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418,592 | 1,609,079 | 287,487 | 3 | Less unusual than he usually is . | ' Horoscope ' is one of the short movies made by underground filmmaker Richard Kern . All of Kern's movies are unusual : intentionally transgressive , and often violent . But ' Horoscope ' is unusual by Kern's standards because it's LESS unusual than usual , for him . There's very little transgression , and the mood is... |
418,253 | 1,609,079 | 40,089 | 3 | Great gimmick , feeble film | ' Always Together ' is a low-budget Warner Brothers drama with one of the cleverest gimmicks I've ever seen in any movie . That gimmick is probably the only reason why you'll want to see this film . Unfortunately , the gimmick is used in the service of a turgidly dull and unsympathetic plot line . If only this gimmick ... |
418,433 | 1,609,079 | 14,179 | 3 | Oh , golly ! Where's Ollie ? | Before the days of home video , Stan Laurel's pre-Hardy comedy ' Kill or Cure ' was known - - to the extent that it was known at all - - only because a few sequences were included in Robert Youngson's compilation film ' Laurel and Hardy's Laughing 20's ' . Youngson knew what he was doing : the best gags in ' Kill or Cu... |
419,465 | 1,609,079 | 16,390 | 3 | Kilted Colman , creepy Cody | Ronald Colman is fondly remembered for his beautifully modulated voice , so it's surprising that he played starring roles in silent movies , in which his voice was irrelevant . According to Garson Kanin , Colman almost left Hollywood when talking pictures came in , because he feared that his voice wasn't good enough fo... |
418,456 | 1,609,079 | 94,566 | 3 | How can I put this delicately ? | I find Emma Thompson extremely sexy , not merely because of her classic English-rose beauty and her physical grace , but also because of her keen intelligence and sense of humour . ' Thompson ' was meant to be a showcase for her talents as a comedian , dancer and scriptwriter , in a format permitting her and her friend... |
418,705 | 1,609,079 | 183,777 | 3 | I don't mean to be mean to Armenia , but . . . | I saw the Armenian comedy ' Shor and Shorshor ' in October 2007 at the Cinema Muto festival in Pordenone , Italy ; the festival screened a new 35mm print struck from a 28mm diacetate . I didn't think much of this film : it's an extremely crude comedy ; so very crude that I was surprised to learn that its year of produc... |
419,498 | 1,609,079 | 18,607 | 3 | Bolshevik borscht | The Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn had a Greta Garbo complex : for well over a decade , he made repeated attempts to find some exotic European actress whom he could lure to Hollywood and mould into the next Garbo . He brought several would-be Garbos to Hollywood , but none of them ever clicked . The least unsuccessful ... |
418,692 | 1,609,079 | 222,316 | 3 | Gobbledygook up the yin-yang . | ' The Reincarnation of Karma ' is a weird film , right enough , but some of its weirdness is down to incoherence rather than the film's exotic subject matter . The synopsis already posted on this movie's IMDb page is accurate , but it's also much clearer than the movie itself . That's because some of the action is repe... |
419,128 | 1,609,079 | 10,045 | 3 | ' Dangerous Hours ' ? More like ' Dangerous Howlers ' . | The best thing about the movie ' Dangerous Hours ' is its title . I've never made any secret of the fact that I despise all forms of communism , especially the Soviet variety , and that I also despise movies which depict communism favourably . Well , ' Dangerous Hours ' is fervently anti-communist , and yet it delivers... |
419,438 | 1,609,079 | 18,717 | 3 | No midgets , no ventriloquists . | I sought out ' The Branded Man ' because it was based on a story by Tod Robbins , author of some grotesque fiction . I was disappointed twice over : firstly , this story contains no homicidal midgets , schizophrenic ventriloquists , nor any of the other bizarre elements in Robbins's best work . Secondly , even on its o... |
419,479 | 1,609,079 | 13,868 | 3 | Love barges in , but the lovers are in Seine . | I saw ' La Belle Nivernaise ' in October 2005 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Sacile , Italy . Having seen many silent films from many nations , I'm accustomed to the difficulties of reading intertitles in a foreign language . I'm also acquainted with the more disorienting experience of viewing a silent film which po... |
419,111 | 1,609,079 | 25,492 | 3 | Not what you Frink it is | ' The Merry Frinks ' sounds like it's about a vaudeville act . Actually , this is one of the more obscure examples of a comedy subgenre that was popular in the 1930s : a ' wacky ' family with several different eccentric personalities all living under the same roof . Well-known examples of this subgroup are ' You Can't ... |
