reviewId int64 363k 588k | userId int64 33.9k 15.9M | itemId int64 1 1.42M | rating float64 1 10 | title stringlengths 1 10.9k ⌀ | content stringlengths 81 11.6k ⌀ |
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438,783 | 1,617,546 | 260,566 | 5 | Our Hands Are Dirty . Let's Take Off Our Clothes | Four young women change a tire and , feeling hot and bothered , leave their car to go take a swim in the ocean . . . . . and their underwear is less revealing than one-piece bathing suits . While they are frolicking in the surf , a young Black girl comes by and steals their pretty clothes . . . . and their car has myst... |
439,199 | 1,617,546 | 17,757 | 5 | A Last Hurrah | This well done but statically shot late silent shows the out-of-date technique of its director , Sidney Olcott . Olcott was , in many ways , a pioneering talent for Kalem , who produced the first screen version of BEN-HUR in 1907 and the first American feature , FROM THE MANGER TO THE CROSS in 1912 . Unhappily , while ... |
438,811 | 1,617,546 | 50,247 | 5 | The HoneyMousers | The principal gag in this one is that the two lead characters - - who are mice - - are drawn and voiced as Ralph Kramden and Ed Nortion ( Jackie Gleason and Art Carney ) from THE HONEYMOONERS . There had been several Termite Terrace efforts in this vein , including A TAKE OF TWO KITTIES ( Abbot & Costello , the introdu... |
439,215 | 1,617,546 | 153,746 | 5 | Too Mild | This episode of the Woody Woodpecker franchise is saggy in the middle , because of the relatively weak gags , and the the inconsistency of the setting - - at first it seems to be turn-of-the-century , given Wally Walrus ' antique police uniform and Woody's occupation as a ' White Wings ' street sweeper , but there is a... |
439,070 | 1,617,546 | 373,161 | 5 | Fly Me To the Moon And Let Me Play in Sheboygan | Billy Dooley - - sometimes it seems like half the silent comedians were named ' Billy ' and about a tenth of them ' Sid Smith ' - - was a stage hoofer who moved and looked like an exaggerated Ray Bolger . He spent a few years in the mid - and late twenties as a comedy lead for Christie . Dressed in a sailor suit , with... |
438,681 | 1,617,546 | 387 | 5 | Before Its Time | Although Melies was a groundbreaker in many aspects of the cinema , including telling stories , fade cutting , trick films , stag films and religious stories , this one may hold the record : the story is that in order to meet the demand for films of the coronation , he filmed this reenactment - - and released it before... |
438,983 | 1,617,546 | 11,129 | 5 | Not Really Felix | Although this appears as the second short on The Felix the Cat dvd collection , it does not resemble Felix particularly . The cat looks like a cleaned-up version of Krazy Kat and the story takes place in a dream after some kids have been reading " Huckleberry Finn . " Of interest for animation historians . |
439,073 | 1,617,546 | 37,295 | 5 | Reports of Cole Porter's Death | As so often happened in this period , Cole Porter's songs from the Michael Todd show that this was nominally based on were cut , except that Carmen Miranda sings a snatch of the title song at the beginning . It's understandable , since Michael Todd produced adult shows and the lyrics are among Porter's most risqué , in... |
439,379 | 1,617,546 | 415,993 | 5 | Bless Mickey Rooney | As I write this in 2007 , Mickey is still chugging along . One new appearance is already on the books for him in the IMDb , in the 82nd year of his movie career , He played midgets in the 1926 , was MGM's biggest star in the late 1930s and is still chugging along . Bless him . As to this short , it's nothing much : an ... |
438,862 | 1,617,546 | 23,764 | 5 | What Went Wrong ? | There's some very good talent in front of the camera in this lighthearted movie about con men conning other con men ; and there are signs that someone who understood something about subtext had a hand in the script , as lies are expounded , confidences betrayed and reality starts to bend so much that you can't tell who... |
439,443 | 1,617,546 | 248,487 | 5 | Crash Test Dummy | This was one of Larry Semon's last shorts . He would make three more and die the following year of a combination of tuberculosis and a nervous breakdown . Although it is apparent that Semon spent a goodly amount of money on this picture - - props , miniatures and explosions were not cheap , even in 1928 - - neither sto... |
439,393 | 1,617,546 | 23,769 | 5 | Nothing New But Well Executed | There is nothing much new in this story of poor farmers in Maine : their trials and tribulations , their hopes and dreams and the Polish family that bought the abandoned farm down the road . However , the performances are excellent . Jean Muir is luminous as the hard-working drudge who wants something more without quit... |
