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419,098 | 1,609,079 | 71,024 | 9 | I'll chime in : this mystery has a peal . | Nine tailors make a man , which explains why Adolphe Menjou ( Hollywood's best-dressed actor ) titled his memoir " It Took Nine Tailors " . In Dorothy Sayers's novel ( and this adaptation ) , the title refers to a Church of England tradition : the parish bell chimes nine " tailors " ( tolls ) to mark the death of a m... |
418,289 | 1,609,079 | 15,763 | 9 | Hyde-de-high hilarity ! | Stan Laurel ( pre-Hardy ) appeared in several short comedies that were parodies of big-budget Hollywood dramas . Although most of these are quite funny , all ( with one exception ) are seriously weakened by extremely low budgets . ' Dr Pyckle and Mr Pryde ' is the exception ; not only is this movie hilarious , but it b... |
419,130 | 1,609,079 | 149,234 | 9 | Heckle's schnozzola | ' Taming the Cat ' is an above-average Heckle and Jeckle offering . The opening sequence is a bit odd . We see a house cat next to an unoccupied birdcage as he pulls a canary feather out of his mouth . Hmm , I wonder what happened ? Now he hangs up a sign : ' Songbirds Wanted ' . I never knew that magpies were songbird... |
419,572 | 1,609,079 | 595,374 | 9 | Excellent chamber musical , with the " rape " scene downplayed . | I viewed a kinescope of this TV special in the Museum of TV & Radio . This production of ' The Fantasticks ' is a Hallmark special , so - - like all of that breed - - it's impeccably well-done family viewing , and squeaky-clean . One problem with ' The Fantasticks ' ( adapted from an Edmond Rostand play ) is that the f... |
419,082 | 1,609,079 | 13,741 | 9 | Fascinating Egyptian epic | I viewed an incomplete print of ' The Wife of the Pharaoh ' that was reconstructed ( from several sources ) by Stephan Droessler of the Film Museum in Munich . Even in remnant form , this is a phenomenal film : an epic piece of film-making , with 6 , 000 extras and elaborate sets . ' The Wife of the Pharaoh ' is the ne... |
418,308 | 1,609,079 | 377,091 | 9 | Excellent teen character study | One of the greatest movies ever made is ' A Place in the Sun ' . Based on a true murder case , this story features a protagonist who takes his pregnant ex-girlfriend on a boating trip with the intention of drowning her so he won't have to marry her . At the last moment , he has a pang of conscience ( or did he just los... |
419,493 | 1,609,079 | 222,844 | 9 | Heads will roll in this bizarre bazaar | ' Le Bourreau Turc ' is one of the ' stunt ' films of Georges Melies , although with more of a plot than usual . My late wife Diane owned an 8mm acetate print of this movie , which she bought in the 1970s from Blackhawk Films . Whenever she showed this short movie for guests , they invariably cheered during the decapit... |
418,572 | 1,609,079 | 7,983 | 9 | Wiene is good , but Veidt is brilliant . | I saw ' Furcht ' in July 1996 at the Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna . They screened a print with the original German intertitles , loaned by the Deutsches Institut für Filmkunde . One of my all-time favourite films is ' The Cabinet of Dr Caligari ' , which is by far the most famous movie directed by Robert Wiene ... |
418,571 | 1,609,079 | 7,992 | 9 | Delft blue meets Pearl White ; or , Yoo-hoo blue-hue boo-hoo . | One more ' lost ' film returned from oblivion ! Although popular at the time of its release , ' The Mystery of Delft ' vanished soon afterward . A nitrate print was found in October 1994 and loaned to Nederlands Filmmuseum for restoration . I attended a screening of the restored version in July 1996 , at the Cinema Rit... |
419,516 | 1,609,079 | 19,253 | 9 | Chicken delight | Pass the Gravy is one of Max Davidson's funniest comedies , with less emphasis on the Jewish stereotypes which render so many of Davidson's films taboo today . The credits list Fred Guiol as director , and Leo McCarey merely as ' supervising director ' ( who he ? ) . . . but McCarey's distinctive brand of humour is e... |
418,880 | 1,609,079 | 177,707 | 10 | Now hear this ! | The very first talking picture has returned from oblivion , and now you can hear it and see it ! In autumn of 1894 , at the Edison lab complex in West Orange , New Jersey , Thomas Edison's associate William Dickson tried to combine two existing technologies ( the phonograph and the kinetoscope ) to record sound and ima... |
419,029 | 1,609,079 | 14 | 10 | Soak a bloke ; a hokey joke . | I had read descriptions of this movie at least 20 years before I first saw it ; inevitably , the movie is a disappointment . Actually , the Lumiere Brothers made at least two different versions of this movie , in different locations with different casts . Its title is usually given in English as ' Watering the Gardener... |
