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438,405 | 1,617,546 | 254,820 | 4 | the ouevre of cineaste Jules White | Somewhere there is a doctorate waiting for someone who wishes to go over the entire output of director-producer Jules White : or , if not a doctorate , the extreme sympathy of anyone who enjoys good movie comedy . Mr . White is known today as the producer-director of the Three Stooges shorts , which he produced when he... |
439,430 | 1,617,546 | 24,561 | 4 | Good Story Gone Bad | This should be an excellent weeper , but it doesn't come off . Too much of the story is told by narration and the performances are flat and , in the case of lead Zita Johann , far too frequently leaden - - as often happens with a good actor , an apparently deliberate but boring choice . The cinematography is excellent ... |
439,386 | 1,617,546 | 146,738 | 4 | The answer to the question not asked | Van Beueren was experimenting with lead cartoon characters at this stage . They had a pretty good musical series with their ' Tom & Jerry ' , which had nothing to do with cats and mice , but were two barfly-ish looking individuals who appeared in a number of good black and white cartoons - - check out PENCIL MANIA if y... |
439,354 | 1,617,546 | 6,981 | 4 | Plowing the Same Ground | I look for anything in this early Lonesome Luke comedy for some sign of the brilliance that Harold Lloyd would attain in the next decade , but it's like looking for the Lloyd Hamilton of the mid-twenties in his Ham & Bud comedies . LLoyd and Roach were just starting out at this stage and anxious to produce something , ... |
438,657 | 1,617,546 | 45,229 | 4 | A Sam Katzman Production | Before Roger Corman there were the B movie departments . At Warner Brothers they had Bryan Foy , at Paramount they had the Dollar Bills and at Columbia , which was a B movie Studio for 90 % of their productions anyway , they had Sam Katzman . This means , for this flick , occasional A movie intellectual support Paul He... |
438,400 | 1,617,546 | 12,699 | 4 | Martyrs of the Northwest | Heavy-handed but well-mounted , this early King Vidor film would have us believe that all that is needed to bring Christianity to cattle rustlers is to win their respect . Vidor mixes sentimentality and excitement a little ham-handedly , as when Colleen Moore regains the use of her legs so she can drag the unconscious ... |
439,450 | 1,617,546 | 27,898 | 4 | No Jokes | If you're a fan of cartoons - - or ' animation ' as those who attempt to give it great dignity call it - - you have undoubtedly seen A CORNY CONCERTO . Well , this is the Blue Danube section . . . . . but with no redeeming jokes . A great pity . |
439,269 | 1,617,546 | 224,119 | 4 | Watch Out There ! | As much as I adore Melies ' work , the fantasy , the joy of performance , the sheer thought that had not Griffith come along and made such a strong show of Englishman George Smith's film grammar that we might today be looking at movies based on Melies ' work . . . . well , when he wasn't playing to his strengths he was... |
438,597 | 1,617,546 | 20,267 | 4 | Close But No Cigar | This 1929 mystery-tearjerker suffers from all the stereotypical problems of talkies in this year - - a very few works like Mamoulian's APPLAUSE aside - - immobile camera and actors who seem unable to read a line with any naturalism - - the sound track sounds poor , too , but that might will be an artifact of a worn pri... |
438,906 | 1,617,546 | 14,522 | 4 | Mabel , look pretty | It is difficult to comment on Mabel's performance in this movie , as surviving prints don't have that much of her in them . The result is not a farce so much as a story of Mabel caught up between sneaky lovers in Mexico . Mabel is called upon to look pretty and realistic in her scenes , and she does this with the flair... |
438,589 | 1,617,546 | 45,345 | 4 | Ill-Humored Comedy | Slick , fast-paced unfunny romantic comedy as rich Peter Lawford and research doctor Gig Young don't exactly romance Jane Greer , but more accurately bid on her for her affections . Young seems grouchy at being in the picture , Lawford tries to get through his lines as fast as possible and Jane Greer seems to just want... |
439,323 | 1,617,546 | 29,951 | 4 | They must be classy , they're English | . . . and they're excellent actors too , yet somehow , this mish-mosh of wasted talent manages to stumble the way through this lifeless second feature without any more than occasional signs of interest . There is a lion which roars with some energy and plays pat-a-cake with a dummy with some evident hope of making it a... |
