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418,911 | 1,609,079 | 32,132 | 5 | Quit hoggin ' the toboggan | ' Winter Carnival ' is froth ; enjoyable and well-made of its kind , but it won't leave you with any major memories . I took the time to view it only because it was written by Lester Cole , a major Hollywood screenwriter whose work nonetheless was extremely variable . This isn't one of Cole's best films , but it's cert... |
419,570 | 1,609,079 | 202,208 | 5 | . . . but only 30 cents ' worth of sense . | Several things about this movie " $30 , 000 " intrigued me very much , not least its unusual title . This is a haunted-house film . When I mentioned a haunted house , you likely envisioned a creaky old mansion . There's another thing that intrigued me : the haunted house in ' $30 , 000 ' is a brand-new block of flats ,... |
418,370 | 1,609,079 | 53,214 | 5 | Double-duty daddy | In the 1950s , Clifton Webb starred in many films for Twentieth-Century Fox . In private life , Webb was ( how can I put this tactfully ? ) a very effeminate bachelor with a serious mother fixation . For some reason , Fox kept trying to convince movie audiences that Clifton Webb was a family man , repeatedly casting hi... |
418,830 | 1,609,079 | 33,787 | 5 | Scientific feats , do yo ' stuff ! | ' King of the Zombies ' is a low-budget horror movie with some intentional humour and rather too much UN-intentional humour . The leading players are best known for their performances as comic-strip characters : Joan Woodbury , extremely beautiful here , whose career peaked with the title role in the 1945 serial ' Bren... |
419,658 | 1,609,079 | 369,648 | 5 | Gorgeous Gothic , scrawny script | The Lady's Maid's Bell is one of those ever-so-earnest British TV productions with all the elements that make this sort of programming so popular with the Anglophiles who watch PBS in America : a period setting , elaborate production design , a wide range of Brit accents up and down the social scale , and a script ba... |
419,375 | 1,609,079 | 24,189 | 5 | If you were the last man on Earth . . . | It's Great to Be Alive is one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen . It's a science-fiction comedy , similar in spirit to " Just Imagine " ( 1930 ) , although not quite as musicalised . This is a dumb movie , but it's so cheerful in its mindlessness that you'll have a good time watching it . . . ONCE . I'm not sure ... |
418,206 | 1,609,079 | 6,883 | 5 | Tyrone's Power failure | ' John Needham's Double ' is a creaky melodrama which relies upon a huge stack of coincidences , of precisely the sort which would appeal to Charles Dickens or Wilkie Collins , but which modern viewers would reject as deeply contrived . This is the sort of story that gives Victorian melodrama a bad name . If there had ... |
418,234 | 1,609,079 | 1,164,621 | 5 | Don't blink , or you'll miss it . | ' Nightwalking ' is a very short film ; it's really more of an anecdote than a full-fledged story . We see an attractive young woman walking down a dark street while we hear her worried thoughts in voice-over . Then we see a slightly scruffy young man walking behind her . His voice-overed thoughts indicate his concern ... |
418,401 | 1,609,079 | 12,482 | 5 | Passable ' Pim ' , possibly past . | A . A . Milne is of course remembered for ' Winnie the Pooh ' , but during his lifetime he was known for a wide range of writings . He regularly contributed humour pieces to ' Punch ' magazine , and his novel ' The Red House Mystery ' ( a whodunit that's also a howdunit ) was in the 1930s considered one of the great wo... |
418,684 | 1,609,079 | 901 | 5 | Wedlock deadlock | I saw this film at the 1998 Cinema Muto festival in Pordenone ; they screened a print from the Museum of Modern Art with the original intertitles missing . Fortunately , the action in this short comedy is simple enough to follow . Mrs Jones receives a telegram announcing that her mother is coming to visit . Mr Jones ex... |
419,162 | 1,609,079 | 28,135 | 5 | F . D . R . , don't quit your day job . . . | The President's Mystery isn't really a mystery , but it's a well-made B-picture with an interesting premise . President Franklin D . Roosevelt was fond of reading murder mysteries . On 12 May 1935 , at a White House luncheon , FDR offered his lunch guests an idea for a mystery : How could a millionaire disappear and ... |
418,385 | 1,609,079 | 33,496 | 5 | A preview of ' Book Revue ' | Not even cartoons are immune to remakes . Five years after making ' A Coy Decoy ' , Robert Clampett would remake this cartoon as the better ( and better-known ) ' Book Revue ' . Both toons have the same premise : a wolf chases Daffy Duck through a bookshop , with the titles of the books supplying gags . We get here one... |
418,621 | 1,609,079 | 25,319 | 5 | She refuses to Czech herself . | I don't know who gets to decide that these movies are ' lost ' : several years ago , I viewed a print of ' Iza néni ' with its original Magyar ( not German ) soundtrack and Czech subtitles . . . a bilingualism which is somewhat ironic , given this movie's storyline . I attended a screening at which another audience mem... |
