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438,532 | 1,617,546 | 336,857 | 1 | Imitation is the sincerest form of Theft | There were many Chaplin imitators . Billy West made a career doing Chaplin for several years and did some very fine work - - and some not so good . West had a real sense of comedy , good timing , and Oliver Hardy - - occasionally Charley Chase would direct . People would hold Chaplin look-alike contests - - the story i... |
438,524 | 1,617,546 | 232,267 | 1 | Where ? | Once again , Mr . James White , famous for his views of the backs of people's hats , has turned his camera to a fascinating subject , to wit : what do the railroad tracks look like from a moving train , when the train is moving past beautiful scenery . Well , they look like railroad tracks . That's a load off my mind a... |
438,505 | 1,617,546 | 119,414 | 1 | The boredom of boredom is boring | And so is this movie . Joe - - at least we think it's Joe , since we're never actually told his name , or , indeed anything , since there is no dialogue - - lives a boring life in a boring place . We get to watch him clean his shoes a lot . He also goes into what appears to be a lobby and sits , staring at something , ... |
439,205 | 1,617,546 | 10,045 | 1 | Look Under Your Bed | This movie is overwrought , hysterical and little more than tripe . Lloyd Hughs , under the immoral and debilitating influence of a college education , falls for the Bolshevik labor agitators . While this trash may have some interest to those who wish to understand the propaganda of the period , an era of Red Scares an... |
439,371 | 1,617,546 | 49,092 | 1 | I'm taking names | I see that there are six people who gave this idiotic , misbegotten , miscast film a 10 rating . I can forgive the twenty or so people who gave TERROR OF TINY TOWN a ten rating , but anyone who gave this a rating substantially higher than 1 is an idiot . Anyone who gave it a rating higher than 3 has never seen this mov... |
439,230 | 1,617,546 | 368,384 | 1 | It's All Symbolic | Yes , even the symbols are symbolic . What are they symbolic of ? Why , that is for you , the viewer to decide . What does this movie mean to you ? An utter waste of six minutes ? Then clearly , this movie was not meant for you . Why did you look at it ? Go look at something else . |
439,384 | 1,617,546 | 13,971 | 1 | Piffle | Miss Talmadge had , like her more famous sister Norma , quite a career in silent movies and her ability to survive borefests like this argues an amazing star power . The plot is not about a cleaning woman with a mean mop - - although such a character does serve as comic relief in a few scenes to lighten the unbelievabl... |
438,452 | 1,617,546 | 62,334 | 1 | Failed Pilot | After a charming series of movies starring Debbie Reynolds and Sandra Dee , this fourth entry in the series is an unmitigated disaster . The steady , professional actors who populated earlier movies are gone . The dialogue , in which Tammy's language is composed of archaic usage and quotes from the King James ' Bible i... |
438,582 | 1,617,546 | 265,523 | 1 | Isn't a Comedy Supposed to be funny ? | Lloyd Hamilton and Bud Duncan made up a comedy team in the teens as ' Ham and Bud . ' Ham was the big fat one , looking a little like a seedy Oliver Hardy with a bad walrus mustache , and Bud looking a lot like a seedy adult Micky Rooney . They played a couple of vicious tramps who wandered into random situations invol... |
439,166 | 1,617,546 | 331,597 | 1 | Not | This is not a panoramic view of Newport . This is actually what happens when you put a camera at the back of a small , black-smoke-belching boat , point the camera at the prow right past the smoke stack , and race the boat parallel to the shore . Newport ? Why not ? You might as well claim it is Newport . For those wit... |
439,002 | 1,617,546 | 63,571 | 1 | The Excuse of Art | The major talents involved with this movie - - director Joseph Losey and actors Robert Mitchum , Elizabeth Taylor and Mia Farrow , have done some great work and some lousy work - - Mitchum was inclined to phone in performances unless he got interested . But , like many people who get involved with the arts , when they ... |
438,690 | 1,617,546 | 26,726 | 1 | It's for the kids . | A demonstration that talent , expense and hard work can still produce work that is utterly abominable . This cartoon starts off with a non-anthropomorphic cow dancing ballet and descends thence to depths of puerility that would make Barney the Dinosaur vomit . Beautiful technicolor , excellent painting and well-done an... |
439,081 | 1,617,546 | 52,077 | 1 | but I'm An Artist ! | I should think that anyone with an abiding interest in films has at least heard of this movie , and of its director , Ed Wood . Everyone agrees it is a bad movie . Many people feel it is so awful that is hilarious . I have no reason to argue with these people . I have watched this movie on tape , stopping it to examine... |
