Let the count continue! Movies to finish June.

151. Stage Door (1937)
With a great female ensemble cast, this cynical, Grand Hotel style movie about the intertwined lives at a boarding house for New York show girls is a delight even when it gets serious.

152. Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
I found this "classic" exceedingly boring, probably because of its predictability. I'd say that they don't make them like this anymore, but I suspect that they still do.

153. Girl Crazy (1943)
If Mr. Chips was predictable, I must have written this movie. Judy Garland gives a couple of entertaining performances, but Mickey Rooney's threadbare slapstick gags go on far, far too long.

154. Adventureland (2009)
Typecast teenaged-nerd Jesse Eisenberg falls into a romantic relationship with typecast teenaged-angst Kristen Stewart? How... Hollywood. Kennywood Park serves as the amusement park backdrop for their uncomfortable summer, and I really thought it was the star of the show.

155. Wells Fargo (1937)
This movie tries to be the perfect date movie: half romance, half action. It doesn't excel at either, but Joel McCrea is plenty charming enough to carry it through the rough patches.

156. Fast Five (2011)
How are they still making these movies? This is a big, dumb movie full of dumb characters and the dumbest climactic action scene I've seen in years. All the car racing scenes were skipped to save budget for the climax, I think, much to the film's detriment. I knew the series had a problem when I realized that I was cheering for the Rock to catch the leads as soon as he shows up on camera. I smell what the Rock is cooking!

157. Jack and Jill (2011)
This movie is in the running for the worst movie I've seen all year. It wasn't just as bad as I thought it was going to be, it was worse.

158. Valiant (2005)
This animated movie's by-the-numbers heart is in the right place, but it is clear that the artistic personnel were not. Even with Ricky Gervais providing the sidekick's dialogue, its not bad so much as it is just boring.

159. Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)
I was able to deduce the killer before Nick Charles told me. I'd like to think I'm getting better at playing detective, but it probably means that this was the weakest story of the Thin Man movies I've seen so far.

160. Divorce American Style (1967)
As soon as Dick Van Dyke gets a divorce from his shrewish wife (sorry, Debbie Reynolds, but you are not endearing in this film), he falls in with a woman who is treating her ex-husband as poorly as his wife treated him. Women, bah! This movie reminded me that I've done the right thing by avoiding sex for the past decade.

161. The Thirteenth Guest (1932)
Secret passageways, amateur detectives, a villain with a ridiculous scheme designed to scare an heiress out of her family fortune... if this film had been made in the 1970s, it would have been a Scooby-Doo cartoon. Obviously, I liked it.

162. Wanted: Babysitter (1975)
Yet another movie with a dead dog -- a miniature poodle! -- used to demonstrate how evil a man is. I see that TV Tropes.org imaginatively calls this cliche "kicking the dog." I agree with my brother that killing the dog is typically a pretty good indicator of a bad movie. Despite this flaw, the rest of this thriller is pretty darn enjoyable.

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To be continued...

 

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