438,768 | 1,617,546 | 9,173 | 5 | Melodrama | Sessue Hayakawa shot to stardom in Demille's THE CHEAT and his employers didn't know quite what to do with him . A Japanese actor , he couldn't be a romantic hero in the United States , so they made him into a melodramatic hero of a non-white race - - here he plays a half-Polynesian - - who suffered for his love - - us... |
438,577 | 1,617,546 | 28,564 | 5 | On the Rock ( s ) | Below-par Warner's B movie . True , this is a mostly decent production , with Litel , railroaded into Alcatraz by a judge who doesn't care about plea bargains . He gives one of his solid performances . However , most of the lines spoken by other actors are declaimed rather than spoken and the juvenile leads are truly a... |
439,300 | 1,617,546 | 283,678 | 5 | Faces | This short subject , nominally in celebration of Warner Brothers ' silver jubilee - - the only thing I can think of is that they may have opened their first theater in 1905 - - they didn't go into production for another dozen years - - is an excellent primer for putting faces to names . If you are a fan of old movies ,... |
439,414 | 1,617,546 | 37,373 | 5 | Simple Answers For Complex Questions | The post-Lew-Ayres Dr . Kildare series sputters with Keye Luke and Van Johnson still competing to be Lionel Barrymore's assistant - - and each has to solve a medical mystery of his own choice . Meanwhile , various plots continue from earlier entries in the series , mostly comic . The series was winding down and only tw... |
438,645 | 1,617,546 | 28,667 | 5 | six characters in search of a script | Drummond and his pals spend their time following the instructions of a pair of continental criminals who want revenge and , using his kidnapped fiancee as a prod , keep them running hither and yon to no particular purpose . Everyone seems ashamed to be in this turkey , especially John Barrymore , who spends much of his... |
439,303 | 1,617,546 | 413,733 | 5 | The More Things Change . . . | Eddie Barry wants to keep wife Betty Compson happy , and she wants him to be a race car driver , so he hires a driver to impersonate himself on the track ; but there is an accident and he has to go to the hospital and convince the doctor to have him bandaged . He persuades him to do so by offering to donate $2000 to th... |
439,054 | 1,617,546 | 248,544 | 5 | Like All the Other Comedies | Modern film fans will look at this , if they look at it at all , to see the young Oliver Hardy . Well , he's on the screen for about four seconds in which he's knocked over , does a decent 108 and shows his face for about half a second . He's far down under any notional cast list in this split-reeler about a tramp purs... |
439,353 | 1,617,546 | 1,195,871 | 5 | Where Film Comedies Go Wrong | Watching Poodles Hanneford on the screen always makes me think of Chaplin's THE CIRCUS in which he attempts to learn the clown's routines and cannot . The clowns , who perform their routines perfectly but mechanically , are not funny . Chaplin , who performs them ineptly but with tremendous life , is hilarious . Not , ... |
439,147 | 1,617,546 | 19,889 | 5 | Runaway train ! | Decent British part-silent about the life and love of cockney Ray Milland - - yes , that Ray Milland at the beginning of his career - - as the new fireman aboard the ' Flying Scotsman . ' Of course he falls in love with the daughter of the Flying Scotsman's engineer , unbeknownst to any of the parties , and of course t... |
438,749 | 1,617,546 | 1,032,868 | 5 | Reasons to Take Off Your Clothes | A chambermaid is dusting when she discovers a statue of a reclining nude . In order to ascertain . . . . well , in order to produce a film that will play in a fin de siecle Viennese smoker , she takes off her clothes . In walks the master , who orders her out of the room , whereupon he follows her . Johann Schwarzer ma... |
439,169 | 1,617,546 | 487 | 5 | More Violent ! | This rip-off of Porter's THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY - - you could not actually copyright a movie at this time , so there was no real protection for producers against plagiarism - - is generally supposed to be a scene-for-scene remake , but there are differences : the robbery itself is more violent , as the thieves knock o... |
438,569 | 1,617,546 | 177,163 | 5 | Unhappily , I don't read Dutch | There are limits on how intelligent a review I can write about this movie , since the copy I saw today at New York's Museum of Modern Art was from the Dutch Film Archives and the titles were , naturally , in Dutch , and the Museum seems to think that either everyone in old New Amsterdam reads Dutch or they didn't care ... |
