Cleaning Out The DVR #38: It Happened One Night (dir by Frank Capra)

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For those following at home, Lisa is attempting to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing 38 films by the end of today!!!!! Will she make it? Well, it depends on whether or not she can finish the review below!)

Before I talk too much about the 1934 film It Happened One Night, I want to tell a story about legs.

I’ve always been insecure about having a slightly large nose and once, when I was 17 years old, I was giving my mom a hard time about the fact that I had basically inherited it from her. I was going on and on and being fairly obnoxious about it. (Yes, believe it or not, I can occasionally be obnoxious…)

Finally, my mom held up her hand and said, “Yes, you got your nose from me but you also got my legs so stop crying!”

And you know what? I glanced down at my legs and I realized that she was right and that made me feel a lot better. Ever since then, I’ve taken a lot of pride in having a good pair of legs.

Now, you may be asking yourself what that has to do with It Happened One Night. Well, It Happened One Night is one of the ultimate “good legs” movies. That’s because It Happened One Night features the famous scene in which Claudette Colbert teaches Clark Gable the proper way to hitchhike. (If I ever take up hitchhiking, I’m planning on using the same technique.)

That’s the scene that It Happened One Night is justifiably famous for. However, It Happened One Night is more than just a film about hitchhiking.

It’s also a romance, one that features Claudette Colbert at her wackiest and Clark Gable at his sexiest. Reportedly, the sell of undershirts plummeted after Clark Gable took off his shirt and revealed that he wasn’t wearing one.

It was one of the first road movies and it was such a success that it remains influential to this very day. Any time you watch a movie that features two seemingly different characters getting to know each other on a road trip, you’re watching a movie that exists because of It Happened One Night. (And yes, that includes Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road.)

Frank Capra won his first Oscar for directing this film and It Happened One Night remains one of his most likable and least preachy films. Just compare the unpretentious, down-to-Earth style of It Happened One Night to Meet John Doe.

Perhaps most importantly, It Happened One Night was the first comedy to win the Oscar for best picture. It Happened One Night is a film that announces that a film doesn’t have to be a self-serious, pretentious epic to be great. Before the victory of It Happened One Night, the top prize was exclusively reserved for films like Cimarron and Calvalcade. (Seriously, just try watching some of those early winners today.) It Happened One Night‘s Oscar victory was a victory for the future of entertainment.

(By the way, as I sit here typing up this review, I keep accidentally typing It’s A Wonderful Life instead of It Happened One Night. That’s the power of Frank Capra.)

It Happened One Night tells the story of Pete Warne (Clark Gable). Pete is an out-of-work reporter. Though he may be down on his luck, he’s still confident and lovably cocky in that way that only Clark Gable could be. While riding on a bus from Florida to New York, Pete recognizes one of his fellow passengers as Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert), an heiress who has recently eloped with a buffoonish big game hunter named King Westley (Jameson Thomas). Ellie’s father wants to get the marriage annulled and has people all over the country searching for his daughter. Pete agrees not to call Ellie’s father if Ellie will agree to give him an exclusive story when she meets up with Westley in New York.

For the rest of the film, we follow Pete and Ellie as they cross the United States, spending awkward nights in motel rooms, getting kicked off of buses, and hitchhiking. Ellie gives lessons on how to get a car to stop. Pete delivers a long monologue on the proper way to undress before going to bed. Along the way, Pete and Ellie fall in love. It also becomes obvious that Ellie’s father is right about Westley only marrying her for her money.

They also meet a large cast of increasingly eccentric characters. Whether they’re dealing with the passengers on the bus or the cranky people staying at a rest stop or a motorist who won’t stop singing, Pete and Ellie do noy meet anyone who doesn’t have at least one odd quirk. Like many classic screwball comedies, It Happened One Night takes place in a world where everyone — from a bus driver to a desk clerk to a group of women waiting to use a shower at a rest stop — has something to say about everything. Some of the film’s funniest moments come from watching the normally smooth Pete have to deal with the increasingly crazy world in which he’s found himself.

(For her part, Ellie is at her happiest when things are at their strangest. Ellie’s the best.)

The other great moments come from simply watching Gable and Colbert interact. They have an amazing chemistry and it comes through in their performances. It’d odd to read that apparently neither Gable nor Colbert were happy to be cast in It Happened One Night because their performances are so much fun to watch. A love story only works if you love the characters and the love story in It Happened One Night definitely works.