419,294 | 1,609,079 | 16,658 | 3 | not so much ' Blind ' as ' Dumb ' . | This movie's title pays tribute to the deity of Justice , when it should have spent some time at the altar of Credibility . The underrated character actor Ernest Torrence plays ' Big ' Bill Devens , a railway navvy whose wife Eileen leaves him to marry a more promising man named Clayton . . . abandoning her infant daug... |
419,034 | 1,609,079 | 222,495 | 3 | Unsavoury slavery ; not enough bravery . | After I saw this movie , my brain wanted to wash its hands . I used a hand-held Steenbeck viewer to watch ' The White Slave ' , and some of the antics in this crude movie were so repulsive I nearly dropped the Steenbeck . ' The White Slave ' is immensely racist : it's one of those antebellum mellerdrammers that celebra... |
418,250 | 1,609,079 | 15,919 | 3 | Shearer becomes a Cody pendant | ' His Secretary ' is a comedy starring Norma Shearer . . . which is a bad combination to be getting on with , as comedy was never Shearer's strong point . ( In her most successful comedy , ' The Women ' , she plays her central role entirely straight . ) But ' His Secretary ' is an MGM film , and Shearer was at this poi... |
418,860 | 1,609,079 | 51,362 | 3 | Eugene O'Neill did it better . | ' Anna Lucasta ' was originally a stage play with a white cast , filmed in 1949 . A few years on from its debut , the play's original author ( Philip Yordan ) re-staged it with all the roles played by African-Americans . This was considered something of a gimmick at the time , but the gimmick was still fresh a bit late... |
419,710 | 1,609,079 | 15,905 | 3 | Lacklustre direction , insipid script | Actor-director Rupert Julian is now remembered solely as the man credited with directing ' The Phantom of the Opera ' ( 1925 ) , a screen classic . But credits can be deceiving . Julian and the film's star Lon Chaney quarrelled intensely during production , to the point where Julian was removed from the set and three o... |
419,172 | 1,609,079 | 18,892 | 3 | There are already quite enough pirates along the Potomac . | ' The First Kiss ' is proficiently directed and beautifully photographed among Maryland's riverside locations , but is harmed by Fay Wray's lacklustre performance and by a ludicrous script . When I saw the retro comedy ' Movie Movie ' ( 1978 ) , I laughed that Harry Hamlin's character ( a prizefighter with jurist aspir... |
418,534 | 1,609,079 | 15,956 | 3 | Life terrible ? No , but this movie is . | A consistent gimmick in American comedy films and cartoons is the practice of giving them titles that parody recent dramatic releases , even when there's no other similarity between the serious film and the comedy . Charley Chase's 1925 comedy " Isn't Life Terrible ? " parodies the title of a D . W . Griffith drama fro... |
418,394 | 1,609,079 | 38,285 | 3 | Murky turkey , herky-jerky | ' Accomplice ' is a low-budget noir caper film , starring Richard Arlen after his career was long past its peak . I always liked Arlen ; during the peak years of his career ( late silent era to mid-30s ) he was almost the exact equivalent of the modern Harrison Ford : an action hero , in the classic adventurer mould , ... |
418,986 | 1,609,079 | 29,245 | 3 | Don't bother to ' Floss ' | ' The Mill on the Floss ' was one of the lesser novels by Mary Ann Evans , who wrote under the male pseudonym George Eliot . I tried to read this dull and very turgid novel years ago , but was unable to finish it . I'll review this film version solely on its own merits , as I don't know how faithfully it follows the or... |
418,384 | 1,609,079 | 34,630 | 3 | Just a Mini Ha-Ha . | Amazingly enough , here's a Daffy Duck cartoon that actually gives him a backstory ! According to ' The Daffy Duckaroo ' , it seems that our Merrie Melodies mallard WAS a big singing-cowboy star , but he gave it up because ( as he says ) " I want to be a lone . . . ranger . " If this premise had come along a few years ... |
418,640 | 1,609,079 | 31,014 | 3 | . . . and I'll be Enemy # 6001 . | I'm intrigued that Paul Kelly and Tom Neal are both in the cast of ' 6000 Enemies ' . Kelly and Neal both had prolific careers in tough-guy roles , but they are now remembered largely for the fact that , in real life , both of them ( separately ) did prison time for manslaughter . The fact that ' 6000 Enemies ' is a pr... |
418,340 | 1,609,079 | 46,144 | 3 | This uncle isn't funny | I'm always intrigued whenever a film director remakes his or her own work . What do they want to do differently this time ? ' Der Onkel aus Amerika ' ( ' The Uncle from America ' ) , directed by Carl Boese , is a remake of his 1931 film ' Man Braucht kein Geld ' . Each film gives an interesting depiction of Germany ( a... |
418,693 | 1,609,079 | 151,085 | 3 | Beware of Greeks with Italian accents . | Some animation fans have a very high regard for the output of the short-lived Van Beuren studio . Van Beuren toons tend to be brightly coloured and upbeat , yet I dislike them : they're poorly animated and their stories have very little real conflict . I much prefer the cynicism and violence of the Warner Brothers cart... |