439,485 | 1,617,546 | 39,585 | 5 | Calling Dennis Morgan ! | Jack Carson is teamed up with Robert Hutton in this Warners farce about two would-be songwriters . But while it looks good on paper , the two male leads lack any particular chemistry when together : it's Jack Carson who sings the songs while Hutton plays the piano . This looks a great deal like one of the Carson-Morgan... |
438,734 | 1,617,546 | 32,021 | 5 | They Made Her a Leading Actress | A decent script by , among other people , Michael Kanin gets turned into an RKO B movie . Although the cast is nominally pretty good - - including Sally Eilers and Alan ' Rocky ' Lane as the leads - - old pro Teddy von Eltz as the good spymaster and Fritz Leiber Sr . as the rather rather cadaverous and evil Dr . Krull ... |
439,202 | 1,617,546 | 22,425 | 5 | Fast start , sloppy finish | The first part of this movie , about the birth and rearing of " Tommy Boy " , is pretty good , if a tad sentimental . Ernest Torrence does his usual excellent job . In the second half , Tommy Boy leaves the farm and falls in with bad companions , and the whole thing degenerates into into bad soap opera . The camerawork... |
438,732 | 1,617,546 | 230,675 | 5 | How He Do Go On | Another of the seemingly innumerable FitzParick Traveltalks , a Technicolor series that MGM distributed for a couple of decades . In an era where a trip to the local movie theater was all that most moviegoers could afford , these afforded some interesting shots of exotic locales , and , indeed , the Technicolor photogr... |
438,958 | 1,617,546 | 2,767 | 5 | Famous Players | This early example of " Famous Players in Famous Plays " - - the best known is Bernhardt in QUEEN ELIZABETH - - is interesting on several counts , and fails on other counts . James O'Neill , now barely remembered for being Eugene O'Neill's father , was a well-known actor , famous for playing the Count on stage for many... |
438,675 | 1,617,546 | 256,961 | 5 | Movement | One of the pleasures of watching the Lumiere's movies from the 1890s is that they understood composition and the fact that things had to move : no stationary shots of the Brooklyn Bridge , this . Instead , the bridge , only about a decade old then , serves as a backdrop for the constant motion of trains , steam and oth... |
439,309 | 1,617,546 | 223,958 | 5 | Backdrops | This is a nice little war scene : some Zoaves spike a petard to a door and blow it up in what is supposed to be , I suppose , Tournavos . A fairly good reenactment for the era , but nothing outstanding . . . . . except for the set design . Have you ever notice how three-dimensional and realistic even the most fantastic... |
439,178 | 1,617,546 | 14,656 | 5 | Big Set Up | An extensive live set up goes into this early Alice short : our heroine is in a schoolroom where she gets into trouble and is made to sit in a corner with a dunce's cap on , whereupon she falls asleep and dreams of cartoonland . Spec O'Donnell is one of her classmates in the live sequence . Other people commenting on t... |
439,432 | 1,617,546 | 25,639 | 5 | Bad Boy , Bad Movie | Peculiarly ill-tempered version of much-made story . Seems to be a part tailor-made for Jackie Cooper , but long-time stalwart Meighan seems tired - - he died two years after this movie was made of cancer , and might not have been up to the part . Perhaps it would have been better done four years earlier when Cooper wa... |
438,584 | 1,617,546 | 641 | 5 | A Mack Sennett Comedy | Although this is an early movie by D . W . Griffith , it has all the earmarks of a Mack Sennett comedy half a decade further down the road : people , dressed in ill-fitting costumes , gesticulating wildly ; a frantic chase with plenty of comic spills ; and Mack Sennett himself in a leading role . Still , there are alre... |
439,396 | 1,617,546 | 18,013 | 5 | Metonymy : The Container for the Thing Contained | When pretty young Jenny Jugo has her undergarments fall down as she and her much older husband are on their way to Church one fine Sunday morning , she is so embarrassed that she rushes back home . Her husband , on returning , starts to rant , but a little domesticity in the form of bacon restores harmony . However , t... |
438,461 | 1,617,546 | 60,863 | 5 | Never Act With Small Children | This is a prime example of this show biz dictum . Beatty and Caron both act as if they are embarrassed to be in this cheap , poorly written , smutty comedy , and well they should . Apparently they were having an affair at the time and would rather be off alone . So would you if you were in this movie . Give it a miss u... |
438,942 | 1,617,546 | 152,324 | 5 | Another daydream | A lot of work and talent went into this episode in the ' Scrappy ' series of cartoons , but I get little pleasure out of it , because it is clearly aimed at small children , with very little , except some technical work , of interest to an adult . The animation is fluid and cartoonish as Scrappy and Oopie train for and... |