438,605 | 1,617,546 | 57,122 | 4 | End of the Line | Veteran MGM B director Roy Rowland ended his career with three cheap westerns co-produced with MGM and shot in Spain . In some ways this looks like one of the gritty westerns that were being turned out by Italy , but while the body count is adequate , Rowland was too steeped in the MGM mystique - - this movie is too vi... |
439,339 | 1,617,546 | 290,095 | 4 | Unsuitable | Weak Jackie Chan vehicle , shot without his physical charm and cobbled together with short takes and an improbable , special-effects-laden plot . Jennifer Love Hewitt shows comedic talent and there is a quick look at James Brown for fans of soul music , but there only one good joke in the entire thing . |
439,148 | 1,617,546 | 26,110 | 4 | As Thrilling as his name | The silent one-panel cartoon Henry comes to Fleischer Studios , billed as " The world's funniest human " in this dull little cartoon . Betty , long past her prime , thanks to the Production Code , is running a pet shop and leaves Henry in charge for far too long - - five minutes . A bore . |
438,703 | 1,617,546 | 14,450 | 4 | the evolution of Mr . Laurel | It's a gag comedy from 1923 that makes fun of the French Foreign Legion Stories of P . C . Wren . . . . or at least uses them as a jumping-off point . Stan shows up at a Foreign Legion post in a high-crowned hat , jacket and heavy mascara blotches under the eyes . He enlists , and then has a series of short comic takes... |
438,891 | 1,617,546 | 33,510 | 4 | No Time For Second Takes | Cheap Thin Man ripoff from PRC attempts to use Neil Hamilton and June Storey in the roles of sophisticated detectives , and they are good . The rest of the cast , alas , isn't up to their acting ability and make a mess of the story . Some interesting early film-noir photography and the leads make this watchable . |
438,571 | 1,617,546 | 320,534 | 4 | Primitive for 1913 | This trick slapstick comedy - - surviving in a print in the Dutch film archives under a title that translates as ' The Slapstick Police Agent ' is primitive by the standards of 1913 , as objects appear , disappear and change into other objects in a very simple fashion , although the mail box that follows the cop is amu... |
438,985 | 1,617,546 | 22,045 | 4 | But Don't Sing ! | The first credited Merrie Melody is a poor effort . The animation is repetitive , the gags poor - - one involves a character's dentures coming out on an armature and acting like a castanet - - and the songs - - " Lady , Play Your Mandolin " and " I Am A Gay Caballero " are sung in annoying cartoon voices . |
438,522 | 1,617,546 | 232,458 | 4 | A silent speech | Can there be anything more pointless than a silent movie of someone giving a speech ? Interspersed with title cards - - titles written by Robert Benchley , one would hope - - it might make some sense . There might be some technical interest in looking at such a picture ( Fiorello Laguardia , it is reported from observi... |
438,695 | 1,617,546 | 258,821 | 4 | Silents are awful | If you think silent movies are awful pieces of soundless overacting accompanied by bad piano playing , then this is the movie for you . A compilation of excerpts from three unidentified silent pictures , this piece is embarrassing . All I can say is that silent movies are not like that . Really . |
438,759 | 1,617,546 | 35,393 | 4 | Never Gels | The photography in this movie is beautiful . That is the first thing you notice . Paul Vogel lights this in high contrast shadows , so much so that you think you're looking at a film noir as shot by Hurrell . The actors are all deep in character : even Guy Kibbee is restrained and excellent . But there are so many odd ... |
438,745 | 1,617,546 | 296,212 | 4 | Mr . & Mrs . Reagan | When he wasn't busy making the world safe for democracy by making training films during the Second World War , Reagan took the time out to appear in this movie with then-wife Jane Wyman , each playing themselves , in which they get impromptu golf lessons from a couple of golf experts : he gets his lesson from Jimmy Tho... |
438,677 | 1,617,546 | 224,316 | 4 | The worst Melies film I have seen | i love Melies works , but this one , in which some toughs rob a drunk and then set off a bunch of fireworks to wake him from his efforts to sleep it off , is the worst one I have seen . there is some lovely acrobatics involve , but , alone among all his works , it lacks all sense of charm . Ay wheel , even Jove nods . ... |
438,538 | 1,617,546 | 148,688 | 4 | End of the Line | The last Chilly Willy release has him and the polar bear in an environmentalist fight between a man on an icebreaker who wants to drill an oil well in the arctic . The point of the movie is admirable , although , understandably in a short cartoon aimed at children , hardly balanced ; certainly few adults make serious e... |
