BIG CITY * CONVICTION

Big City - I'm still watching the wonderful movies on TCM. Big City (1948) is about three men, a reverend, a cantor who lives with his mom, and a policeman who adopt a foundling. The deal is that the first of them to get married will the raise her with his wife. She gets to be about 12 years old, and the policeman meets a cabaret singer named Shoo Shoo. The girl (Margaret O'Brien) and Shoo Shoo love each other, but the reverend and the cantor and the mom get very jealous and don't like Shoo Shoo, and especially don't want to lose the girl, Midge, to the couple. In the meantime the cantor and the reverend fall for the girl's beautiful teacher, to see if they can get married first and get Midge for themselves. Then at the end there is a trial. This was a fabulous movie starring George Murphy, Danny Thomas and Robert Preston as the cop, cantor and reverend.

Conviction - Hilary Swank never disappoints. In Conviction, she plays a woman whose wild brother is sentenced to life in prison for murder. Throughout the movie, you're never sure whether or not he committed the murder; he is one of those guys with no impulse control who will make you very, very uncomfortable. Still, Betty Ann knows that her brother could never do such a thing. So she devotes her life to exonerating her brother. When she can't find a lawyer to take the case through the elaborate appeals process, she goes back to school, gets her GED, gets a college degree and graduates from law school, so that she can figure out a way to set her brother free. The minute she passes the bar exam, she gets to work. This is a true story and a great movie. Now THAT'S a reason to go to law school.