419,527 | 1,609,079 | 368,898 | 10 | Brilliant use of locations . | SPOILERS THROUGHOUT . ' The Nine-Mile Walk ' , a 1947 story by Harry Kemelman , is rightly considered one of the greatest mystery stories of all time . Its plot is ingenious . A language professor named Nick Welt , trying to persuade a colleague that words have meanings which transcend their definitions , asks for a ra... |
419,718 | 1,609,079 | 365,135 | 10 | Cunning stunts ! | I attended a press screening of ' Double Dare ' , so I got to meet this film's director and editor as well as the documentary's main subjects - - Jeannie Epper and Zoë Bell - - and to participate in Q & A . I sceptically asked if any of this material was staged : specifically , the sequence in which the documentary cam... |
418,596 | 1,609,079 | 215,575 | 10 | An actor is kept in suspense . | This is one of the very best of Georges Melies's many ' trick ' films . Interestingly , the English-language prints of this film render its title as ' The Black Imp ' rather than the more accurate ' The Black Devil ' . . . probably because English-language audiences would interpret the word ' devil ' to mean THE Devil ... |
418,865 | 1,609,079 | 41,785 | 10 | Hilarious McKimson cartoon | ' Rebel Rabbit ' is one of the funnier Bugs Bunny cartoons , with an exciting and unusual climax . This toon is a splendid example of the work of Robert McKimson , the most underrated figure in American animation . McKimson's cartoons are always bright , visually attractive and ( oh , yeah ) funny . . . far more so tha... |
419,719 | 1,609,079 | 10,929 | 10 | Unemployment , fun enjoyment ! | Silent-film star Wallace Reid is ( like Roscoe Arbuckle ) unfairly remembered for a scandal which didn't accurately reflect his true life or career . Reid played clean-cut young men , until his sudden death revealed a history of morphine abuse . This was actually the fault of front-office executives at Reid's home stud... |
418,931 | 1,609,079 | 279,760 | 10 | Delightful low-budget musical | The 1967 TV production of the Broadway musical " Damn Yankees ! " is not as well-known as the 1958 Warner Brothers film version . But the TV version has some merits which the movie version lacks : it's an excellent alternative version of the same story , told on a much smaller budget . One of the best songs in the Broa... |
418,806 | 1,609,079 | 372,837 | 10 | Dirty work at the crossroads . | I've viewed the reconstructed print of ' Curses ! ' . It's a brilliant effort of reconstitution and detective work , a true labour of love . Still , I wish I'd seen an original print of this film , with its original titles . Why ? Because ' Curses ! ' , filmed in 1925 , is a parody of those old-style curses-foiled-agai... |
419,007 | 1,609,079 | 279,784 | 10 | Delightful musical comedy short | A previous IMDB reviewer has said that " Dora's Dunking Doughnuts " is about a boy who's afraid of dogs . That reviewer is thinking of a different movie , called " Pardon My Pups " . Both are short comedies which feature Shirley Temple before her stardom . Both of these films have been released on video as part of a co... |
418,737 | 1,609,079 | 43,924 | 10 | Hollywood's greatest film ever ! | CONTAINS SPOILERS THROUGHOUT . ' A Place in the Sun ' is , for my quids , the greatest movie ever made in Hollywood . The film is a reworking of Dreiser's novel ' An American Tragedy ' ( filmed previously ) , which in turn is based on a real murder case . In 1905 , a young man named Chester Gillette , a supervisor in a... |
419,142 | 1,609,079 | 73,981 | 10 | Entertaining and ( mostly ) accurate | The excellent scriptwriter Wolf Mankowitz has surpassed himself in ' Dickens of London ' , a miniseries recounting the life of Charles Dickens from early boyhood till his death . One of the clichés of biographical drama is the tendency to tell the story in flashback , with the central figure looking back on his or her ... |
418,974 | 1,609,079 | 83,536 | 10 | Lewis Carroll would have loved it . | There have been many adaptations of ' Alice in Wonderland ' . I've enjoyed most of the versions I've seen ( even an X-rated version ) , although I found Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer's semi-animated version ' Neco z Alenky ' ( 1988 ) deeply alienating . Many of the dramatisations - - including the best-known version ,... |
419,280 | 1,609,079 | 70,591 | 10 | . . . and he did it all with only one eye . | In 1972 and ' 73 , film critic Richard Schickel made an 8-part series for American public television : ' The Men Who Made the Movies ' . Each episode featured a prominent Hollywood director discussing his career in an on-camera monologue ( actually an interview , with Schickel's questions edited out ) , interspersed wi... |
418,796 | 1,609,079 | 275,375 | 10 | Firewatch with Mother | Will Hay started his performing career in the music halls , as a comedy schoolmaster who is ( of course ) outsmarted by his schoolboys . Well before Abbott and Costello wondered Who's on First , Will Hay was doing a routine about a schoolboy named Howe in Wye from Ware . In his film career , Will Hay - - no relation to... |
