01/13/08
Voice of the Whistler (1945)
William Castle
Fourth film in Columbia's series is once again directed by William Castle but he also co-wrote the screenplay here. This time out Richard Dix plays a rich man who will dead within a two month period. Not wanting to spend his last months alone, he offers a nurse (Lynn Merrick) a great opportunity. She marries him to bring him happiness and he'll leave her his millions. They go through with the plan but all of the sudden he starts to get healthy again. This is certainly the best film in the series so far and it works mainly due to the great story they are working with. There's a lot of twists and turns throughout the short 60-minute running time but it all leads to a highly believable ending. Dix is very good in his role as is Merrick and the two work perfectly well together. The screenplay offers both of their characters a chance to grow, which certainly isn't normal for this type of B movie. Castle does a very good job with his direction and proves he could direct something without gimmicks.
Mysterious Intruder (1946)
William Castle
Fifth film in Columbia's The Whistler series has Richard Dix playing a private investigator who gets a case from an old man who is looking for his niece. Soon the old man is dead and the PI might have had something to do with it. This is a pretty good entry in the series, although the screenplay falls short when compared to the previous film. I think the biggest problem here is the plot itself, which is quite confusing and even in the end it didn't seem to work itself out very well. The film only ran 61-minutes so perhaps that's why the story didn't have time to work itself out as well as it should have. Dix once again turns in a good performance with Charles Lane, Barton MacLane and Nina Vale offering fine support. Castle's direction is good throughout, although it could have probably been better with a better script.
Bucket List, The Rob Reiner
Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman learn that they're both going to die of cancer so they set out on a trip to see and do everything they've wanted to in life. As I type this little review I've been out of the theater for about ten minutes and I must admit that my blood is boiling in anger. This is an incredibly bad, worthless, mean spirited and downright tasteless movie that really, really pissed me off. The first forty-five minutes we see the two legends on screen bleeding, puking and slowly dying. Is this a good way to start a comedy? Seeing this stuff gets one in a rather depressed mood and at the same time we have childish acts going on, which are meant to make us laugh but all these jokes did was come off very distasteful to me. When the road trip/buddy picture starts the material was just weak and not very funny. We of course then come to the forced ending, which begs us to cry but by this point I was wanting out of the theater as quick as I could get out. This movie jerks the viewer around so much that it's rather shocking to see the talent involved. If it weren't for the two stars then i'd probably be ripping this film a lot more but I'll be respectful to them and say I hope this isn't their last film. Nicholson is all over the place and really delivers one of the worst performances I've seen from him since his pre-fame era. Freeman seems to be sleepwalking through the role but I suspect both actors knew this material was weak and were doing whatever they could to try and save it. Freeman plays the wise, quiet guy and Nicholson goes over the top to try a milk any laugh that he can get out of the script. It just doesn't work. A really big misfire as far as I'm concerned.
01/14/08
Crime Wave: 18 Months (2008)
Unknown
History Channel documentary about an eighteen-month period from 1933 to 1934, which are considered the most violent period in American history due to an outbreak of organized crime, which included Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie & Clyde, Baby Face Nelson and various others. This documentary does a great job with the timeline of events, which all these things happened and it also discusses the rise of the FBI, which itself was an interesting story. The FBI had to be among the biggest idiots in the history of American considering some of the mistakes they made while trying to bring down these gangsters. Several secret missions were blown, innocent people killed and even Dillinger got away from them countless times. I found it interesting that when they finally killed Dillinger he was at a gangster movie,
Manhattan Melodrama, with Clark Gable.
Secret Bride, The (1935)
William Dieterle
The governor's daughter (Barbara Stanwyck) secretly weds the D.A. (Warren William) but hours after the wedding he receives information that the governor has been taking bribes for paroles. This is your typical, fast paced drama from Warner that has a decent story but works mainly to the star power. William was born to play these types of roles and he steals the film delivering a very strong performance. William has such a calm, cool and collective way to deliver these types of performances and most of them are always worth watching. Stanwyck is also very good, although she delivers a few truly campy moments including one scene where she gets upset and punches a table. You'll know the scene when it happens. The two of them work well together and really carry the story which isn't the strongest in the world but it makes for a fun 64-minutes.