439,256 | 1,617,546 | 16,573 | 4 | The Deuce you Say ! | An unintentionally hilarious comedy-mystery-western of how Hoxie's family is being murdered by the evil MacGill family in a range war : Hoxie is trying to figure out who is killing off his relatives and pinning a playing card to the corpses with , apparently , never a thought as to motivation . Of course Hoxie and the ... |
438,800 | 1,617,546 | 27,203 | 4 | All dressed up and nowhere to go | Harman and Ising had a long and checkered career producing cartoons . They started out with Disney , spent the middle part of their career creating Warner's Merry Melodies and Loony Tunes , then wound up at MGM in charge of their cartoon department until they gradually . . . . stopped in the mid forties . This is a fai... |
439,114 | 1,617,546 | 5,434 | 4 | Climbing Mountains With Syd Chaplin | Another of the fast and furious slapstick comedies produced for Keystone that is long on speed and mugging and short on jokes . Gussle and his wife decide to go mountain climbing and shoot at each other in a not very interesting effort . Syd does not even manage his usual graceful surprise movements in this , but spend... |
438,709 | 1,617,546 | 16,583 | 4 | Cats Rattled By Home Brew | Despite the elevated view held by many of all the works of Walt Disney , this early production has numerous flaws . SPOILERSFirst , the " ground-breaking " mixed live-and-animated work consists of " Alice " standing to one side and her cat - - looking and behaving very much like Felix the Cat - - on the other side , ha... |
438,921 | 1,617,546 | 230,238 | 4 | Aptly Named | This is not one of the high points of Buster's career . He seems to be used for his remaining marquee value here . Even the two falls from the car near the beginning of the movie do not seem to be performed by him - - when Buster fell , his entire body moved and reacted , like a a trout struggling to not be drawn in by... |
438,848 | 1,617,546 | 168,022 | 4 | Driving Miss Daisy Mad | I first must note special interest : I do not like ' comedies ' in which animals are mistreated for the audience's amusement : Jules White & Zion Meyers ' DOGVILLE series for MGM fills me with horror . But chimpanzees are human enough and social enough that using them as performers does not disturb me and I have some f... |
438,391 | 1,617,546 | 311,692 | 4 | Quoi ? | This is a poorly scripted but prettily photographed whodunnit . It starts out with a locked room mystery but bogs down until the murderer turns up , unprefigured , along with method and motive in the last minute . Structurally it is unsound and the occasional interesting image cannot save it . Perret tries , though . H... |
439,456 | 1,617,546 | 51,560 | 4 | Lah dee Dah | Tex Avery was not a series creator . He preferred to seek out new ideas and new situations , so much so that he ended his last Screwy Squirrel short with Screwy dead . Yet if there was one Tex Avery character made for a Tex Avery series , it was Droopy . Droopy was the straight man to Avery's insane world . While Avery... |
438,832 | 1,617,546 | 131,137 | 4 | Found | Although the trivia for this film indicates it is supposed lost , it does turn up in a perfectly serviceable print in under of the Thanhouser dvds issued in 2007 , credited with thanks to the Library of Congress . Now that we've got that out of the way , is this any good ? Alas , not much as a stand alone piece . Like ... |
438,375 | 1,617,546 | 178,811 | 4 | Industrial Scenery | Although this piece is no masterpiece of the American cinema , it is worthy of some comment . It is one of a series of industrial films shot by Billy Bitzer ( later D . W . Griffith's cameraman ) at the Westinghouse works near Pittsburgh , one of the earliest examples of industrial film making . It was released by Amer... |
438,742 | 1,617,546 | 768,212 | 4 | Pandering to Children | Mimsy Were the Borogroves , Kuttner & Moore's terrifying parable about the loss of innocence and the ending of childhood , is chopped up , its dark meat bleached until , like a chicken leg , it is converted into a breaded chicken nugget , suitable for a children's audience which holds that the only thing wrong with t... |
439,078 | 1,617,546 | 31,715 | 4 | The secret is it's a poor movie | Poor little second feature has Grant Withers and Fay Wray wandering around the city trying to track down who wants an envelope carrying navy secrets - - only they think it's collectible stamps . Withers and Wray try to carry this one along on their charm , but they aren't up to it , although there is one good scene in ... |
439,041 | 1,617,546 | 44,827 | 4 | Visitors Will Leave the Train Before Departing | This last gasp effort to resurrect Jon Hall's career has him as an American diplomat in India caught up in the usual web of intrigue and overwrought screen music . The script itself is a bit of a hodge podge of spy movies , ranging from KIM to SABOTEUR , filled with hearty Irish spies , Indians who wear turbans and so ... |
