The Cannonball Run (1981)

A wide variety of eccentric competitors participate in a wild and illegal cross-country road race, and they will do anything to win the road race, including low-down, dirty tricks.

From memory: All-star cast thigh-slapping car chase comedy, mainly for an audience with a low threshold to have a laugh.

Halliwell (no star): "Well-known stars are all at sea in this comedy/disaster extravaganza, which seems to have begun as a joke rather than a script."

Maltin BOMB: "Just what civilization needs - more Reynolds car-chase silliness...Pretty unendurable, despite unusual cast; rumor has it that the one responsible for casting Dino and Sammy as priests is still doing his Hail Marys."

Ten Thousand Bedrooms (1957)

An American hotel mogul becomes smitten with a young Italian woman when buying a hotel in Rome, but to marry this gal, he has to get her three older sisters married off.

Claudia Cardinale & Dean Martin

Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis

Dean Martin and Zsa Zsa Gabor

Airport (1970)

A bomber on board an airplane, an airport almost closed by snow, and various personal problems of the people involved.

The movie that started the 70s series of all-star disaster movies and one of the best; sturdily produced, old-fashioned, with multiple plotlines, suspense, melodrama and some comic relief.

Halliwell***: "Glossy, undeniably entertaining, all-star version of a popular novel, with cradboard characters skilfully deployed in Hollywood's very vest style."

Maltin***1/2: "GRAND HOTEL plot formula reaches latter-day zenith in ultraslick, old-fashioned movie that entertains in spite of itself...Plastic performances dominate, with down-to-earth Kennedy, touching Stapleton, and nervous Heflin standing out."

Showdown (1973)

Two men who have been friends since childhood find themselves on opposite ends of the law.

Standard Western with two aging stars and a wee touch of melancholy.

Halliwell (no star): "Routine star Western adequately done."

Maltin**1/2: "Agreeable but unexceptional Western yarn was Seaton's final film."

Rio Bravo (1959)

A small-town sheriff in the American West enlists the help of a cripple, a drunk, and a young gunfighter in his efforts to hold in jail the brother of the local bad guy.