AlsExGal

Mike Richards gets a job with the railroads through a protection racket that seems to be no larger than boss Sandy (Gene Roth) and enforcer Ray (Leonard Nimoy). When Mike refuses to pay the protection, Sandy has Ray beat him up, in the railroad yard in broad daylight. But Ray apparently gets a little enthusiastic about his work and Mike dies in the hospital a few hours later. Meanwhile, Mike's stepbrother thinks the police will be able to do nothing about this situation, and decides to go "undercover" as someone needing a job at the railroad so that he can expose the actual men involved in the scheme. Complications ensue.

Leonard Nimoy often played gangsters and underworld figures before he got his big break on Star Trek in the 1960s, so I wasn't too surprised to see him here. The only criticism I can really level at this episode is that the actress who played Mrs. Richards, Theona Bryant, was really not very good. Most actors and actresses on this show have an abbreviated style, because that is the straightforward nature of the show. This was something else; it was straight up bad acting.

Both Bryand and Nimoy have small parts in episodes of the TV show "The Untouchables" a few years later.

Lowell Sherman plays wealthy businessman and playboy Wayne Carter who is juggling lots of women. He's not just NOT the marrying kind, he actively uses them and loses them. The easier they are to get the quicker he loses them as it seems the chase is 90% of the thrill for him. Then he meets a woman he cannot get - stenographer Helene Andrews (Irene Dunne). He can't tempt her with nice things, and he can't sweet talk her with his obvious come-ons. So he hires her as an executive secretary at his firm, and even that takes some talking for her to believe that this is anything but what it looks like - a long con attempt to get into her pants.

But then Carter starts to truly fall for Helene. The problem is that he, as part of his long con, has been extremely open about his love life and so any abrupt change in him would be eyed very suspiciously by Helene. The most complicating factor is an old flame of Carter's (Mae Murray) who married a rich man in his circle but who has decided that she wants to stay married to the rich guy but pick up her sex life with Carter where they left off before the marriage. And she's not averse to showing up unannounced at his penthouse, undressing, and jumping into his bed to wait for him. Complications ensue.

Subplots involve Dunne's showbiz sister (Claudia Dell) who, unlike Dunne's character, doesn't have a problem with sleeping her way to the top. Sherman had a breezy delivery of lines and a rapid-fire, almost overlapping way of doing dialog that seems very modern. You also get the feeling he ad libs constantly. The real curiosity here is Murray who was 45+ but is dressed like a woman in her 20s with an odd baby-talk way of speaking. It really is outrageous. Purnell Pratt plays Murray's husband who has murderous intent if he ever finds out who it is that his wife is seeing behind his back.

This was Irene Dunne's third feature film role, and it's not often you would see her pop up in a pre-code film, even with her usual virtuous persona.

The wedding of Dr. Kildare and nurse Mary Lamont is fast approaching, and Mary's brother, Doug (Robert Young) has come for a visit. He has drawn up plans for a philanthropic concern that needs the backing of a rich person, and so he has come to New York for two reasons - to meet his future brother-in-law and also to ask Dr. Kildare to introduce him to a rich man who is indebted to Kildare. During the visit, Kildare notices that Doug seems to be hearing things followed by a period of extreme energy and confidence. For reasons that are beyond me, Kildare thinks that this behavior could amount to some dread disease and won't stop until he uncovers said dread disease. Complications ensue.

The disease that is suspected is epilepsy, and as with most illnesses mentioned in this series, it is given an excessively bad rap. It is said it leads to insanity unless the person lives a very calm uneventful existence, it is said that the person eventually becomes an invalid, and because it is often inherited, it could mean that Mary has it too. But wait, wouldn't that mean that their parents would have it too, that it wouldn't just suddenly crop up in Doug and Mary? This is never mentioned.