As I stated above, It Happened One Night was the first comedy to win Best Picture. Beyond that, it was also the first movie to win all of the top 5 Oscars: Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Adapted Screenplay. (Those were also the only 5 nominations that It Happened One Night received.) For once, the Academy got it right. It Happened One Night remains a delightful film.

(Oh my God, y’all, I did it! That’s 38 films reviewed in 10 days and my DVR now has space to record all sorts of things! And making it all the better is that I finished this project by reviewing a truly wonderful comedy like It Happened One Night!)

Cleaning Out The DVR #37: A Room With A View (dir by James Ivory)

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(For those following at home, Lisa is attempting to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing 38 films by the end of today!!!!! Will she make it? Keep following the site to find out!)

Poor Cecil Vyse.

The 1986 film A Room With A View is a love story. It’s about a young woman who meets a young man in Florence, Italy and then, upon returning to England, she discovers that the same young man and his father are now her neighbors. From the minutes they meet, it’s obvious that the young man and the young woman are destined to be together. The only thing that’s standing in their way is the strict culture of conformity of Edwardian England. That and the fact that the young woman is engaged to Cecil Vyse.

Cecil represents the establishment. He comes from a good family. He’s well-educated. He talks about the right subjects. He holds all the right opinions. He’s not an exciting man but he’s a good man who is destined to have successful but not very interesting life. From the minute that we meet him, we know that our heroine is not meant to stay with Cecil.

And it’s heart-breaking because the film goes out of its way to show that Cecil is not a bad person. In his own befuddled way, he’s one of the most likable people in the entire film. He may not have an interesting mind but he does have a good heart. When the moment comes that Cecil’s heart is broken, the film treats him with respect.

Of course, it helps that Cecil was played, in one of his first roles, by Daniel Day-Lewis. Day-Lewis plays the role with a quiet dignity. Instead of just turning Cecil into a mere nuisance that has to be pushed out of the way in the name of love, Day-Lewis emphasizes Cecil’s humanity. There’s a quiet scene where the recently heart-broken Cecil ties his shoes that is an example of truly great acting.

As for the two young lovers, Lucy Honeychurch is played by Helena Bonham Carter while George Emerson is played by Julian Sands. Both of them are achingly beautiful and, even more importantly, they both look as if they belong in Edward England and with each other. Still, seeing this film today, it takes a little while to adjust to seeing both Bonham Carter and Sands playing such … normal characters. We’re so used to seeing Helena killing people in Tim Burton movies that it’s nice to see her getting to rather sweetly fall in love for once.

The entire film is full of great British actors, all at their best. Denholm Elliott plays George’s father and gets to deliver a rousing defense of both true love and free thought. Maggie Smith plays Lucy’s overprotective aunt while Rosemary Leach is Lucy’s supportive mother. And then you’ve got Simon Callow as an eccentric vicar. (Because every British film needs an eccentric vicar.) Lucy’s younger brother is played by an actor named Rupert Graves and he’s so adorable that I kind of found myself wishing that he could have had a spin-off movie of his own.

A Room With A View is a wonderfully romantic film, one that I could easily see myself spending days just watching over and over again. A Room With A View was nominated for best picture but it lost to the far less romantic Platoon.

(For those following at home, I now have one more review to go to reach my goal of reviewing 38 films in 10 days!)

Cleaning Out The DVR #36: Toni Braxton: Unbreak My Heart (dir by Vondie Curtis-Hall)

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(For those following at home, Lisa is attempting to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing 38 films by the end of today!!!!! Will she make it? Keep following the site to find out!)

It’s becoming a new annual tradition. Every January, Lifetime airs a biopic about a singer. As I watched Toni Braxton: Unbreak My Heart, I found myself thinking about what makes a good biopic. Unfortunately, good lives rarely make good biopics. After all, we watch biopics for the drama behind-the-scenes. When someone has lived a successful life and has basically lived her life with intelligence and integrity, it makes them a role model. But it doesn’t necessarily make them into a fascinating subject for a movie.

Now, I have to admit that, before watching this movie, I didn’t know much about Toni Braxton. My musical taste tends to run from EDM to more EDM. I had heard the name Toni Braxton, of course. I knew that there was a reality show called Braxton Family Values, though I’ve never seen an episode. But I didn’t know much about her or her life.