419,272 | 1,609,079 | 34,560 | 3 | Sorry , Damon . . . | Damon Runyon's short story ' Butch Minds the Baby ' is probably the funniest thing Runyon ever wrote ; it's certainly one of his most widely anthologised stories . I have a fairly low threshold for Runyon's world : I find most of his fictional characters extremely contrived and implausible , and I strongly dislike his ... |
418,642 | 1,609,079 | 273,497 | 3 | Hocus pocus , fix the focus | ' Ching Ling Foo ' was the stage name of Chi Ling Qua , a native of Peking who studied the stagecraft of illusionists in his native China , then performed those tricks with tremendous success for audiences in Europe and America in the late Victorian and early Edwardian era . Ching always made it clear that his magic tr... |
418,418 | 1,609,079 | 31,214 | 3 | Wanna buy a dead duck ? | Joe Penner was an extremely untalented and physically unappetising man who starred in a few low-budget comedies . Basically , Joe Penner was Lou Costello without the sex appeal . ( Or Frankie Howerd with less effeminacy . ) If Penner is now remembered at all , it's only because he was the source of a catchphrase that c... |
419,550 | 1,609,079 | 151,294 | 3 | Kelp beyond help ; Art Carney didn't need this . | During the late 1940s and early ' 50s , a popular children's programme on American radio was ' Land of the Lost ' , in which a boy and a girl travelled through a magical underwater kingdom ( the realm of lost toys ) guided by a talking fish named Red Lantern . The series was so popular in its time that the very early E... |
419,161 | 1,609,079 | 8,034 | 3 | Spot the hidden " V " s | O . Henry's short story ' The Green Door ' is not among his best-known tales , but it's one of my favourite O . Henry stories ( marred only by some unfortunate racial dialect ) . Rudolf Steiner is a shy piano salesman who longs for adventure . He seems to get some one night in Manhattan's theatre district , when he spo... |
419,629 | 1,609,079 | 26,860 | 3 | Starts out amusing , but goes downhill . | Charles Ruggles was an extremely annoying comedian , rather like Clifton Webb without the bitchiness . Yet he was hugely popular in the 1930s . Ruggles tended to play henpecked little fusspots . One reason I find him annoying is that there are several movies - - ' Roadhouse Nights ' and ' Murder in the Zoo ' are good e... |
418,884 | 1,609,079 | 36,650 | 3 | Parley-voo les Garcons aux Bouwerie ? | Sometimes it's hard to tell one Bowery Boys movie from another . They tend to have similar plots , similar settings and interchangeable titles . This 1944 movie is named ' Block Busters ' , but the plot of this movie doesn't fit that title any more aptly than the plots of half a dozen other Bowery Boys movies . The new... |
418,695 | 1,609,079 | 788,085 | 3 | Feat of clay . | Some of my American friends are huge fans of the Gumby animation shorts by Art Clokey , which don't appeal to me at all . Invariably , it turns out that these people first encountered Gumby when they were small children . I never even heard of Gumby until I was well stuck into adulthood and I had already encountered mo... |
418,718 | 1,609,079 | 928,050 | 3 | Undistinguished extinguisher . | The print I viewed of this film ( at the 2006 Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy ) had opening credits which gave its full title as ' THE Magic Extinguisher ' ( my emphasis added ) , which makes more sense than merely ' Magic Extinguisher ' . The titular object isn't really an extinguisher : it's a magician's prop ... |
419,201 | 1,609,079 | 26,978 | 3 | Which key gets me out of here ? | George M Cohan's success as a songwriter and performer has obscured the fact that he also wrote or co-wrote many plays , most of which were very successful in their day . But Cohan's plays have dated badly . He relied heavily on one very contrived device . Most of Cohan's plays feature a wide assortment of very old-fas... |
419,039 | 1,609,079 | 22,015 | 4 | Tin Pan Alibi | ' June Moon ' was originally a 1929 Broadway comedy by George S . Kaufman and Ring Lardner . I've never understood why Ring Lardner is so highly regarded . Whenever anyone praises Lardner , they always make a pretence of searching through his entire body of work to find just the right line that epitomises Lardner's sty... |
419,275 | 1,609,079 | 17,626 | 4 | The Tannoy is annoying . | ' The Beautiful Fraud ' is a romantic drama with strong comedy elements . Billie Dove , who never especially appealed to me , portrays Millicent Howard : the hat-check girl in the restaurant of a posh Manhattan hotel . Millicent ( what an unattractive name ! ) has social pretensions , so she claims to be living at the ... |