So the diagnostic/treatment portion of this film is a bit of a mess, but then I'd expect that from a film that is 85 years old. The entries on melanoma and diabetes were all wrong medically too, but they were still enjoyable films. The key to its enjoyability is the consistency of the supporting characters - Molly Bird, Nat Pendleton as lovable but strong as an ox Joe, Nell Craig as the persistently terrified Nurse Parker, and Marie Blake as Sally the hospital receptionist and switchboard operator.

Otis comes in one night to lock himself up in the jail, drunk as usual, and tells Andy and Barnie to be sure and wake him up at 8AM. Barney thinks this is just something Otis said that he didn't mean, and decides to teach him a lesson by waking him at 8AM as instructed. Surprisingly, though, Otis thanks him and rushes out for an appointment that he has.

It turns out that Otis has bought a car. The idea of the town drunk behind the wheel of a mult-ton vehicle has Barney up in arms, but Andy says he doesn't think Otis would get behind the wheel drunk. He does agree to having Barney follow Otis for a week or so to make sure that he does not drive drunk.

Lo and behold, Otis does drive to the house of a friend where he proceeds to get drunk. He then passes out on the hood of his car. Andy is disturbed by this development, but has an idea as to how he can get Otis to decide to never drive a car again. Complications ensue.

Andy and Barney make quite a good team here. Barney with his suspicions and the drive to follow Otis for an entire week, and Andy with his wisdom on how to handle the situation.

Cyril Maude was born way back in 1862 and was an accomplished stage actor long before motion pictures had even started. He came to the new medium in 1914 making a few silents before his first talkie "Grumpy" in 1930. This of course was an ideal start to his talking picture career as he had been playing the title role for near to two decades and made it his own as had George Arliss made "Disraeli" his own.

The idea of "Grumpy" being transferred to film was not novel, as it had been done as a silent in 1923 with Theodore Roberts taking the title role and interestingly enough, the talking version was also photographed in America - at Paramount's New York studios (no doubt so that Mr. Maude could do his stage work in the evenings).

George Cukor was selected to direct "Grumpy" and it was his first directorial endeavor. One would tend to think that he would have had an easy job of it, only being required to translate Mr. Maud's thorough knowledge of the work into film language.

The storyline to "Grumpy" is probably hackneyed to today's audiences as there have been such a proliferation of this type of 'jewel robbery' pictures over the years - and the only redeeming feature is perhaps the performance Cyril Maude gives - although that too is perhaps too theatrically handed for film. He plays the part of an aged ex-barrister living in retirement as a grumpy old man, irritating and loveable at the same time. A jewel is stolen, and Grumpy eventually solves the mystery. That is the story in a nutshell and the whole thing is quite entertaining if one allows oneself to watch the show in the guise of a 1930's movie-goer and thus not be overtaken with 21st Century values.

Mr. Maude was assisted in this photoplay by fellow English countrymen, Halliwell Hobbes, Robert Bolder and Paul Cavanagh, Scotsman Olaf Hytton, Irishman Colin Kenny, Austro-Hungarian Paul Lukas and Americans Phillips Holmes, Francis Dade and Doris Luray.

This film to me was interesting as a historical document - preserving for all-time a famous performance.

On the surface, it's the story of Eddie Adams (Mike Wahlberg), a busboy in a nightclub in LA who, in 1977, gets recruited into the adult film industry by director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds). He takes the stage name Dirk Diggler, and does very well until he gets hooked on cocaine in the 1980s, has a big falling out with Horner, and takes a run at being the prodigal son. Meanwhile, other members of Horner's tight little filmmaking group have their own personal disasters and problems dealing with the changing times.

On a deeper level, though, the film is about the safety and comfort of family. Each character finds a new definition of what family means by who accepts them for the flawed people they are, and who offers help when no one else does. From the safety of this acceptance, they feel they can achieve the things they want, despite most of the characters being terrible at actually navigating life and skills.