438,623 | 1,617,546 | 142,340 | 5 | Good Second Feature | This second feature directed by jack-of-all-trades director Richard Thorpe - - he would go to Metro as a B movie director and graduate to big spectacles , based on his ability to get a cheap performance out of actors like Robert Taylor - - shows Thorpe with warts and details of care . This locked room mystery has its m... |
438,952 | 1,617,546 | 449,231 | 5 | Putting on the Pressure | Another in the campaign conducted by Gaumont and Pathe to take over Melies ' market by producing movies that cost far more than he could afford - - the stencil method of tinting the prints that Pathe used here was too expensive for Melies to replicate regularly . Within a year Melies ' production would be sputtering an... |
438,968 | 1,617,546 | 659 | 5 | Getting There | In this short from 1908 , directed by Wallace McCutcheon , we can begin to see signs of what D . W . Griffith would achieve over the next ten years . With Billy Bitzer behind the camera , we see the standard Biograph composition , and with Griffith in front of the camera - - along with Edward Dillon , who would become ... |
438,935 | 1,617,546 | 6,978 | 5 | Innocuous and pointless | It is interesting to look at the talent involved in this half-reel movie - - Hal Roach behind the camera , Harold Lloyd , Bebe Daniels and Snub Pollard in front of it - - and think : Well . Miss Daniels has been in the movies six years at this point . She's the veteran . She was 15 at the time this was released . Lloyd... |
439,020 | 1,617,546 | 35,681 | 5 | A Sigh for Bygone Days | A competent Monogram B Western , this otherwise harmless programmer is a bit painful to watch . Ken Maynard looks fat and old near the tail end of his career , and attempts to have him play straight man to Gibson's usual low-key humor are largely mechanical . Gibson is , as always fine and steals every two shot they ar... |
439,117 | 1,617,546 | 22,331 | 5 | Enunciate | A potentially interesting entry in Warner Brothers ' series of crime dramas is weakened by an improbably wordy script , stagey performances - - Walter Huston , in this early role , seems to have no sense of where the camera is - - and an outright awful performance by Doris Kenyon , who , although fifth-billed , is actu... |
439,150 | 1,617,546 | 22,326 | 5 | The Hero Gets to Underact | Stagy version of Robert Sherwood comedy about the waning days of a constitutional monarchy . Everyone overacts , except for director-star Lowell Sherman who acts urbanely tipsy most of the time . The story doesn't hold up well . Watch for Mary Astor in a leading role before she learned how to steal a scene . |
438,885 | 1,617,546 | 32,218 | 5 | Ritz Brothers vs . Andrews Sisters | If you don't like the Ritz Brothers - - and I can only take so much of their mugging myself - - then avoid this Universal B movie . It is not , I hasten to say , a complete waste of time . The best bit in it is a burlesque of those novelty Latin dances from from the Astaires-Rogers movies called ' The Brooklyn Nanga ' ... |
439,408 | 1,617,546 | 8,372 | 5 | A Fish Called Stanley | Not much survives of this , Stan Laurel's first movie . By my watch , assuming that it was cranked at the right speed , just 73 seconds , which involve Stan , wearing a tricorn hat , almost getting run over by a steamroller , then getting on it and having it move in various unusual maneuvers and speeds . At the end , h... |
438,362 | 1,617,546 | 35,670 | 5 | Marcel Varnel's George | George is an unwilling civilian during the war . When an enlisted friend switches clothes with him in order to go to a party , George finds himself mistakenly pressed into the navy , where he gets involved with pretty Ann Firth and caught up in a subplot involving German spies . Varnel directed the last nine of George ... |
438,472 | 1,617,546 | 24,141 | 5 | Redux | Quirt and Flagg return for yet another go around . This time they're mustered out of the marines . Flagg becomes a speakeasy magnate , Quirt cons him and others out of money and the two of them have a series of go-arounds in which McLaglen constantly threatens Lowe like Ralph Kramden threatening Alice . and Lowe comes ... |
438,550 | 1,617,546 | 25,988 | 5 | Rip Van Winkle | Rip van Winkle gets the musical cartoon treatment , and the result , while not a rip-roaring success , does show how Friz Freleng ( here credited under his given name of ' Isadore ' ) came to produce some of the best musical cartoons of the next twenty years , like RHAPSODY IN RIVETS , PIGS IN A POLKA and THE THREE LIT... |