419,354 | 1,609,079 | 22,792 | 5 | Two-fisted he-man chick-flick | This race-car drama , directed by Howard Hawks , was a personal project of his : Hawks had a lifelong passion for stock-car racing , and he persuaded several top racers to appear in this film as themselves ( although demonstrating very little screen presence ) . I was expecting ' The Crowd Roars ' to be quintessential ... |
418,774 | 1,609,079 | 31,604 | 5 | About 998 faces short . . . | Despite what we think to the contrary , silent-film actor Lon Chaney was not widely known as ' The Man of a Thousand Faces ' during his lifetime . In fact , I can think of only one Chaney film ( an obscure one : ' The Trap ' ) which used the ' Thousand Faces ' tagline in its advertising . When Paramount released ' The ... |
418,649 | 1,609,079 | 16,569 | 5 | Social change | In 1993 , there was a movie called ' Twenty Bucks ' , in which the camera followed a $20 bill from one person to the next . Here's the exact same idea , done more than 60 years earlier in Germany . Considering that this is a German drama , it has a surprisingly light-hearted tone . The central object in this movie is a... |
418,820 | 1,609,079 | 40,107 | 5 | One midget too many . | The 1957 film ' The Buster Keaton Story ' was ostensibly a biopic of silent-film comedian Keaton , but went far out of its way to tell Keaton's life story inaccurately . . . and came up with a fiction that wasn't even very entertaining . A vastly better film , ' The Comic ' ( 1969 ) , depicted the life and career of an... |
419,322 | 1,609,079 | 29,626 | 5 | Pangborn's great , Butterworth curdles , Lamour needs a makeover | ' Swing High , Swing Low ' is a semi-musical , based on a Broadway play ( not a musical ) called ' Burlesque ' which was originally filmed as ' The Dance of Life ' when censors wouldn't approve the original title . The play and the original film took place in vaudeville and burlesque : this remake , surprisingly , spen... |
419,106 | 1,609,079 | 408,516 | 5 | England's Abbott & Costello | The cross-talk comedy team of Jewel & Warriss were Britain's version of Abbott & Costello . Both teams featured a well-dressed straight-man who easily exploited and baffled an ill-dressed bumbler . Whereas Bud Abbott was dapper , his counterpart Ben Warriss onstage typically dressed as if he was on his way to a Coronat... |
418,766 | 1,609,079 | 22,864 | 5 | Weak drama , one good comedy scene | ' The Expert ' is based on a play titled ' Minick ' , and the name change is probably down to the fact that Chic Sale plays the leading role . For many years , Sale was a vaudeville monologist who did rural material about hicks and hillbillies . More importantly , Sale was also the author of a book called ' The Special... |
418,247 | 1,609,079 | 16,628 | 5 | anything Yukon do . . . | ' The Barrier ' is based on a novel by Rex Beach , who wrote tales of two-fisted he-men . Oddly , in this story , the most sympathetic of the two-fisted he-men is named Gale Gaylord . Audiences for Rex Beach stories expected to see a good slug fest , as in his epic novel ' The Spoilers ' . In ' The Barrier ' , there's ... |
418,347 | 1,609,079 | 341,266 | 5 | Good golly gosh ! | ' Bhoot ' is the Hindi word for ' ghost ' , so this Bollywood spook-movie has a generic title . . . and that's a symptom of this film's biggest problem . ' Bhoot ' offers a pick-'n'-mix of scenes inspired by earlier ( and better ) movies , including ' The Tenant ' , ' The Exorcist ' , ' Carnival of Souls ' , ' Repulsio... |
419,320 | 1,609,079 | 25,196 | 5 | Feverish | CONTAINS SPOILERS . ' Grand Canary ' is based on a novel by Scots author A . J . Cronin , who specialised in stories about doctors caught in ethical crises . The star of this film is Warner Baxter , whom I usually like , but his performance here seems to be a practice run for his later role in ' The Prisoner of Shark I... |
419,528 | 1,609,079 | 157,263 | 5 | Quick and painless . | Kurt Kren was an Austrian filmmaker of some real talent who never quite pulled off a significant film . His frame compositions are often excellent , and he manages to do much with cheap equipment and no discernible production budget . Kren's major failure is an inability or an unwillingness to join his compositions int... |
418,209 | 1,609,079 | 25,148 | 5 | The locations are better than the script . | Jenny Jugo was a Teutonic brunette actress who specialised in light comedy ingenue roles , similar to Doris Day . When she made the film with the intriguing title ' Fräulein Frau ' - - roughly ' Miss Mistress ' - - Jugo was 29 years old , yet she is cast here as an 18-year-old girl-woman . . . and she is utterly believ... |
