Jean Harlow plays patsy in this sharp-toothed comedy of a movie queen who squirms vainly under the thumb of her publicity agent. Lee Tracy, as the demonic puppeteer, knows what to do with Jules Furthman's gleaming dialogue; and Franchot Tone, as a sappy spoiled rich kid, arrives in time to …
Noel Coward's play, adapted by Ben Hecht, about a bohemian ménage à trois in a Paris garret. We've been told it was naughty in its day. We have to take this, if at all, on faith. Ernst Lubitsch directs it with a certain style -- his certain style -- but …
Nothing much to shout about cinematically, but in its airily histrionic and tirelessly talkative way, this MGM centerpiece is abundantly entertaining -- especially so in the husband-and-wife set-tos between the inspirationally matched Wallace Beery and Jean Harlow. With John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Marie Dressler, and Lee Tracy; adapted from the …
The finale, a crescendo to an almost euphoric light-headedness, is a schizophrenic battle scene of abrupt time jumps and costume changes, and it disengages itself from logic far beyond the Marxes' usual tease-and-torment repartee. This is as high off the ground as the Brothers ever get. Directed by Leo McCarey.
Without a proverbial pot to piss in, Depression-era audiences flocked to cinemas to hear (and see) corines clad in papier-mâché coinage lift their spirits to the strains of “We’re in the Money.” After the success of 42nd Street, Warners followed their formulaic mold to the letter: bridge a handful of …
Cary Grant comes up to see Mae West some time in this pre-code hoot.
Imaginative and technically adept retelling of the mad-scientist classic by H.G. Wells. The fabled wit of director James Whale picks its spots, but it's subservient to the painstaking and sometimes painful delineation of what life actually might be like for a man turned invisible with no way back. Claude Rains, …
What is the law? Are we not men? Have you forgotten the house of pain? Is that Bela Lugosi underneath all the weremonkey makeup? The answers to these questions and countless more will be revealed if you dare to see Island of Lost Souls.
The 1933 original by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack (gorilla by Willis O'Brien) about the mammoth jungle beast brought back, in harness, to sophisticated Manhattan, where it throws a fit and gets pounded into the pavement for its natural impulses. The film has been matched in situation and …
Glossified and Garbo-fied historical epic about the pants-wearing royal Swede of the 17th Century. (The lesbian interest is thoroughly neutered.) One unforgettable scene, more dance than drama, but more Dada than either, of Garbo "memorizing" a room. With John Gilbert, Lewis Stone, C. Aubrey Smith; directed by Rouben Mamoulian.
Starring Cary Grant, Mae West, Owen Moore, Gilbert Roland, Rafaela Ottiano.