439,145 | 1,617,546 | 4,630 | 5 | First You Have To Explain . . . . | At the top of the comments page is a request : if you've seen this title , please write a review for others . But there is so much to explain about this movie before a useful comment can be made , that it becomes a meaningful problem . First and foremost , this is a silent picture in black and white . This means that ,... |
439,404 | 1,617,546 | 377,990 | 5 | Another Pointless Remake | This perfectly serviceable remake of the 1977 picture raises the question as do so many remakes , of why this was remade . The scene is changed from the Upper West Side to West Greenwich village , but other than that , it looks like the leads worked on their characterizations by looking at the earlier film - - and the ... |
439,237 | 1,617,546 | 6,826 | 5 | Star Vehicle | A star vehicle for Mae Marsh . Interestingly , this would be a fairly typical sort of movie for Mary Pickford in three or four years . Here , the first half , set in an orphanage , does not wear well , since the inmates consist of 12-year-old boys and twenty-year-old girls . Rather backwards girls for their ages , exce... |
438,558 | 1,617,546 | 142,748 | 5 | Monkey on His Back | 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... |
439,490 | 1,617,546 | 31,823 | 5 | Blind to the Blue | Race horses have been a subject for motion pictures since before there were motion pictures - - Eadward Muybridge's series of photos , meant to figure out how a horse runs , is considered an important datum in the movies ' history . This story , about how a boy trained his blind horse to be a champion steeplechaser , h... |
438,845 | 1,617,546 | 29,914 | 5 | Overdone | Elaborate and overproduced , this early George Sidney musical short suffers a bit from the sort of overproduction that Billy Rose's shows were infamous for - - take a look at FUNNY LADY - - that played very well in the period , although the profits for the producer might be pretty iffy . There are a couple of plots sho... |
439,245 | 1,617,546 | 129,011 | 5 | The Lion Squeaks | Static , early MGM short covering the city desk of the " Daily News " , where the usually-reliable Roscoe Karns is the managing editor . Everyone speaks very loudly and very clearly and every emotion is ludicrously overemphasized . Some interesting setting shots of linotype operators . |
438,511 | 1,617,546 | 31,812 | 5 | Porky the Leading Man | At this stage , Porky was still Termite Terrace's only star - - although Daffy Duck was pulling up fast and Bugs would be introduced shortly . So he got tossed into every cartoon , including this rather dull retelling of ' Jack the Giant Killer ' , with a Giant who looks and sounds like Bluto from Popeye but who was , ... |
438,957 | 1,617,546 | 31,908 | 5 | Near-Serial thrills | Fast , engaging Warner Brothers B movie , spearheaded by the dependable John Litel and the young ( ? ! ) Ronald Reagan as they engage in various undercover stuff . The movie is paced like a strung-together serial , and the entire production is full of gimmicky holes - - Reagan , despite being recognized as an ex-con , ... |
439,486 | 1,617,546 | 884,322 | 5 | Growing Up With Timmy Burton | Casper the Friendly Ghost is given the animated Tim Burton treatment in this computer-animated cartoon with a claymation look . in which the powers of cuteness and niceness triumphs over the old-style order in which ghosts , vampires , mummies and so forth are sent to ' scare school ' in order to learn how to terrify '... |
439,305 | 1,617,546 | 22,119 | 5 | So This Is Paris Hollywood | Paramount had a specialty of sex comedies set in Paris , France from the mid-twenties until the Production Code closed them down in 1935 . At that point , the Screwball Comedy arose . As long as they were doing comedies in Paris , they did a couple of straight programmers set there too . In this one , William Powell pl... |
439,295 | 1,617,546 | 37,799 | 5 | Not George , Anyway | This tightly plotted story about how George gets involved in a murder as a suspect and victim is efficiently directed , as one would expect from a farce with Marcel Varnel at the helm . However , George Formby's usual charm is largely absent from this movie . Part of the reason is that some of the plot is put into moti... |
438,998 | 1,617,546 | 22,135 | 5 | Doesn't Age Well | Edgar Selwyn , one of the people who actually founded the studio that would become MGM ( " Goldwyn " was originally an amalgamation of his and his brother's name with co-owner Samuel Goldfish , who liked it so well he renamed himself after the studio ) , directed this rather stagy version of a story about fidelity and ... |