419,133 | 1,609,079 | 148,486 | 5 | Where's Bullwinkle when we need him ? | ' Moose on the Loose ' is mid-level Heckle and Jeckle . Although I'm a fan of the two magpies , I'm always faintly annoyed by Jeckle's alleged English accent , which wouldn't fool anyone in Britain . For some reason , in ' Moose on the Loose ' is accent is even dodgier ( and more elaborate ) than usual . Trying to spot... |
418,567 | 1,609,079 | 13,830 | 5 | Skip this and see ' The Jazz Singer ' . | I saw ' This Ancient Law ' ( subtitled ' Baruch ' ) in October 2007 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone , Italy ; they screened a print from the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin . The print had a running time of 107 minutes ; I could have cut out 15 minutes without losing any of the plot . IMDb's detailed synopsis... |
418,271 | 1,609,079 | 16,014 | 5 | Fast and loose ? No ; slow and Loos . | ' Learning to Love ' was written by Anita Loos and John Emerson , her much older husband . Loos and Emerson were long-time collaborators , but in her memoirs Loos claimed that most of their scripts were written entirely by Loos while her husband took most of the credit . Her claim sounds plausible , but Loos later told... |
418,903 | 1,609,079 | 844,291 | 5 | Hang up , Cohen ! | I first heard about ' Cohen on the Telephone ' in a roundabout way . One of the most hilarious pieces by the brilliant humour author S . J . Perelman is ' Waiting for Santy ' , a brilliantly funny parody of Clifford Odets's deadly-serious stage plays . Even if you're not familiar with Odets's work , ' Waiting for Santy... |
418,382 | 1,609,079 | 27,458 | 5 | Don't come any closer , folks . | Despite a well-deserved Oscar for his performance in ' A Tree Grows in Brooklyn ' , James Dunn is now almost entirely forgotten . Not quite a romantic leading man , not quite a character actor , Dunn was a downmarket version of Lee Tracy ( another actor unjustly forgotten ) . I always enjoy Dunn on screen , but ' Come ... |
419,696 | 1,609,079 | 9,996 | 5 | Far from McCay's best work . | Winsor McCay was a newspaper cartoonist in the glorious days when cartoonists were given an entire over-sized Sunday newspaper page on which to give their artwork free rein . His full-colour comic-strip art is so remarkable that McCay's original newspaper pages ( if you can find them ) command high prices at modern art... |
418,301 | 1,609,079 | 25,504 | 5 | I don't wanna be a goil ! | If you want to see a boy get turned into Shirley Temple , this movie is right up your street . The central premise of ' Million Dollar Baby ' might seem far-fetched - - namely , that vaudeville parents would force their young son to pass as a girl performer - - but I found this part of the movie absolutely believable .... |
418,244 | 1,609,079 | 13,926 | 5 | Uncle Fester turns into a girl . | If you want to see a movie about a boy who runs away to join the circus and becomes a girl , here it is . James Otis Kaler was an extremely prolific author of boys ' novels , all of which have vanished into obscurity except one : ' Toby Tyler ' , the tale of an abused boy who runs away and joins the circus . ' Circus D... |
418,826 | 1,609,079 | 16,874 | 5 | Their careers went up in flames | I viewed the Turner-Time / Warner print of this movie . ' The Fire Brigade ' is a firefighting drama which also manages to be a piece of propaganda for firefighters . . . as if these brave souls needed any spin control . There are several firemen characters in this film , and without exception all of them are depicted ... |
419,334 | 1,609,079 | 421,867 | 5 | The kid would kick the Kaiser , but he wouldn't eat the meat ! | I saw this intriguing propaganda film in October 2007 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone ; the annual festival has made a welcome return to that town after eight years in nearby Sacile . . . a town no less beautiful , but in Sacile the festival's programme was split between two smaller cinemas at opposite ends... |
419,328 | 1,609,079 | 226,350 | 5 | 19th-century sex-changes . | I saw this film in October 2007 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone , Italy . The festival screened a brand-new acetate print , specially struck from an original nitrate print which has miraculously survived since 1899 , and which is now archived at Filmoteca de Catalunya in Barcelona . This film's title - - ' ... |
419,370 | 1,609,079 | 22,667 | 5 | Stuff her ballot box | UPDATE : This IMDb webpage is for a 1932 one-reel Betty Boop cartoon called ' Betty Boop for President ' . Several reviewers have mistakenly posted comments here for a completely different movie : a 1980s compilation feature , also titled ' Betty Boop for President ' . They're in the wrong place . Now read on . The Fle... |
419,420 | 1,609,079 | 476,980 | 5 | Ann Miller in a rubber cat-suit | ' Dames at Sea ' was originally a micro-budget stage musical that affectionately guyed the big-budget Warners musicals directed by Busby Berkeley in the 1930s . The tiny off-off-Broadway musical had the good luck to cast the mega-talented Bernadette Peters in her star-making role . I didn't see the original stage produ... |