438,398 | 1,617,546 | 34,567 | 1 | Camp - - boot camp | This grade Z programmer makes an attempt to recapture the chemistry between McLaglen & Lowe from WHAT PRICE GLORY ? It only manages to be a thorough embarrassment to everyone involved . It is hard to decide whether the foolish spy plot , the poorly timed low comedy - - McLaglen seems stunned throughout the procedure an... |
439,110 | 1,617,546 | 218,405 | 1 | Just a postcard | This early Edison short is a picture of a ship sitting at a dock . While it is identified as a ship being loaded for the Klondike , there is nothing particular to indicate it is shot in Seattle and heading for the Klondike . It could just as well be in Hoboken , headed for Secausus . There is no motion , except for a h... |
438,872 | 1,617,546 | 215,573 | 2 | Wrong Composition | As usual , Messrs . White and Heisse , the originators of the bad school of film making , have demonstrated in this film that they know nothing about composition . The train approaches the onlookers and the camera straight on and the right hand of the frame is wasted until the last moment of this film . Bad camera plac... |
438,399 | 1,617,546 | 240,931 | 2 | A movie of a statue | I would suppose that an American in a theater in 1898 , watching a film program of short films from around the world , would be caught up in the excitement of a film of the Statue of Liberty . If you stop and think about it , though , what you have here is a film of a statue . This differs from a photograph of the Stat... |
438,631 | 1,617,546 | 1,103,224 | 2 | The Brains of a Dope | A married trapper wins the heart of an Indian maid and is married to her . After the wedding night he returns to his other wife and family . The Indian discovers this bigamy and determines to kill him , but seeing the love he has for her daughter , she jumps off a cliff instead , hoping to meet again in the " Happy Hun... |
439,500 | 1,617,546 | 52,636 | 2 | And the point is . . . . ? | I think there is no point . This looks like a pilot for a one-hour war drama like COMBAT ! that never got beyond this stage . Filled with Cold War angst about the forthcoming Third World War , we watch as Americans with guns alternate with shots of Japanese with guns , eked out with occasional shots of palm trees , unt... |
438,896 | 1,617,546 | 11,197 | 2 | For the Love of Pete ! | Clara Kimball Young was a capable actress who could perform in farce or melodrama - - her TRILBY is still quite watchable - - but she all too often found herself cast in melodramatic tripe . This is an example of her worst . This is not to imply that there weren't people trying . DP Arthur Edeson shot some beautiful st... |
438,565 | 1,617,546 | 26,486 | 2 | Syrupy | A treacly Happy Harmonies cartoon from Rudolf Ising as a bunch of childish , anthropomorphic bees spend their time , when they are not making honey , in cavorting with each other around Disney-fied mushrooms , until a big black spider with pink spots threatens their idyllic existence . This is one of those cartoons tha... |
438,606 | 1,617,546 | 65,596 | 2 | Disintegration of the Western | Poor little programmer of a western , tries to ride in the trail of the Eastwood-Leone " Man With No Name " series and fails . There is an intensely 1960s feel the the performances that make the performances awkward and unconvincing . In addition , the prints have a washed-out look . Even a graceful opening with Joel M... |
438,640 | 1,617,546 | 309,365 | 2 | bad photography | By the time this was shot , the public was losing interest in simple vistas . This picture is also rendered almost unviewable by the poor , irregular lighting it was shot in . If you look at this hoping to see what the San Francisco landscape looked like before the Great Quake , this won't help you . |
439,137 | 1,617,546 | 12,716 | 2 | Anita Stewart is gorgeous | . . . and John Stahl knows how to direct , so there's plenty of interesting motion and posing . Once you have said that , you have exhausted the good points of this movie . Yes , Miss Stewart is gorgeous , but she can't act very well . The script is based on coincidences that are so flabbergasting as to defy the abilit... |
439,045 | 1,617,546 | 24,510 | 2 | Among the Worst Roach Movies | Well , some of the original Lonesome Lukes are pretty awful , and a couple of the Stan Laurel one-reelers are pretty bad too - - there's one in which the humor consists of everyone being Irish and bashing each other with bricks . But once you get past the initial gag in this movie , which is a typical piece of Del Lord... |