So, as I watched, I kept waiting for the inevitable moment when Toni Braxton would first be pressured into trying cocaine or when she would end up in an abusive marriage or when she would eventually end up going through a Hellish rehab experience. But none of that happened, largely because Toni Braxton appears to have been pretty intelligent when it came to making her life decisions.

Oh, there’s certainly some drama. She had some financial difficulties early on her career. Some members of her family get jealous of her success but not so jealous that they can’t be totally supportive. She gets married but the marriage ends — not because of infidelity or abuse but just because sometimes marriages end. And really, Lifetime should be commended for the way it handled the end of Braxton’s marriage because sometimes, marriages just don’t work out and it’s not anyone’s fault. Finally, Toni discovers the she has Lupus. Lupus is a serious disease and both Toni and the movie deserve full credit for educating the public.

In the end, Toni Braxton: Unbreak My Heart is a well-made and perfectly pleasant film but it’s not particularly memorable Lex Scott Davis does a good as Toni and the film provides good roles for a lot of talented African-American performers. But, as a movie, Toni Braxton: Unbreak My Heart never quite reaches the memorable heights of last year’s Whitney.

Cleaning Out The DVR #35: Stage Door (dir by Gregory La Cava)

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(For those following at home, Lisa is attempting to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing 38 films by the end of today!!!!! Will she make it? Keep following the site to find out!)

The 1937 film Stage Door is a great example of a unique genre of American film, the Katharine Hepburn Gets Humbled genre.

In the 1930s, Katharine Hepburn went through a period of time where she was considered to be “box office poison.” She was undeniably talented but it was obvious that the studios weren’t sure how to showcase that talent. They put her in high-brow films that often did not have much appeal to audiences. As well, the press hated her. Katharine Hepburn was outspoken, she was confident, she was a nonconformist, and, too many, her refusal to do interviews and sign autographs marked her as a snob. Very few people wanted to see a movie starring Katharine Hepburn and therefore, very few people were willing to make a movie starring Katharine Hepburn.

(Interestingly enough, as I sit here typing this, another KH — Katharine Heigl — is pretty much in the exact same situation, with the main difference being that Hepburn was a far more interesting actress.)

Fortunately, Katharine Hepburn was smart enough to recognize the problem and she started to appear in films like Stage Door. In Stage Door, she essentially played a character who mirrored the public’s perception of her. Terry Randall is a snobbish and pretentious aspiring actress who comes to New York to pursue her career and moves into a theatrical rooming house. At first, her attitude makes her unpopular with the other actresses living in the house. But, as the film progresses, Terry slowly starts to let down her defenses and reveals that she’s just as insecure, neurotic, and vulnerable as everyone else. She also proves herself to be willing to stand up to manipulative producers and condescending directors. When she’s cast in her first Broadway show, it turns out that the show is being financed by her father and his hope is that she’ll do such a bad job and be so humiliated that she’ll give up acting. And, at first, it appears that Terry will be terrible. During rehearsals, she is stiff and mannered. (Hepburn was actually quite brave to portray Terry as being such a believably bad actress.)

Of course, Terry isn’t the only actress at the rooming house who has issues to deal with. For instance, Judy Canfield (Lucille Ball) has to choose between pursuing her career or getting married and starting a family. Kay (Andrea Leeds) is a once successful actress who is now struggling to find roles, can’t pay her bills, and has become suicidal as a result. And then there’s Jean (Ginger Rogers), Terry’s cynical roommate and frequent enemy and occasional friend. Jean is falling in love with Anthony Powell (Adolphe Menjou), the lecherous producer of Terry’s play.

Stage Door is a wonderfully entertaining mix of melodrama and comedy. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll really find yourself hoping that all of the actresses at the rooming house will have their dreams come true. While the film is dominated by Hepburn and Rogers, it truly is an ensemble piece. Not only does the cast include Eve Arden, Lucille Ball and Andrea Leeds (giving the film’s best and most poignant performance) but the great dancer Ann Miller appears as Jean’s equally cynical best friend. Stage Door may be 79 years old but it’s aged wonderfully.

At the box office, Stage Door was a modest success and it directly led to Hepburn being cast in the classic screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby. Stage Door was nominated for best picture but it lost to The Life of Emile Zola.