The people in this film are rejected by everyone else outside of their insular little world every time they try to interact with the wider world. So they eventually return to the only world they know, the only family that accepts them and is supportive - the adult filmmaking community, specifically the people making adult films for Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds). The exception might be Don Cheadle's character and his wife, and in their case, they've formed their own separate family, totally understanding the world that they both once inhabited.

Probably the coldness of the wider world is no better illustrated in this film than in the portrayal Joanna Gleason gives as Eddie's/Dirk's mother. Early on she freaks out on him one night, and in a rampage calls him stupid and a loser, while ripping the contents of his room to shreds. The way Eddie pleads "Please don't be mean to me", to the parent whom we are taught to believe is life's one guaranteed giver of unconditional love, explains Eddie for the remainder of the film. He'll do anything to be in good company regardless of cost.

The film has a terrific soundtrack and nails the period of the late 70s and early 80s completely. Burt Reynolds has said he never watched this film, didn't like making this film, and didn't like the director. That's odd since I found it to be Reynolds' best performance and one that got him nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

Otis gets a letter from his sister-in-law that she and his brother will be coming through Mayberry to see Otis. Otis is disturbed by this development as he has been lying for years about being the town deputy. He did this because his family was always comparing him to his brother, and Otis did not want to admit he was the chronically unemployed town drunk.

When he confesses this to Andy and Barney, Barney's reaction is to get all hyper and to accuse him of a crime - impersonating an officer. But Andy's reaction is more sympathetic. Andy suggests that Otis be made a deputy for the short period of time that his relatives are in town, complete with uniform, so that he does not lose face. This charade seems to be working out, but then there is a surprise as Otis's brother seems to be hiding a few secrets of his own.

Again, the self-importance of Barney Fife as interpreted by Don Knotts and his wonderful way with physical comedy makes this episode, as he tries to administer a make-shift oath to Otis to ensure his sobriety while Otis is a deputy.

This episode does beg the question - Is it acceptable to lie and be hypocritical if the lie causes someone else to decide to break a self-destructive habit?

It's a survivalist sci-fi thriller with aliens and vampires but mostly about victims of an airline crash. No routine action special-effects film, it's often artful and philosophical, certainly sermonizing on a variety of social-political issues (mostly war, politicians, munitions manufacturers, political assassinations, terrorists, hijackers, and general human nature), and is unusually bleak for a modest-budget genre film.

An American girl is one of the passengers here, too, but she's a Vietnam war widow traveling to retrieve her husband's remains, a fact that will determine the direction of some of the action once things start to happen. It starts off as an airline disaster film, and gradually evolves into sort of a weird blend of Night of the Living Dead, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, War of the Worlds (or Independence Day), and The Last Man on Earth, with perhaps a tinge of Melancholia.

It starts with a bunch of astronauts preparing for a mission to Mars, three guys and a girl, of course (and an American girl with a crush on the Japanese mission commander at that!), while the mission commander meanwhile has an uneasy relationship with the beautiful moonbase communications officer who is a good friend of our beautiful blonde scientist (they even shower together).

Anyway, once they're enroute in space things start to happen, like blocked communications signals and asteroid showers, and a weird UFO with a tracking beam that deposits some sort of glowing spores on the ship. Naturally they bring one back and it grows into a giant semi-chicken-shaped monster who stomps off towards Tokyo. Then it becomes your typical man-in-a-suit monster movie.

... it's about an unmanned train under full power tearing its way through Pennsylvania and the railroads attempts to stop it. Denzel Washington plays a 28-year veteran engineer who takes it on himself along with his partner to stop the train against corporate's orders. While you get some background on Washington and his life and his conductor/partner Chris Pine it is secondary to the action of stopping the train. Denzel is the rock in this picture. His quiet knowledge, confidence and determination carry the film. Otherwise, it's a 98-minute chase.