418,762 | 1,609,079 | 352,173 | 10 | Calling all corset-lovers ! | Anna Held was the first wife of legendary showman Flo Ziegfeld , and also the star of many of his productions . By all accounts , she had some talent as an actress and a singer and a dancer , but her greatest appeal for audiences was undoubtedly her physical beauty , most notably her astonishing figure . Tightly corset... |
419,303 | 1,609,079 | 268,601 | 10 | Johnny LaRue meets Doctor Zhivago | 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... |
419,700 | 1,609,079 | 396,354 | 10 | Notorious Norwich , streets ahead of the rest . | I missed ' On the Margin ' when it was originally transmitted on BBC2 in ' 66 , but I saw the repeats ( Jan-Feb ' 67 ) , which attracted so much attention that just about every adult in Britain ( including me ) saw the BBC1 transmissions ( May-July ) that same year . ' On the Margin ' was a fascinating hotch-potch of c... |
418,229 | 1,609,079 | 45,911 | 10 | The greatest 3D movie ever ! | ' Inferno ' was originally filmed in 3D , but this film avoids the stupid gimmicks that plagued so many films in that brief genre . . . such as the paddleballs that utterly ruined ' House of Wax ' for me . In far too many 3D films , the actors are constantly chucking objects at the audience . We get none of that here ,... |
419,425 | 1,609,079 | 240,823 | 10 | Two men with three lordships between them . | Many early films which purport to show major public figures are actually staged enactments , featuring impersonators on mostly unconvincing stage mock-ups . Just occasionally , a film might contain authentic footage of the person it claimed to depict , in an authentic setting but in a staged situation . A good example ... |
419,607 | 1,609,079 | 11,217 | 10 | Conrad Veidt's expressive hands | This film's German title would translate as " Journey in the Night " , but that " night " is metaphoric : it refers to blindness , rather than anything nocturnal . The film's most notable merits are its photography ( by Max Lutze ) , the direction by F . W . Murnau ( a bit lighter than usual from this director ) and a ... |
418,835 | 1,609,079 | 340,057 | 10 | Brilliant drama of ideas | I saw Michael Frayn's stage play ' Copenhagen ' in London . . . in fact , I was technically IN the play , as Peter Davison's set design seated some of the audience members onstage directly above the actors , like a tribunal sitting in judgment , and I chose to watch the play from one of these onstage seats . ( I also s... |
418,798 | 1,609,079 | 363 | 10 | Streets ahead of Pepper's Ghost . | I viewed the British Film Institute print of this early movie by Robert W Paul . Like his better-known contemporary Georges Melies in France , Britain's Paul was an early film-maker who experimented with the camera's possibilities to produce ' trick ' films . While these very early movies must have baffled and delighte... |
418,807 | 1,609,079 | 248,473 | 10 | Zoo-zoo's pedals ! | After the scandal that drove him off the screen , Roscoe Arbuckle continued to work behind the camera as a director and gag constructor under the pseudonym William Goodrich . By coincidence , he directed two unrelated movies - - a short and a feature - - both called ' Special Delivery ' . This is the first , and it's h... |
418,460 | 1,609,079 | 13,033 | 10 | Unflinchingly honest . Brilliant ! | I saw ' Crainquebille ' in October 2005 at the Cinema Muto festival in northern Italy . . . at which was also screened the film's original ' suppressed ' ending . This movie has previously been reviewed for IMDb by a self-appointed count ( who gave himself one vowel too many ) . He has managed to get several details wr... |
419,565 | 1,609,079 | 13,055 | 10 | Bitter Buster , beaten Keaton | SPOILERS SPOILERS " Day Dreams " is the bitterest and most disenchanted Buster Keaton film . . . which is saying a great deal about this most embittered and darkest of all comedians . " Day Dreams " climaxes with one of the most famous gags in the Keaton canon , and fades out on a final image of stark futility worthy o... |
419,261 | 1,609,079 | 409,892 | 10 | One more trip across the ottoman . | ' The Dick Van Dyke Show ' was one of the greatest sitcoms of all time . A comedy show that was actually about comedy , this series brilliantly combined slapstick , low banter , high wit and sophisticated cultural references . Three episodes addressed the changing nature of race relations in America during the early 19... |
419,492 | 1,609,079 | 455 | 10 | Headbanger's music | ' The Melody Maniac ' is one of the ' stunt ' films of Georges Melies , in which the action is centred upon trick photography . This is one of his best efforts . It's a shame that thie movie was shot silent , as music is central to this film's action . . . and it would have been amusing to learn if the actors onscreen ... |