419,245 | 1,609,079 | 193,239 | 4 | A truffle , a trifle . | I'm trying to think of a British or American film figure whose career is similar to Sacha Guitry's , and the nearest I can get is Preston Sturges . . . who was himself quite French-influenced , having spent his formative years in Paris and being a lifelong Francophile . Guitry was an original . An extremely prolific pl... |
418,872 | 1,609,079 | 49 | 4 | The manly art of fisticuffs . | This crude early film was shown at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy , in October 2006 . The very earliest film-makers ( such as Birt Acres , who made this film ) often used their cameras to record sporting events : this saved them the cost of hiring actors and staging scripts , and early nickelodeon customers... |
419,144 | 1,609,079 | 23,846 | 4 | Blondell is phony baloney as a girl named Tony | I saw ' Broadway Bad ' in May of this year , at the Cinevent festival in Columbus , Ohio . If I hadn't been attending the festival anyway , I would never have bothered to see this movie , as it stars an actress whom I loathe : Joan Blondell . Always cheap , vulgar , squawk-voiced and unattractive , Blondell is in her u... |
419,513 | 1,609,079 | 13,064 | 4 | Brazil , where the nuts come from . | I saw ' The Destiny ' in July 1996 at the Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna ; they screened a restored print with the original Portuguese intertitles . This creaky melodrama is an extremely silly film , and I sat through it only because I've seen very few Portuguese silent films and I'd wanted to get a better sense ... |
418,722 | 1,609,079 | 152,006 | 4 | Strictly from hunger . | Warner Brothers ( consistently the studio with the best animation ) produced some very funny cartoons featuring caricatures of real people . . . for instance , a couple of Loony Toons starring a worm who looks and sounds like Jerry Colonna , which I laughed at when I watched them . ' Pleased to Eat You ' is a one-off c... |
419,568 | 1,609,079 | 15,276 | 4 | Worthless layabouts , but we're meant to like ' em . | Let's keep this quick and painless . ' Riders Up ' stars Creighton Hale and George Cooper as a pair of compulsive gamblers who live in Kate Price's boarding-house , but who are always behind on the rent . ( As I said , they're compulsive gamblers . ) Hale's character is nicknamed the Information Kid , because he allege... |
419,259 | 1,609,079 | 33,145 | 4 | Twinkle , Twinkle , little star quality : VERY little . | The funniest thing in this movie is its title . ' The Golden Fleecing ' has a similar premise to Danny Kaye's unfunny comedy ' The Man from the Diner's Club ' : a gormless hero , on behalf of his employer , extends financial obligation to a gangster , then must imperil himself implausibly in order to undo the damage . ... |
419,489 | 1,609,079 | 43,915 | 4 | Archie Leach's weirdest film | Some movies take place in their own weird universe , but they usually proclaim that weirdness in the opening frame . ' People Will Talk ' starts out looking like a conventional Cary Grant comedy ( from his middle period ) but it becomes gradually weirder in subtle ways . I wasn't surprised to learn that this movie is a... |
418,651 | 1,609,079 | 17,588 | 4 | Jumping Gemini | Oh , blimey ! This is one of those movies about identical twins : one good , one evil . How often does this actually happen in real life ? High-society hostess Evelyn Trevelyan ( a name which almost rhymes ) is happily married to Adam Trevelyan . . . never suspecting Adam's secret , namely that he has an evil identical... |
419,428 | 1,609,079 | 17,586 | 4 | He likes her duchy . | ' Young April ' seems to be an attempt to cash in on the success of the Ruritanian romances such as ' The Prisoner of Zenda ' and ' Beverly of Graustark ' that were so popular in the 1920s . Much of the plot of this film manages to be both contrived and predictable . . . yet the actors give appealing performances , and... |
418,729 | 1,609,079 | 173 | 4 | Counterfeit conflagration | The Yorkshire-born showman J . Stuart Blackton was an important figure in the early history of American movies . Most of his early films were newsreel-style records of actual current events . . . but their historical value is compromised , because Blackton's films are often re-enactments ( often blatantly faked ) of th... |
418,590 | 1,609,079 | 172 | 4 | His hand bone's connected to her thigh bone | ' The X-Ray Fiend ' is a very short film produced and directed by the Victorian showman George Albert Smith . This is a ' trick ' film : one of many such films made before 1910 , inspired by the movies of Georges Melies , in which the very thin plot of the film is merely a vehicle for trick photography . ' The X-Ray Fi... |
419,619 | 1,609,079 | 24,027 | 4 | Chopsticks and choo-choos | ' Fleuchtlinge ' translates into English as ' flightlings ' or ' refugees ' . From a modern viewpoint , it's easy to dismiss this movie as German propaganda , 1933 vintage . Actually , it's a fitfully suspenseful action drama which depicts its German protagonists ( and Germans in general ) more sympathetically than den... |
