reviewId int64 363k 588k | userId int64 33.9k 15.9M | itemId int64 1 1.42M | rating float64 1 10 | title stringlengths 1 10.9k ⌀ | content stringlengths 81 11.6k ⌀ |
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419,669 | 1,609,079 | 67,892 | 2 | Duke and Astin are wasted | ' Two on a Bench ' was a pleasant bit of froth : a made-for-TV movie directed by Jerry Paris in his usual workmanlike manner . The most notable fact about ' Two on a Bench ' is that Patty Duke and John Astin met for the first time when they were cast in this movie ; they married the following year . The male lead in th... |
418,436 | 1,609,079 | 14,357 | 2 | Stan Laurel gets the shaft , drops a lode , and corrupts miners . | For me , the funniest thing about this barely funny slapstick comedy is its title . The movie takes place in a coal mine , so American audiences probably assumed that the title ' Pick and Shovel ' is merely a reference to the miners ' tools . However , in Britain the phrase ' pick and shovel ' refers to hard labour - -... |
418,505 | 1,609,079 | 29,761 | 2 | Robert Riskin , don't quit your day job . | When You're in Love is notable for two trivial reasons , neither of which brings any merit to the movie . The first trivium is that silent-film star Louise Brooks appears in this film as a chorus girl . In 1929 Brooks had poisoned her Hollywood career , refusing to participate in the re-shooting of one of her silent ... |
418,467 | 1,609,079 | 336,857 | 2 | The lady is a Tramp , and vice versa . | As previous IMDb reviewer Bob Lipton correctly notes , Charlie Chaplin's ' tramp ' films were so popular that he spawned many imitators . ( The Gloria Swanson performance which Mr Lipton cites was in 1973 , on - - wait for it - - the Carol Burnett show . Carol Burnett played Buster Keaton , no less . ) Chaplin imperson... |
418,540 | 1,609,079 | 123,380 | 2 | Incest and Eskimos | The most impressive thing about ' Anemic Cinema ' is its title : an anagram which is very nearly also a palindrome . Unfortunately , it only works in American English , since in Britain ' anaemic ' is spelt differently . I've always found the dilettante Man Ray and his artistic efforts to be deeply pretentious , and I'... |
419,534 | 1,609,079 | 228,647 | 2 | Mexican jumping beans . | The title of this Spanish-language film translates as " You will not kill " , but I assume that the more portentous ( and Biblical ) commandment ' Thou shalt not kill ' is closer to the director / author's intention . The most intriguing thing about this very low-budget Mexican movie is that some sequences were actuall... |
418,298 | 1,609,079 | 12,014 | 2 | She can pull the one that flushes this movie . | ' Bunty Pulls the Strings ' stars Leatrice Joy , a silent-film actress who did her best and most popular work in comedy roles . Although Joy was a major box-office name in her own right , she is now remembered mostly for marrying John Gilbert , the leading man whose career - - more conspicuously than that of any other ... |
418,290 | 1,609,079 | 123,297 | 2 | It's just not up to scratch . | ' Thundering Fleas ' has been marketed on video as an Oliver Hardy and Charley Chase film . In fact , Hardy shows up only briefly ( as a burly cop ) but has some funny moments . Chase is glimpsed in only a tiny bit role , hiding behind what appears to be Chester Conklin's moustache . ( From Chase's brief days at Mack S... |
418,507 | 1,609,079 | 18,552 | 2 | Trouble looms | ' The Weaver ' is German agitprop . I get the impression that this film purports to depict actual events , but my limited knowledge of German history prevents me from verifying this . The film appears to take place in roughly the same period as the Luddite uprising in England , or possibly the Tolpuddle Martyrs . The w... |
419,267 | 1,609,079 | 259,317 | 2 | Hang up and don't call back | ' Fraulein , Wrong Number ' attempts to be a frothy farce , but it's neither especially frothy nor particularly funny . Imagine the MGM musical ' Bells Are Ringing ' with all the songs cut out , and that's about what you'd have here . Blonde actress Magda Schneider - - pretty , but not very interesting - - plays Inge ,... |
419,347 | 1,609,079 | 135,522 | 2 | Half-baked doughboys | ' French Leave ' has enough good laughs to fill a one-reel comedy short ; unfortunately , those laughs are spread out over six reels of tedium . IMDb's cast list has got Al Cooke and Kit Guard credited ( ? ) as playing ' themselves ' . That's not quite accurate . In the same way that Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy played... |
419,137 | 1,609,079 | 20,789 | 2 | Was the German version better ? It could hardly be worse ! | ' Der Greifer ' - literally ' The Snatcher ' - was shot concurrently in German - and English-language versions ; this was a fairly common practice in the early days of talking pictures , when it was not yet practical to overdub dialogue soundtracks . Inevitably there are other differences between the different versions... |