439,405 | 1,617,546 | 14,302 | 4 | Uh Uh | Where to begin with the problems with this picture ? Shall we start with the missing footage , including the last two reels ? The fact that it seems to start out as a bedroom farce and then veers into black tragedy ? How about the actors ? OK , let's start with the actors . It's not their fault that they are miscast . ... |
438,607 | 1,617,546 | 139,944 | 4 | The Art that is French Cinema | Imagine you are looking at one of those awful Matt Helm movies that Dean Martin made in the late 1960s . Now imagine there are no production values . That's what this movie is like . This is , of course , French cinema ; and this is a Lemmy Caution movie and the New Wave was so enamored of this series that Goddard made... |
439,181 | 1,617,546 | 7,413 | 4 | He's Fallen into the Water ! | Harry Edwards was a new director when he turned out this Keystone in the house style - - fast , furious and not making much sense . It takes place in the space between a swimming pool and the ocean and the three plots - - Poppa wants a drink , Raymond Griffith wants Julia Faye - - which certainly makes sense - - and th... |
439,427 | 1,617,546 | 22,587 | 4 | Not When it's good animation | Early Merrie Melodie is primarily of interest for its use of Gus Arnheim's Band to perform the title song . The gags and animation are pretty awful , looking like third = rate Disney animation . You'd be better off finding a good copy of the original Brunswick record . |
439,122 | 1,617,546 | 121,608 | 4 | The Buccaneer Act Three | What we have here is Demille's THE BUCCANEER showing just the highlights of the Battle of New Orleans and the celebratory party afterwards , with some fine color photography and no story . In 1939 this was a mildly interesting short subject of the American History as Hagiography type , but little else . Most of the sto... |
438,494 | 1,617,546 | 25,579 | 4 | Disingenuity | As I write these comments , the repercussions from the O . J . Simpson book / TV show / media blitz over his " If I Did It " book are still rumbling through the news . This movie is based on a ' work of fiction ' by the widow of Arnold Rothstein , the notorious gambler who may have fixed the 1919 World Series - - the i... |
439,035 | 1,617,546 | 16,085 | 4 | Sum Sap | Unhappily , the surviving prints of this movie have substituted the title cards ( originally written by future director Tay Garnett ) with clock cuckoos , chiming gongs , rimshots , the occasional slide whistle , as well as a voice-over by an unspecified narrator who insists of punctuating each joke with a comment . " ... |
439,265 | 1,617,546 | 35,988 | 4 | Dull | This rather dull Monogram programmer is a remake of a picture from the early 1930s . Despite some interesting antecedents - - including being based on a story by Dore Schary - - it rarely shows much in the way of flair , with the exception of the scenes with Armida , who looks interested in being the new Lupe Velez . B... |
438,382 | 1,617,546 | 1,269,560 | 4 | Attack of the Teeny-Bopper Suffragette Doctors | The eighth of Janette Oke's novels to be translated to a Hallmark TV movie is full of peculiar choices . First is the casting of Annalise Basso and Haylie Duff as nineteenth-century graduates of Harvard medical . Each is younger than 25 and could play 15 if they wish . This makes for a very unprepossessing start to the... |
438,838 | 1,617,546 | 25,514 | 4 | Hitchcock Manqué | A man found guilty of a murder he didn't commit , a daring escape by leaping off a train crossing a bridge , a shooting in a café and a scrap of paper that leads to a denouement in Monte Carlo - - - these are the plot points that tell you you're watching a great Hitchcockian thriller . Only it isn't a Hitchcock picture... |
438,667 | 1,617,546 | 322,154 | 4 | Insight ? | Some good clips are present in this tv biography of Elizabeth Taylor , but the people who speak about her are frequently a bit ridiculous . Peter Lawford , who hosts the show , sounds like he is reading the overblown dialogue off cue cards while half sloshed . Miss Taylor's mother tells long rambling stories about her ... |
439,280 | 1,617,546 | 140,040 | 4 | Not Good , But Good Enough | Even by the standards of the era , this was not a particularly good cartoon . The drawings are poor , the animation is limited , the characters are ill-defined and the story is not particularly amusing . But there is one thing you can say about Paul Terry's cartoons : he was able to make them on a small enough budget t... |