Cleaning Out The DVR #34: The Story of Louis Pasteur (dir by William Dieterle)

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(For those following at home, Lisa is attempting to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing 38 films by the end of today!!!!! Will she make it? Keep following the site to find out!)

OH MY GOD, LOUIS PASTEUR WAS THE DEVIL!

Okay, maybe not but that’s certainly the impression that you might get from looking at the one sheet for the 1936 film, The Story of Louis Pasteur. Seriously, Louis looks quite sinister!

As the movie starts, that’s certainly the view of the 19th century French medical establishment. A doctor has been murdered by a grieving husband and it’s believed that the murder was inspired by one of Pasteur’s incendiary flyers. What does the flyer demand? That doctors should wash their hands and sterilize their instruments before operating.

That’s right! Washing your hands before plunging them into a human body was once considered to be a controversial notion. Pasteur is put on trial, accused of inciting violence with his quackery. Even though Pasteur is acquitted, he finds himself a pariah. The autocratic and close-minded Dr. Charbonnet (Fritz Leiber) declares Pasteur to be guilty of great quackery and even the ducks are offended. That’s how hated Pasteur has become.

But, of course, we the audience know that Pasteur is not a quack. Not only do we know that he is responsible for discovering the process of pasteurization but he’s also apparently important enough to have his own 1930s Warner Bros. biopic. And he’s played by Paul Muni, who made a career out of playing great men in 1930s biopics.

The film follows Pasteur as he discovers cures for anthrax and rabies. Along the way, he yells at a lot of people and he gives a lot of speeches. This film might as well have been called The Paul Muni Show and … well, his performance is okay. It’s not great. If you’ve seen the very first version of Scarface, you know that Paul Muni was capable of giving a far better performance than he gives here. But then again, as written, all Louis does is bellow against everyone who disagrees with him. (And cure rabies, we shouldn’t overlook that.)

The Story of Louis Pasteur is one of those old-fashioned biopics that feels a bit creaky and stiff today. As I watched it, I kept thinking that it felt like something you might across on PBS at three in the morning. However, 1936 audiences disagreed with me. The Story of Louis Pasteur did quite well at the box office and was nominated for best picture, though it lost to another biopic, The Great Ziegfeld.

Cleaning Out The DVR #33: Heaven Can Wait (dir by Ernst Lubitsch)

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(For those following at home, Lisa is attempting to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing 38 films by the end of today!!!!! Will she make it? Keep following the site to find out!)

The 1943 film Heaven Can Wait opens with a 70 year-old man named Henry Van Cleve (Don Ameche) stepping into an opulent drawing room and having a conversation with a refined but menacing man known as His Excellency (Laird Cregar). From their conversation, it quickly becomes obvious that Henry has recently died and His Excellency is in charge of Hell. Most people who come to see His Excellency do so because they want to argue that they do not belong in Hell and they usually end up falling through a convenient trap door. However, Henry is there to argue that, after living an enjoyable but dissolute life, he belongs in Hell.

Henry tells the story of his life. He tells how he was born into great wealth and influenced by his down-to-Earth grandfather (Charles Coburn). As a young man, he spent most of his time chasing after showgirls bur eventually, he met the beautiful and kind-hearted Martha (Gene Tierney). He immediately fell in love with Martha but, unfortunately for him, she was engaged to his cousin (Allyn Joslyn). Henry, however, used his considerable charm to convince her to elope with him.

(It helps, of course, that Henry’s cousin was totally and completely obnoxious, in the way that rival suitors often are in films like this.)

And, for 25 years, Henry was happy with Martha. It took him a while to settle down and, at one point, Martha even left him as a result of his affairs. However, they always got back together and Henry eventually did settle down, even going so far as to prevent his son from running off with a showgirl of his own. It was only after Martha herself died that Henry, who always felt he didn’t deserve her love, returned to his old ways.

And, Henry argues, it’s because he was unworthy of his wife that he deserves to spend an eternity in Hell. Does His Excellency agree?

Well, it would certainly be a depressing movie if he did.

One of the great things about TCM’s 31 Days of Oscar is that it gave me a chance to discover several films from director Ernst Lubitsch, films like The Smiling Lieutenant, The Love Parade, Ninotchka, and Heaven Can Wait. Of those four Lubitsch films, Heaven Can Wait is probably the least substantial but it’s still an undeniably entertaining and nicely romantic film. This is one of those films that you watch because the sets look wonderful, the costumes are to die for, and the performers are all pleasant to watch. It’s pure entertainment, a crowd-pleaser in the best sense of the word.