419,622 | 1,609,079 | 20,781 | 2 | ' Common Clay ' is merely mud | ' Common Clay ' is based on an old stage play , and it shows . The action is creaky and stagebound , and the highly contrived final revelation relies on an extremely heavy coincidence which comes with an even heavier moral . Ellen Neal ( Constance Bennett , the least attractive of the three Bennett sisters ) is establi... |
419,378 | 1,609,079 | 18,611 | 2 | Extremely petty larceny | ' 13 Washington Square ' is a real address in a very prestigious residential neighbourhood of New York City , so I'm surprised to see it as the title of a fictional film . ( Henry James's novel ' Washington Square ' didn't cite a specific address in its title . ) The choice of the number 13 in this fictional address is... |
418,513 | 1,609,079 | 117,643 | 2 | A dim sum indeed | ' Sei Min Ha Wa ' is Cantonese for ' Four Faces of a Beautiful Woman ' , but there's a ( possibly unintended ) pun in the title . ' Min ' means ' human faces ' , but it also means ' surfaces ' . . . and there's the Chinese rub , because this movie is all surfaces and no depth . When I lived in Kowloon , I learnt a bit ... |
419,165 | 1,609,079 | 20,848 | 2 | Beryl Mercer gets steadily worser | The beloved character actor James Gleason had a second career as a playwright ; he starred in several of his own plays on Broadway before becoming a film actor . One of Gleason's plays , the farce ' Is Zat So ? ' was a huge box-office hit : if Gleason had carefully invested his royalties from this one play , he might n... |
418,918 | 1,609,079 | 23,028 | 2 | Fast-forward to the underpants . | The male leads in ' Hot Saturday ' are Cary Grant and Randolph Scott , who - - in real life - - were house mates at about the time this movie was made . Some people have publicly speculated that Grant and Scott had a sexual relationship . I'll comment that there's very little real evidence for this . I saw ' Hot Saturd... |
419,688 | 1,609,079 | 163,797 | 2 | Agitating agitprop | ' Professor Mamlock ' is very much a work of Soviet propaganda , and heavy-handed with it . . . not merely extolling the alleged virtues of collectivist Marxism but also viciously condemning the Nazis . In real life , the Nazis were very likely indeed as bad as the fictional Nazis in this movie , but also no worse than... |
418,664 | 1,609,079 | 18,671 | 2 | One less belle to lancer | Even though I've written some historical fiction , I really dislike stories which place fictional characters at the centre of genuine historical events . The hundreds of real people who actually died aboard the Titanic are reduced to dress-extras for a tragic romance between fictional lovers . The hundreds of soldiers ... |
419,610 | 1,609,079 | 20,809 | 2 | Yukon do better than this | ' Dangerous Nan McGrew ' stars Helen Kane and Victor Moore , who also teamed at about this time in ' Heads Up ' for the same studio . I can't see any real advantage in teaming these two performers ; they have no on-screen chemistry with each other , and ( due to the age difference ) they couldn't even be teamed as a ro... |
419,716 | 1,609,079 | 168,212 | 2 | This taxi doesn't play ' fare ' . . . | ' The Taxi Mystery ' starts very promisingly , but rapidly goes pear-shaped . In its general tone , this film is very similar to ' The Second Floor Mystery ' ( 1930 ) : both films feature a young hero who finds himself in adventures that get very weird very quickly . But ' The Second Floor Mystery ' remains enjoyable b... |
418,294 | 1,609,079 | 25,564 | 2 | Send for Emeric Pressburger ! | ' The Part of the Nightie ' . . . sorry , I mean ' The Night of the Party ' is yet one more of the many , many , many ' lost ' films that have returned from oblivion . . . although this particular movie might perhaps have done better to stay lost . The single most notable thing about ' Night of the Party ' is that it w... |
418,353 | 1,609,079 | 479,098 | 2 | It just goes round in circles , with a bustle on its bum . | I was very impressed with Jefferson Mays's performance in the stage play ' I Am My Own Wife ' , an apparently factual account of a German transvestite's struggle to survive and to maintain his / her transgender dignity during the oppression of the Third Reich . ' Memoirs of My Nervous Illness ' opens with those dread w... |
418,187 | 1,609,079 | 44,599 | 2 | Nothing very ' Champion ' here | Marge and Gower Champion were a popular dance team in the 1950s , probably best-known for ' Show Boat ' , in which their roles were very much secondary . They did some of their best work in television , notably in a musical special with Yves Montand . Although they were excellent dancers , and Gower was a very talented... |
418,650 | 1,609,079 | 16,652 | 2 | Shut your trapeze | Bigger than Barnum's is a hokey drama with a circus background . Like so many movies which use the circus as a setting , this one gives a highly inaccurate and unconvincing depiction of the culture of circus people . A travelling circus is a self-contained universe in microcosm , and filmmakers who have never lived a... |