439,403 | 1,617,546 | 38,379 | 4 | Awwwww . . . | A barefoot orphan and his faithful basset hound meet up with a folksy Harry Davenport in this manipulative short from Leroy Prinz , who should have stuck to dance numbers . Not recommended to anyone who doesn't have a good supply of insulin on hand . |
439,222 | 1,617,546 | 44,579 | 4 | The Talking Blues War | Edward Dmytryk returned from the McCarthy hearings to direct this slightly expanded stage show of eight World War Two soldiers , sitting around in a wrecked basement , waiting for their chance to go on furlough . . . . but the sergeant - - - played by a Lee Marvin so young that he still has dark hair - - wants to go ou... |
439,175 | 1,617,546 | 192,129 | 4 | Not good movies , mind you | Fat , lazy , petulant Hughie Mack is in danger of losing Lucille Lee Stewart because he keeps falling out of trees while trying to pick apples for her , so he takes boxing lessons and beats his opponents into the ground to win her heart - - or perhaps to indicate what he'll do to her if she doesn't marry him . Oh , you... |
438,463 | 1,617,546 | 35,916 | 4 | Nightmare Inducing | I have nightmares about this one . It's not enough that I walk about , my head pounding with a headache because I can't get Carmen Miranda singing " Paducah " out of my brain , but I keep seeing these bizarre Busby Berkley images in my mind , retreaded musical numbers from SUNNY SIDE UP . Avoid this one if you possibly... |
439,160 | 1,617,546 | 137,259 | 4 | Work : when you don't need it , it's great | Andre Carel ( with accent marks ) is the son of a rich father . He never has had to work and he hasn't and as a consequence has gone literally mad with boredom , so mad that his old tutor , played by the wonderful Michael Simon near the beginning of his career , has been recalled to service as a warden . Andre takes a ... |
438,747 | 1,617,546 | 347,063 | 4 | Men are Such Clowns | This is an example of one of the most unusual techniques in film making , the silhouette play . The best known examples are the animations of Lotte Reininger , whose feature - - arguably the first animated feature , DIE ABENTUR DIE PRINZ ACHMED - - is available on DVD for those interesting . Although the technique ofte... |
438,868 | 1,617,546 | 13,624 | 4 | Full of Ridiculous Moments | Given the movies ' fascination with Arabia - - one need only consider Valentino as THE SHEIK , the frequent remakes of BEAU GESTE , UNDER TWO FLAGS , THE FOUR FEATHERS , and David Lean's LAWRENCE OF ARABIA , this should have been an interesting movie . Unhappily , it isn't . I have seen about half a dozen of Miss Talma... |
438,913 | 1,617,546 | 23,337 | 4 | Ah , For Our Gang ! | Bizarre little novelty short about a wagon train crossing the Plains , being stopped by the Indians . . . . and all the actors are little children in diapers ! One of a series directed by Charles Lamont before he hit it big at Universal . Notable for a young Shirley Temple as the girl tied to the stake by the Indians . |
438,570 | 1,617,546 | 44,449 | 4 | Napoleonic Zenda | The senior Dumas ' novel is turned into a knockoff of THE PRISONER OF ZENDA - - although as I have never read this Dumas novel , it may simply be returning the compliment . Director Karlson is not able to raise much of a performance from anyone except from Anthony Quinn , who plays his slimily villainous role with the ... |
438,475 | 1,617,546 | 840,303 | 4 | Groundhog Christmas | Take the plot of GROUNDHOG DAY , in which Bill Murray has to do the same day over and over again until he finally gets it right , remaking himself , in the process , from a surly lout into a genuinely caring individual . Change the setting from a real Punxatawney , Pennsylvania to a stand-in-for-everywhere , ill-define... |
439,186 | 1,617,546 | 21,422 | 4 | Talk Loud ! Louder ! | This turgid screen version of Somerset Maugham's " The Circle " suffers not only from the dated story , but from performances by seasoned silent performers who seem absolutely overwhelmed by the sound equipment . The first scene suffers as the juveniles insist of making sure their emotions can be read in the second bal... |
438,566 | 1,617,546 | 34,582 | 4 | Conflicts | There seem to be two sets of film makers at work on this short : one is Harry Langdon and Harry Edwards , one of his lead collaborators from his Mack Sennett days . The two of them manage a few real Harry Langdon moments , when the pixilated Harry - - actually , here he seems permanently soused - - is befuddled by the ... |
439,065 | 1,617,546 | 21,495 | 4 | Rotten | Bad sound , poor script and Al St . John making faces : what less could you ask for ? St . John and Jimmy Aubrey waste their time dropping dishes in a restaurant with two patrons , one boss and a floor show of eight . There's singing , but the sound makes it impossible to follow . There's dancing , but it isn't terribl... |