438,888 | 1,617,546 | 29,939 | 2 | Golden Turkey Sleeper | Or perhaps ' Snoozer ' would be the right term for an undiscovered masterpiece of bad film making . If you've ever seen THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT , you may know there was a genre of trucking pictures in the late 1930s . Well , this is a SINGING trucking picture . Yes , Ward Bond sings ! And no ordinary songs of love and the ... |
439,016 | 1,617,546 | 969,322 | 2 | Surely they could have cut in clips of Vincent Price , Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi ? | You know the sort of thing in which they have Fred Astaire dancing with a vacuum cleaner ? I mean , when you've got Nazis , World War Two Pilots and supernatural creatures and they're referring to UFOs at least three years before the term was coined . . . . well , it seems that someone has written a script by channelin... |
439,034 | 1,617,546 | 236,517 | 2 | in a flop | First , I must tell you that I think Ben Turpin is one of the unfunniest screen comics in the history of the cinema . There are screen comics - - Larry Semon , for example - - who are complete nullities so far as I am concerned , but Ben Turpin's screen performances go beyond not funny into the realm of active terror .... |
439,219 | 1,617,546 | 840,305 | 2 | Showing My Age | The Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner is a long series of unfunny comedians who are more interested in seeing if they can drive anyone off stage than in actually saying or doing anything that can be remotely construed as funny . Now , a Roast is not meant to be polite . A roast can and should run the gamut from r... |
439,388 | 1,617,546 | 1,265,091 | 2 | Anesthesia | For years I kept hearing the the worst comedian of all time was Al Joy . This seemed to me a rather intriguing statement , since I have seen a lot of awful comedians in my time , from Minerva Courtney , who simply remade Chaplin shorts with herself in the starring road , to Paulie Shore . But Al Joy was . . . . . beyon... |
438,396 | 1,617,546 | 38,953 | 3 | Smarter than the narration | Interesting nature photography showing the first year of a life of a collection of fox kits , made ridiculous by being shown in double time and a ridiculously anthropomorphic narration . Turn the sound off on this one . |
438,368 | 1,617,546 | 321,391 | 3 | Expensive Props | Although the American Mutuscope & Biograph Company lacked any hint of the future greatness of cameraman Billy Bitzer and director D . W . Griffith , we can see that even as early as 1901 , when this picture was shot , it was trying to distinguish itself from Edison's style . Edison would show you a waterfall . Biograph... |
439,095 | 1,617,546 | 495,416 | 3 | Join the Navy and See the Snakes | By the middle of the 1920s , Lloyd Hamilton was one of the most accomplished screen comedians working . Chaplin said he admired him . Charley Chase ( who had directed Ham in a few pictures about 1920 ) said that when he needed to think of a gag , he would ask himself what Hamilton would do . But first he had to be bad ... |
438,717 | 1,617,546 | 244,855 | 3 | Unmoving Picture | The good things about this comedy is that the actors look like the cartoon characters they are playing ; and some of the titles are funny . The bad thing about this movie is its motionlessness . The Toonerville Trolley does not moves . The acting is little more than posing ; and the plot starts and stops for no clear r... |
439,235 | 1,617,546 | 21,763 | 3 | Of Bad Moviemaking | Awful second feature about a shipboard murder following a crooked poker game fails to maintain any suspense or indeed , any interest at all . There is some experimentation with dubbing to deal with moving shots - - dubbing in which the mouths don't match words spoken . Harry Myers , best known for his role as the rich ... |
439,126 | 1,617,546 | 45,752 | 3 | Takes Her Nowhere | A career-killing movie for Betty Grable , who is wasted , along with everyone except Eddie Foy Jr . in this prettified musical version of the movie that made Henry Fonda a star . Dale Robertson plays the farmer , who is a moron , Thelma Ritter is wasted and some fake-looking scenery still leaves one mystified at how pe... |
438,912 | 1,617,546 | 242,963 | 3 | Is That Yellowstone Park ? | Are those tourists ? You see a shot of three horse-drawn wagons on a dirt road with some mountains in the far background . This lasts about five seconds , to be followed by another shot of three horse-drawn wagons on a dirt road with some mountains in the far background . One grows tired of looking at these various Edi... |
439,410 | 1,617,546 | 9,015 | 3 | A Place For Kids To Be Bad | George Burns used to mourn the death of vaudeville , saying " There's no place for a kid to be bad anymore . " No place for him to learn his craft . Well , Stan Laurel knew how to be a silent clown : anyone who came out of Fred Karno's troupe knew that . But here , though , he is busy ringing the changes on bad film co... |