419,108 | 1,609,079 | 337,302 | 5 | His girlfriend turned invisible , so he stopped seeing her . | ' The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz ' is a television drama based on a story of the same name by Jules Verne . . . or maybe not , according to some Verne purists . The story was first published in 1910 , five years after Verne's death , in an anthology titled ( in French ) ' Yesterday and Tomorrow ' , edited by Verne's son... |
419,519 | 1,609,079 | 23,367 | 5 | We wents ta collidge | The funniest thing about ' Rackety Rax ' is its title , which is a very clever pun . ' Rackety rax ! ' is the first line of a college football cheer that was popular in the 1920s and thirties : in this movie , that same phrase does double duty as a college cheer and as a pun on ' rackets ' as in racketeers . I've alway... |
418,617 | 1,609,079 | 11,463 | 5 | Eerie prediction of Lewis Stone's death . | The 1920 film ' Milestones ' is a remake of a film ( with the same title ) made only four years earlier . This implies that the 1916 version ( which I've not seen ) was so awful that it vanished from the public memory in less than four years ' time . This 1920 production and ( apparently ) the 1916 version are both bas... |
418,989 | 1,609,079 | 170,725 | 5 | Quids in : early look at female independence | ' The Twelve-Pound Look ' was originally a play by James M . Barrie , who is now best known for writing ' Peter Pan ' . Throughout his life and career , Barrie exhibited some strange attitudes towards women . ( Among other things , he had a penchant for writing plays in which the main role is a boy played by an adult w... |
419,023 | 1,609,079 | 21,482 | 5 | Just barely tol'able . | The 1921 drama " Tol'able David " is one of the classics of silent film : deservedly so , and much of the credit goes to the sensitively virile performance of Richard Barthelmess and the understated directing of the great Henry King . This early sound-era remake is faithful to the original story , but is far inferior t... |
419,305 | 1,609,079 | 21,472 | 5 | William Holden - - the other one - - is excellent . | I saw this movie in the early 1990s , at a screening given by William K Everson at the New School for Social Research in New York City . I usually took detailed notes during all of Mr Everson's screenings , but this time there was a disturbance in the auditorium ( no , not my fault , you clever clots ) and I didn't kee... |
418,285 | 1,609,079 | 16,903 | 5 | Tryon tries it on ; Bara barely seen . | ' 45 Minutes from Hollywood ' is sometimes cited in filmographies as Theda Bara's last movie . When her deadly-earnest vamp roles fell out of fashion , Bara signed a multi-film contract with Hal Roach to guy her previous screen image in lowbrow comedies . . . but made only one film , ' Madame Mystery ' . Since Bara did... |
418,411 | 1,609,079 | 318,182 | 5 | Money for old rope tricks . | James Whitmore first came to attention in movies as the second-team Spencer Tracy , but swiftly established himself as a performer very different from Tracy and with a far wider range . In the 1970s , he developed and starred in three one-man stage shows which he performed on the U . S . college circuit and occasionall... |
419,171 | 1,609,079 | 344,089 | 5 | Albert dances , Grady prances ; not much else to see here . | ' Footlight Rhythm ' is the very generic title of this mini-musical , in which all the songs are numbers in the stage show within the ( marginally ) larger plot line . Although the songs are generic and undistinguished , the chorus girls ' costumes are given an exotic Latina look , possibly to complement the performanc... |
419,382 | 1,609,079 | 46,306 | 5 | Virginia ham and Mayo | Virginia Mayo is largely associated with lightweight Danny Kaye movies and occasional dramatic roles ( ' White Heat ' and ' The Best Years of Our Lives ' ) . " She's Back on Broadway " is an attempt to star Ms Mayo in a musical with some real substance to it . This movie fails at most of what it sets out to do , but it... |
419,331 | 1,609,079 | 476,257 | 5 | He sailed to Manhattan , but this film missed the boat . | I saw this circus drama in October 2007 at the silent-film festival in Pordenone , Italy ; they screened a print from the Bundesarchiv in Berlin . ' Der Herr des Todes ' would translate as ' The Master of the Toads ' . . . oops , I mean ' The Master of the Deaths ' . IMDb's cast list for this film has two serious omiss... |
418,837 | 1,609,079 | 127,544 | 5 | At least three versions exist . | I saw ' Evangeliemandens liv ' at the 2006 Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy , where it was screened with three different endings . Speaking of which : several Internet bloggers ( mostly in the U . S . A . ) have questioned the accuracy of some of my IMDb reviews , claiming discrepancies between my plot synopses a... |