439,357 | 1,617,546 | 314,141 | 4 | Automatic Sausage Machine | Lloyd Hamilon and Bud Duncan , at this stage in their careers , formed a comedy team of ' Ham and Bud ' . They played two vicious tramps who wandered into situations , engaged in some not too funny torture and left . Later Lloyd Hamilton became an accomplished and inventive screen comedian who drank himself to death an... |
438,542 | 1,617,546 | 30,613 | 5 | One of the Weaker Tashlins | Until the rise of Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny at the very end of the 1930s , Porky Pig was Termite Terrace's biggest star , but he was largely a straight man . In this one he is a farmer doing his spring planting , beset by a lazy watch dog ( " I must be a watch dog - - I'm full of ticks " ) and raiding chickens . Part o... |
439,204 | 1,617,546 | 142,990 | 5 | Will No One Understand That I am a man of Dignity ? | Those words might have summed up Fin's screen personna . Here , as a stuffy college dean , he accidentally sits on a youth-restoring plaster invented by Ted Healy - - the man who founded the Three Stooges - - and quicker than you can say " 23 Skidoo " He's off chasing the young ladies and serenading sorority houses in ... |
438,626 | 1,617,546 | 350,104 | 5 | Cooling | This Cameo Comedy from 1929 - - the Cameos were produced by Jack White , one of the leading comedy shorts producers of the 1920 , and the cameos were single-reelers , as opposed to the ones that used his name - - was produced in the last year that producers turns out silent comedies and there is a certain poverty to it... |
439,061 | 1,617,546 | 17,634 | 5 | But no more | This late Mabel Normand short - - she would make two more in that year , 1927 , then retire , dying in early 1930 - - and it shows that she is pretty near the end of the line . She looks tired and , despite a topnotch supporting cast - - Jimmy Finlayson and Max Davidson included - - and Richard Jones directing , this h... |
439,195 | 1,617,546 | 10,969 | 5 | A Bad Trip On A Hash Pipe | Carefully conceived and generally well-executed visually , this movie fails because it fails to take advantage of the story's structure , which is just hinted at in this movie and because of the over-the-top performance of the pudgy Stacia Napierkowska as Queen Antinea of the remnants of Atlantis which , as we all know... |
438,580 | 1,617,546 | 2,255 | 5 | Lust ! Betrayal ! Fudge ! | One of the several dozen short comedies that Sennett directed for Biograph , before he went off to Keystone to work on his own , wilder farces . Here he not only directs , but stars as the jilted lover . Although not as wild as some of his own comedies , this stands up better than much of the work he did at Keystone . ... |
438,995 | 1,617,546 | 21,926 | 5 | Crusading Reporters | Every Poverty Row producer's favorite lead actor , Regis Toomey , is the world's most clueless cub reporter in this comedy-action newspaper romp about the events around a crusading District Attorney killed by Boris Karloff , two days before the election on the orders of his corrupt machine boss - - although the laughs ... |
438,740 | 1,617,546 | 773,065 | 5 | Escalation | This early Keystone , about the rivalry between two goonish suitors over goonish Alice Howell , starts out with with the suitors attacking each other with spiders and quickly escalates with attacks by rocks , water and soon , a civil war cannon . It lacks any subtlety in its humor but all it lacks is a mushroom cloud a... |
439,433 | 1,617,546 | 153,943 | 5 | The Old Wot For | The usual Popeye-versus-Bluto fight of almost all the post-Fleischer era . This one has them as knights jousting for the hand of Sleeping Beauty - - Olive Oyl in a long blonde wig . Good backgrounds , good animation and the usual poor scripts with unfunny gags makes this pretty much like all the others of this era . If... |
439,087 | 1,617,546 | 225,681 | 5 | A Talent Too Big for the Movies | Bert Lahr , alas , never made the transition from the stage to the screen . Oh , he's wonderful in a couple of movies ; as the cowardly lion in THE WIZARD OF OZ he's great , and as the burlesque comic , in THE NIGHT THEY RAIDED MINSKY'S he was amazing . But , alas , his performances were too broad and mannered for any ... |
438,471 | 1,617,546 | 21,883 | 5 | Weaker Silly Symphony | One of the weaker Silly Symphonies , this one is quite enjoyable , but fails in a basic aesthetic rule of animation : if it could have been shot as a live-action short , then it doesn't need to be a cartoon , and therefore isn't a good one . Now , you may disagree with this aesthetic rule of mine , and I won't dispute ... |