438,947 | 1,617,546 | 33,439 | 5 | Saying the words | Anthony Hopkins tells the story of working with Katherine Hepburn on A LION IN WINTER , how she said " Don't speak the line , just say it . " In this largely uninteresting second feature - - or third feature , we see evidence that advice is good advice . Almost everyone speaks their lines portentously , in an effort to... |
438,434 | 1,617,546 | 864,851 | 5 | Oy Vey | With the departure of Mack Sennett from Biograph for the greener pastures of Keystone , Eddie Dillon became Biograph's leading comedy director , usually under the supervision of D . W . Griffith . I am loath to credit Griffith with any hand in this strange little comedy , because it lacks anything in the way of worthwh... |
439,297 | 1,617,546 | 133,006 | 5 | Her Rotten Kids | Roscoe's sister brings her two boys over to his office - - he's a doctor in this one , with a nice beard , and a manner like Ford Sterling - - while she goes out shopping . He doesn't like them and they don't like him and spend a lot of time and effort in ruining his practice . In many ways this looks like it was inten... |
438,778 | 1,617,546 | 990 | 5 | A World In Turmoil | Dickens ' OLIVER TWIST is lovingly filmed for the screen by Vitagraph co-head , Blackton . A good deal of money has obviously been spent on costume and sets , but it is evident that Blackton was not concerned with the major changes in the industry that Griffith was wreaking at the Biograph Studios in Manhattan and that... |
439,330 | 1,617,546 | 956,250 | 5 | The Importance of Being Earnest | This biopic of the life of Thedore Herzl , the founder of Zionism , is an earnest movie and shows the influences that caused him to seek a renewed homeland for Jews in what is now Israel . The movie spends , properly enough , a lot of screen time demonstrating anti-semitism in forms from accusations of well-poisoning t... |
438,715 | 1,617,546 | 18,204 | 5 | The Horse Makes All The Rules | It says here this is a serious story about how Rex the Wonder Horse saves grizzled old prospector James Finlayson's life , mine and stepdaughter - - the stepdaughter is played by Barbara Kent with perfectly plucked and drawn eyebrows - - from two baddies , Theodore von Eltz and Oliver Hardy , in perfectly serious bad g... |
438,750 | 1,617,546 | 891,288 | 5 | It must be art . . . . . they're nekkid | Three young women are frolicking in the water when a man comes along and orders them out , so they leave , but not before he - - - and the audience - - get a good view . A surprising number of these dirty films survive in the Vienna Film archives from the first decade of the 20th century . Just as the first real money-... |
438,830 | 1,617,546 | 28,144 | 5 | Pitching too straight for a screwball | Released the same year as MGM's LIBELED LADY , this light Warner's crime drama shares a lot of plot points , tries for a comic take on the subject , but fails , in no small part because Pat O'Brien does not display the diffident feyness that William Powell brought to his role , in part because Margaret Lindsay lacks a ... |
438,651 | 1,617,546 | 152,158 | 5 | Surely Everyone Knows This Story | Little Red Riding Hood gets the Walter Lantz treatment as Knothead and Splinter , having been told the tale , are sent to visit Granny . Pulling out out hammers , dumping the wolf in the washing machine , using the artillery gun on him , and so forth , they give him a hard time . The story is eked out with various came... |
438,839 | 1,617,546 | 28,153 | 5 | Too Fast a Pace | This one-hour feature from RKO , about how Ann Dvorak wants to revive father Harry Carey's racing stable but winds up following a filly after it's picked up in a claiming race moves along at too fast a pace to be particularly engrossing . Even the large number of fine actors in supporting roles - - not only Carey , but... |
439,380 | 1,617,546 | 11,956 | 5 | Beautiful but still | This silent movie , its story constructed around the famous Sir Edward Cole Burne-Jones painting , which in turn was based on the Tennyson poem , is a fair , if pedestrian romantic story about a rich lord ( played by Reginald Denny ) who loves a poor tenant ( played by a Mary Astor so young she hasn't quite lost all he... |
438,510 | 1,617,546 | 14,100 | 5 | The Silent George Arliss | This must have been a spectacular stage show . I can see how it would work there : the shooting , the strangling , the processional before the murder ; these would really have worked under the proscenium arch , and there is a good attempt to open it out in the added scenes , but the whole thing comes to a crashing halt... |
439,263 | 1,617,546 | 29,654 | 5 | What Went Wrong ? | I have the feeling this movie should be funnier than I find it . All the performers are good - - even if Gene Raymond was always a little too stiff to be interesting , that has lots of possibilities in a screwball comedy . Joe August's cinematography is , as always , great without being intrusive . The stooge reporters... |