419,178 | 1,609,079 | 24,615 | 5 | Don't blow those ashes over here . . . | Stoopnagle and Budd were a comedy team in 1930s American radio . They weren't a cross-talk act , because Budd Hulick was strictly the ' straight man ' and feed , while Colonel Lemuel Q . Stoopnagle got the laughs . . . if there were any . Despite his elaborate name , Colonel Lemuel Q . Stoopnagle was ( in the team's ve... |
418,219 | 1,609,079 | 21,360 | 5 | Whiney Winnie warbles wanly . | I always find it distracting when a character in a movie or TV programme has the same name as the actor playing that character . ' She Couldn't Say No ' stars an actress named Winnie as a woman named Winnie : an unnecessary contrivance . Perhaps Warner Brothers were trying to build up Winnie Lightner for the star treat... |
419,065 | 1,609,079 | 70,424 | 6 | The middle portion of a bleak triptych . | ' My Ain Folk ' is the second of three autobiographical films written and directed by Bill Douglas , recounting his childhood and adolescence . In all three films , the protagonist - - ostensibly Bill Douglas's alter ego - - is cried Jamie . The name change warns us that some fictionalisation is in the works , but we'r... |
418,645 | 1,609,079 | 303,894 | 6 | Seeing isn't believing | ' The Death Ray ' is not a comedy : it's a documentary film of what purports to be an actual demonstration of a genuine invention . Unfortunately , we'll never know how much of what occurs here is authentic science , and how much is hoax or outright fraud . ' The Death Ray ' reminds me of that notorious Bigfoot footage... |
419,600 | 1,609,079 | 433,326 | 6 | Too long in the oolong . | The Prince Street Players were a Manhattan children's-theatre troupe ( of adult actors ) staging musical versions of traditional fairy tales , with scripts and songs written by Jim Eiler . Eiler's scripts tended to be straightforward retellings of the beloved classics , with very little modernisation or topical humour ... |
419,352 | 1,609,079 | 21,932 | 6 | Frankenstein's goombah | ' The Guilty Generation ' has a misleading title . This movie would seem to indict a generation , but it's actually more interested in indicting an ethnic group . . . to be precise , the Italians . This movie takes place in a universe where everyone named Angelo or Luigi is automatically a gangster . Late in the film ,... |
419,213 | 1,609,079 | 6,603 | 6 | Louise is lovely , Lon is lively | Dolly's Scoop starred the Sydneysider actress Louise Carbasse , whose Hollywood career was lumbered with the unfortunate screen name Louise Lovely . But she is indeed lovely , and very beautiful in this film , especially in one beautifully backlit close-up . This film is also extremely interesting because Lon Chaney ... |
419,668 | 1,609,079 | 6,601 | 6 | Ora's fixation | Ora Carew was a blonde actress in silent films who was pretty but not especially talented ; she later had slightly more success as a screenwriter . ' Dollars and Sense ' is possibly her best film , as it gives her a chance to play two different roles . . . one of them male . The Keystone Film Company is remembered for ... |
418,287 | 1,609,079 | 246,538 | 6 | Hardy's too good for this indifferent comedy . | By grim coincidence , quite a few of the cast members of ' Crazy to Act ' died before age 50 ; some of them at quite young ages indeed . Leading man Matty Kemp lasted into his nineties , but his career didn't last much longer than ' Crazy to Act ' . This is a comedy movie ABOUT making movies , and it commits several in... |
418,373 | 1,609,079 | 21,872 | 6 | Face the camera , Gracie . | George Burns wants to buy a necktie ( hence this film's title ) but runs afoul of a shopgirl who speaks in extreme 1920s slang . ( He also meets a shopgirl with a very proper English accent . ) He claims to be the nephew of the store's owner , but this is clearly a ploy to get some service , as a moment later he asks w... |
418,451 | 1,609,079 | 1,059,686 | 6 | Nixon as King Arthur with some greasy Fryes . | I was living in Britain and Australia when ' The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour ' aired in the States , so I didn't have a chance to watch it regularly . I'm aware of the controversies which accompanied this programme , and which only make me that much keener to track down all the episodes . Despite the ' Comedy Hour ' ... |
418,864 | 1,609,079 | 268,612 | 6 | Fleetingly poignant | Each year since 1973 , the American Film Institute have given their Lifetime Achievement Award to a prominent film star or director . To date , every recipient has been genuinely deserving , but the choice of whom to honour has been motivated by various factors . . . such as whose name will sell the most tickets . The ... |
419,703 | 1,609,079 | 21,840 | 6 | W . C . Fields should have sued . | The comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey are one of my guilty pleasures : I enjoy their films , but I'm aware that much of their material isn't very good . Part of the problem is that W & W's gag writers were working concurrently for the Marx Brothers , and the Marxes always got first pick of their best material , lumber... |