418,252 | 1,609,079 | 10,157 | 2 | ' gay ' is hardly the word . . . | ' The Gay Lord Quex ' ( stop laughing in the back , there ) is the sort of material that no longer appeals , as it's so deeply concerned with the class system . . . and with public perception being more important than justice . Sophie Fullgarney is a London manicurist whose young stepsister Muriel is engaged to the Mar... |
418,711 | 1,609,079 | 27,596 | 2 | Crane Wilbur should have sued . | Richard Connell was the author of ' The Most Dangerous Game ' , one of the most popular and most widely-anthologised short stories of the twentieth century . So I had high hopes for ' F-Man ' , a film for which Connell receives a story credit . Serves me right for getting my hopes up . The whole plot of this movie is (... |
418,405 | 1,609,079 | 209,050 | 2 | Sorry , Charley | Charley Chase has some immensely loyal fans who will tolerate no criticism of their idol . Yet his work is highly variable , and I hardly ever laugh at Chase's work . In his very best movies , such as ' Mighty Like a Moose ' or ' His Wooden Wedding ' , I find myself impressed with Chase's professionalism rather than in... |
418,756 | 1,609,079 | 14,027 | 2 | Bebe's boo-boos | In 1921 , silent-screen star Bebe Daniels was arrested for speeding , and given a brief prison sentence . Her producer Adolph Zukor turned this into a publicity stunt , with Daniels photographed mopping her cell and redecorating . Zukor then rushed into production ' The Speed Girl ' , a star vehicle for Daniels , canni... |
418,856 | 1,609,079 | 20,546 | 2 | The princess should have drowned . | ' Venus ' was made in France , but this movie fits squarely into the Italian film genre which has a name that translates into English as ' white telephone ' . A white-telephone movie is a film about superficial rich people who have plenty of leisure time , doing unimportant things in extremely swank surroundings . Prin... |
419,662 | 1,609,079 | 33,975 | 2 | Not so much a circus as a freak show . | Arthur Lucan and Kitty McShane starred in a series of low-budget comedies that were extremely popular in 1940s Britain , in which Lucan ( in drag ) played an old Irish scrubwoman named Mrs Riley , and McShane ( Lucan's real-life wife ) played Old Mother Riley's daughter Kitty . Neither of these portrayals were very pla... |
418,499 | 1,609,079 | 9,246 | 2 | What blue eyes you have , Stanley ! | Nearly everything I was prepared to say about the early Stan Laurel comedy ' Just Rambling Along ' turns out already to have been said in the perceptive comments by IMDb reviewer " wmorrow59 " . Morrow is indeed correct that Laurel's business with the salt and pepper shakers is cribbed from a Chaplin gag in ' The Immig... |
419,115 | 1,609,079 | 24,813 | 2 | The green eye of the yellow god-awful mess | I genuinely didn't understand this movie , but it was so fascinatingly bad that I carried on watching . ' Adventure Girl ' reminds me of an Ed Wood movie , because it attains his easy breezy cheesy sleazy level of ineptitude . This movie also reminds me of ' Perils of Nyoka ' , ' Sheena , Queen of the Jungle ' and the ... |
419,135 | 1,609,079 | 13,579 | 2 | It's movies like this one that give silent films a bad name ! | I'm a passionate advocate on behalf of German Expressionist films , especially from the silent era . I'm still bitter about an incident at the 1982 World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago , when an audience full of idiots ( jaded by high-tech S / FX movies ) laughed at the cardboard sets in ' The Cabinet of Dr Cali... |
419,318 | 1,609,079 | 26,724 | 2 | Defective detective , no noir | The chief appeal of ' Mister Dynamite ' is that it's based on a story by Dashiell Hammett , whose detective stories tended to be realistic because Hammett drew upon his own experiences as a private eye for the Pinkerton agency . So , that's one point in this movie's favour . Another good point is that ' Mister Dynamite... |
418,773 | 1,609,079 | 31,011 | 2 | Well , shut their big mouths . . . | Joe E . Brown and Martha Raye were ( separately ) both known for their wide mouths , so I guess it was inevitable that someone would decide to team them on screen . Unfortunately , this movie isn't very funny . The cleverest thing about this movie is Joe E . ' s character's name : he plays a ham actor christened Marlow... |
418,259 | 1,609,079 | 31,038 | 2 | Melvyn Douglas in drag IS a drag ! | There's nothing amazing about ' The Amazing Mr Williams ' . Part of this movie's problem is its lead actor Melvyn Douglas . He was a lousy actor and lazy with it . For most of his career , he allowed his good looks , a glib manner and ( usually , but not in this movie ) some fine scriptwriting to make up for his lack o... |