438,408 | 1,617,546 | 449,565 | 5 | On Average , Nothing Gets Done | This so-so family movie is a fairly innocuous effort in a fairly standard mode - - a couple gets married on drunken impulse in Las Vegas , and their kids don't like it . Will love - - or a soundtrack of an Elvis impersonator singing " Viva Las Vegas " - - rule the day , or will family pressure ruin everything ? The hoo... |
439,453 | 1,617,546 | 249,679 | 5 | Beach Nuts | So-so silent comedy in the series Joe Rock produced for Alice Ardell - - she had great charm , but not much comedy ability , so Rock built her up by using a different comedian in each movie . Here's it's the dependable Chester Conklin . Alice and Chester meet on the beach where they are both dog owners - - and the dogs... |
438,469 | 1,617,546 | 22,798 | 5 | Dance Movie Without Dancing | James Dunn and Sally Eilers form a dance team , but we see little dancing : the director has ace cinematographer James Wong Howe concentrate on their faces and for their one big number , they are replaced by uncredited doubles . Dunn was a hoofer , but obviously neither was up to it . The story is much darker than one ... |
438,568 | 1,617,546 | 5,458 | 5 | The fault lies not in our stars , but in our mustaches | A fairly typical Keystone the-youngsters-want-to-get married short , but . alas , Papa the astronomer doesn't want daughter to marry Chester Conklin , since papa is a firm believer in long , bifurcated beards and and Chester only has a mustache . Or something like that . So it's time to set off some Roman candles and d... |
439,192 | 1,617,546 | 22,815 | 5 | The devil is in the details | A potentially fascinating story about love and the rackets is rendered into second feature mush by pedestrian direction . You have snappy dialogue , a midget , a criminal gang masterminded by a deaf-mute who communicates via pantograph within the first ten minutes . You're talking about von Sternberg meets Todd Brownin... |
439,000 | 1,617,546 | 5,446 | 5 | A Parrott Chase | Charley Chase - - still working under his birth name of " Parrott ' at this time ; he wouldn't become ' Chase ' for another nine years - - was not just a minor Keystone supporting comic at this point . He was a minor Keystone director , given the job of wielding the whip on Ford Sterling , one of Keystone's top three o... |
438,986 | 1,617,546 | 34,154 | 5 | Folksy Humor | It's a little startling to see Guy Kibbee in a toupee - - actually two toupees , since the movie begins with a prologue with him as a young man - - but once you grow used to him , he looks perfectly natural . By the time the main story begins , Kibbee , or Scattergood Baines , the eponym of this movie , is the owner of... |
439,115 | 1,617,546 | 5,436 | 5 | Keystone slapstick | An unremarkable Keystone effort with much mugging and physical attacks . This is what people think of when they think of a Mack Sennet comedy : much movement and little in the way of sense , as people beat each other up and wander into open cages at the zoo . None of Keystone's top comics are in this one , although Syd... |
438,572 | 1,617,546 | 3,226 | 5 | Collapses at the End | This late Biograph Griffith starts out pretty well and develops into a very tense situation : Blanche Sweet Sweet plays a dancer and we get a five-minute Isadora-Duncan style production that I couldn't help snickering at - - Ben Model was playing the piano - - who falls in love with and marries Henry Walthall , ' The I... |
438,372 | 1,617,546 | 201,580 | 5 | Lifeless | Literal version of one of the lesser Holmes stories does not translate well to the silent screen . Although this team made a couple of dozen short Holmes movies in the early 1920s , they fail to demonstrate any real grasp of the character - - far too cerebral , alas , for so few words , and so not very good . |
439,283 | 1,617,546 | 214,684 | 5 | A Dog's Life | Fala was the famous Scotch Terrier owned by Franklin Delano Roosevelt during his last two presidential terms , , the cause of a bit of a controversy and a stern lesson to the Republicans that you can attack a man , but best leave his dog alone - - a lesson that Nixon learned well enough to use to advantage in his Check... |
438,907 | 1,617,546 | 324,308 | 5 | Oh , you kid ! | Soft-core porn circa 1901 : a woman strips while performing on the trapeze and winds up wearing more clothes than a modern family on a picnic , while members of the audience crane their necks trying to spot even more . The trapeze work is not very good . |