418,587 | 1,609,079 | 175,924 | 6 | Who knocks ? | W . W . Jacobs was an extremely prolific author , whose works have occasionally been filmed . Surprisingly , his story ' The Money Box ' was the inspiration for a Laurel and Hardy movie ! Most of Jacobs's short stories were moody pieces with nautical settings , but his most famous story takes place firmly on land : ' T... |
418,188 | 1,609,079 | 45,822 | 6 | Bob Fosse and Ira Gershwin are great | ' Give a Girl a Break ' deserves to be better known ; it's certainly not one of MGM's greatest musicals , but it has many bright spots and some pleasant tunes by Burton Lane with excellent lyrics by Ira Gershwin . Modern viewers will probably be most interested in Bob Fosse's excellent performance , in a supporting rol... |
418,789 | 1,609,079 | 141,004 | 6 | Chinese rhubarb . | The title ' False Vases ' is a ( very contrived ) pun on ' False Faces ' . This Felix the Cat cartoon looks a little better than most from the Messmer period , thanks to a palette of grey tones offering some variety from the usual stark black and white of the Felix toons . This Felix cartoon isn't particularly funny ( ... |
418,728 | 1,609,079 | 325,142 | 6 | She feeds him a gummy bear | ' Seilbahn ' was filmed in Germany , with a German cast , and the credits and dialogue are in German . . . but this film is listed in IMDb as ' Cable Car ' , which is a good translation of its title . This is a short film , about children and told from their viewpoint . SLIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD . Very little actually happ... |
418,982 | 1,609,079 | 17,439 | 6 | a Bronx cheer | There are some amusing moments in ' Subway Sadie ' , but there's really nothing here that hasn't been done better in several other films . . . in fact , I watched this low-budget silent with a definite sense of deja vu . Dorothy Mackaill plays Sadie Herman , who works in a very posh Manhattan fur shop , but she's a wor... |
419,457 | 1,609,079 | 134,173 | 6 | Knockabout knockwurst | ' The Unknown Guest ' is a German comedy film . I'm tempted to make a cheap joke that the phrase ' German comedy ' is an oxymoron . . . and , indeed , much of the knockabout slapstick in this film is merely embarrassing . But in fact there is some genuine humour here in this by-the-numbers farce , supplied by the comed... |
419,028 | 1,609,079 | 1,184,937 | 6 | It's only 1896 , and they're already shooting remakes ! | I had read descriptions of this movie at least 20 years before I first saw it ; inevitably , the movie is a disappointment . Actually , this is the Lumiere Brothers ' second version of this simple idea : filmed in a much more elaborate garden than their earlier version . Its title is usually given in English as ' Water... |
418,946 | 1,609,079 | 217,945 | 6 | That everlasting wristwatch | Eleanor Bron's series ' Making Faces ' was ahead of its time ; although basically a sitcom , ' Making Faces ' was more concerned with offering an ongoing character study of its female protagonist , and in that regard the series anticipated later American programmes such as ' The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd ' and ' Th... |
418,739 | 1,609,079 | 455,585 | 6 | Joy Bang ! Oh , Joy ! Oh , Bang ! | ' The Kowboys ' was the unsold pilot for what was meant to be a weekly half-hour series . After the American networks failed to buy this pilot , I saw it at a screening in London , where the pilot's producers were hoping to cut their losses by getting ' The Kowboys ' transmitted on British television . The Kowboys are ... |
418,790 | 1,609,079 | 836,637 | 6 | Only two shows of Lerner's and Loewe's | I was present at a screening of this TV special in London in 1964 , when I was a teenager working as an intern for the Grade Organisation . More than a year after its original Stateside transmission date , one of the American producers of this programme hoped to convince my employer Lew Grade to buy the UK broadcast ri... |
418,883 | 1,609,079 | 11,263 | 6 | Racist but funny anyway | ' Haunted Spooks ' , starring Harold Lloyd , was midway through its shooting schedule when Lloyd suffered the bizarre accident which crippled him for life . As a publicity gag , he posed for a photo with a prop bomb of the classic ' bowling-ball ' style so popular among movie anarchists : the bomb's fuse was lit , and ... |
418,726 | 1,609,079 | 21,698 | 6 | Say " uncle " , Jack | Jack Benny had a spectacularly successful career as a comedian , but just once in a while he showed some hints of real talent as an actor . The most obvious example is his starring role in ' To Be or Not to Be ' , but ' A Broadway Romeo ' deserves attention too . Benny starred in this short film early in his career , w... |