419,203 | 1,609,079 | 70,916 | 2 | no breakfast at Tiffany's . | I admire any movie that tries to change the language of film , even though such efforts nearly always fail . 3-D was a fad that was almost never used properly ( ' Inferno ' being a rare exception ) . Smell-O-Vision and Odorama were never more than stunts . ' The Door in the Wall ' , with its fascinating use of Dynamic ... |
418,881 | 1,609,079 | 88,397 | 2 | in-Fernald devices | ' The Marvellous Inventions of Alvin Fernald ' , by Clifford B . Hicks , is a really brilliant children's novel about a boy named Alvin who wants to be a scientist AND a detective . . . so he devises all sorts of low-tech ( but complicated ) inventions , which he then uses in his inept attempts to solve mysteries and c... |
418,772 | 1,609,079 | 26,841 | 2 | Turn over the page , boy . . . | ' The Dalmasse Hotel Page ' stars Dolly Haas . Ach , does it ever . For a deeper analysis of Dolly Haas's life and career , see my IMDb review of her film ' Es tut sich was um Mitternacht ' . For purposes of ' Dalmasse Hotel Page ' , I'll repeat the gist of that review : Dolly Haas tended to play ' gamin ' roles : thos... |
418,586 | 1,609,079 | 48,166 | 2 | The Bowery Boys win an Oscar ? Almost . . . | ' High Society ' , starring the Bowery Boys , is a bit more serious than most of their films , but otherwise extremely typical of their output . . . except for one bizarre detail . The script of this Bowery Boys movie was nominated for an Oscar . Yes , it's true ! The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences actuall... |
418,481 | 1,609,079 | 23,498 | 2 | Buster's heartbreaking decline | To be a Buster Keaton fan is to have your heart broken on a regular basis . Most of us first encounter Keaton in one of the brilliant feature films from his great period of independent production : ' The General ' , ' The Navigator ' , ' Sherlock Jnr ' . We recognise him as the greatest figure in the entire history of ... |
418,565 | 1,609,079 | 193,620 | 2 | I'll bet Hitler loved this movie . | I saw this German documentary in October 2007 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone , Italy . The festival screened a print from a German collection ( the FW Murnau archive in Wiesbaden ) that had English intertitles . According to the programme notes at Pordenone , in 1925 the failing German economy had forced a... |
418,475 | 1,609,079 | 38,565 | 2 | Good twist ending , not worth waiting for | ' The Glass Alibi ' is a no-budget grade-Z film noir , featuring a clever double-twist ending that I genuinely didn't anticipate . I'll credit actor Douglas Fowley with one of the greatest film performances I've ever seen , as the excitable silent-film director in " Singin ' in the Rain " . Most of Fowley's many , many... |
418,449 | 1,609,079 | 374,964 | 3 | Don't quit your day job , Plimpton . | Somebody once described George Plimpton as " the professional amateur " , and it certainly fits . Plimpton was a journalist who tried his hand at several high-profile occupations for which ( as he readily admitted ) he was eminently unqualified - - quarterback , trapeze artist , race-car driver - - not expecting to suc... |
419,196 | 1,609,079 | 17,631 | 3 | She's got a nice pair of eyes , too . | ' Ankles Preferred ' is , as one might expect from its title , a frothy comedy . More unexpectedly , the entire film seems to cater for foot-fetishists . Madge Bellamy's attractive face and figure are prominently featured throughout this movie . . . yet the opening shot is a close-up of her trim ankles , and her feet -... |
418,569 | 1,609,079 | 13,178 | 3 | This ' Glass ' is more than half empty . | ' A Glass of Water ' is the extremely prosaic title of this elaborate Decla-Bioscop costume drama . I saw the film in October 2007 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone , Italy ; they screened a print ( with the original German titles ) from the Murnau archive in Wiesbaden . This movie reminded me of an Ernst Lub... |
418,746 | 1,609,079 | 23,890 | 3 | Dressler's swan song | The Late Christopher Bean is a weak drama , notably only as the last film of the beloved character actress Marie Dressler . Like Lon Chaney in his last film ( and for similar reasons ) , Dressler gives a poor performance here , because her body was riddled with the cancer that would soon kill her . But there are stil... |
418,892 | 1,609,079 | 10,945 | 3 | Not tonight , Napoleon . | Rachel Crothers was an extremely popular American playwright of the early 20th century , whose appeal faded before World War Two . ( Her name is mentioned in MGM's 1939 musical ' Babes in Arms ' , but only because lyricist E . Y . Harburg needed a rhyme for ' Marx Brothers ' . ) Crothers tended to write brittle comedie... |
419,404 | 1,609,079 | 140,869 | 3 | Bisected goulash can't make up its mind . | This Hungarian film was originally released in two parts ; I saw both parts ( in separate screenings ) in July 1996 at the Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna ; they screened prints with Dutch intertitles , on loan from the Nederlands Filmmuseum . Each half had a running time of 75 minutes , but there's a slight overl... |