418,812 | 1,609,079 | 15,229 | 4 | Intemperate Temperance lecture | Once again , a movie that was ' lost forever ' turns out merely to have been mislaid . ' Pied Piper Malone ' was in the Gosfilmofond archives in Russia , and has now returned to circulation . Having visited Gosfilmofond , I know for a fact that a large number of Hollywood silent films - - and quite a few British silent... |
419,709 | 1,609,079 | 13,209 | 4 | ' The Guttersnipe ' is utter tripe . | I screened a print of ' The Guttersnipe ' that had a reel missing , so I missed an important plot point . . . or maybe this movie's script just didn't bother to resolve it properly . The story appears to take place in the United States , but the main character works as a chambermaid for an English milady ( Carmen Phill... |
418,805 | 1,609,079 | 13,194 | 4 | ' Golf ' takes a mulligan . | I was pleasantly surprised to spot my friend Joe Rock in a supporting role in this Larry Semon movie . Joe Rock kindly permitted me to interview him in his home a few years before his death . Rock was a real utility man in the early days of American films . With time out for combat service in the Great War , he put his... |
418,265 | 1,609,079 | 268,600 | 4 | a sour Lemmon | Each year since 1973 , the American Film Institute have given their Lifetime Achievement Award to a prominent film star or director . The choice of whom to honour has been motivated by various factors . . . such as whose name will sell the most tickets . The guest of honour must be alive , and must be willing to attend... |
418,876 | 1,609,079 | 50,483 | 4 | Franco-American spaghetti | I dislike children's movies like " The Happy Road " which romanticise the experiences of runaway children . In kids ' movies , runaways tend to have lots of fun and get into little or no danger , having adventures with picturesque hobos and indulgent old ladies . I dread the thought of what might happen to a mildly tro... |
419,399 | 1,609,079 | 438,076 | 4 | Art Carney lets it all hang out ; Lucy wets the bed . | I'll say straight off that I've never been a Lucille Ball fan . But I'll give her some credit , or rather half-credit , for attempting to do something different here . The TV movie ' Happy Anniversary and Goodbye ' was Ball's one-off attempt to portray a credible human being , rather than her usual wacky redhead . Unfo... |
418,594 | 1,609,079 | 11,243 | 4 | Beware of Froggie the Vampire ! | David Devant was one of the three great music-hall illusionists of Victorian England . His near-contemporaries Nevil Maskelyne and George A . Cooke specialised in large-scale effects that took up an entire stage ( usually the Egyptian Hall in London ) and which could be viewed from the most distant seat in the gallery ... |
419,477 | 1,609,079 | 493,075 | 4 | This is what happens when you swallow some bull ! | Here's a film within a film ! In 1907 , the Gaumont Films company in France made a slapstick comedy ( silent , of course ) with a title that would translate from the French as ' A gentleman who ate some bull ' . I'm aware of at least one ( incomplete ) print of that original film , which was screened in October 2007 at... |
419,704 | 1,609,079 | 11,257 | 4 | Keep young and beautiful . . . | I saw ' Hairpins ' at Cinefest 2006 in Liverpool , New York ; it was a last-minute substitute for a James Kirkwood movie I'd lot rather have seen instead . A great deal of the narrative in ' Hairpins ' implies that a woman's worth is based on her physical appearance . I'd like to hope that this sort of story wouldn't b... |
419,615 | 1,609,079 | 262,479 | 4 | This is no ' Cabaret ' | ' I Get Out and You Stay Here ' is a German screwball comedy ( or is that an oxymoron ? ) from 1931 . The year is significant . At this point , Germany has recovered ( somewhat ) from the crippling economic problems of the 1920s that gave German film goers nothing to laugh at , but Hitler is still not yet in charge . .... |
419,672 | 1,609,079 | 54,759 | 4 | . . . but don't come too often | ' Come September ' is an amusing bit of trifle that falls well short of hilarity . One major flaw in this film ( for modern viewers ) is that it stars Rock Hudson as a ladies ' man : a casting decision which is apt to provoke unintended laughter . But fair do's here : at the time this film was made , Hudson gave some v... |
418,939 | 1,609,079 | 200,588 | 4 | Some Turks eat garlic . . . | ' Dracula in Istanbul ' deserves credit for an honest title , at least . This Turkish-made film sticks fairly close to the original plot of Bram Stoker's novel ( greatly simplified ) , apart from moving the action to Istanbul in the present day ( 1953 ) , presumably as a budget-saving device and in order to make the fi... |