Some films you have to suspend your disbelief and this one comes to a stretching point but it is mostly about the role of the news coverage as it is portrayed in the film. The first thing is that a news helicopter follows the train at a very low altitude pretty much the whole way through the picture. I would think local authorities would at a minimum have it put higher or back off all together. The reporters all along the way have names of people involved while this is going on. During one attempt to block the coming train by slowing it down with another train, in a matter of a few minutes, they know the name of the engineer. They put his picture on screen with his name. They also know the name of the guy responsible for letting the train get away from him in the first place. I don't think that would have been the case when it happened though it might have happened that way.

Can editing be too much and too fast? The camera doesn't stop. If it is not quick cuts it is a camera panning or turning or anything but sitting still. That part was a little dizzying.

It's a pretty entertaining film overall.

... MGM really didn't get comedy at all, especially during the early 30s when he was tied to that studio.

Ed Wynn was more well known from his stage performances as well as his radio show than he was for his early film performances as a comedian. In later years he turned his hand to dramatic roles and was very good in them, but here I am just turning my criticism to his performance in this film, and his schtick is abysmal as translated to the big screen.

Like some other comedians of the period, Mr. Wynn favored attiring himself in a comical fashion and molding his character as an exaggeration of the norm. Because filmed performances are more intimate than the stage, characterizations of this sort can tend to be out of place.

The film is based on a character he created especially for radio - that of the son of a heroic and deceased fire chief. In the film he also gains fame as a hero (through no fault of his own) and is persuaded to stand for election as an Alderman. Of course, there is a lot of skullduggery to dodge as politicians here are presented as being crooked.

Mr. Wynn is aided in his endeavors by Charles 'Chic' Sale who plays his Uncle Joe, an aged and deaf street-sweeper; Dorothy Mackaill as scenery; Effie Ellsler as the quintessential mother; C. Henry Gordon and William 'Stage' Boyd as scheming politicians; George Givot as a Greek Clothing Merchant who is an expert in Malapropisms; Nat Pendleton as a henchman who is easily softened, and there is a brief appearance by a young Mickey Rooney.

A woman and her stepson break their husband/father out of jail when he is taken out of the prison to be a witness at a court proceeding. A guard is killed in the process.

It's quickly apparent that the woman is the brains of the outfit and just as tough as the other two if not more. Once her husband is free they switch cars and then she drives her husband and son to a hideout that the cops don't know about. Then she drives back alone to her house, expecting the police who certainly do come.

She does one thing that I never understood - Once the police come, look around, and realize that her convict husband is not there, she immediately goes to the hideout they don't know about and brings him back to the house they DO know about. She had already said that the unknown hideout was well stocked with food. Why not just have everybody stay put until the heat is off? At any rate, complications ensue.

Dan Mathews is good at outsmarting this tough cookie, and as usual the attention is kept on solving the dilemma of getting the convict back in custody with the minimum amount of gunplay, which it seems this gang of crooks are not afraid of. That's what's so compelling about this old show - the straighforward simplicity of the thing, with the focus being on police strategy and problem solving.

Kramer has invested in a yogurt shop that sells non-fat yogurt that still manages to taste delicious. The gang starts eating there quite a bit, and then they realize that they've gained weight. Their suspicion falls on the alleged non-fat yogurt, so they get a sample and take it to a lab for testing of its fat content. Complications ensue.

And what complications they are! This episode manages to intertwine the non-fat yogurt with Jerry accidentally cursing in front of the son of an acquaintance, Kramer's rugged charm, a childhood rival of George's who is still lionized by George's parents much to George's chagrin, and even the Dinkins/Giuliani 1993 race for NYC mayor. And yet the episode is not too busy at all. It has perfect comic timing.

In the Seinfeld Extra on the DVD, it's mentioned that Seinfeld filmed two alternate versions for this episode - one if Dinkins won, and one if Giuliani won. For the personal appearance, Seinfeld got an enthusiastic response from the Giuliani campaign, but the Dinkins campaign was non-committal. Thus for the personal appearance in case Dinkins won, the show got Phil Morris to play a Dinkins spokesman instead. The election was on a Tuesday and the show went on the air on a Thursday, so they barely got it edited and ready in time. Phil Morris was the actor who later played lawyer Jackie Chiles, one of Seinfeld's greatest recurring characters.