418,936 | 1,609,079 | 13,095 | 3 | Ahoy , Captain Nemo | ' Ebb Tide ' is based on a novel begun by Robert Louis Stevenson and completed by his stepson Lloyd Osbourne . I tried reading it once , but found it too dull for me . This movie is more interesting ( largely due to the presence of two attractive young actresses ) , but not very believable . The stars of this film are ... |
418,300 | 1,609,079 | 182,691 | 3 | Double-crossing cross-dresser . | This is a weird movie . Actually , any movie about cross-dressing is automatically weird , but this movie is weird even by cross-dressing standards . The hero's name - - at least when he's wearing trousers - - is Dick Browning , which prompted me to think of several cheeky puns while I was watching his antics in skirts... |
419,569 | 1,609,079 | 1,198,516 | 3 | Don Knotts is Andy Griffith's wife ; Jim Nabors is their son ! | Since this one-off TV special teams Andy Griffith , Don Knotts and Jim Nabors , you would be justified in assuming that they appear here as their Mayberry characters : Sheriff Andy , deputy Barney and grease-monkey Gomer ( who left the lube rack to join the Marines ) . You would be justified , but you would be mistaken... |
418,954 | 1,609,079 | 15,184 | 3 | The mortgage on the old homestead | I'm not a huge fan of cowboy movies . . . and if more cowboy movies were like this one , I wouldn't like them at all . Buck Jones ( billed here as Charles Jones ) gives a good performance , but he plays a hugely implausible character . Jack Mills ( Jones ) and his buddy Loupel ( also cried Jack , but nicknamed " Bud " ... |
418,504 | 1,609,079 | 99,250 | 3 | Small-time true-crime , facts fudged . | CONTAINS SPOILERS THROUGHOUT . ' Chicago Joe and the Showgirl ' is based on the true story of Karl Hulten and Elizabeth Jones . Hulten was a Swedish-born American GI stationed in England during WW2 . Jones was a Welsh-born woman who had drifted through several professions , including striptease . When Hulten and Jones ... |
418,833 | 1,609,079 | 281,766 | 3 | Liza with a Zzzzzz . . . | ' The Dangerous Christmas of Red Riding Hood ' was originally aired on ABC-TV on 28 November , 1965 . . . almost a month before Christmas . The material really has nothing to do with Christmas , and it's obvious that a few Yuletide details have been bunged in just to make it likelier that this production would be optio... |
418,312 | 1,609,079 | 15,110 | 3 | He could have stayed there . | This film's portentous title implies that it's the story of a man who returned from the dead , or at any rate from some undiscovered bourne . In fact , it's a character study dealing with the moral regeneration of a protagonist who starts out unsympathetically , and who is intended to earn our sympathy . The attractive... |
418,286 | 1,609,079 | 142,972 | 3 | Combustible flapjacks . | ' Wandering Papas ' is the barely-relevant title of this comedy starring Clyde Cook . A former vaudeville performer ( as ' the Kangaroo Boy ' ) , Cook's dazzling acrobatic abilities could have made him the equal of Lupino Lane , Al St John and even ( as an acrobat , at least ) the great Buster Keaton . In ' Wandering P... |
419,008 | 1,609,079 | 34,948 | 3 | 187 miles from Moose Head , Alaska . . . | ' Klondike Fury ' is the overwrought title of a Poverty Row film that takes place mostly indoors . The opening shot is a laughably fake studio set-up of a miniature ' plane flying past some papier-mache mountains . The very few ' exterior ' shots of the Klondike terrain are clearly filmed indoors , on a level floor , a... |
419,269 | 1,609,079 | 227,441 | 3 | Kill the clown next , please . | ' Shadow of the Circus Ring ' is a turgid drama set against the background of a German circus . This stodgy talkie has the feel of an EA Dupont film , but without Dupont's splendid visual sense or directorial pace . The director , Heinz Paul , shows no flair for the material . Several other directors could have heighte... |
418,612 | 1,609,079 | 28,447 | 3 | I couldn't believe it . | ' The Unguarded Hour ' takes its title from the existentialist premise ( expounded in this film's dialogue ) that every man's life contains an interval in which circumstances conspire to deprive him of all his defences , leaving him a pawn of fate . How true , how true . I'm a great fan of the films of Sam Wood , a cra... |
419,104 | 1,609,079 | 15,007 | 3 | A slaughter , a daughter and overripe ham . | I viewed a print of ' I Am the Man ' that had been intended for exhibition in Belgian cinemas : the original intertitles had been cut out , and other footage with French translations inserted . Also , a crucial shot of a suicide note had been removed , and new footage of a French translation inserted . I've learnt from... |
