My movie watching has really slowed down since football season started. At this rate, I'll be lucky to make it to 120 on the year.

83/2394. Stage Struck (1936)
Dick Powell, Joan Blondell, and Frank McHugh in a Busby Berkely movie musical about putting on a Broadway show should be a good time, but this only manages to be a forgettable uninspired mediocrity. One too many times to the well, I guess.

84/2395. Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948)
Okay, so this whole film is about a 49-year-old man (played perfectly by William Powell) panicking about his advancing age and starting a romantic relationship with a mermaid who is much, much younger than he is. As a 49-year-old man living in 2024, I find the whole thing more than a little cringy, admittedly in part because I cannot imagine wanting to make love to a fish.

85/2396. Suicide Squad (2016)
This is the first Suicide Squad movie, the bad one. And "bad" is an understatement. I realized while watching it that the sequel was written as a response to some of the fundamental errors in plot and characterizations this movie makes. Don't watch this. It's irredeemably awful.

86/2397. Tom Sawyer (1973)
Produced by Reader's Digest, it feels true to brand as an abridged version of the Mark Twain novel I read so many years ago. (That is definitely not how I remember the Injun Joe situation playing out.) The film is fine, but it is never again as good as the opening montage of Tom running and running and running and running at the sound of a riverboat whistle.

87/2398. The Big Knife (1955)
Clearly a stage play (an angry indictment of the Hollywood studio system) before being adapted to the big screen, the claustrophobic nature of the single location is befitting for the protagonist's emotional state, but it did try my patience.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: movies william powell

To be continued...

 

Search by Date:

Search: