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Reviews
The Automat (2021)
Sheer delight for anyone misses (or wonders about) Automats
THE AUTOMAT takes viewers back to the very beginning, sharing how Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart teamed to create the eateries so many of us love, though they no longer exist. Hurwitz spoke to family members, former employees, historians, authors and a few celebs -- Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Eliot Gould, Colin Powell -- about their Automat memories, and the result is a joyful yet unavoidably elegiac film that is simply a must-see for anyone with an interest in these bygone gems.
I expected this film to be good -- I was counting on it. And it lived up to and exceeded all hopes and expectations.
Pep Up (1929)
Well Worth Watching
I found this short delightful. I love silent comedies with dogs in them, and the tiny pooch in this one is a delight. And there are several gags in the movie that made me laugh out loud.
Platinum Blonde (1931)
So very slow-moving....
I saw this in February 2009 with a nearly full house at a theatre in NYC, and the crowd responded very minimally. Williams is solid, Young is gorgeous, but, as so many others have said, Harlow is miscast and, worst of all, the pacing is absolutely glacial. I know this was an early effort from Frank Capra, but it's hard to imagine he couldn't recognize that the picture moves much too slowly.
The movie would have been much better if it had been sped up, if the actors had been encouraged to pick up the pace and keep things moving.
It's a shame, given Williams' tragic death, that we didn't get to see how he might have shone under a director who worked more quickly. Heck, Capra himself would soon learn to keep things moving, but he clearly hadn't yet learned that lesson when he shot this picture. I'm surprised more reviewers haven't mentioned this fault of the film.
I'm not sorry I saw it, but my wife sure was. She couldn't stand this slow-moving tortoise of a movie.
Broadway Bad (1933)
It's not that confusing
This movie's a very entertaining little Pre-Code picture.
I'll ***SPOILER ALERT *** this, even though the previous poster didn't:
The father was Bob. She just didn't want to lose custody of the baby to that lowlife (if upper-crust) creep, so she lied about it.
After all, Bob had been trying to blackmail her prior to discovering the kid, so that makes her justified in doing whatever she must do to keep the child out of his clutches.
And Blondell's terrific in this picture, as she was in just about every other movie she ever made. She had a down-to-earth, likable quality that always served her characters.
No More Ladies (1935)
Did I watch the same movie as these other reviewers?
In the past 24 hours, I watched two 1930s comedies -- MERRILY WE LIVE and NO MORE LADIES.
IDMB users seemed to like MWL far more than I did. Many of the actors brought little to their roles in that film, and there's not a snappy bit of dialogue in the whole picture.
NML, on the other hand, is very witty, very well-acted, and quite entertaining. Yes, it might have been even better with someone other than Joan Crawford in the female lead, but Robert Montgomery is very strong and this was the most enjoyable work I'd ever seen Edna May Oliver deliver.
And I don't think, as one reviewer suggested, the Code impacted this movie very much -- in fact, it comes as being quite Pre-Code in nature. If you didn't know when it was made, one might easily guess it was pre-, not post-, code.
In short, not a classic, but quite snappy and entertaining and well worth watching.
Private Number (1936)
Pre-Code? Uh...
This movie has its charms, but it cannot be a "Pre-Code gem," since it came out two years after the Code clampdown kicked in.
It's a little sappy, actually -- it'd have been much better if it HAD been made during the Pre-Code era.
But I do agree that Loretta Young's delightful in it.
The Good Girl (2002)
you can do better
This movie was disheartening. It takes a very condescending view of everyone it depicts, and the audience is left with no one, really, to pull for. Most of the actors are perfectly fine, but their talents are largely wasted.
There's no heart to this film. It tries at once to humorously skewer Middle America but also to touch the audience with the pathos of these sad, unfulfilled lives. That's a tricky line to tread, and this movie doesn't come close to succeeding. It comes off instead as both mean-spirited and namby-pamby.