418,256 | 1,609,079 | 28,543 | 3 | Shirley Temple's evil twin | Jane Withers's film career had the bad luck to occur at the same time as Shirley Temple's , and under contract at the same studio ( Fox ) . Both of these child actresses were very similar in their talents and appeal . But Shirley was much prettier than Jane , and just that bit more talented as an actress , singer , dan... |
418,562 | 1,609,079 | 26,582 | 3 | When love came borscht-ing in | This movie's alternate title ' Krasnaya Derevnya ' translates literally as ' Red Village ' but it also means ' Beautiful Village ' . . . because , in Russian , the word for the colour ' red ' ( the most fleshly and sexual colour ) also connotes physical beauty . It's no coincidence that the Soviet communists ( the Red ... |
419,096 | 1,609,079 | 15,027 | 3 | Turgid mellerdrammer from a mail-order school . | Turner Entertainment have a print of ' Judgment of the Storm ' , but this movie's gestation is far more interesting than the movie itself . By the 1920s , movies were big business , and many Americans believed there was big money in writing screenplays ! Several mail-order companies made considerable money catering for... |
418,305 | 1,609,079 | 396,603 | 3 | Titter ye not much ; they didn't do well . | Bruce Forsyth and Frankie Howerd are two giants of British television comedy . Forsyth is still going strong as I write this , while the late Mr Howerd ( " oh no , Missus ! " ) remains popular in repeats and his films . But they had two vastly different performance styles that didn't mesh well . Although they teamed up... |
419,592 | 1,609,079 | 23,772 | 3 | Faintly amusing | As a female comedian , Cicely Courtneidge's performing style was somewhere between those of Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett . Like both of them , Courtneidge tried to get laughs out of elaborate costumes , in her case involving ludicrous over-sized hats . As with Joan Davis ( who was much funnier and far sexier ) , Cour... |
419,252 | 1,609,079 | 165,077 | 3 | Little Annie Fanny's inspiration | ' Jane ' was a very popular comic strip in wartime Britain . Drawn by Norman Pett , it began its long run in the Daily Mirror in 1932 as the misadventures of an innocently sexy young blonde . In 1938 , with Don Freeman writing the continuities , ' Jane ' gradually became more suggestive and then finally quite lewd . Ma... |
418,698 | 1,609,079 | 30,280 | 3 | Some funny stuff , but not enough to justify the rest . | Many of Tex Avery's cartoons at Warner Bros were parodies of the short subjects that ( in those days ) were screened during a trip to the movies before the main feature . ' The Isle of Pingo Pongo ' is a parody of travelogue movies : specifically , the ' Going Places ' shorts that Lowell Thomas narrated for Universal .... |
419,624 | 1,609,079 | 268,299 | 3 | sexual Orient-ation | I have mixed feelings about the career of playwright A . R . Gurney . I dislike his plays - - which tend to deal with the manners and morals of brittle WASPs - - yet I admire how well he has handled his career as a dramatist . Gurney's most successful stage work is ' Love Letters ' , which consists entirely of a man an... |
419,613 | 1,609,079 | 27,649 | 3 | How Swede it is ? Not much ! | CONTAINS SPOILERS . ' Girl Becomes Maidservant ' is the intriguing title of this by-the-numbers Cinderella story . Alva Rosengren is the daughter of a well-to-do Stockholm family . Hoping to find herself , and to make her own way in the world , she goes off into the countryside and gets a job as a housekeeper to the Al... |
418,708 | 1,609,079 | 20,001 | 3 | After you , m'sieur Raoul . . . | Raoul Walsh was one of the greatest directors in film history , yet his autobiography ' Each Man in His Time ' is quite dull . . . indicating that Walsh's visual sense was greater than his story sense . The opening titles of ' Hot for Paris ' give Walsh a credit for writing the scenario , but ' credit ' might be the wr... |
418,608 | 1,609,079 | 18,030 | 3 | Aaaah , shaddap ! Oh , yeah ? Yeah ! | ' Is Zat so ? ' was originally a stage play co-written by James Gleason , who played one of the lead roles in the play's Broadway run . Anyone who's seen Gleason's memorable screen performances as a wise-cracking Brooklynite can easily imagine him speaking this movie's title phrase . But James Gleason isn't in the film... |
419,026 | 1,609,079 | 14,694 | 3 | Destination Zero | George Antheil's music for ' Ballet Mecanique ' appears to be one of those artistic works that provoked audiences to violence . The original orchestration included such unorthodox musical instruments as a typewriter and an aeroplane motor ! Reportedly , during the premiere of Antheil's music , the audience broke out la... |
418,430 | 1,609,079 | 332,280 | 3 | Milk of amnesia | SPOILERS THROUGHOUT . ' The Notebook ' is the 17 , 329 , 587th movie about a woman choosing between a reliable steady guy who sincerely loves her and a macho jerk . It's also the 17 , 329 , 587th movie in which ( big surprise ! ) she chooses the macho jerk , and we're supposed to applaud that decision . This movie's on... |