438,692 | 1,617,546 | 151,610 | 3 | Don't get your cow drunk in a bowling alley and other sound advice | I suppose it was inevitable that the Van Beuren studio would attempt to come up with its own series ideas . Besides recycling Felix the Cat in three pretty good cartoons in 1936 and a bunch of Toonerville Trolley shorts that owe their interest to the comic strip , Van Beuren had a Tom-and-Jerry series of singing shorts... |
439,047 | 1,617,546 | 72,268 | 3 | A Burnt Out Genre | The Disaster Movies of the Late 1960s and 1970s seem to owe their success to the spectacle involved . If you have a really big building on fire or a gigantic ship sinking at sea or an earthquake ripping down a city , it's very impressive . But once you get past the big set piece , you still have to photograph people an... |
438,519 | 1,617,546 | 310,118 | 3 | a view of girders | A close-up examination of the girders of the Eiffel Tower in Paris . The view is varied somewhat by occasional glimpses of buildings , warehouses in the early sections and at the end of this two-minute film , ten seconds of the buildings surrounding the Champs de Mars . |
439,358 | 1,617,546 | 30,183 | 3 | Warners Goes Exploitation | Warner's Brothers B unit goes for a straight exploitation plot , but manages to stay within the Production Code nonetheless , resulting in a movie that is neither amusingly salacious nor particularly well made - - a look at the plot outline offered by the Internet Movie Database will give you a rough idea of how silly ... |
439,356 | 1,617,546 | 53,224 | 3 | Pretty Awful - - But Marshall and Noonan are good | This service comedy , for which Peter Marshall ( Joanne Dru's brother and later perennial host of The Hollywood Squares ) and Tommy Noonan were hyped as ' the new Lewis and Martin ' is just shy of dreadful : a few random sight gags are inserted , everyone talks fast and nothing works quite right - - there's one scene i... |
439,196 | 1,617,546 | 668 | 3 | 1908 | 1908 was a momentous year in the history of American films . D . W . Griffith became a director and , over the next dozen years , would transform film . Between him and his competitors , anxious to maintain their positions in an industry that threw off millions of dollars of profit every year , they would transform the... |
438,925 | 1,617,546 | 41,346 | 3 | Sanders is Perfect . Everyone Else is Dull | Oscar Wilde's comedy of manners , perhaps the wittiest play ever written , is all but wrecked at the hands of a second-rate cast . Sanders is , as one would expect , casually , indolently brilliant in the role of Lord Darlington , but the rest of the cast makes the entire procedure a waste of time . Jean Crain attempts... |
439,437 | 1,617,546 | 64,721 | 3 | At Least the Music's Good | The Ex-Warner-Brothers team from Termite Terrace left to form DePatie-Freleng and did a bunch of poor work . ' The Ant and the Aardvark ' series was one of theirs . It was like the Roadrunner series , but from hunger . In this one , Aardvark tries to catch the ant uses sugar cubes and fishing gear . The animation is po... |
439,151 | 1,617,546 | 20,255 | 3 | Creaky Mess | Antique , static , early talkie , a sort of bad Lon Chaney version of TWELVE ANGRY MEN . Joe E . Brown gives a good performance as Hermann , a clown on the jury ( yes , he plays a clown and he is on the jury ) who is the lone holdout for acquittal , but between poor sound recording and his stage-Dutch accent , the whol... |
438,361 | 1,617,546 | 142,635 | 3 | Failures of Screen Writing | Andre Antoine liked to shoot screen adaptations of popular French novels , preferably about country life . His movies are always beautifully shot with a love of country life that borders on idolatry . A major weakness of his movies - - and this one in particular - - is that he seemed to so love the works he based his m... |
438,359 | 1,617,546 | 2,822 | 3 | Take Heart for Mrs . Pankhurst Has Been Clapped in Irons Again ! | That line , from a song in MARY POPPINS is probably all most people know about Mrs . Pankhurst , a leading suffragette in this period . This early early feature shows her and Harriet Stanton Blatch , also a leader in the movement . But other than that it it is a thinly told story fronting for a plea for women's vote : ... |
438,552 | 1,617,546 | 25,947 | 3 | Worse Than Bosko | A lot of people dislike Merrie Melodies ' first star , Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid , who may have been a monkey or may have been a small Negro , but who was clearly a rip-off of Mickey Mouse , set up by Harman & Ising after they left Disney and Universal - - that's a long story and we won't go into it here . But after they ... |