439,362 | 1,617,546 | 18,509 | 5 | Cartoonerville Trolley | Disney was still pretty far back in the pack of cartoon producers at this stage of the game , when Felix the Cat and Koko the Clown were still way ahead in the lead . Nor was Disney backwards about borrowing gags : this cartoon opens with Oswald polishing his trolley , which he then places on his rump as a fluffy bunny... |
439,392 | 1,617,546 | 42,831 | 5 | History Lurking | This production by Harry Cohn's nephew Robert , released through Columbia , looks , at first sight , like a Fox Production - - that bright , slightly overlit color photography that said " When we said Technicolor , we meant it ! " If DP Vincdent Farrar doesn't use the opportunity to produce any startling compositions ,... |
438,521 | 1,617,546 | 221,180 | 5 | But . . . | This film is largely of technical interest . In the 1920s , two-strip Technicolor - - as opposed to the three-strip variety that became standard in the late 1930s - - was usually used for set pieces within a major movie : the endpieces of Keaton's SEVEN CHANCES , the triumphal march in BEN HUR and the masked ball in PH... |
438,545 | 1,617,546 | 150,764 | 5 | Do Cats Eat Bats ? | Der Fledermaus , aka Mighty Mouse , battles a bunch of bat-winged cats from a mysterious planet . The format of Mighty Mouse rarely varied : sometimes it was mock opera , featuring Pearl Pureheart and Oil-Can Harry , but mostly it consisted of Mighty Mouse beating up a bunch of cats . There is little doubt of the succe... |
438,602 | 1,617,546 | 1,263 | 5 | Survive and Is Seen | I had the pleasure of seeing this film tonight at MOMA , where , Mr . Anderson notes in his comments , it survives . It is a silly , rather obvious film as Miss Talmadge ( who is as startlingly beautiful with long braids as she would be in a plain white apron 15 years later - - beauty is beauty ) plays a princess who d... |
438,670 | 1,617,546 | 38,083 | 5 | Fades in the Stretch | So-so Romantic comedy of how several professors try to get their colleague's job back by playing the horses scientifically isn't much . What strengths there are lay in the supporting cast , particularly the ever-delightful Edmund Gwenn and Sig Rumann , as well as Ava Gardner in a well-played role as the other woman . J... |
439,268 | 1,617,546 | 224,404 | 5 | Tummelers | When I was a kid , about when Hector was a pup , they still had acts like this : they would play the Catskill resorts and parties at country clubs : some people would come out and look like they were going to break their necks and the audience would laugh uproariously . They were called ' tummelers ' , which was Yiddis... |
439,179 | 1,617,546 | 7,506 | 5 | The Problems of Royalty | No , the problems of royalty are not worrying about revolution . Instead , in this movie , it is a lack of romance , which apparently does not exist when you get to dress well , eat decent food , sleep in clean , comfortable beds and marry pretty princesses who do not smell like they've been mucking out stables all day... |
439,351 | 1,617,546 | 249,758 | 5 | First LKO picture | Henry ' Pathe ' Lehman had a checkered career . He got his start in the movies by telling D . W . Griffith he was off the boat from Europe , claiming he had been a director for Pathe Freres . While working for Sennett , he was possibly the first Chaplin imitator on film . Within a year he had used his credentials to ge... |
438,905 | 1,617,546 | 16,195 | 5 | Silent Backstage Musical | Elaine Hammerstein , part of the great theatrical family of producers and lyricists was a leading star on Broadway and - - in this period - - a leading actress in the films . Here in this backstage musical melodrama , she's a spunky New York Irish girl who makes her way up to star in a Broadway musical , but of course ... |
438,798 | 1,617,546 | 38,055 | 5 | Afraid Not | Overwrought comedy-mystery suffers from unlikeable characters , poorly-paced script . The actors try hard , but between the bratty kid , the scatter-witted hero and the shrill heroine , even veteran character actor Lucien Littlefield ( as identical twins who hate each other for unspecified reasons - - probably for sign... |
438,979 | 1,617,546 | 20,666 | 5 | Betty ! | Betty Boop starts to take more form in this , the second cartoon in which she appeared , although she still has floppy spaniel ears . . . . yes , Betty was a real dog when she was young ! This is one of the animated song cartoons that Fleischer did , and the gags fill out the singing of ' Barnacle Bill ' . Not bad . |
439,103 | 1,617,546 | 249,454 | 5 | Monkeyshines | A large monkey arrives in a crate at a private house and escapes . Everyone , led by a bald-headed man in a housedress chases it . This sort of early slapstick movie was the standard model during this period , being used for runaway horses , pumpkins and whatnots , until Mack Sennett added a bit of standard story , usu... |
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