418,396 | 1,609,079 | 309,370 | 3 | It's petrified , but no ' Forest ' | ' Blind Alley ' was a live-television drama , transmitted in the very early days when television was still experimental . Fortunately , a kinescope recording was made of this drama , which I was able to view . Due to the technical limitations of early tv , this is a slow and static production , filmed entirely on one s... |
418,487 | 1,609,079 | 27,840 | 3 | Kelly is smelly , just like an old welly | In ' Kelly the Second ' , Patsy Kelly meets an Irish lorry-driver who rejoices in the name Cecil Callahan , and she trains him to become a prizefighter . This is a Hal Roach feature , so its production budget is at the bottom of the barrel . You might expect all parties concerned to set their sights on appropriately mo... |
419,358 | 1,609,079 | 14,652 | 3 | flying McGuffins | ' Air Hawk ' is a stunt film , in which the plot exists largely as an excuse for the stunt sequences . Fortunately , the stunts are enjoyable enough to justify this structure . ' Air Hawk ' looks and plays a lot like those feature-length assemblages of movie serials . CONTAINS SPOILERS . Al Wilson stars as Al Parker , ... |
418,916 | 1,609,079 | 10,290 | 3 | Some hicks from the sticks with an I . Q . of six . | Robert Warwick was a silent-film leading man who interrupted his career to serve in the Great War . Moderately handsome , Warwick's greatest asset was a cultured voice that was completely useless in silent films . . . and by the time talkies came in , Warwick was too old for leading roles . He had a long career in mino... |
418,561 | 1,609,079 | 25,696 | 3 | Dead dad didn't die . Did he , daddy ? Did he ? | A recurring theme in movies of the 1920s and ' 30s was the one about the man who simply walks away from his own life and starts over again under a new identity . . . occasionally by stealing the identity of a dead man , but often without benefit of any sort of I . D . documents at all . In those days , before Social Se... |
419,209 | 1,609,079 | 17,923 | 3 | Dieterle's brilliant , but not here | SPOILERS SPOILERS William ( Wilhelm ) Dieterle was a brilliant director whose career is long overdue for appraisal . He was also a talented actor in German silent films : fortunately , he switched over to directing before the sound revolution . ( As a director among the Europhile producers who ran Hollywood's studios ,... |
419,532 | 1,609,079 | 18,410 | 3 | What the hell is THIS ? | This is one of the weirder films I've ever seen . Even the title is odd . I viewed a print in which the opening credits show the title as ' 6 - x 11 ' - - with a case fraction , which is not how I've typed it here - - yet for some reason IMDb have spelt out the title in words . Anyway , the title refers to the print fo... |
418,803 | 1,609,079 | 12,347 | 3 | Get out and walk . | Although ' The Great Race ' is one of my favourite movies ( and , in my opinion , the funniest comedy ever made ) , in general I dislike movies about auto races . . . and especially movies such as ' The Four-Wheeled Terror ' in which the autos are racing through open countryside rather than a purpose-built race track .... |
418,600 | 1,609,079 | 302,014 | 3 | Awake at a wake ; or , a bier and a beer . | Hell's Kitchen was - - and remains - - the nickname of a neighbourhood in Yorkville , Manhattan . In the late nineteenth century , and for some decades thereafter , Hell's Kitchen was a slum . . . with all the usual traits of that grim term . The predominant ethnic group in the neighbourhood were the lower-class Irish ... |
419,323 | 1,609,079 | 22,107 | 3 | The acting drags , the plot drags , the drag drags . | ' Maid to Order ' is a low-budget comedy , not especially funny , of interest only because it's a sound film starring Julian Eltinge , who was primarily a stage performer . Eltinge was a female impersonator , probably the most successful of them all . ( Unless those rumours are true about a certain actress . ) Eltinge ... |
419,074 | 1,609,079 | 938 | 3 | I've found a French letter ! | I've handled quite a few reels of nitrate-stock film from the days of silent movies and the early talkies . On more than one occasion , I've encountered a silent film from which a sequence was deliberately cut out . Unless this was an intertitle , the missing footage almost invariably turns out to have been an insert s... |
418,381 | 1,609,079 | 332,003 | 3 | A mouse and a camel | This was a quickie TV special , made to profit from the popularity of Olympic figure skater Dorothy Hamill . I'll declare quite openly that figure skating doesn't remotely interest me unless I find the female skater very sexy , such as Belita or Sonja Henie or the early Tonya Harding . I respect Dorothy Hamill's achiev... |