418,896 | 1,609,079 | 351,987 | 10 | Ground-breaking and amusing . | I'm always fascinated by film's ability to convey two or more contrasting viewpoints at once . In sound films , this is usually done by having the image on screen contradict the narration on the soundtrack . An excellent example of this is in the first reel of " Singin ' in the Rain " , when Don Lockwood ( Gene Kelly )... |
418,866 | 1,609,079 | 574 | 10 | Pity the poor projectionist ! | This afternoon at the Barbican , I attended the UK premiere of the digitally restored ' The Story of the Kelly Gang ' , with excellent piano accompaniment by John Sweeney , as part of the opening day's programme for the Silent Film & Live Music Series running through June . It's also part of the London Australian Film ... |
418,917 | 1,609,079 | 25,755 | 10 | Gorgeous specimens | What a great idea for a movie ! ' Search for Beauty ' assembles some dazzling young specimens of physical perfection ( both female and male ) and places them in a smart-aleck comedy that's downright hilarious ! Real-life Olympic swimming champion Buster Crabbe plays an Olympic swimming champion ( but gets almost no swi... |
419,014 | 1,609,079 | 24,325 | 10 | Astonishing near-future drama | ' Men Must Fight ' is one of the most astonishing and audacious films I've ever seen . This 1933 drama boldly predicted a second world war ( in 1940 ! ) at a time when many Americans were actively planning to sit out such an event . This film depicts an aerial attack upon Manhattan , in a sequence that seems startlingl... |
418,794 | 1,609,079 | 466,399 | 10 | ' Ten Canoes ' rates a 10 ! | SPOILERS THROUGHOUT . I saw ' Ten Canoes ' at Cannes , and I was absolutely awestruck . Even now , almost precisely a year later , I've difficulty writing about this film without being emotionally overcome . Yes , damn it , the movie's that good , that wonderful , that miraculous . I feel a deep attachment to this film... |
419,450 | 1,609,079 | 76,393 | 10 | Gentlemen , stand up and take a bow ! | I watched a videotape of ' Minstrel Man ' in the archives at the Museum of Television & Radio . This brilliant musical drama is not ' lost ' ; Viacom have the home-viewing rights , and it's a shame that they choose not to release ' Minstrel Man ' on video or DVD . Viacom are probably concerned that this movie will be c... |
419,697 | 1,609,079 | 126,880 | 10 | Rapture and rupture . | 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 . An absolute master of perspective , McCay was best at dream-like and nightmarish scenarios , which explains why his two most successful projects ... |
418,555 | 1,609,079 | 130,802 | 10 | Kosher courtroom capers | The hilarious silent-film comedy ' Jewish Prudence ' is fairly easy to obtain in film libraries , but all known English-language prints of this movie have the original title card ' Jewish Prudence ' removed and a new title card spliced in , so that this film is now renamed ' Prudence ' . If you can't locate this very f... |
419,277 | 1,609,079 | 69,686 | 10 | Eggs McGuffin | In 1972 and ' 73 , film critic Richard Schickel made an 8-part series for American public television : ' The Men Who Made the Movies ' . Each episode featured a prominent Hollywood director discussing his career in an on-camera monologue ( actually an interview , with Schickel's questions edited out ) , interspersed wi... |
419,656 | 1,609,079 | 24,150 | 10 | A masterpiece , no strings attached ! | ' I Am Suzanne ' is an astonishing film , one of the most original movies I've ever seen . . . and yet it reminds me of several others . Director Rowland V . Lee and his co-scenarist Edwin Justus Mayer are both severely underrated ; their careers are overdue for reappraisal , and this movie is a good place to start . '... |
418,482 | 1,609,079 | 26,047 | 10 | High-flying entertainment | ' Air Hawks ' is a rousing good adventure story , starring Ralph Bellamy in one of his rare outings as a two-fisted action hero . ( Bellamy was more typically cast in romantic comedies , as the guy who lost the girl to a better man . ) Here , he plays a former Army pilot who sets up his own low-budget air-courier servi... |
419,617 | 1,609,079 | 260,948 | 10 | Brilliant , distinctive , utterly original ! | Guy Maddin is the most brilliant film-maker working today ! If there's somebody better , that person must be labouring in obscurity . Maddin is strongly influenced by the disciplines of silent film , but his vision is unique , distinctive , and utterly original . ' The Heart of the World ' could easily have been a thro... |
418,302 | 1,609,079 | 138,957 | 10 | Brilliantly anarchic hilarity . | I was delighted to view this tele-recording for two reasons . Firstly , it's well and truly hilarious . Secondly , the recovery of this long-lost recording vindicates for television something I've long maintained for cinema films : no movie or TV programme should be considered ' lost ' unless it was deliberately destro... |