438,929 | 1,617,546 | 10,506 | 3 | Not Even Close | One of the poorer of the Harold Lloyd ' Glass ' shorts , this is little more than a demonstration of physical violence , and Harold and Snub try to slap each other to death , Bud Jamison gets beaten on the head by policemen with Billy clubs , and even Bebe gets her foot stepped on . Pay attention to the title , and giv... |
438,971 | 1,617,546 | 234,029 | 3 | Long Titles to Explain sense-free action | Looking at a Biograph story picture before D . W . Griffith came on the scene is a revelation as to what a difference he made to the American film . People in the movies did act by waving their hands about . With a few notable exceptions - - notably the pictures shot by Billy Bitzer - - the action took place all over t... |
438,420 | 1,617,546 | 123,380 | 3 | Is It Art or Is it a Joke ? | So this guy goes into a psychiatrist's office for his first appointment . After the paperwork is done , the psychiatrist says " I'm going to show you ink blots . Tell me what you see in them . " " Well , says the patient , " looking at the first one , " I see a man and a woman having sex . " On seeing the second one , ... |
439,224 | 1,617,546 | 311,724 | 3 | Maybe Fakers | Lloyd Hamilton and Bud Duncan made up a comedy team in the teens as ' Ham and Bud . ' Ham was the big fat one , looking a little like a seedy Oliver Hardy with a bad walrus mustache , and Bud looking a lot like a seedy adult Micky Rooney . They played a couple of vicious tramps who wandered into random situations invol... |
439,331 | 1,617,546 | 338,951 | 3 | Buster Brown as Shirley Temple ? | Looking at these Charles-Lamont-directed Buster Brown shorts makes me wonder . The series is another that attempted to follow up the success of Roach's OUR GANG with a well known branded competitor : they have the Munsters , we take Charles Addams ' stuff and poof , you've got a good show . The Monkees ripped off the B... |
438,767 | 1,617,546 | 51,669 | 3 | Much Ado About Nothing | This occasionally interesting story about a high school couple who get married and pregnant is written , directed and acted like a TV sitcom , with a supporting character who looks like a clean-cut Maynard G . Krebs , a father who does everything but pour steam out of his ears and lots of double takes and loud reaction... |
439,033 | 1,617,546 | 251,432 | 3 | High Concept , Low Comedy | Joe Rock was a fine producer of comedies in the late silent era . He knew how to let his performers work and the results showed . So when he came up with a bad idea , it was really a stinker . The bad idea here is this : people laugh at fat guys . People laugh at comedy teams . So let's take three enormously fat bit pl... |
438,389 | 1,617,546 | 44,681 | 3 | Breed isn't the word | Poorly acted drama about Robert Young - - doing a badly acted William Powell impression - - coming between Janis Carter , doing a bad Lucille Ball imitation and Reed Hadley doing a surprisingly awful Charlton Heston imitation . Beautiful location shots don't do anything towards rescuing this picture . Not even awful en... |
439,326 | 1,617,546 | 71,194 | 3 | Miscast Maladaptation | I do not understand why the movies cannot handle Donald Westlake's comic writing . They miscast them , based on who is hot . They cut out the scenes tat might be cinematically interesting . They miss the points of all the jokes and don't understand the characters . Only when Westlake does the script - - as in THE GRIFT... |
438,914 | 1,617,546 | 22,708 | 3 | Small differences | The early Bosko series of early Looney Tunes are rarely seen . First , because they are in black and white , and most people don't have the patience for black and white . Second , because Bosko and Honey , his girlfriend , are supposed to be Black - - or Afro-Americans , depending on which term you prefer - - and are o... |
438,949 | 1,617,546 | 164,083 | 3 | An Inauspicious Beginning | This movie , the first from the production company of Hollandia , is not a particularly prepossessing harbinger of things to come . The story is simplistic to the point of idiocy , the pacing is glacial , the cinematography is about five years behind the times - - and this in an era in which the art of cinema was dashi... |
438,520 | 1,617,546 | 218,566 | 3 | Black Feather Hats | This movie is an early example of James White's genre of Looking At the The Backs of People's Hats As They Stand Around . A master of this variety of short film , he apparently so overawed his competitors that no one would dare imitate him . " That's a James White movie you're trying to do , isn't it ? Lacks his sense ... |
439,488 | 1,617,546 | 44,466 | 3 | Defeating the Dialogue Directors | Cornel Wilde does a Mexican accent . He does a really bad Mexican accent with an often wooden delivery . For me that trumps every other aspect of this movie , which is supposed to be about California in the 1840s and jockeying between Mexico , the U . S . England and Russia to control it , but seems to be about Wilde g... |