In fact, tt was such a crowd-pleaser that it was nominated for best picture of the year. However, it lost to the ultimate crowd-pleaser, Casablanca.

Cleaning Out The DVR #32: Ninotchka (dir by Ernst Lubitsch)

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(For those following at home, Lisa is attempting to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing 38 films by the end of today!!!!! Will she make it? Keep following the site to find out!)

Oh my God, I love this movie!

First released in 1939, Ninotchka is many things. It’s a love story. It’s a comedy. It’s a story of international intrigue. It’s a political satire. It’s a celebration of freedom. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s a showcase for one of the greatest actresses of all time, the one and only Greta Garbo!

But you know what? As great as Garbo is, she’s not the only worthy performer in this film. Melvyn Douglas plays Garbo’s love interest and his performance is full of charm and class. And guess who plays the main villain? BELA LUGOSI! That’s right — this was one of Lugosi’s few roles that did not require him to play a variation on his famous Dracula. And, even if he doesn’t have a lot of scenes, Lugosi does a pretty good job in Ninotchka. It’s interesting to see Lugosi playing an all-too real monster for once.

Ninotchka opens in Paris. Three Russians are in town and they’re trying to sell some jewelry that was confiscated by the government during the revolution of 1917. That’s right — they’re communists! When they first show up in Paris, they make a big deal about hating the decadence of capitalism. But then they meet Count Leon d’Algout (Melvyn Douglas), who proceeds to introduce them to the wonders of the free market. Soon, the three of them are holed up in their luxurious hotel, ordering room service and having a nonstop party.

(Leon, incidentally, is working for the original owner of the jewelry. The jewelry, as you’ve probably guessed, is what Hitchock would have called a macguffin.)

Once it becomes obvious that the first three Russians have been corrupted by western society, Ninotchka (Greta Garbo) is sent to bring them back to Moscow. Ninotchka is a “special envoy” and, from the minute that she meets Leon, it’s obvious that she’s going to be a lot more difficult to corrupt. For all of Leon’s charm, he cannot get Ninotchka to smile or drop her “all Marxist business” attitude.

Of course. from the minute that she first appears, we all know that Ninotchka is eventually going to loosen up and come to love both the west and Melvyn Douglas. But what makes Garbo’s performance truly special is that we like and sympathize with Ninotchka even before she embraces decadence. Even when Ninotchka is reciting Marxist-Leninist dogma, there’s a playfulness to the way Garbo delivers the lines.

That’s one reason why it’s so much fun to watch as Ninotchka (and Garbo) starts to actually relax and enjoy both Paris and life. Wisely, the film doesn’t suggest that Paris has changed Ninotchka. Instead, it merely shows that being in Paris and getting to know Leon has finally allowed her to act like the person that she was all along.

(Before her appearance in Ninotchka, Garbo was known for playing very dramatic roles. Not only is this film about Ninotchka learning to enjoy herself. It’s also about Garbo proving that she could play comedy just as well as she could play melodrama.)

Of course, eventually, Ninotchka and the three Russians are forced to return to Moscow and director Ernst Lubitsch does a wonderful job contrasting the glamour of freedom-loving Paris with the drabness of life under communism. Just when it looks like Ninotchka is going to be forced to spend the rest of her life in her depressing apartment and missing the luxury of being able to wear silk stockings, her boss (Lugosi) tells her that she is being assigned somewhere else. Ninotchka doesn’t want the assignment but, as Lugosi explains, the revolution doesn’t care what the individual wants.

Will Ninotchka and her friends ever find their way back to freedom and Leon? Or will she remain trapped in the bureaucracy? You’ll have to watch the film to find out!

I really liked Ninotchka. Even 77 years after it was first released, it remains a wonderfully romantic and sweet-natured little comedy. If you haven’t seen it, you definitely should!

Ninotchka was one of the many great films to be nominated for best picture of 1939. However, the Oscar went to another famously romantic film, Gone With The Wind.

I Should Have Watched Something Else, But I Sat Through Superdragon vs. Superman (1975, dir. Chia Chun Wu)

Posted on March 17, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

The movie is also called Bruce Lee Against Supermen. By that they mean Bruce Li Against 80 Minutes Of Your Life. I really should have been watching something else.