418,437 | 1,609,079 | 1,031,955 | 10 | Three men get wood : Vaudeville's funniest comedy act ! | There is correctly a comma in ' Willie , West and McGinty ' . . . because Willie and West were two different people . Possibly more so than any other comedy act , this trio defined vaudeville and the vaudeville methods of performance . Billed as ' The House Wreckers ' ( and with various other bill matter ) , Willie , W... |
418,818 | 1,609,079 | 475,527 | 10 | Inspiration and respiration | Here's a cute , clever , enjoyable quickie cartoon that marks the screen debut of Jimmy Murakami , the co-founder of Murakami-Wolf Productions . ' The Breath ' is a weird cartoon : it doesn't look like nor sound like any other cartoon I've ever encountered , including Murakami's later work . The general appearance of t... |
418,409 | 1,609,079 | 148,463 | 10 | No plot : just jokes ! | What a delight ! Here we have a Heckle and Jeckle cartoon with no plot at all - - merely a premise - - and it's a fast-paced laughfest from start to finish . That tough bulldog ( did he ever have a name ? ) , assisted by Dimwit the hound , is going through the woods nailing posters to trees : Wanted posters of Heckle a... |
418,680 | 1,609,079 | 921 | 10 | A strait-laced comedy . | I saw this short comedy at the 1998 Cinema Muto festival in Pordenone ; they screened a print from the Library of Congress with the original intertitles missing . What a cheeky little comedy . . . and impressively well-made , too ! We first see Mr and Mrs Jones at home as he prepares to leave for the office . Griffith ... |
418,603 | 1,609,079 | 319,392 | 10 | A voice that just won't quit . | Short , sweet and funny ! The title of this early Edison film - - ' The Extra Turn ' - - uses the word ' turn ' in its British ( and 19th-century American ) sense of a ' stage turn ' : one of several acts on a variety bill . In the days of American vaudeville and the British variety halls , a theatre would post its bil... |
419,084 | 1,609,079 | 10,600 | 10 | Ossi Oswalda is a beautiful doll ( sexy , too ! ) | ' The Doll ' , directed by Ernst Lubitsch , is a charming fantasy , a splendidly original film inspired by one of the Tales of Hoffmann . . . and a movie which also captures the mood of English holiday pantomimes and Hans Christian Andersen . As a bonus , this film features an extremely kinky performance ( very funny a... |
418,941 | 1,609,079 | 148,314 | 10 | Magpie mayhem | ' House Busters ' is the all-time funniest of the Heckle and Jeckle cartoons . For once , the two magpies indulge their penchant for violence in a productive ( and hilarious ) fashion . This cartoon short even features a delightful and peppy song . The magpie twins ( with mismatched accents ) have an honest job for onc... |
419,129 | 1,609,079 | 148,339 | 10 | Heckle & Jeckle put on the dog . | ' The Intruders ' is an absolute top-notch Heckle and Jeckle cartoon . It actually looks TOO good to be one of their toons . The Paul Terry animation studio was never noted for large budgets nor high production values , and the strength of the Heckle & Jeckle toons was always that they were funny despite their cheapjac... |
418,266 | 1,609,079 | 152,128 | 10 | Stanelli honks while Lorenzi harps . | ' Radio Parade ' has no plot at all : it's merely a series of music-hall turns . But this film is fascinating as an example of what a trip to a 1930s music hall must have been like . Some of the acts in ' Radio Parade ' are delightful , while others are wretched : this too conveys the true flavour of music-hall enterta... |
418,457 | 1,609,079 | 441,648 | 10 | Compelling and fascinating . | ' The Short Life of Anne Frank ' tells , briefly and concisely , the remarkable story of the young diarist . Since this is a documentary with only one talking-head sequence ( a clip of Otto Frank on television in the 1960s , speaking in English ) , the format consists of narration over visuals . . . so it was easy for ... |
418,814 | 1,609,079 | 6,764 | 10 | Lobsters and mobsters , but Roscoe is un-shellfish . | Several of Roscoe Arbuckle's films have titles which became cruelly ironic in the hindsight of his 1921 trial for manslaughter : notably ' The Life of the Party ' and this two-reeler , ' He Did and He Didn't ' . There's a famous photograph of Arbuckle in evening dress , gaping in horror as he drops Mabel Normand down a... |
418,207 | 1,609,079 | 18,433 | 10 | Cantor at a gallop : Eddie goes postal . | After the scandal that drove him off the screen , Roscoe Arbuckle continued to work behind the camera as a director and gag constructor under the pseudonym William Goodrich . By coincidence , he directed two unrelated movies - - a short and a feature - - that were both called ' Special Delivery ' . The second is a star... |