438,804 | 1,617,546 | 3,760 | 3 | The Drunk Act | Although this is not an earth-shaking classic , it is a very pleasant little film . Charlie is not yet , as W . C . Fields would later call him , " the world's best ballet dancer " , but he takes his falls gracefully . Even more , he permits his other actors their moments in the light . Mack Swain is - - not surprising... |
439,275 | 1,617,546 | 222,938 | 3 | Weaker Effort but technically interesting | A tramp crawls into a mattress that is being made to get warm and is sewn into it . when he wakes suddenly , he scares the bejasus out of everyone . Although this slapstick effort is one of Melies ' weaker movies , there are a couple of interesting points : first , the cutting definitely uses Magic lantern grammar , as... |
439,173 | 1,617,546 | 59,667 | 3 | Wrong , wrong , wrong | Once again , Robert McKimson shows he has no idea of what's going on as he takes Chuck Jones ' Roadrunner-coyote series and wrecks it by having the Roadrunner do things to the coyote . Although I am no fan of this particular series , which I feel Chuck Jones ran into the ground fairly early , a victim of its own succes... |
439,074 | 1,617,546 | 19,014 | 3 | Friz | Friz Freleng's second directorial effort - - under his legal name of ' Isadore ' and credited as co-director with Rudolf Ising - - is a silent Oswald the Lucky Rabbit effort , made soon after Charles Mintz grabbed the rights to the character and almost all his crew from Walt Disney . Oswald takes in Homer , a small kit... |
439,382 | 1,617,546 | 142,976 | 4 | Unfortunately Weak | Only the first reel of this two-reeler from 1922 seems to survive , which is a pity . Of course every lost reel of film is a sad loss , but this is a Stan Laurel film , one of the great talents of film comedy , and a loss of one of his films is greater than , say a missing Al Joy comedy . Even so , this is not a partic... |
438,970 | 1,617,546 | 59,299 | 4 | The Roadrunner : Variations on a Theme ( Urban ) | There are people who consider the Wile E . Coyote / roadrunner shorts that Chuck Jones did for Warner Brothers to be his best series . Certainly , as a demonstration that silent cartoons still had some appeal , they do work . . . . but their inherent limitation as a variation on a simple theme bores me after a while . ... |
439,227 | 1,617,546 | 32,614 | 4 | Much Ado About Nothing | Frantic unfunny comedy about how Frank Morgan panicked the nation on radio - - a gloss on Orson Welles ' broadcast of WAR OF THE WORLDS - - and the lives , loves and generally unfunny situations surrounding his newfound success . Frank Morgan doubles sixteen times a second and an impossibly young Dan Dailey plays the j... |
439,146 | 1,617,546 | 21,918 | 4 | Which is Olsen and which is Johnson ? | I suppose some people will like this , but not me . Olsen and Johnson , we are told , are one of the Crazy Comedy teams , like the Marx Brothers , the Ritz Brothers and Wheeler and Woolsey . The problem is that the farce is set up so absurdly with characters that are not particularly funny and the three leads - - Olsen... |
438,464 | 1,617,546 | 15,289 | 4 | Dreary | Given the mature talent of Henry King and the Gish sisters , this is a slow , dreary misfire . The plot proceeds at a deadeningly slow rate - - King liked to take his time , but this is ridiculous . For completists of the Gishes , King or William Powell |
439,106 | 1,617,546 | 30,525 | 4 | Editor needed to shave a bit closer | Even Billy Gilbert cannot shave - - I mean save - - this musical comedy about a rivalry between two barbers ' colleges run like a football game . It looks as though the editor thought it was funnier than it was and ran the reaction shots longer than needed , resulting in slow pacing and annoying gaps . Billy is in full... |
439,340 | 1,617,546 | 19,685 | 4 | Below Par | This is a long , static mess of a crime drama . Although the cinematographer obviously worked hard to make this visually interesting we can judge it against contemporary crime dramas such as Von Sternberg's stylish UNDERWORLD , Browning's brooding WHITE TIGER and Badger's funny PATHS TO PARADISE . This was at the heigh... |
438,440 | 1,617,546 | 45,702 | 4 | Well Ain't That Too Damned Bad | Lots of behind the screen talent takes a whack at what seems to be an attempt to make something to compete with the success of Rodgers & Hammerstein's stage success of SOUTH PACIFIC , struggling with some unfortunately odd casting choices to produce a fitfully interesting , silly musical . We have Billy Gilbert and Mit... |