Right now a woman is riding a shark while wearing a bunny suit. (Zodiac Fighters, 1978)

The movie begins with a car chase. Get used to that cause it will happen a lot. This time it’s a police car chasing a couple of criminals. The criminals see that the police are catching up. They are carrying a bag full of money, which they promptly toss out the window. A man and a woman find the money, but are surprised by Bruce Li dressed as Kato.

Why is he dressed like Kato? Who knows? Once a battle after the credits is done, he won’t do it again for the whole movie. There will be a mention of The Green Hornet who I’m pretty sure is two guys dressed like Supermen. Kato takes the couple to his car and drives them away to the police station.

Right now a dog taught to hate is heading towards a tragic end. (White Dog, 1982)

Now the film cuts to the opening credits. There are flies all over them. I’m not sure why. Later we’ll see flies on the Superman uniforms of the Supermen who might be The Green Hornet in this movie.

After dropping the couple off at the police station we see Kato drive away. He doesn’t get far before he appears to have trouble with his tire. After getting out he is attacked from behind.

One thing immediately clear is that not only is Bruce Li not as good an actor as Bruce Lee, but not as good a fighter either. However, everyone else is worse than him in this movie.

After Bruce Li dispatches with them, it cuts to one guy in a suit strangling another guy in a suit. The guy being strangled tells him The Green Hornet did it. That’s when it cuts to some newspapers to tell us that Dr. T has invented a way to refine food from petroleum by-products. He has been invited by the Arabs so he is going to travel to the middle east with his daughter. Then we get to see the Supermen who might be The Green Hornet.

They also have this glowing ball.

Sadly Burt Reynolds doesn’t talk to them through it. Instead, it flashes, and a printer spits out something we can’t read. If you watch this movie, then I hope you enjoy this shot of the Supermen because you won’t see them again in uniform till the very end of the film.

Right now a Russian Count may or may not be coming to the rescue. (The Marquise of O, 1976)

That’s when we cut to the bad guys talking to a guy who is willing to pay big bucks for the bad guys to get Dr. T’s formula. He is willing to pay a lot of money. Now we cut to the “Middle East”

No joke. That’s supposed to be an Arab. That Chinese guy right there is supposed to be an Arab. You might be wondering what he sounds like. He sounds like a Chinese stereotype. I think he is trying to do a Middle Eastern accent, but it’s hard to tell. I seriously doubt they cared. Now the movie cuts to Will Our Heroes Be Able to Find Their Friend Who Has Mysteriously Disappeared in Africa? (1968) as they take Dr. T out to a dig site.

When they arrive at the site they hand the doctor some ore. He suddenly has an attack, but is okay once his daughter gives him some medication. Then he takes a good long look at the ore. We get nice closeups of the ore. We get a zoom shot on her dropping a liquid on the ore. We get a zoom shot on the doctor looking through a magnifying glass at the ore. Once that padding of the movie is done, the daughter decides to go swimming.

Right now a playboy is realizing he killed someone. (Il Sorpasso, 1962)

This is when the movie decides it’s time to show us the daughter swimming around naked. Oh, and we see the bad guys spying on her, but it’s really just so we can see her naked. Will they actually say anything? Nope. She just gets dressed, then cut to an airplane landing.

Now we watch a man cross the street for a minute or so before hailing a cab to pad the movie out some more. Then we cut to fighting.

We don’t know what they are fighting about at first, but who cares! They’ve got 80 minutes of your life to take away so some of it might as well be mildly entertaining. It turns out they were just practicing. We find out…

this guy in red needs help protecting Dr. T and his daughter. I’m quite sure it’s Bruce Li, but I’m not sure if he was one of the Supermen at the beginning or not. Doesn’t matter because in the next scene Dr. T is getting kidnapped and shoved in a car. In a car that’s passing, the two guys above spot the car and give chase. A long slow car chase.

Right now a pen tester is going through somebody’s trash. (Sneakers, 1992)

Back in the movie the car chase is still happening with a needlessly crazy angle…

that doesn’t add anything to the film.

Right now a boxer is finding out that winning the fight doesn't keep him from the fate he didn't know was coming. (The Set-Up, 1949)

Right now a boxer is finding out that winning the fight doesn’t keep him from his fate he didn’t know was coming. (The Set-Up, 1949)

After a four minute slow speed car chase our two heroes pretend to be lying on the road to stop the kidnappers. They take them by surprise and a fight breaks out.