438,669 | 1,617,546 | 37,040 | 5 | Double Talk | This middling entry in MGM's answer to Warner's Torchy Blaine series has Maisie going to Reno , getting involved in a mystery surrounding a divorcing couple . It is a rather dull entry , the result of an uninvolving script and bland characterizations . Harry Beaumont , one of MGM's longtime B directors , does his best ... |
438,776 | 1,617,546 | 372,902 | 5 | Lost Context | This was one of a series of short comedies produced under the supervision of D . W . Griffith , probably as a potboiler to keep the money coming in while he was concentrating on BIRTH OF A NATION . . . . what would later become part of the Triangle-Fine Arts company . But only a few of these survive , director Eddie Di... |
438,441 | 1,617,546 | 323,580 | 5 | The Great Marksman | There is a joke about a great marksman . When you came to his home , you found a fence with bulls-eyes painted on it and right in the middle of each bullseye is a bullet hole . A visitor asked the marksman how he came to be able to do that . " There's nothing to it , " said the marksman . " I fired the bullets into the... |
439,258 | 1,617,546 | 327,410 | 5 | Mistaken Relations | Snub goes butterfly hunting in Grffith Park and catches Marie Mosquini by accident . They go to a café where all the men have a lot of hair on their faces and the usual mischief ensues . The plot was later re-used in the Laurel & Hardy classic , THE FIXER-UPPERS , but here it just results in one reel of the usual mayhe... |
438,797 | 1,617,546 | 312,610 | 5 | Les tableaux | Before discussing this movie , I need to discuss the idea of tableaux . There are two ways of looking at movies : as a series of actions , or a series of scenes . Tableaux takes the " series of scenes " to an extreme : a series of still pictures , rather than action . Perret's tableaux in this and other movies are magn... |
438,454 | 1,617,546 | 35,134 | 5 | Clark Gable manqué | This B movie remake of MANHATTAN MELODRAMA set in the Yukon was the one of the salvos that MGM fired in its attempt to use James Craig as a replacement for Gable while the King of Hollywood was at war . Craig is pretty good at the Gable role and there is a pretty good supporting cast , including Keenan Wynn , Jack Holt... |
439,149 | 1,617,546 | 4,484 | 5 | Biograph After Griffith | By the time this Biograph came out , Klaw & Ehrlanger had taken over and D . W . Griffith had walked . And , while the people at Biograph had learned a lot of the mechanical lessons of Griffith's era - - the acting is fine , the cutting is fine , the crowd scenes are well done , and the composition uses the familiar ' ... |
439,409 | 1,617,546 | 8,866 | 5 | Now With Less Semon ! | Over all , this is a pretty good movie for Semon . Which , for me , is damning with faint praise . The story is that Stan Laurel was so good in the first half of their first movie together - - usually said to be FRAUDS AND FRENZIES - - that Larry Semon the star / director / producer of the Vitagraph comedy division had... |
439,209 | 1,617,546 | 142,975 | 5 | A Bunch of dummies | This late Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon - - the series would continue for another couple of years with a one-shot revival in the 1940s - - garners its jokes from plays on horror movies , as Oswald - - who seems to run a wax museum - - takes in an orphan , who , in the middle of the night , encounters various evil wax... |
439,484 | 1,617,546 | 33,265 | 5 | Slow Vehicle | This rather poor RKO programmer manages to keep some interest going , mostly due to Fay Wray , who struggles with the poor material , but who is canny enough to make the most of her close-ups , and to Paul Guilefoyle who is pretty good is his supporting role as the hot-tempered moral center of the piece . Leading man -... |
438,982 | 1,617,546 | 33,279 | 5 | Fast Start , Sloppy Finish | This RKO second feature stars Lucille Ball and James Ellison , starts out amusingly - - particularly the scene where Ellison is hung over and the toaster is very noisy - - but ends in very predictable fashion . The leads can't hold this fluff together : Ball is unconvincing and Ellison is too montonous . Robert Coote ,... |
438,843 | 1,617,546 | 6,322 | 5 | ' Twas Ever Thus | A typical Keystone flirting-in-the-park one-reeler , this one is differentiated slightly by dressing the players in early nineteenth century garb and having them adopt their manners - - and they do carry it off most convincingly . But once you get past that , there's nothing to make this one different from any of the d... |
438,988 | 1,617,546 | 26,536 | 5 | Some Sparkle , But . . . . | This romantic comedy about a rich young American who is trying to make a go at painting in Paris ( John Loder ) and a young woman who is trying to become a dress designer in the City of Lights ( Nancy Burnes ) owes whatever sparkle it possesses to its leading actors . Miss Burnes , in particular , is a bright and attra... |