438,996 | 1,617,546 | 156,169 | 4 | Pause for a Travelogue | This well-meaning but incredibly muddled short feature - - it looks to have been about half an hour until eked out by the interpolation of a travelogue about kibbutzim in Palestine and a short silent film about two lovers , one royal , the other Jewish , who commit suicide in a variation of the story of Esther - - is a... |
439,079 | 1,617,546 | 47,678 | 4 | Why a Cartoon ? | There is no reason this had to be a cartoon . It could have easily been a live-action short , of the sort that commonly done throughout the history of films . True , there was a shortage of well-known female comics to do this sort of work , but it looks a lot like some of the gags used on I LOVE LUCY in the era . |
439,259 | 1,617,546 | 8,860 | 4 | Girl , Not Lost , But Limber | The story is that Harold Lloyd abandoned his moderately successful ' Lonesome Luke ' character and started up his familiar ' Glasses ' character in order to do something different than the Chaplin-derived baggy-pants slapstick of the era . Well , if so , he still hadn't found his way yet to his classic comedies of the ... |
439,466 | 1,617,546 | 15,164 | 4 | Another Mess , Not Fine | Revised November 27 , 2005I would like to thank John Achorn who dropped me a note pointing out there were two versions of this short available , an eight-minute cut-down on which I based my original review , and a twenty-minute version recently reissued on DVD by Kino and Lobster . My original review read : " Once agai... |
438,540 | 1,617,546 | 780,536 | 4 | The Profundity of Banality vs . the Banality of Profundity | It has been my lot in life to know - - at least to the extent of taking part in conversations with - - three and a half hit men : two definitely and three who might have been killers for hire . None of them were possessed , so far as I could judge , of any great sense of moral angst , existential anguish or philosophic... |
438,918 | 1,617,546 | 2,465 | 4 | Lost In Sherwood Forest | This early version of Robin Hood has turned up at a couple of recent shows sponsored by the Fort Lee Film Commission as one of the films shot at Fort Lee , New Jersey , one of world's major film centers in the early 20th century . The print that survives is in pretty good shape for such an orphan , aided by a lot of ti... |
439,470 | 1,617,546 | 30,390 | 4 | Movies on a Budget | Here is yet another entry in Fox's " Jones Family " series , which ran from 1936 through 1940 . In this one , the newlyweds are fighting over money issues and fast-talking semi-con man ' Uncle Charlie ' , played by Alan Dinehart is in town making trouble . As usual for a Fox B , the camera work by Edward Snyder - - who... |
438,551 | 1,617,546 | 23,621 | 4 | Bad Acting | Jack Hoxie was one of the great cowboy stars of the silent screen , and deservedly so . This , his final starring role for Poverty Row Western Star Productions , shows very clearly why he could not make the transition : he can't speak a line of dialogue without it sounding like it's being read . Nor is the dialogue all... |
438,950 | 1,617,546 | 11,172 | 4 | The Family's Shame | The Tucker family has fallen on hard times and is down to their dilapidated home , their last dollar and the last chicken in the yard , when home comes their hope : Roscoe Karns , who takes the last dollar to pay the cab fare , eats the last chicken and gets a job running a roulette wheel at the local dance hall . King... |
438,779 | 1,617,546 | 370 | 4 | Zip Zip Zip | Although the IMDb listing would have you believe this movie is 11 minutes in length , the DVD version of it as issued by the British Film Institute in 2006 times in at about three minutes - - - and there isn't time enough to tell the story in any meaningful way unless you know it - - stick with the 1951 version starrin... |
439,098 | 1,617,546 | 28,483 | 4 | We Didn't Go to this movie | This mild little comedy of how Walter Abel goes to his college homecoming in order to secure a contract for his company might have made a nifty little movie a few years earlier , especially as Una Merkel appears in it and few were better in sexy pre-code comedies than she . But , alas , the enforcement of the Code was ... |
438,543 | 1,617,546 | 147,915 | 4 | Be Friendly to Casper - - He will be voting in the New York City Elections | How many Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoons are there ? One , really , since they all have exactly the same plot : Casper shows up , the adults are terrified , but the children don't know to be frightened . Eventually Casper saves someone's life and the adults decide they like him . Here it's Indians . There are some l... |
439,454 | 1,617,546 | 275,071 | 4 | Role Reversal | Poor little short comedy which posits that in a hundred years men's styles will revert to Regency garb , and that there will be a complete role reversal , with Clyde Cook staying home alone while wife Katherine Grant goes tomcatting - - if that's the word - - around town . That and the blimps that can be seen out the w... |
