Movies watched in March, batch 2 of 3:

35. (1094.) The Late Show (1977)
The 1970s saw a rebirth in hard boiled detective noir films. Most of the ones I've seen are pretty good. This one, produced by Robert Altman (whose quest for realism on film is a perfect fit for this genre), is no exception. Art Carney and Lily Tomlin make a great odd couple.

36. (1095.) The Long Voyage Home (1940)
This film rubbed me the wrong way. Though the cinematography is great, few of the characters were tolerable, and their stories were all painfully predictable. I admit that I have a bias against sea voyage movies (because I have a bias against the sea), but it really seems a criminal misuse of John Wayne's "talent" to cast him as a nearly mute, happy-go-lucky Dane.

37. (1096.) Deliverance (1972)
No, I had never seen Deliverance before now. That's because I suspected I would hate it. I hate camping, white water rafting, and hillbilly rape. After watching, I was surprised at how well made a suspense thriller it is. That said, I was right. I didn't care for it and, frankly, never want to see it again. Once was one viewing too many.

38. (1097.) The Nut Job (2014)
This is another of those movies that should be delightful but somehow fails to equal the quality of its parts. It has a great cast, high-quality character design and animation, and a clever twist on a screwball caper plot (with animals and humans attempting simultaneous overlapping robberies that collide in the climax). However, like Epic, the film fails because it plays it too safe and loses its sparkle amid the mundane. Oh, well. They can't all be classics.

39. (1098.) -30- (1959)
Jack Webb makes my kind of movie. Webb plays the editor of a newspaper, and we follow him and his motley crew of reporters and associates over the course of one day presented in Webb's signature "just the facts" style. If you like Dragnet, you'll like this. (And if you don't like Dragnet, what's wrong with you?)

More to come.

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