I call that kick, the Dolemite. That’s where you just place your foot near their face and they pretend to get hit.

Right now you’re looking at Degrassi long before Netflix got ahold of it.

After three minutes of fighting we cut to this guy…

who is ordering a sniper. Then we cut to who I assume is Bruce Li and Dr. T’s daughter walking around.

Then they walk around some more.

Right now you’re looking at an Eastern you should see. (White Sun of the Desert, 1970)

After three minutes of walking around we cut to a shot of a building. For reasons that I don’t know, a guy who I assume is still Bruce Li walks up to a little girl and somebody takes a shot at him. He grabs the little girl and they hide behind a pillar. She is carrying a little wind up toy. Bruce winds it up and places it on the street. He leaves the girl to make a run for the building.

He runs to the top of the building where the shot came from. Then he throws a rope over the edge of the building and rappels down the side of it to pad the movie out some more.

Then he gives chase.

Right now this woman is in the middle of having explained to her what happened last year. (Last Year at Marienbad, 1961)

After seven and a half minutes of him chasing him, the two fight.

It cuts to this shot during the fight.

After leaving the audience wondering Where’s Waldo? it then cuts back to the two of them on the top of the building where the bad guy falls to his death.

Back to the phone guy, and we learn that “The Green Hornet” is a real problem for him. But after listening to the unseen person on the other end, he says he’ll just get Superman. Maybe that’s this next guy who now does his part to pad this movie out more.

After he spends a minute of doing his martial arts/calligraphy routine, we cut to ninjas flipping.

No really, random ninjas inserted that flip around for 10 seconds. Maybe Godfrey Ho did this part of the movie.

Right now you’re looking at a very famous scene of a historical event that didn’t take place where the film says. (Battleship Potemkin, 1925)

Now a guy and a girl speak in Adam and Eve talk before padding the movie out with sex.

We cut to the doctor getting kidnapped again before cutting back to sex. Now the doctor’s daughter runs on the street, bumps into a guy, and he takes her to the sex scene. Then we see more sex to pad the film out some more. Daughter bursts in and immediately starts a cat fight with the girl. After one tries to hold the other’s head under a running shower, we cut to this.

While they have to wait for “Green Hornet”, the doctor is getting tortured by bad camera effects.

Planet of Dinosaurs (1977)

Right now that’s how I feel about the rest of this review. Let’s cut through this: chase, fight, pointless hostage scene, fight, chase, fight, pointless hostage scene, fight, fight, fight, chase, and movie!

Make that the middle finger, and you have what I felt the film was trying to tell me. You didn’t miss anything. It’s all padding. The chase scenes go on forever, the fighting is boring, and the plot is almost non-existent. Please go watch the other movies and TV Shows I mentioned rather than subjecting yourself to this. Well, that is except for the one just below this text. That documentary was awful.

Right now another bad movie is getting made because of what this title card says. (I Love Dollars, 1986)

Cleaning Out The DVR #31: Libeled Lady (dir by Jack Conway)

Posted on March 17, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(For those following at home, Lisa is attempting to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing 38 films by the end of this Friday. Will she make it? Keep following the site to find out!)

In the 1936 comedy Libeled Lady, tabloid newspaper editor Warren Haggerty (Spencer Tracy) has a problem. His newspaper has just published a story accusing wealthy heiress Connie Allenbury (Myrna Loy) of being the other woman in a scandalous divorce. The problem is that Connie was not the “other woman” and she is now suing the newspaper for $5,000,000.

“5 million dollars!” an astonished Warren declares, “nobody has that type of money!”

(It was 1936, after all.)

However, Warren has a plan and, since this is a screwball comedy, it’s an unneccesarily complicated plan. He hires a former reporter, the suave Bill Chandler (William Powell, the suavest man alive in the 30s) to meet with Connie. Warren believes that there’s no way that Connie won’t fall in love with Bill. (Perhaps Warren had recently seen The Thin Man…) Once Connie does fall in love, Warren will arrange for Bill’s wife to catch the two of them together. In order to avoid the scandal, Connie will drop the suit.

The problem is that Bill isn’t married. However, Warren has a solution for that as well. Warren arranges for Bill to marry Warren’s fiancée, Gladys (Jean Harlow). Gladys is not happy about the arrangement but goes along with it because, despite his behavior, she truly loves Warren and Warren promises her that the marriage will only last for 6 weeks.

