In this beloved musical effort set against the backdrop of the 1903 World’s Fair, Judy Garland sings her way through a world where the most pressing problem of the day is the fact that the boy-next-door’s tailor is closed meaning that he can’t get his tuxedo in time for the big graduation dance. Read More

RKO was guilty of the performing the cinematic equivalent of a partial birth abortion on Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons. Its 88 minute running time only came about after fifty minutes of it were shaved off by RKO butchers after the film had a disastrous test screening. For some reason they thought they should show this movie to a Saturday night audience after they had already sat through a test screening of the upbeat musical The Fleet’s In! Guess what? People weren’t quite prepared to sit through Welles’ thoughtful meditation on the ending of a way of life and the coming technological boom after watching sailors sing and dance. Read More

Watching films like Lost Horizon with its distinctly “capitalism sucks” message reminds me that those concerned citizens who agonize over all the sex and violence the liberal media are intent on selling our children are completely missing the point. Sex and violence after all, made this country what it is today – great! Read More

This is one of the gimpier offerings from William Powell and Myrna Loy, a pair known for their sophisticated brand of comedy that triumphed in such fare as The Thin Man and Libeled Lady. Double Wedding is one of those zany screwball comedies where a wacky guy and an uptight gal have to overcome their natural inclinations to be wacky and uptight before they can admit what we all knew going into things: that they’re really, truly, madly, deeply, in love. Read More

This a fun movie with four of Hollywood’s great talents firing on all cylinders. Spencer Tracy plays newspaper editor Walter Haggerty. He’s a fast talking, muckraking kind of guy who finds himself in a tight spot when he gets called in to work on his wedding day! His London correspondent has filed a story that socialite Connie Allenbury (Myrna Loy) was involved in some type of husband-stealing, home-wrecking, affair. The paper later figures out that this story is false and Haggerty immediately tells everyone that it was obvious their reporter was wasted when he phoned in the story! Read More

Three women receive a letter from another broad who says that she left town and took one of their husbands with her as a memento. I was hoping that these three dames would be busting the head of every snitch in Gotham City trying to dig up some info on which man of theirs had taken a powder. I even thought there might be some kind of hair pulling slap fight between these chicks that would end with all of them crashing into a giant fountain in the middle of town. Read More

Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis) is the wife of a guy who runs a rubber plantation in Malaysia and if you know anything about life on a rubber plantation in Malaysia like I do, there isn’t much more to do than your husband’s best friend. And even though this all went down in Malaysia, it still turns out that you just can’t go around killing secret boyfriends because they dump you! You can’t really blame Leslie though. How can anyone be expected to know the intricacies of Malaysian rubber plant homicide laws? Read More

I think it was all those speeches that Robert Taylor as Sir Lancelot delivered in his stentorian monotone that did it. When it finally came time for Arthur to banish Lance from the realm, he may have said it was because Lance couldn’t quite seem to avoid hanging on to Guinevere’s green ribbon with an almost fetish-like fervor, but honestly, he was just tired of hearing all of Lance’s chivalry babble. Read More

Jane Fonda won an Oscar for her work as the only-in-a-Hollywood-movie hooker who’s smart, good looking and deeply troubled by her lifestyle. This is a hooker that’s so Hollywood, she even visits a therapist on a regular basis! Read More

Kings Row successfully navigates around the edges of the movie-style soap opera to bring us a memorable look at how that most hallowed slice of Americana, the clean, pretty, small town, was just as susceptible to madness, corruption and pointless violence as any big city. At least until the last 20 seconds of the movie when the lame and unconvincing happy ending rears its ugly head. Read More