Or perhaps "The Phantom of the Opera, Down Under" with a dash of Cinderella thrown in for good measure.

This is one of six RKO films that were buried in rights problems that Turner Classic Movies managed to resurrect and show back in 2007, with the rights having been resolved by their legal department. Only this one is less than excellent.

Of course, Irene Dunne has a great singing voice. She was the songbird of the RKO lot in the 1930s, but this was just a terrible vehicle for her talents.

There are some good individual performances. The looks on Henry Stephenson's face were priceless. Also, how was little RKO able to get Reginald Owen for what was basically an uncredited cameo? This film falls into several categories - adventure, romance, comedy, musical. If RKO had left out the music and concentrated on one or a couple of the other genres it might have worked.

Margaret Simmons (Ann Harding) is a very able and busy plastic surgeon. Some of her cases are women who just want to be better or younger looking, others are serious accident victims. When she meets the son of a former patient, Bobby Preble (Robert Young), he mentions his surprise at the doctor being a woman and then he mentions that he smells something peculiar, and she mentions that it is ether - she just came from the OR. So, feeling like she has lost herself and her femininity in her profession, she takes a leave of absence to just enjoy life.

While she is in California, she runs into Bobby again. Or I should say that he almost collides with her. He's acting like a complete jerk, doing loops in his plane and drinking heavily. He almost runs into the entire cafe where she is dining. When Bobby sees Margaret not in her scrubs, he falls for her, wines and dines her, and then follows her back to New York and proposes. They marry on the spur of the moment - even though a big wedding has somehow been inexplicably arranged - and settle down to normal married life. But just because you can take the boy out of the night life doesn't mean you can take the night life out of the boy. Complications ensue.

This film was a bit of a mess. There is a loud soundtrack through the first half that often obscures dialogue, which was something most films didn't do after about 1930. Then the film suddenly is completely devoid of soundtrack for the second half.

Robert Young was a rather neutral looking fellow, so he could play honest forthright characters, or victims of circumstance, or a completely immature if well-meaning cad like he is here. But even though this was the precode era I was just not expecting that ending. It was as if to say that everything Ann Harding's character has done over the past 70 minutes was a mistake, so back to the drawing board!

I give it a 5/10 because the plot overall is pretty unexpected.

... in that the principal characters are not people with criminal intent out of the gate, but instead are average people that due to their own character flaws and some unfortunate circumstances, end up in legal hot water.

A salesman who does lots of local travel has gotten several tickets and as a result has a date to get chewed out by Dan Mathews, but it is done in a very peculiar way. Mathews invites the salesman to pick up a gun he has on his desk. When he does so, Mathews yells at him for being reckless and tries to tie that into his driving - an odd segue for sure. Later, the salesman gets yet another ticket, and this time his license is suspended for 60 days. As a result his wife has to drive him to his sales appointments. One day, on the road, a careless waitress in a remote diner breaks his wife's glasses and they are thus stranded. She can't see to drive, and he is legally prevented from doing so. He decides to drive anyways as he is late for his appointment. Complications ensue.

The episode says that the place where everyone is speeding is a new stretch of divided highway where higher speeds are possible. From the looks of that highway, it looks like a precursor to the interstate system since people are able to easily exit and enter the highway directly, without ramps and access roads.

... as they discuss where to kill their next victim as dispassionately as a husband and wife would plot out their meal stops if planning a day's highway driving.

The criminals of the week are a couple who have decided to hit three payrolls being carried by bank messenger in the same day. In each case, the woman feigns illness or injury to get the bank messenger to let her sit in his car. Then she pulls a gun and has him drive to a remote area. Her husband follows behind in a motorcycle with sidecar. Once at the remote area, they take the payroll and kill the messenger and make their getaway in the motorcycle and sidecar. They've already gotten two payrolls that way today, and are planning a third. Today, in the era of automatic electronic deposit of paychecks, these two would have to get real jobs.

