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Thursday, June 27, 2013

The Awful Truth (1937) ****

Posted on 11:35 PM by Unknown
  Cary Grant and Irene Dunne were a match made in screwball heaven. Her impeccable comedic timing and his gift for physical comedy made them an irresistible pair. While The Lady Eve (1941) is my all-time favorite screwball comedy, The Awful Truth (1937) comes in as a close second. Perhaps there aren’t any spectacular cinematographic shots or jaw-dropping dramatic performances, but to pull off a comedy filled with such sophisticated wit and engaging...
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Posted in ****, 1937, McCarey (Leo) | No comments

Sunday, June 23, 2013

I Walked with a Zombie (1943) **

Posted on 8:01 PM by Unknown
Producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur made three low-budget ‘horror’ films together for RKO: Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and The Leopard Man (1943).  For me, they are slightly amusing looks at the supernatural with a heavy dose of eerie cheese on the side.  The acting is always less than stellar and the set productions are minimal, but the stories are always oddly entertaining and told in a highly unusual...
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Posted in **, 1943, Tourneur (Jacques) | No comments

Friday, June 21, 2013

Gaslight (1944) ***

Posted on 10:06 PM by Unknown
(There may be spoilers in this post.) What man would choose jewels over Ingrid Bergman? Liberace does not count… Director George Cukor’s Gaslight (1944) is a taut drama filled with suspense and anxiety.  Blessed by a spectacular cast of Hollywood heavyweights, Cukor, with the help of MGM’s suppression team, totally eclipsed the 1940 British film version of Patrick Hamilton’s play Gas Light, which was called Angel Street on Broadway. Nominated...
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Posted in ***, 1944, Cukor (George) | No comments

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) ***

Posted on 9:01 PM by Unknown
Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) holds a special place in my heart, as it was the first film my mother ever took me to see.  Mind you, I saw it in re-issue, and only after I was so frightened by the newspaper advertisement for Charlotte’s Web (1973, also in re-issue) that I refused to see a film with a menacing-looking spider. In retrospect, I now know that I saw the more frightening of the two.  As a child it was easy...
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Posted in ***, 1937, Sharpsteen (Ben) | No comments

Sunday, June 9, 2013

The Third Man (1949) ***

Posted on 8:36 PM by Unknown
(There possibly could be spoilers contained within this post.) If anyone ever deserved an Oscar for Best Cinematography it was Robert Krasker for his outstanding work on The Third Man (1949). Yes, the story is intriguing and the actors are engaging, but it’s the cinematogrphy that makes this film the preeminent film noir.  Director Carol Reed was a visual genius and a great handler of enormous egos.  His bold use of off-angle shots and...
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Posted in ***, 1949, Reed (Carol) | No comments

Monday, June 3, 2013

The Life of Emile Zola (1937) **1/2

Posted on 7:43 PM by Unknown
For me, director William Dieterle’s The Life of Emile Zola (1937) is one of those films that I admire but don’t really want to watch over and over again. As a former history teacher it provided a nice tool to visually educate my students about the Dreyfuss Affair, but that’s really it. Yes, it won a Best Picture Oscar, but that had more to do with Heinz Herald, Geza Herczeg, and Norman Reilly Raine’s Oscar-winning screenplay about one of the most...
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Posted in **1/2, 1937, Dieterle (William) | No comments

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Throne of Blood (Kumonosu Jo) 1957 **

Posted on 12:11 AM by Unknown
Long before Tony Montana went down in a blaze of bullets in Scarface (1983), Taketoki Washizu (Toshiro Mifune) went out in a flurry of arrows in Throne of Blood (1957). There are memorable death scenes, and then there are extraordinary comeuppances that fell insane Japanese feudal lords.  Of course, famed director Akira Kurosawa was quite adept at staging furious and glorious battle scenes, but for me Washizu’s timely end is unforgettable....
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Posted in **, 1957, Kurosawa (Akira) | No comments
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      • The Awful Truth (1937) ****
      • I Walked with a Zombie (1943) **
      • Gaslight (1944) ***
      • Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) ***
      • The Third Man (1949) ***
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