439,400 | 1,617,546 | 37,121 | 5 | Neither the Right Way Nor the Wrong Way | This is a flag-waving programmer about the lives of boots at the Great Lakes Training Facilities during World War II . It manages to cover all the bases without doing much wrong . This Pine-Thomas feature - - they were known as " Dollar Bills " because of their ability to squeeze out a decent flick on a tight budget - ... |
439,048 | 1,617,546 | 248,371 | 5 | Up in the Air , Junior Birdman | Robinet , the lead in this Italian slapstick comedy , wants to be an aviator in the worst way , and this being an Italian slapstick , that's how he does it . Italian slapstick in this period was absolutely bone-breaking , so much so that it makes Keystone slapstick look like drawing-room comedy by contrast . Although t... |
439,191 | 1,617,546 | 268,468 | 5 | Stop Motion History | This short subject - - about one reel - - is more interesting as an historical artifact than as a work of art : it was Harryhausen's first independent production after working for George Pal . Essentially a silent with a synchronized sound score , it covers four Mother Goose rhymes animating the supertitled words that ... |
438,354 | 1,617,546 | 28,513 | 5 | Good Actors Prop Up Bad Script | One of the problems with a lot of courtroom dramas of the 1930s - - and this one in particular - - is that they are mysteries . Now mysteries make good stories and good movies , since they have usually have a fast start - - someone is killed - - and a definite plot - - the detection of the guilty . But when they take p... |
438,628 | 1,617,546 | 215,882 | 5 | Standard | Fire engine companies racing their ways through the streets towards a conflagration were a standard bit of film from this period : fire companies in Buffalo , New York and Quebec ( on sleigh runners ) were available . Evenually , Edwin S . Porter would edit a bunch of them into one of his early masterpieces , THE LIFE ... |
439,080 | 1,617,546 | 297,144 | 5 | Passion and Special Effects | And so James Cameron directed his first movie release since Titanic . As one might expect of a James Cameron movie , it pushes the technical limits of film-making to show this 3-D documentary on the latest investigations of the wreck of the Titanic , lying four thousand meters beneath the surface of the cold cold Atlan... |
439,315 | 1,617,546 | 17,829 | 5 | Stranger in a Strange Land | I'm sure the story of a young man who goes to college for the wrong reasons - - here , William ' Hopalong Cassidy ' Boyd gets into West Point to impress the always wonderful Bessie Love - - and gradually discovers a sense of dedication - - was not original with this , but it's the oldest variation on it I can think of ... |
439,121 | 1,617,546 | 68,553 | 5 | Lynn Redgrave | This chaotic , fitfully amusing comedy of how Lynn Redgrave's character came to mastermind the kidnapping of a Mafia don owes its occasional successes largely to Ms . Redgrave's crisp performance and her sardonic delivery of some amusing lines . Victor Mature is also fine as an oblivious Mafia don . Dom Deluise and Joh... |
439,119 | 1,617,546 | 32,889 | 5 | Unpardonable Waste | This being a comedy directed by Jules White , the first thing we establish is that Buster Keaton's character is a half-wit . This is a basic problem with his sound studio pictures . The real Keaton character is not an idiot triumphing over fate by luck , but a dreamer , out of step with the chaotic world , who triumphs... |
438,997 | 1,617,546 | 15,015 | 5 | Slow , Not Tangled | This is a pretty poorly acted movie : leading men Jack Mulhall and Bert Moore bring little energy or expression to their roles , although Mulhall does beat up a couple of bad ' uns towards the end of this movie about kidnapped heiresses and what happens to them . The villains don't get to act much either , although the... |
439,262 | 1,617,546 | 143,357 | 5 | Naked as in without proscenium arch | By the time J . Stuart Blackton directed this version of the story of how Lady Godiva came to ride naked through the streets of Coventry , Vitagraph had gotten the Word : not an inkling of the proscenium arch remains in this composition ; and , if at times , the actors seem to be just standing around in a state of conf... |
439,046 | 1,617,546 | 87,645 | 5 | Good Leads Fail To Sparkle | John Ritter and Penny Marshall lead a capable TV movie comedy cast in this tale of moral love in suburbia that somehow fails to ever really get off the ground . Director Tony Bill does an able job and the lack of sparkle is , for me , something of a mystery . The early scenes are played , perhaps , a bit too slow and s... |
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