418,677 | 1,609,079 | 90,316 | 10 | Mostly accurate , completely fascinating . | I'm a major fan of the wonderful series of Oz novels written by L . Frank Baum ( and the sequels by other authors ) , so I'm sometimes irritated that so many people know Oz only through a certain MGM musical . Here , intriguingly , we get a documentary which attempts to give an overview of the entire Oz phenomenon . It... |
419,453 | 1,609,079 | 364,439 | 10 | Astonishing tumbles , and one minor fumble . | Richard Risley Carlisle ( 1814-1874 ) was a circus performer from New Jersey who developed a type of acrobatic act which was such a clear innovation that , ever since , performers of similar acts have been known - - in arenas as diverse as circuses , American vaudeville and the British music-halls - - as ' Risley acrob... |
418,648 | 1,609,079 | 343,407 | 10 | Spoot is a hoot when his pillow goes toot ! | ' Barnaby Spoot and the Exploding Whoopee Cushion ' ( what a great title ! ) was transmitted 28 May 1965 on BBC1 . This one-off playlet is a perfect example of the sort of comedy that British television does so brilliantly , but which American TV doesn't even attempt to create . A story like this would never get produc... |
419,193 | 1,609,079 | 358,817 | 10 | A really first-rate series | Frank Buxton is a man of many talents : in addition to his credits as an actor and director , he compiled the book ' The Big Broadcast ' , which is required reading for anyone interested in the golden age of American radio . He also was involved in the writing and production of ' Discovery ' , besides serving as co-hos... |
419,132 | 1,609,079 | 148,568 | 10 | Heckle's homage to Groucho . | ' Out Again , in Again ' is one of the funniest Heckle & Jeckle cartoons . This toon begins in a surprising way . A few weeks before this epic was released , the two magpies had starred in ' Free Enterprise ' , a cartoon that ended with them both in prison . ' Out Again , in Again ' begins like the latest chapter of a ... |
418,524 | 1,609,079 | 196,346 | 10 | High kicks and high jinks . Delightful ! | The Artist's Dilemma is an early American ' trick ' film , clearly imitative of similar films by the French showman Georges Melies . Modern audiences , jaded by high-tech special effects , tend to laugh at ( rather than laugh WITH ) the early trick-photography films . However , " The Artist's Dilemma " will still imp... |
418,614 | 1,609,079 | 289,495 | 10 | Naughty bawdy shocking stocking . | A very well-known early movie is ' The Kiss ' , filmed in 1896 . Only a few seconds long , this consists of an actor and actress re-enacting a brief moment from the stage play ' The Widow Jones ' : specifically , the man brushes back his elaborate moustaches , and then he kisses her . Early moviegoers were fascinated b... |
419,705 | 1,609,079 | 458,375 | 10 | Train-wreck fascinating ! | SPOILER : The Nazis lose World War Two . For my quids , Paul Joseph Goebbels was far and away the most interesting and complicated of the Nazi leaders . Goering and Himmler were motivated purely by self-interest ; so was Speer , but he was also caught up in Hitler's cult of personality . Goebbels , on the other hand , ... |
418,484 | 1,609,079 | 78,888 | 10 | Bob & Ray can make shoelaces hilarious | ' Saturday Night Live Presents Bob and Ray Meet Jane , Laraine & Gilda ' was ( as breathlessly announced by Don Pardo ) the unwieldy title of a one-off special that was for all practical purposes a fairly typical third-season episode of ' Saturday Night Live ' . SNL was pre-empted for one Saturday , so that this specia... |
418,281 | 1,609,079 | 443,582 | 10 | Entertaining and informative . | This entertaining and informative documentary about silent-film star Mary Pickford was produced for the PBS television series ' American Experience ' . Some appetising film clips ( and one radio interview ) of Pickford have been expertly compiled with sound bites from film scholars . I'm very impressed with how documen... |
418,894 | 1,609,079 | 423,623 | 10 | A show-stopper ! Bravo ! | ' Broadway : The American Musical ' is a six-part series that's just what it claims to be : a documentary history of the American musical ( although it doesn't start anywhere near the beginning : ' The Black Crook ' in the 1860s ) . The basic structure is chronological , though there are a few odd deviations : ' Bye By... |
418,817 | 1,609,079 | 302,584 | 10 | WARNING : Very catchy song ! | The American animator Gene Deitch really deserves to be better known : his toons are funny and accessible , with a physical appearance and character movements that are uniquely Deitch's work . His cartoons don't remind me of anyone else's . Due to the labour-intensive cost of cel animation , much of Deitch's work has b... |