Wild Elephinks (1933)
Dave Fleischer
Popeye and Olive Oyl land in the jungle and must fight off various animals including a wild elephant and a gorilla. I'm really shocked to see how much I'm enjoying these early Paramount cartoons but so far they've all been a lot of fun with this one here being one of the best. There's some great action, nice animation and a lot of funny lines including a great exchange of words between Popeye and the King of the Jungle. It seems the gorilla kidnapping Olive subplot is a homage to
King Kong.
Sock-A-Bye, Baby (1934)
Dave Fleischer
Weaker but still entertaining Popeye vehicle has him babysitting and beating up anyone or anything that dares to wake the kid up. There's plenty of action in this short but there aren't as many laughs as normal. The highlight is a great sequence where Popeye punches a radio, which sends his fist across the country to the actual guy singing and knocks him out. There's another rather funny moment where the baby steals Popeye's pipe and begins smoking it. The baby falls asleep right after his few hits so I'm guessing Popeye was smoking something other than tobacco.
Let's You and Him Fight (1934)
Dave Fleischer
Popeye and Bluto in the ring fighting it out. I think this is the first of the Popeye shorts that didn't make me laugh a single time. If all you want is action then there's quite a bit here but most of the jokes fall flat on their faces. Wimpy makes a cameo here, which is the highlight of the film.
01/15/08
Val Lewton: Man in the Shadows (2008)
Kent Jones
Martin Scorsese produced and narrates this documentary that takes a look at the life and career of producer Val Lewton who hated the horror genre but become best known for his horror titles like
The Body Snatcher, Bedlam, I Walked with a Zombie and
Cat People. I personally find many of Lewton's horror movies overrated but they are popular so I understand the need to do a documentary on them but to do one on Lewton never really made much sense to me. It's even more senseless when you consider that another documentary,
Shadows in the Dark was just made in 2005. As with that documentary, there really isn't much to Lewton so we learn very little. He didn't do interviews, didn't have any on camera stuff and in reality there's very little known about him so we don't learn a thing. When they discuss the movies we still don't learn anything outside the fact that Lewton hated horror movies and didn't want to work with Boris Karloff. Since there's nothing to Lewton I just can't justify having two documentaries about him and in the end neither of them do much. Roger Corman, Robert Wise and Japanese director Kiyoski Kurosawa are the only movie people interviewed and both only get a few clips.
Youth Runs Wild (1944)
Mark Robson
Val Lewton produced this WW2 drama about teenagers who start getting into trouble while the older folks are either working or fighting in the war. Lewton hated horror films and wanted to be taken more serious and I guess this film was his attempt to do that but the movie is really boring and bland. The strange thing is that Lewton's horror films didn't contain much horror and this juvenile film doesn't contain too much stuff dealing with the subject. There's a subplot of a tire stealing ring, another story dealing with teenage love and yet another dealing with a soldier returning home. None of them work and together they just make for a mess of a film. The film should have centered on one story and followed it but as it is the film just becomes tiresome even at 67-minutes. Bonita Granville of Warner's
Nancy Drew series gets top billing but she too is rather bland, which was a disappointment since I enjoyed most of her early roles. Glenn Vernon, Kent Smith and Lawrence Tierney co-star.
White Buffalo, The (1977)
J. Lee Thompson
An all-star cast highlights this rather strange tale of Wild Bill Hickok (Charles Bronson) who goes looking for the albino buffalo that is haunting his dreams. I'm a die-hard Bronson fan but this film has always left me rather disappointed, which is a shame because the story is there for a classic action film but what we end up getting is a rather bizarre movie that doesn't know what it wants to be. The film has all sorts of characters coming and going, which is part of the problem because the hunt for the buffalo is the most interesting thing yet we get very little of it. The final twenty minutes are certainly the best thing about the movie as the action finally starts going and it's pretty exciting as well. Bronson is good in a way only Bronson can be but it's Jack Warden who steals the show as his sidekick. The supporting cast includes Will Sampson as Crazy Horse, Clint Walker, Slim Pickens, Stuart Whitman, Kim Novak and John Carradine. The buffalo itself looks very silly and sometimes brings laughs but it looks marginally better in the long shots. Some of the dialogue is also very silly including a hilarious sequence where Bronson tells a man to watch his mouth while in the presence of a lady. Even though the film doesn't work as a good movie it does manage to be somewhat interesting as a real head scratcher but Bronson and director Thompson would go onto some better films.