419,079 | 1,609,079 | 6,349 | 4 | Lubitsch as Mr Doubtfire | ' Wo Ist Mein Schatz ? ' ( roughly , ' Where's My Sweetie-Pie ? ' ) is a very early comedy written and directed by and starring Ernst Lubitsch . Although Lubitsch went on to become one of the most important directors in movie history , this early effort is nothing much . In fact , ' Where's My Sweetie-Pie ? ' has almos... |
419,360 | 1,609,079 | 21,658 | 4 | Don't try this at home , kids ! | Whenever I hear a reference to ' the Little Rascals ' , I cringe . This is partly because I just don't find those kids very funny , but largely because there never really was a ' Little Rascals ' movie . Hal Roach's long-running series of low-budget kiddie comedies were actually called the ' Our Gang ' shorts ( ' Our G... |
419,321 | 1,609,079 | 26,570 | 4 | Thinly-plotted thick-ear | CONTAINS SPOILERS . ' King Solomon of Broadway ' is one of several low-budget movies that tough-guy actor Edmund Lowe made in the waning days of his career , teamed with director Alan Crosland . . . whose career was also in a downhill phase at this point , but who might have made a comeback had he not died in a road ac... |
419,304 | 1,609,079 | 19,907 | 4 | I just can't get Inuit . | I was able to screen an incomplete print of this early talkie , which features some impressive use of music and ambient sound . The star of the film is Lenore Ulric , who was a popular actress on Broadway ( often co-starring with her husband Sidney Blackmer ) , yet who never caught on in movies . . . probably because ,... |
418,530 | 1,609,079 | 54,651 | 4 | ' Flat ' is the word for it . | Critics tend to ignore director Frank Tashlin's films , except for the two starring Jayne Mansfield . When they do review Tashlin's work , they invariably mention that he began as an animator ( Warner Brothers ' Looney Toons ) , and that Tashlin's live-action movies tend to feature cartoonish characters and impossible ... |
419,290 | 1,609,079 | 19,923 | 4 | Speak , spook ! | ' The Ghost Talks ' isn't a horror movie : it's a comedy , but it isn't even a spooky old-house comedy , as there's no whiff of the supernatural . This movie became slightly weirder in hindsight , due to the presence of Stepin Fetchit . He gives his usual ' yassuh ' performance here , but this time round his character ... |
419,022 | 1,609,079 | 43,618 | 4 | Bobby Howes should have sued . | The oddly-named Vera-Ellen was to movie dancing what Sonja Henie was to movie ice-skating : blonde , girlish , always delightful to watch , but not an especially good actress and usually lumbered with weak material . When I watch Vera-Ellen's sexy apache dance with Gene Kelly in ' Words and Music ' , I can't help notic... |
419,342 | 1,609,079 | 9,189 | 4 | Dated satire , vital viewing | Most people's knowledge of George M . Cohan begins and ends with " Yankee Doodle Dandy " , which features an embarrassing scene in which retired song-and-dance man Cohan ( played by James Cagney ) tells some jive-talking jitterbugs that he never appeared in any movies . This is simply not true , as Cagney himself knew ... |
418,676 | 1,609,079 | 108,649 | 4 | ' Zero Patience ' : zero budget , but some pleasant songs . | ' Zero Patience ' is a low-budget musical about the Aids crisis that actually treats the subject intelligently yet manages to be fun , light-hearted and optimistic . The film is targeted for an audience of gay males ( or , at least , people who enjoy watching male nudity ) but I liked it anyway . The title is a wordpla... |
418,637 | 1,609,079 | 13,031 | 4 | Osgood Perkins shines in a weak film | One of the very best silent films I've ever seen is ' Puritan Passions ' . Several of the people involved in that film worked together a year earlier on ' The Cradle Buster ' , so I screened this movie with high hopes . Serves me right : I was disappointed . Glenn Hunter ( age 28 at this time ) stars as Benjamin ' Swee... |
419,529 | 1,609,079 | 122,855 | 4 | Fool's mate . | The title ' 8x8 ' refers to a chessboard : an order-8 square grid . The cast list of this film will look very appetising indeed to anyone who is interested in art of the mid-20th century , as several important artists participated in this movie and appear on screen . But it pains me to report that ' 8x8 ' is basically ... |
419,244 | 1,609,079 | 17,767 | 4 | The Marx Brothers did it better . | ' The College Widow ' is an obscure comedy which is notable for inspiring a much better-known ( and much funnier ) comedy . The Marx Brothers ' classic ' Horse Feathers ' is largely a parody of this movie . ' Horse Feathers ' ( 1932 ) featured much dialogue about Thelma Todd's character being a ' college widow ' , but ... |
418,426 | 1,609,079 | 21,506 | 4 | Look , mum ! No Hans ! | ' Der Unsterbliche Lump ' ( ' The Undying Scalawag ' ) is a semi-musical starring Gustav Fröhlich , who is best-known for playing the lead role in the greatest film of all time : ' Metropolis ' . Here , he depicts a fairly similar personality in a very different story . Hans Ritter ( Fröhlich ) is a young schoolmaster ... |