418,850 | 1,609,079 | 90,476 | 10 | Brilliant show-business epic | The mini-series ' Lost Empires ' is a brilliant adaptation of J . B . Priestley's novel , extremely faithful to the original text ( even using much of Priestley's dialogue ) yet opening up the material to heighten the contrast between the false world of the British music-hall ( where this story's leading characters spe... |
418,479 | 1,609,079 | 234,486 | 10 | Cop , chops , a flatfoot " flic " flick | ' The Run of the Village Constables ' is very funny in its own right , and also historically significant as the earliest known example of the ' chase ' comedy , later developed at Mack Sennett's Keystone studio . The fact that the pursuers in this film are small-town constables ( anticipating Sennett's Keystone Cops ) ... |
418,854 | 1,609,079 | 57,916 | 10 | Skip the message , savour the performances | ' Carol for Another Christmas ' features a teleplay by Rod Serling at his most dead-earnest . As often happened with this controversial writer , Serling's script ran afoul of network censors who insisted on major changes . . . inevitably making the material much more innocuous . Astonishingly , ' Carol for Another Chri... |
418,236 | 1,609,079 | 993,771 | 10 | I'd rather be blue . . . | The title of this telefilm set me up to dislike it . I expected ' Make Me a Tory ' to be a Michael Moore-type screed from the left , with a smug liberal setting up a series of Aunt Sally conservatives to be made looking ridiculous . Fortunately , I was mistaken . ' Make Me a Tory ' is a delightful documentary , as well... |
419,075 | 1,609,079 | 1,463 | 10 | Fascinating re-enactment of early stage musical | In some ways , I found this 1910 silent version of ' The Wonderful Wizard of Oz ' more entertaining than the big-budget MGM remake . And in some ways , this silent version ( made while L Frank Baum was still alive and writing more Oz novels ) is more faithful to Baum's source novel ( and its sequels ) than the MGM movi... |
418,316 | 1,609,079 | 22,732 | 10 | A nice pair of jugheads | Buzzin ' Around is the funniest ( and most action-packed ) of the six Vitaphone shorts which comprise Roscoe " Fatty " Arbuckle's entire talking-picture career . ( Of the other five , " Close Relations " and " In the Dough " are only a whisker less funny than " Buzzin ' Around " . ) More significantly , " Buzzin ' Ar... |
418,413 | 1,609,079 | 376,525 | 10 | Alexander Cohen's greatest hits | For part of the 1970s and the early 1980s , I ( all too briefly ) had the honour of working for Broadway producer Alexander H . Cohen , one of the greatest showmen of all time . Mr Cohen ( ' Alex ' to his thousands of friends ) was the only producer to maintain permanent production offices both on Broadway and in Londo... |
419,483 | 1,609,079 | 423,384 | 10 | Omiyo , oh-my-oh ! Action-packed railway drama ! | I saw a 101-minute version of this Japanese silent film in October 2005 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Sacile , Italy ; the print was restored ( from a nitrate original ) in 2004 by Professor Yoneo Ota of Osaka's University of Visual Arts . At Sacile , the film was screened with its original Japanese intertitles , b... |
419,557 | 1,609,079 | 13,669 | 10 | Energetic hilarious slapstick | Silent-film star Wallace Reid is ( like Roscoe Arbuckle ) unfairly remembered for a scandal which didn't accurately reflect his true life or career . Reid played clean-cut young men , until his sudden death revealed a history of morphine abuse . This was actually the fault of front-office executives at Reid's home stud... |
418,838 | 1,609,079 | 8,100 | 10 | green-cheese Danish | I saw " Heaven-Ship " ( " Himmelskibet " ) at the 2006 Cinema Muto festival in Sacile , Italy . What a great movie ! This Danish steampunk saga is the stirring tale of the first trip to Mars , in an era when wireless telegraphy hasn't been perfected . The spaceship hasn't got a radio , and the heroes are brought back f... |
418,547 | 1,609,079 | 158,910 | 10 | Harold Russell applauds | William Wyler was the fourth recipient of the American Film Institute's annual lifetime achievement award . One of the purposes of the award is to generate income for AFI from the broadcasting rights to a televised edition of the AFI tribute . . . so , the award is always given to someone whose name value is likely to ... |
418,414 | 1,609,079 | 359,313 | 10 | A very dandy Yankee Doodle | ' George M ! ' is a fine example of a ' chamber musical ' . . . meaning , a musical stripped down to its barest essentials : a minimal cast on a bare stage , with only the most cursory props and no special costumes . The official screen biography of George M . Cohan was the great musical ' Yankee Doodle Dandy ' , starr... |
418,237 | 1,609,079 | 970,525 | 10 | Good performances , twist ending | I started out disliking ' A Fitting Tribute ' because the premise reminded me of one of the most uncomfortable events in my adult life . In 1975 , I was a stringer for one of the Fleet Street tabloids . An attractive young heiress named Lesley Whittle was kidnapped and held to ransom by a psychopath who eventually murd... |