439,463 | 1,617,546 | 248,433 | 4 | No , it's the 33-year-old Semon | A Semon comedy that reveals most of the problems with his work : the gags are well executed , but without much flair and with no logic in their set-up . Semon works backstage in a theater where open jars of nitroglycerin are left sitting about for animals in a magician's acts to drink from ; where open barrels of lamp ... |
438,489 | 1,617,546 | 43,632 | 4 | Okay for pre-teen girls , I guess | This attempt to continue Margeret O'Brien's starring roles into her teens is completely unengaging to me - - although it is possible that in an earlier era , when magazines like TIGER BEAT appealed to pre-teens anxiously awaiting the onset of adolescence , it might have actually found an audience . But , speaking as a ... |
439,059 | 1,617,546 | 143,162 | 4 | It gets better | A musical variety short from Universal Pictures , the quality of the singers and dancers , while excellent , are often hampered by what they are called on to perform . The Pied Pipers , for example , a close-harmony singing octet , get to perform a Hawaian number and " Polly Wolly Doodle All the Day " which sound as lu... |
438,476 | 1,617,546 | 26,468 | 4 | Nay Nay | Bosko is given the MGM treatment , which means color . . . . not Technicolar , but Cinecolor , and not used to any particularly good effect . Harman & Ising appear to have been overwhelmed by a slightly better budget and had no clear idea of what to do with it , except to produce a New Deal sort of movie in which Bosko... |
438,498 | 1,617,546 | 23,696 | 4 | Tight budget | Walt Disney was having some problems getting paid by his distributor in this period . Eventually he would leave United Artists and settle in for the next twenty years at RKO . In the meantime , however , he would cut corners on his movies by having a lot of repetitive movements in some of his shorts . Here he tries to ... |
438,836 | 1,617,546 | 28,634 | 4 | Uneven | William Rearden Sr , who built the steel mill dies on the job and leaves the mill to his son , a painter in Paris , if he works in the mill for a year . In the meantime , it is in the hands of ' Tons Walker ' . It's an interesting idea for the story , and the steel mill sequences are shot with care and verve . Grant Wi... |
438,940 | 1,617,546 | 526 | 4 | Bitzer Before Griffith | This short subject shows the excavation under way for Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan , for more than half a century one of the great pieces of Public architecture in New York . Then they tore it down to put up what Russell Baker called ' a bus station with trains . ' After that they put up photos of the old station ... |
438,835 | 1,617,546 | 43,499 | 4 | Annoying | A great director , a wonderful cast , a skilled director of photography and lots of studio gloss results in a stinker of a movie , redeemed only by Clifton Webb's mugging and one medium-sized interaction by Evelyn Varden and Margalo Gillmore as they discuss small children . Otherwise this script is too studio bound , w... |
438,483 | 1,617,546 | 167,929 | 4 | Past Prime Time | Miss Horne is one of the greatest singers of 20th Century Standards . She ranks up with Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald . Anyone who loves the jazz-influenced style of songwriting that flourished from 1905-1970 who does not think that her range of performances of " Stormy Weather " is as great an artistic achievement... |
438,448 | 1,617,546 | 35,826 | 4 | Stumblin ' All Around In A Wheelchair | MGM's Dr . Kildare second feature series continues without Dr . Kildare - - Lew Ayres was in the doghouse because of his antiwar stance since starring in 1930s ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT and was serving as a medic . In the meantime , the series carried on with Lionel Barrymore as the crusty Dr . Gillespie , with ne... |
439,090 | 1,617,546 | 437,662 | 4 | Mechanical Gags | After ten years of working for Hal Roach , first as a supporting comedian for Harold Lloyd and then in his own series of shorts , Snub Pollard was let go . His style of comedy had not kept up with the new , more realistic , character-based comedy that had emerged , first under Lloyd , then Eddie Boland and now with Cha... |
439,216 | 1,617,546 | 20,218 | 4 | Technical Failures | I came in expecting to get some pleasure out of this picture ; between the Mal St . Clair direction , the George Abbott script and some interesting talent in front of the camera , it looked pretty good on paper . However , although the script still looks good - - the corruption of an honest boxer - - there are far too ... |
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