(When the minister says that he hopes he’ll be invited to the new couple’s silver anniversary, Gladys replies, “It better be in six weeks.”)

And, at first, things go as planned. Bill meets Connie on a luxury cruise and she quickly falls in love with him. However, Bill finds himself falling in love with her too. Soon, he no longer wants to frame her. However, that’s not the only complication. Finally fed up with Warren’s behavior, Gladys has started to think that maybe it would be better to be married to Bill. Soon, she decides that she has no intention of getting a divorce…

Libeled Lady is a minor but enjoyable screwball comedy. The plot is thoroughly implausible but, fortunately, William Powell was one of those actors who could get you to believe almost anything. As anyone who has seen any of the Thin Man films can tell you, Powell and Myrna Loy had great chemistry together. Spencer Tracy seems a little uncomfortable with the role of Warren but Jean Harlow is a lot of fun as Gladys. She doesn’t have a big role but, at the same time, you can still understand why she was such a huge star and why her tragic death a year later was such a shock.

(At the time the movie was made, Harlow was dating William Powell. She wanted to play Connie but MGM was determined to repeat the formula of previous William Powell/Myrna Loy comedies and Harlow settled for the secondary role of Gladys.)

As enjoyable as the film is, it still does seem a bit strange that it was nominated for best picture. It lost the Oscar to The Great Ziegfeld, another MGM film that starred William Powell and Myrna Loy.

Cleaning Out The DVR #30: The Great Ziegfeld (dir by Robert Z. Leonard)

Posted on March 17, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(For those following at home, Lisa is attempting to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing 38 films by the end of this Friday. Will she make it? Keep following the site to find out!)

Do you know who Florence Ziegfeld was?

Don’t feel bad if you don’t because, until I saw the 1936 film The Great Ziegfeld, I had no idea and history is my number one obsession. Florence Ziegfeld was a theatrical producer who, in the early days of the 20th Century, produced huge spectacles. He was a showman who understood the importance of celebrity and gossip. He produced a show called The Ziegfeld Follies, which was considered quite risqué at the time but which looks remarkably tame today. Florence Ziegfeld was so famous that he even got his own Oscar-winning biopic.

The Great Ziegfeld features the always smooth William Powell as Ziegfeld. When we first meet him, he’s promoting a strongman and a belly dancer and nobody takes him seriously. But through hard work, good luck, and his own instinct for showmanship, he becomes famous and his shows gets bigger and bigger. The film follows Ziegfeld as he gets married, both times to someone he is grooming to be a star. His first wife is Anna (Luise Rainer), who loves him but divorces him when it becomes obvious that Ziegfeld’s life will always revolve around his work. His second wife is Billie Burke and we know that she is Ziegfeld’s true love because she’s played by Myrna Loy. Whenever you see William Powell and Myrna Loy in the same film, you know that they belong together.

The majority of The Great Ziegfeld is taken up with recreations of Ziegfeld’s stage shows. In fact, the film almost feels more like a musical variety show than a real biopic. (Judging from the credits, quite a few of Ziegfeld’s stars played themselves and recreated their acts on the big screen.) I can understand why this was attractive to audiences in the 1930s. With no end in sight to The Great Depression and Ziegfeld himself recently deceased, this movie was their only opportunity to see one of his spectacles. The film made sure that they got their money’s worth.

However, for modern audiences, all of the acts just add to what is already an oppressive running time. My main impression of The Great Ziegfeld was that it was really, really long. The movie itself is well-produced and William Powell and Myrna Loy are always fun to watch but the movie just goes on and on. As well, this biopic is so worshipful of Ziegfeld — the title is meant to be taken literally — that, as a result, he comes across as being one-dimensional. I did appreciate the film as a historical artifact but otherwise, it didn’t do much for me.

However, it did something for the Academy. The Great Ziegfeld was named the best picture of 1936! Luise Rainer won best actress despite only being on-screen for a handful of scenes. So many people were critical of Rainer’s award that, the very next year, the Academy introduced the award for best supporting actress.

As for why Ziegfeld won that Oscar — well, if you look at its competition and some of the other 1936 films that received nominations, you’re struck by the lack of truly memorable films. It would appear that, in a weak year, the Academy decided to give the award to the biggest production they could find.

And that was The Great Ziegfeld.