Of course this couple's plan is that nobody sees them for what they are but the messenger and he's dead. Also, initially, Highway Patrol thinks that each messenger - now missing - has absconded with the money. Can Dan Mathews and company figure out what's going on in time to save the life of the third messenger? Watch and find out.

This was the last episode of the series, but as the show is not the least bit episodic, there is no indication that this is the case.

I really liked this movie, even if it owed a lot to "Rebecca." In some ways it is an odd mix of Gothic horror, Americana and "women's picture." However, it held together, thanks to the performances of Gene Tierney, Walter Huston, and (especially) Vincent Price. Price practically turns the film into a Poe movie before the fact. He can be both romantically charming and sinister, which is a combination that is hard to beat.

I loved the scenes with Price's first wife, who is obsessed with food. In fact, I found the movie curiously disjointed. In the first half of the film, Spring Byngton plays a rather daft "Mrs. Danvers" type, and then she vanishes from the movie without any mention made of it (Not even "We had to fire that old bid d y.") Likewise the haunted daughter from the patroon's first marriage. She had a couple of powerful scenes, and then she was gone without a word. (Not even "Gee, too bad she died of scarlet fever.")

I never would have guessed that Mankiewicz was the director of this film. (Well, perhaps in the scene in which the aristocratic women were making sport of Tierney's commonness.) Very powerful Gothic atmosphere in the key scenes. A very enjoyable film, especially for Vincent Price fans.

I had heard nothing but bad things about this movie, which is why I waited about 30 years to see it. I came away greatly impressed. "Cobb" isn't a movie you 'like.' Tommy Lee Jones plays Ty Cobb as a guy who was mad, bad and dangerous to know. Robert Wuhl, the ostensible hero, a sportswriter who is working on Cobb's biography, can be seen as a two-faced weasel. Some of the scenes of Cobb being ill are difficult to watch.

And yet, "Cobb" gives the sense of catching life and American culture on the screen to a far greater degree than most movies ever try. "Cobb" opens with a newsreel about Ty Cobb, so I suppose this movie is begging to be compared to "Citizen Kane," but I think "Cobb" can stand in "Kane's" company as a film that says something about the national character. "Cobb" doesn't look away from the fact that people in the past acted and thought differently than we do.

1994 was a good year for films, so I guess everybody was too busy talking about "Pulp FIction" and "Forrest Gump" to pay attention to this film, which is a shame.

... I wonder, as several of the Highway Patrol episodes are about escaped convicts and of course there are all of those old movies about prison breaks, but I digress.

Red Baker escapes from prison to a waiting car driven by the widow of his recently deceased cell mate, Carol Hayes. She is helping Red because her husband was sentenced by the same judge as Red and she blames the judge for her husband's death. Red's plan is to murder the judge in revenge for his long sentence. Carol has determined the judge's schedule and habits and that he is most vulnerable when he goes for his weekly Thursday haircut at a nearby barber shop. She's also bought the gun that he wants.

Highway Patrol is notified of the escape and quickly determine that Carol must be the person helping Red on the outside as she was his only visitor and the only person corresponding with him by mail. Will Highway Patrol be in time to stop the assassination? Watch and find out.

Today, prisons read the correspondence sent to and from prisoners as well as recording conversations between prisoners and visitors. What happened here would be very hard to duplicate. Almost always, if a convict escapes today, they have the help of somebody working at the prison, usually a female guard that the inmate has sweet talked into believing that he is in love with them. That's because interactions between guards and inmates is not recorded.

Someone complained that Paul Cavanaugh, as the judge, was mechanical and dull. That's because Highway Patrol is not one for Hollywood-like histrionics, so Cavanaugh was likely told to play the part emotionally flat.

... as the prominent defense attorney was always wanting a nice vacation away from it all in order to do a little fishing, but instead would vacation where and when a murder occurred and end up being the defendant's attorney, but I digress.