419,177 | 1,609,079 | 19,074 | 10 | Chaney's greatest role . | ' Laugh , Clown , Laugh ' was Lon Chaney's favourite of his own films , according to Robert Gordon Anderson's 1971 Chaney bio . As Tito Beppi , an Italian clown who adopts a foundling , Lon Chaney pulls the stops out : playing a wide range of emotions , even legitimately over-acting as a circus clown . He also adds an ... |
418,732 | 1,609,079 | 229,364 | 10 | The first celebrity newsreel ? | J . Stuart Blackton was an important figure in the early history of American movies . Born in Yorkshire , he emigrated to New York City as a youth , and at age 21 he was employed by the New York ' Evening World ' as a cub reporter and sketch artist . Shortly after Thomas Edison announced his invention of the wonderful ... |
418,843 | 1,609,079 | 861,719 | 10 | A man in Chorleywood fingers his organ . | ' Metro-Land ' is John Betjeman's quiet celebration of the unique and special pleasures of life in one section of England in one segment of the twentieth century . Much of what's seen here was already on its way to extinction when Betjeman extolled it . If you're an Anglophile , or a nostalgic Briton of a certain age ,... |
419,694 | 1,609,079 | 40,481 | 10 | Bit o ' bovver in Bethnal . | Googie Withers was England's equivalent of Joan Blondell ( although better-looking and more talented ) : both actresses played similar types , alternating their performances between dramas and comedies . In ' It Always Rains on Sunday ' , Withers gives possibly the best performance of her career . She's skilfully abett... |
438,674 | 1,617,546 | 26,216 | 1 | The electrical traditions of the Ligurians | Gloriously awful feature version of the even more gloriously awful serial , concerning Zolok , last of the Ligurians , in his steel-plated city beneath the African jungle . Along with hunchback Billy Bletcher - - doing his ' Pete ' voice from Mickey Mouse - - he rules over a land of ' White Giants ' and electrically zo... |
438,587 | 1,617,546 | 306,032 | 1 | Sheesh ! | I didn't know whether to give a 1 or a 10 to this short subject . It's so rotten it comes out on the other side as vastly entertaining . What the hey ! Miss New York only came in second , so I'll give it a 1 . David Selznick made this film for quick cash at the height of the Valentino craze and there are a lot more sho... |
438,392 | 1,617,546 | 56,622 | 1 | Rave Review | It says here this is a documentary . Well , sort of . It features Basil Rathbone , who stands around in what looks to be priestly garbs before a lectern , on which sits a big book , hectoring his audience of one on the evils of communism . He is clearly not playing Basil Rathbone but it is not clear what he is . God ? ... |
438,671 | 1,617,546 | 316,759 | 1 | South African Texas | This brutal , chaotic pseudo-spaghetti western , which steals large plot pieces from Leone's IL BUONO IL BRUTTO , IL CATTIVO adds absolutely nothing to the genre except the odd conceit that South Africa is a good stand-in for the American southwest - - well , I suppose if Spain and Italy are supposed to do the job , So... |
438,590 | 1,617,546 | 309,341 | 1 | Bad Student Film | This is one of the pieces included in the " Treasures of American Film Archives " DVD set . Although it makes the claim , it cannot honestly be called a movie . It is a series of still pictures shot on a winter day at the Battery on lower Manhattan , doubtless intended to evoke some emotion . If it was the intention of... |
439,242 | 1,617,546 | 37,638 | 1 | The French Don't Speak English | When this movie was revived for the first time in fifty years , I was eager to see it . It was , by all reports , a masterpiece of film noir and only the French had seen it in the last half-century , thanks to a print in Paris . Well , I went to see it and was appalled . Visually , it is , I suppose , interesting , but... |
438,710 | 1,617,546 | 97,898 | 1 | How Low Can You Go ? | This is a movie without any redeeming values . Bad script , bad acting , bad cinematography , even bad foley work - - there's one scene in which the lead mafioso is pouring a couple of glasses of wine and it sounds like the mike is taped to the inside of a toilet bowl as someone is urinating into it . Another scene , i... |
438,825 | 1,617,546 | 956,201 | 1 | Musty Suffer ? Must the Audience ? | Made during the collapse of the Motion Pictures Patents Trust , this comedy is a clear exemplar of the problems that the Trust suffered from ; they may have held the patents and the money at the start , but by the time this movie came along , it was about ten years out of date and the audience didn't want it , nor had ... |
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