughter, Addie, whom Moses agrees to transport to St Joseph, Mo -- for money, of course. Mose - an inveterate hustler, has been working ostensibly as a representative of the Kansas Bible Company - who picks his marks from the obits, and tries to sell - at exorbitant prices - the decedents' spouse the custom bible they'd previously ordered. Wise beyond her years, Addie picks up on Moses' grift, and very quickly, she and Mose become a team. Traveling from town to town, making money in every dishonest way imaginable, and looking for the ultimate score. The colorful characters they meet along the way make the film all the more interesting. One in ...
Plot Keywords: comedy, drama, road movie, american film, black and white, retro, great depression era ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Jeff Bailey, small-town gas pumper, has his mysterious past catch up with him one day when he's ordered to meet with gambler Whit Sterling. En route to the meeting, he tells girlfriend Ann his story. Flashback: Once, Jeff was a private eye hired by Sterling to find his mistress Kathie who shot Whit and absconded with $40,000. He traces her to Acapulco...where the delectable Kathie makes Jeff forget all about Sterling... Back in the present, Whit's new job for Jeff is clearly a trap, but Jeff's precautions only leave him more tightly enmeshed...
Plot Keywords: film noir, crime, mystery, romance, betrayal, fate, revenge ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: When powerful publishing tycoon Earl Janoth commits an act of murder at the height of passion, he cleverly begins to cover his tracks and frame an innocent man whose identity he doesn't know but who just happens to have contact with the murder victim. That man is a close associate on his magazine whom he enlists to trap this "killer" - George Stroud. It's up to George to continue to "help" Janoth, to elude the police and to find proof of his innocence and Janoth's guilt.—Ron Kerrigan
Plot Keywords: mystery, film noir, crime, thriller, murder, investigation, journalist ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Jealous of best friend Kit, a critically acclaimed but financially unsuccessful author and playwright, Millie writes a novel, the first in a string of bestselling trashy novels. After eight years of neglect and taking a backseat to Millie's fame, her husband Preston leaves her. Another decade passes and Kit announces her intention of marrying the decade-younger Rudd. Millie thinks Preston wishes to reconcile, only to discover he is engaged. He also admits that he was in love with Kit, who had turned down his many advances. Feeling Kit to blame for the failure of her marriage, Millie flies into a rage and confronts Kit. Later, learning of Rudd's affection for Millie's daughter Diedre, Kit graciously steps aside to bless their union. In the end, Millie and Kit make up, sharing a champagne toast for each one's old acquaintance.—Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>
Plot Keywords: drama, romance, classic, black and white, 1940s, female lead, hollywood ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: The middle-aged stewardess Jackie Brown smuggles money from Mexico to Los Angeles for the arms dealer Ordell Robbie. When she gets caught by the agents Ray Nicolet and Mark Dargus with ten thousand dollars and cocaine in her purse, they propose a deal to her to help them to arrest Ordell in exchange of her freedom. Meanwhile Ordell asks the 56-year-old Max Cherry, who runs a bail bond business, to release Jackie Brown with the intention of eliminating her. Jackie suspects of Ordell's intention and plots a complicated confidence game with Max to steal half a million dollars from Ordell.
Plot Keywords: crime, drama, thriller, film noir, action, mystery, female lead ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Involuntarily-retired Lieutenant Colonel Hyde recruits seven other dissatisfied ex-servicemen for a special project. Each of the men has a skeleton in the cupboard, is short of money, and is a service-trained expert in his field. The job is a bank robbery, and military discipline and planning are imposed by Hyde and second-in-command Race on the team, although civilian irritations do start getting in the way.—Jeremy Perkins {J-26}
Plot Keywords: crime, comedy, black comedy, heist, british film, 1960s, veterans ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: The high school Class President election is approaching and it looks like Tracy Flick is going to win, unopposed. However, teacher Jim McAllister has other plans. He convinces jock Paul Metzler to run, sparking off an interesting chain of events.
Plot Keywords: black comedy, political satire, high school life, ambition, moral dilemma, power struggle, teacher-student relationship ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Some guys get all the luck, whether they like it or not. Chili Palmer happens to be in Hollywood collecting a gambling debt when he's struck by lightning (not literally). Called a natural for the movie business, he's snagged up by a producer. The rest is history.
Plot Keywords: crime, comedy, gangster, hollywood, satire, black comedy, adaptation ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A struggling painter takes a job as a secretary to a female advertising executive. While working to obtain an account from a tobacco company, they end up falling in love.—Ken Carson <kcarson@efn.org>
Plot Keywords: romantic comedy, classic film, strong female lead, independent woman, golden age of hollywood, office politics, feminist themes ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: The camera shows Phillip Marlowe's view from the first-person in this adaptation of Raymond Chandler's book. The detective is hired to find a publisher's wife, who is supposed to have run off to Mexico. But the case soon becomes much more complicated as people are murdered.—Ken Yousten <kyousten@bev.net>
Plot Keywords: film noir, detective story, murder mystery, novel adaptation, 1940s, crime thriller, complex plot ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Alexandre Taillard de Vorms is tall and impressive, a man with style, attractive to women. He also happens to be the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the land of enlightenment: France. With his silver mane and tanned, athletic body, he stalks the world stage, from the floor of the United Nations in New York to the powder keg of Oubanga. There, he calls on the powerful and invokes the mighty to bring peace, to calm the trigger-happy, and to cement his aura of Nobel Peace Prize winner-in-waiting. Alexandre Taillard de Vorms is a force to be reckoned with, waging his own war backed up by the holy trinity of diplomatic concepts: legitimacy, lucidity and efficacy. He takes on American neo-cons, corrupt Russians and money-grabbing Chinese. Perhaps the world doesn't deserve France's magnanimousness, but his art would be wasted if just restricted to home turf. Enter the young Arthur Vlaminck, graduate of the elite National School of Administration, who is hired as head of "language" at the foreign ministry. In other words, he is to write the minister's speeches. But he also has to learn to deal with the sensibilities of the boss and his entourage, and find his way between the private secretary and the special advisers who stalk the corridors of the Quai d'Orsay - the ministry's home - where stress, ambition and dirty dealing are the daily currency. But just as he thinks he can influence the fate of the world, everything seems threatened by the inertia of the technocrats.—Sundance Selects
Plot Keywords: political satire, diplomacy, french cinema, comedy, bureaucracy, government, international relations ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: The story of two miserable and unpleasant wedding guests, Lindsay and Frank, who develop a mutual affection despite themselves.
Plot Keywords: romantic comedy, romance, independent film, humor, dialogue-driven, adult comedy, modern romance ...
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