418,679 | 1,609,079 | 900 | 3 | The priest gets hot under the collar . | I saw this short romantic drama at the 1998 Cinema Muto festival in Pordenone ; they screened a print from the Library of Congress with the original intertitles missing . There don't seem to be wards any more . Even Robin the Boy Wonder is no longer Batman's " youthful ward " . Old-time novels , plays and films are cho... |
419,518 | 1,609,079 | 22,020 | 3 | Meyer leaves much to desire | The terribly tragic years of the Second World War held a few minor comforts . One of the few positive ( unintended ) results of the Third Reich was the flood of European character actors who spent the war years in Hollywood , in some cases continuing their careers there after V-E Day . These include Victor Francen , Ma... |
419,095 | 1,609,079 | 39,790 | 3 | What's black & white and Red all over ? | ' Russian Question ' is flat-out Soviet propaganda , with all the clumsiness of that regime's usual cinematic agitprop . What makes this movie slightly more interesting than its brethren is that , whereas most Russian propaganda movies extol the alleged virtues of the Soviet " worker's paradise " , this one sets out to... |
418,859 | 1,609,079 | 60,660 | 3 | Low-key character study | ' A Man Called Adam ' was tailor-made as a vehicle for Sammy Davis's talents as a dramatic actor . He should have chosen a better script , with a more sympathetic role . The main character in this movie wallows in self-pity , and then turns out to do so for the wrong reasons . As a movie , ' Adam ' is slow and boring .... |
419,659 | 1,609,079 | 42,802 | 3 | Did they ever untie Winifred ? | ' Old Mother Riley Headmistress ' ( this title has no comma in the opening credits ) has a higher budget than most instalments in the ' Old Mother Riley ' series . These films starred Arthur Lucan in panto-drag as Irish scrubwoman Daphne Snowdrop Bluebell Riley , and Lucan's wife Kitty McShane as Mother Riley's daughte... |
418,255 | 1,609,079 | 27,248 | 3 | Ay tank Ay go home now . . . | I recently attended an exhibition of European films from several nations , in various languages . This film grabbed my attention in the programme listing because of its unusual numeric title : in Swedish , ' 65 , 66 and Me ' . I assumed that it would be a movie about convicts , or just possibly robots . . . at any rate... |
418,378 | 1,609,079 | 25,293 | 3 | This Bavarian cream is mostly froth . | This movie's title translates literally as ' I Know You Not and Love You ' , but should be rendered as ' I Don't Know You , and Yet I Love You ' . Either way , it's froth , German-style : not quite on the level of operetta , but set in that same artificial and twee realm . This movie is a semi-musical : it likely would... |
419,368 | 1,609,079 | 18,480 | 3 | Lionel Barrymore is shaggier than the dog | The script and direction of this MGM movie ' The Thirteenth Hour ' are credited ( ? ) to Chester Franklin , whom I've never heard of . . . but I kept checking the credits to see if perhaps this movie was actually scripted and directed by Tod Browning , who was under contract to MGM at this same time ( and who frequentl... |
419,314 | 1,609,079 | 16,550 | 3 | Yassuh , me no like-um ! | Womanhandled stars Richard Dix as Manhattan playboy Bill Dana ( no relation to the 1960s TV comedian of that name ) . While visiting Central Park , he rescues bratty little Percival ( Eli Nadel ) from the lake - - some nice location shooting here - - and then he meets the boy's aunt : the blonde and beautiful Molly (... |
419,285 | 1,609,079 | 29,670 | 3 | Where have you gone , Mister Robinson ? | Edward G Robinson is remembered for playing snarling gangsters and other tough guys , but in real life he was a very cultured man , a collector of art and antiques . ( Robinson acquired a Van Gogh before that artist was well-known . ) ' Thunder in the City ' is a low-budget film that Robinson made in England , playing ... |
418,952 | 1,609,079 | 226,746 | 3 | Oh , Henry ! | I'm a fan of Bert Lahr , and I'm also an advocate for the talents of director Ray McCarey ( the unjustly obscure brother of Leo McCarey ) . So , when I learnt that Bert Lahr played Henry the Eighth in a film directed by Ray McCarey , I was salivating to see it . Lackaday , the movie just ain't very funny . For some rea... |
419,159 | 1,609,079 | 146,366 | 3 | Counterfeit count and no-account countess | L'Épervier is well-directed and visually interesting , yet ultimately this is a very unsatisfying film . It offers us good-looking people wearing expensive clothes in sophisticated settings , and seems to expect us to be satisfied with these . But none of the characters are sympathetic , and their activities are not ... |
419,255 | 1,609,079 | 40,111 | 3 | I'm with it , but this movie's without it | In the days when travelling carnivals and circuses were common in America , these shows would often pick up temporary employees along their tour routes . The temporaries might be performers , or might be day labourers ( roustabouts ) , or might be entrepreneurs ( not always honest ones ) selling candy or cheap toys , o... |
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