418,377 | 1,609,079 | 30,379 | 6 | Ersatz Bowery Boys plus three great pros . | The low-budget ' Bowery Boys ' movies were popular programmers that made healthy profits , so it's not surprising that several other studios would attempt imitations . Among these were the Gas House Gang , the Lemon Grove Kids , That Tenth Avenue Gang and the Little Tough Guys . The latter came nearest to matching the ... |
419,437 | 1,609,079 | 23,627 | 6 | Not as naughty as it thinks it is . | ' Two Kinds of Women ' was directed by William de Mille ( lower-case ' d ' ) , the brother of Cecil De Mille ( upper-case ' D ' ) and the differing orthography is significant : Cecil De Mille made upper-case movies in a big way , whilst William de Mille made lower-case movies in a small way . ' Two Kinds of Women ' is ... |
418,288 | 1,609,079 | 246,482 | 6 | Tell me , pretty maid . . . | ' Chasing the Chaser ' , directed by Stan Laurel and co-written by Laurel with Charley Chase's brother James Parrott , was one of the comedy shorts that tried to promote James Finlayson as a star comedian . ' Fin ' , of course , would ultimately achieve success as an adversary to the greatest comedy team of all time . ... |
419,043 | 1,609,079 | 23,606 | 6 | The cow has the best scene | In the early days of talking pictures , many silent stars eased their transition into talkies by remaking some of their silent hits . Will Rogers had starred in the silent film ' Jubilo ' . He reprised the role for ' Too Busy to Work ' , a talkie remake with some minor plot differences which are improvements over the s... |
419,288 | 1,609,079 | 11,193 | 6 | The winking elk , the bi-located omnibus | I viewed the Eastman House print of this film , which unfortunately is missing the original opening credits and inter-titles from the first reel . From the second reel onwards , there are some clever visual gimmicks in the titles - - at one point , part of a caption is replaced by footage of a boy riding a hobby-horse ... |
418,702 | 1,609,079 | 14,978 | 6 | Baby , take a bough . | I viewed a print of " Helen's Babies " that was restored by the Library of Congress ; despite their laudable efforts , the first title card is missing , and the nitrate deterioration is prominent throughout the first reel . I mention these flaws not to chivvy the wonderful people at LoC but because Diana Serra Cary ( m... |
418,407 | 1,609,079 | 21,632 | 6 | It's been Dunne better elsewhere ; this ' Apartment ' is a flat . | Lowell Sherman had some success as an actor and some success as a director without ever becoming a major name in either speciality : the most interesting thing ( but one ) about ' Bachelor Apartment ' is that he both directed and starred in it . As a screen personality , Sherman was probably the nearest thing to George... |
418,665 | 1,609,079 | 19,748 | 6 | Cocky Clyde Cook's concertina concert | With a title like ' Captain Lash ' , I expected the ' Captain ' to be genuine but the ' Lash ' to be a nickname : I'd thought this would be a movie about a genuine sea captain , nicknamed ' Lash ' for his cruelty . In the event , it was just the other way round : ' Lash ' is genuine and ' Captain ' is the nickname . Vi... |
418,284 | 1,609,079 | 1,237,943 | 6 | Bill Frawley as Lord Haw Haw Haw . | WARNING : RACIAL EPITHETS AHEAD . Here's a musical short that was probably very popular in wartime 1942 ( notice its title ) , but which would now evoke a few protests from various quarters due to the comments against Japanese and Italians . Interestingly enough , the lead performer shown on-camera - - he's accompanied... |
418,624 | 1,609,079 | 11,112 | 6 | A Japanese Jekyll and Hyde . | What a weird film ! I sought out ' The Devil's Claim ' because it was written by J . Grubb Alexander , who did such a great job of turning Victor Hugo's unwieldy novel ' The Man Who Laughs ' into one of Conrad Veidt's greatest films . ' The Devil's Claim ' isn't in that league , though . I viewed the Eastman House prin... |
418,607 | 1,609,079 | 23,806 | 6 | Runyonesque runt . | The first time I saw the movie ' Guys and Dolls ' , with its chorus line of phony Damon Runyon gangsters , I noticed that one character didn't fit in with the rest of the mob : a petty crook named Society Max , played by a runty little actor named George E Stone . His part was undersized ( like the actor himself ) , ye... |
418,223 | 1,609,079 | 292,454 | 6 | The guest is a ghost , and the host is aghast | Greetings to Barbara Siek and everyone else in the Dirk Bogarde chat group . The 1966 television production of ' Blithe Spirit ' suffers in comparison to David Lean's film version , but on its own merits it's an enjoyable drawing-room comedy with a supernatural theme . During World War Two , there was an increase in pl... |
418,556 | 1,609,079 | 19,852 | 6 | Snowballs | ' Eternal Love ' stars John Barrymore in semi-swashbuckling mode with the beautiful Camilla Horn . This is one of those late silent films that were released with soundtracks consisting of music and sound effects . In ' Eternal Love ' , several gunshots are heard at climactic moments . . . but they're all pathetic littl... |