In this case, Dan Matthews (Broderick Crawford) is trying to get away from it all and do some fishing. He's been to this lodge many times before, but he's surprised to find out that the previous owner died of a heart attack and that the widow has sold the place to a new set of owners a few months ago.

This new set of owners happen to be using the lodge as a front for heroin distribution. The drugs are sent to the lodge and then the heroin is hidden in the vehicle of the drug runners - maybe in a fake carburetor, maybe in a fake radio and thus distributed.

Two things alert Matthews to something funny going on. One is the game warden talking about heroin being distributed somewhere in the area, and the other is a man driving to the lodge as though he knows where he's going who has been seriously injured by a gunshot wound. So the cat and mouse game is on between the owners and Matthews, who has brought the rest of the Highway Patrol in on this situation. What Matthews doesn't know is that the lodge owners have already agreed to kill Matthews if he gets too close to the truth of the operation.

I like this old series for several reasons. One is its stoic simplicity. The other reason is a look at a bygone era. For example, in this episode, an officer working this case back at Highway Patrol headquarters literally has an "In" box and an "Out" box on his desk. Now that's done via email. I can remember when this was done, but I'd forgotten about it until I watched this episode.

This is a bittersweet tale of two people from different worlds who fall in love and are unhappily married to others. Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Quinn make this story poignant, well-acted and believable.

It's love at first sight for Quinn as he comes out the box, swinging and pitching in his attraction for her. Honestly, it's just a little unsettling him always popping up, being a corn-pone chatterbox, subtly moving in with the compliments and lingering looks. He comes out the gate heated; but who can blame him. It's Ingrid Bergman he's fancying. And she slowly simmers as her attraction grows for the Tennessee mountain man Quinn plays. She's the wife of a University professor ( Fritz Weaver. ) Nice guy, good provider, but you know the type: he's no ogre, but he's staid, pedantic, and definitely not romantic. As she is throughout her career in films, Bergman is the one to watch. Her characters are so full of life if only allowed to break free.

You know how unfair, biased, skewed and stark movies present choices when they pit Marriage vs the Love Affair. We've seen it time and time again ( "The Arnelo Affair", "There's Always Tomorrow", etc. ) Well this movie is no different. Quinn's wife (played by Virginia Gregg ) is as drab and as sexless as Bergman is glamorous and sensual. It's difficult to conjure up why there was even an attraction between them ( Quinn & Gregg ) in the first place. Fritz Weaver's character fares no better. Apparently he doesn't realize what we all know very well from watching movies; when a spouse says: "let's go away, just the two of us" your marriage is on the rocks. Yet Weaver is clueless. Him throwing up their age as a deterrent to living more spontaneously is also a fly in the liniment.

The movie throws in an unnecessary monkey wrench with the issues of the son and daughter of Quinn's and Bergman's in order to create conflict. I do like how Bergman stands up to her daughter in order to try and get some piece of happiness and joy out of life instead of maternal duty. No, we didn't need the kids in this to get conflict. The story should have stayed focused on how Bergman and Quinn handle their situation.

... Both star Paul Muni in a historical biopic, the location is France, he's on the side of right but the French establishment - in this case the medical establishment - opposes him, he withdraws to a remote location at one point to escape persecution and even prosecution, and there are some tense situations where he could be facing a long prison term for putting his work into action.

This is not to say that the biopic is not worthwhile, and as far as the scientific facts go, it is pretty true to the facts. Because this is a 90 minute film, Pasteur's work is "boiled down" - pardon the expression - into two parts. First is his work in the germ theory of diseases. The second part of the film focuses on his work in the area of vaccines, first anthrax and then rabies.

In the first part on Pasteur's work on germ theory - that germs infect a living host and thus produce disease NOT that the germs somehow "rise up" from within the host - the film focuses on the prevention of childbirth fever. Although Pasteur was better known for his work in the prevention of silkworm disease, the studio probably rightly divined that the prevention of the death of new mothers has more human interest than the preservation of silkworms and would make a more compelling film. The same was probably true in the second part with its focus on the treatment of rabies victims.