419,064 | 1,609,079 | 77,964 | 4 | Harmonicas and clooties . | ' My Way Home ' is the last of three autobiographical films written and directed by Bill Douglas , recounting his childhood , adolescence and early manhood . Although I never met Douglas , I was present for a couple of hours during a location shoot ( near Cerne Abbas , Dorset ) for his best and most elaborate film ' Co... |
418,517 | 1,609,079 | 32,494 | 4 | ' Schiller ' no thriller ; Casper's ghostly performance | During the Third Reich of 1933-1945 , Germany's nationalised film industry produced more than 1 , 100 films . Surprisingly , only about 250 of these were blatantly Nazi propaganda : the vast majority were merely escapist entertainment . But the Nazi leaders who controlled the film industry were clever enough to realise... |
418,713 | 1,609,079 | 41,626 | 4 | Thud and blunder | I sought out this 1949 movie ' The Man from Yesterday ' because one of my mentors ( the American journalist George Markstein ) wrote a novel several decades later with the same title , and I wanted to know if this film was any influence upon him . I doubt it , now I've seen this . Markstein's novel is a taut spy thrill... |
419,253 | 1,609,079 | 188,915 | 4 | Let's play the Minute Game ! | Alexander Woollcott is now remembered primarily as the inspiration for ' The Man Who Came to Dinner ' . He was also the prototype for Addison DeWitt , the drama critic played by George Sanders in his Oscar-winning performance in ' All About Eve ' . There was more than a trace of ' ham ' in Woollcott ; he starred on Bro... |
418,622 | 1,609,079 | 7,040 | 4 | Warner's bloodless performance | During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries , an unusual symbiosis developed between the social circles of Europe ( including Britain ) and the United States . Nouveau-riche families in the States had money but were self-conscious about their social status . European blueblood males with noble titles but n... |
419,627 | 1,609,079 | 204,239 | 4 | This film needs a " Maxim's " silencer . | Farce is comedy based on misunderstanding : if the characters would stop and explain themselves to each other , there'd be no story . In Britain , the farce tradition has been embodied by the Aldwych farces of Ben Travers , the Whitehall farces starring Brian Rix , and various bumpheries by Ray Cooney . In France , the... |
418,444 | 1,609,079 | 12,631 | 4 | They'll be comin ' round the mountain while you snore . . . | I saw this Japanese movie in 2005 at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy . The festival screened a print from the National Film Centre , Tokyo that had its original Japanese intertitles , with English subtitles added . The film's title is offered in English as ' Souls on the Road ' . Idealistic young Koichiro is... |
418,891 | 1,609,079 | 24,419 | 4 | About turn ! Look lively with it ! | A glance at the cast list of ' Orders Is Orders ' would indicate that this is a very funny movie . Charlotte Greenwood ( one of my favourites ) and veteran comic actor James Gleason are aboard . Even more intriguingly , this movie was made in England with a primarily British cast . The thought of Brooklyn-accented Glea... |
419,514 | 1,609,079 | 173,340 | 4 | Burnt cork and over-ripe ham . | There's a decent print of this movie in the Library of Congress . There is no cartoon cat in this film . Four months before this movie's premiere , an animated cartoon was released with the same title , starring George Herriman's character Krazy Kat . The sisters Rosetta and Vivian Duncan toured in vaudeville for years... |
418,802 | 1,609,079 | 248,078 | 4 | Defective detectives . | If Larry Semon had made more comedies like ' Her Boy Friend ' , his career might have lasted longer and ended more happily . Semon's typical screen character was a gormless menial labourer , a stumbling simpleton who came up trumps through dumb luck and accident . In ' Her Boy Friend ' , amazingly enough , Larry Semon ... |
419,589 | 1,609,079 | 18,137 | 4 | Surgery perjury | George Melford's reputation has risen sharply in recent years . For decades , his best-known film was ' The Sheik ' , starring Valentino . In the 1990s , a Cuban archive released a rare print of the Spanish-language version of ' Dracula ' which Melford directed concurrently with Tod Browning's English-language version ... |
418,311 | 1,609,079 | 18,095 | 4 | chi-chi choo-choo cha-cha | ' A Little Journey ' isn't much of a trip , but most of the action takes place aboard a train . . . so the characters keep moving , even when the story is dead on the rails . William Haines plays a brash young man who meets Claire Windsor in Grand Central Station and tries to make a play for her , but she's not having ... |
418,988 | 1,609,079 | 144,710 | 4 | The tide went out , and forgot to come back . . . | ' The Ebb-Tide ' is based on a novel by Robert Louis Stevenson and his American-born stepson Lloyd Osbourne . This 1998 TV version features some stunning location shooting and some impressive art direction , notably in regard to the Victorian three-masted ship ( on which the leading actors spend much of their screen ti... |