418,591 | 1,609,079 | 100,965 | 6 | The bang-bang gang | Richard Kern was an underground filmmaker who specialised in transgressive themes , and images that are violent and erotic at the same go . Like Kenneth Anger , who seems to have been an influence on him , Kern is less interested in coherent narrative than in presenting themes and images that will provoke us , shock us... |
419,455 | 1,609,079 | 1,076,982 | 6 | Mickey's mask , Roland's penguins , Ken on a boulder . Where's Tarzan ? | This is one of the short-subject films that made a trip to the movies in the 1930s a full bill-of-fare . The ' Hollywood on Parade ' series of shorts were cheaply produced because they recycled screen tests ( of big stars ) and out-takes from feature films . The ' Hollywood on Parade ' shorts were distributed by Paramo... |
418,834 | 1,609,079 | 54,561 | 6 | A power failure , but briefly glorious . | Graham Greene's novel ' The Power and the Glory ' got the Hollywood treatment in 1947 , as a film called ' The Fugitive ' ( starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford ) . It's a decent movie , quite faithful to Greene's novel . . . although the title change suggests a cynical ( and misleading ) attempt to dilute th... |
419,609 | 1,609,079 | 14,900 | 6 | F . W . Murnau plays it for laughs . | Any film directed by F . W . Murnau merits serious attention , but " The Grand Duke's Finances " is especially noteworthy because it's one of Murnau's rare attempts at comedy . Based on this one film ( the only Murnau comedy I've seen to date ) , Murnau's comedic skills were far less developed than his flair for drama ... |
419,566 | 1,609,079 | 392,770 | 6 | Tap-dancer Mahoney is the transition between Ray Bolger and Ann Miller . | American performers Will Mahoney and his wife Evie Hayes were very popular in Australia , where I was raised : they were slightly before my time , but I've met several old-time Aussies who spoke very fondly of seeing Mahoney or Hayes ( or both ) in live performances . Will Mahoney had some success in vaudeville as an e... |
419,555 | 1,609,079 | 555 | 6 | Cheesy Danish potboiler | I saw an excellent print of ' Den Hvide slavinde ' ( ' The White Slave ' ) at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy , in October 2006 . During the early 20th century , a popular theme in sensationalist literature was the crime of ' white slavery ' : white slavers were organised rings of criminals who abducted youn... |
419,176 | 1,609,079 | 1,059,272 | 6 | I only saw the top half of this movie ! | I saw this early U . S . ( Paramount ) sound short in 1990 , at a meeting of a film society in s'Gravenhage : most of the film society's members were from Holland or the Low Countries . One Benelux gentleman had a print of this film with the original American soundtrack , but with extremely obtrusive subtitles ( in Fre... |
419,574 | 1,609,079 | 14,798 | 6 | Thomas Meighan is upstaged by his own reflection . | I haven't yet viewed a print of Thomas Meighan's 1919 film ' The Miracle Man ' ( and I fear that none still exist ) , but that was reportedly one of his best performances . Here , in ' The Confidence Man ' , Meighan plays a role nearly identical to the one he apparently played in that earlier film - - a confidence tric... |
419,620 | 1,609,079 | 25,773 | 6 | Mitchell & Durant shanghai this ship | The extremely beautiful ( and sexy ) Alice Faye has long been underrated as an actress and a singer . One of the best moments of film acting I've ever seen was Faye's big scene in " Alexander's Ragtime Band " , as the former girlfriend of bandleader Tyrone Power who has come to attend a performance of his Army show in ... |
419,517 | 1,609,079 | 130,629 | 6 | Oy vey ! My son is a shikseh ! | I can usually laugh at drag humour , but the extended drag sequence in " Don't Tell Everything " makes me uneasy . Still , there are some good laughs in this Max Davidson comedy . Max plays a widowed tailor named Ginsberg , who has a son named Asher ( played by the very ugly Spec O'Donnell ) . Asher is apparently a tee... |
418,948 | 1,609,079 | 24,348 | 6 | Strange Depression musical | ' Moonlight and Pretzels ' is the barely relevant title of this Depression-era musical . Made by low-budget Universal Pictures ( though not filmed on the Universal lot ) , it somehow feels as if it were made by one of the more prestigious studios . The dance numbers resemble what Busby Berkeley was doing at Warners . B... |
419,225 | 1,609,079 | 30,186 | 6 | Joe E . Brown as Clark Kent | ' The Gladiator ' , by Philip Wylie , was a serious science-fiction novel about a man who is scientifically enhanced with superhuman powers . Although a minor novel , Wylie's book is extremely significant because it inspired two teenagers from Cleveland named Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster to create their comic-book char... |
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