There are some fictitious parts of course, for the purpose of dramatic license, such as Pasteur's daughter's marriage to a young scientific ally of his and the dramatic search for a doctor who will agree to deliver that daughter's baby according to Pasteur's principles so that his daughter does not contract the dreaded childbirth fever herself.

If you like the better made biopics of the 30s and appreciate Paul Muni's talents in such films, I'd recommend it.

Two African American basketball players who dream of playing in the NBA are recruited by a suburban high school outside Chicago. Isaiah Thomas played there, and one of the youths is compared favorably to Thomas. Both players live in inner-city housing projects, one in the notorious Cabrini-Green. The documentary follows their lives through high school, on court and off. Voiceover carries us through the gaps in time. Significant events happen offscreen.

Because the film doesn't set out to make political points, the problems and realities faced by the students and their families emerge all the more strongly. Prominent college coaches of the time, including Bobby Knight, Duke's Coach K, and Dick Vitale, are seen watching the players. The white high school coach is a jerk in the Bobby Knight tradition, though he probably sincerely believes he is helping his team grow up. Perhaps this is still common among coaches.

Wikipedia has extensive coverage of how the Oscar panel for documentaries managed to prevent Hoop Dreams from being nominated for Best full-length Documentary. It probably also should have been nominated for Best Picture.

The story is told through flashback, as a middle-aged H. M. Pulham (Robert Young), who has always done the right thing and followed in his family's footsteps, looks back to find out he's not sure if it was worth it. Any movie that ponders whether or not the traditional road is the best strikes me as having gone out on a limb at this time, with war looming right around the corner. The ideas are actually very similar to those in The Razor's Edge, but are told with gentle detail, and attention to the everyday and the common. In fact, one could look at the film as a sort of light version of The Crowd.

The movie starts with Pulham the banker's daily breakfast routine... a glass of orange juice, a soft boiled egg, a piece of toast with the edges cut off (a piece of which is always given as a treat for the dog). Then into his overcoat, loading his pocket with 2 in-the-shell peanuts, and a brisk walk to the office. He stops to feed the squirrels (could Lubitsch have seen this movie and dreamed up Cluny Brown? I think it's possible) along the way and breathes deeply 25 times until he reaches the workplace. This quiet little series of scenes lets us know right from the start that Pulham has followed this same routine every day for 25 years. He's not unhappy, but he does seem sort of... empty.

Through the course of the film, we find out that he was once a more spontaneous young man, how he was brought up, who he loved, and later lost, how he came to be married, and what happened to make him adhere to these silly habits so strongly. It's a lovely film, that actually tackles some difficult questions, not wholly resolving itself at the end. It's sad and funny and true. I found the acting all around exceptionally good, especially the 3 principles, Young, Lamarr and Ruth Hussey, who sets just the right tone throughout the picture, changing from silly chatterbox to sweet young thing, to genuine helpmeet. Lamarr gives an exceedingly good performance, it must have been a relief to play a smart woman for a change, and she shows genuine affection for Young. I really liked her here. Their scenes together are sweet and melancholy, as all memories are. Young portrays a man who has always let things happen to him, he weakly goes this way and that, the way the wind blows. A man who only once did something out of the ordinary, and wonders if he had done it all differently would he have been happy. It was an indefinable experience for me, I find it as charming and inexplicable as the afore-mentioned Cluny Brown... only this film is closer to being told from the viewpoint of say, Peter Lawford's character, or maybe Charles Foster Kane's. "If I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a really great man."

King Vidor is exquisitely good at showing how everyday life can sap the strength out of people, how the little moments escape us and then we realize later how important they were. He shows how time catches up with us all, without preaching or the requisite happy ending, though the film does tie things up in a hopeful way. A fascinating, lovely little film.