419,543 | 1,609,079 | 4,942 | 4 | Near-future war fantasia | ' The Battle Cry of Peace ' is a weird film , depicting a near-future military invasion of the United States , and the subjugation of the American people . Surprisingly , another film on this same theme ( ' The Fall of a Nation ' ) was made only a few months later . This theme was considered very timely during the Firs... |
418,778 | 1,609,079 | 14,738 | 4 | Matt Moore steals Warner Oland's moustache | ' The Breaking Point ' is a great title for a suspense movie ; unfortunately , this particular movie isn't a suspenser , and it's not even an especially good movie . Matt Moore , sporting dapper clothes and an annoying little moustache ( I think he stole it from Warner Oland ) , has something or other to do with a murd... |
418,455 | 1,609,079 | 212,796 | 4 | Don't let that swastika fool you . . . | I saw this silent British comedy at Cinefest 2006 in Liverpool , New York . There was some murmuring in the ( mostly American ) audience when somebody spotted the name of this movie's production company in the credits : Swastika Films . Don't worry , folks . In 1919 , Germany's National Socialist movement hadn't got st... |
418,531 | 1,609,079 | 245,294 | 4 | ILL-MET by ' Moonlight ' . . . | ' Moonlight ' is ( so far ) the only movie I've ever seen that was shot in Luxembourg , but I fervently hope it's not a typical example of Luxembourgeoise cinema . This movie is a lot more arty-tarty than it needs to be . For starters , the title is nearly irrelevant : some of the action takes place in a house named Mo... |
419,282 | 1,609,079 | 32,191 | 4 | Faux folksy foxy fuss | ' Alias the Deacon ' is based on a 1925 Broadway play , originally filmed silent in 1928 . This talkie remake stars radio comedian Bob Burns , who must have seemed a good choice for the role with his southern accent and folksy demeanour . Alas , Burns was no actor . His role here requires him to convey two personalitie... |
418,609 | 1,609,079 | 22,392 | 4 | Is that guy John Waters ? | ' Six Cylinder Love ' is based on a stage play which dates back to the period ( before World War One ) when automobiles first became ( barely ) affordable for middle-class Americans , and when it was still somewhat of a novelty to own a car . . . or even to know somebody who owned one . The cast list implies that this ... |
418,595 | 1,609,079 | 35,602 | 4 | Dr Seuss Puppetoon | Almost all of the children's books by Ted Geisel ( " Dr Seuss " ) were written in rhymed couplets . One of the very few exceptions was ' The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins ' , which Dr Seuss wrote in straight prose . Freed from the constraints of rhyme and metre , Geisel was able to write a deeper and more complex sto... |
419,631 | 1,609,079 | 24,484 | 4 | Hitler comes to Hollywood | A previous IMDb reviewer has stated that ' Rafter Romance ' is a ' rip-off ' ( that's the other reviewer's term ) of a German musical called ' Me By Day , You By Night ' . Apparently that reviewer is unaware that both of these films have borrowed their premise from ' Box and Cox ' , an English play written by John Madd... |
418,494 | 1,609,079 | 14,607 | 4 | Fin goes mental ; a Keystone Cop directs . | The title ' White Wings ' refers to the elaborate white uniforms ( with solar topees ! ) that American street-cleaners wore in the early 20th century . Fans of Laurel & Hardy will be intrigued that Laurel appears here , pre-Hardy but with James Finlayson , who was so memorably a foil for ' the boys ' in their classic c... |
418,267 | 1,609,079 | 76,296 | 4 | Spencer Tracy did it better . | ' The Last Hurrah ' was originally a best-selling novel by Edwin O'Connor . . . who is not ( to my knowledge ) related to actor Carroll O'Connor , but their common surname may have drawn Carroll O'Connor to this material . Edwin O'Connor's novel is a very thinly disguised account of the shenanigans of James Curley , th... |
418,683 | 1,609,079 | 845 | 4 | A poor reception for ' Deception ' . | I saw this short drama at the 1998 Cinema Muto festival in Pordenone ; they screened a print from the Museum of Modern Art with the original intertitles missing . IMDb's synopsis is accurate . This is very much a Victorian drama , with morality ditto . I was deeply annoyed by one sequence : when the husband finally mak... |
419,092 | 1,609,079 | 22,089 | 4 | Thelma Todd rehearses her murder . | Hal Roach produced his comedy series " The Boy Friends " concurrently with his Laurel & Hardy and Our Gang shorts , yet the Boy Friends never achieved the success of those classics . The three girls in the series - - Dorothy Granger , Mary Kornman and dishwater-dull Gertrude Messinger - - have very little screen presen... |
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