A bunch more Classics all rolled up for review.

1932 – Grand Hotel – old time Hollywood cast in an interesting intertwining set of stories. I thought it was pretty good… and also realized it’s the first Greta Garbo movie I’ve actually seen (I guess it wants to be alone in that category… hah!). A little pokey in its pacing but surprisingly good storytelling and acting.

1952 – The Greatest Show on Earth – I can’t say I wasn’t warned that this is one of the worst Best Picture winners… something that likely won on spectacle alone. And it is about 2 solid hours of circus documentary intercut with some gravely cheesy melodrama. 

1955 – The Trouble with Harry – Alfred Hitchcock… only funny. And it IS funny… I laughed a decent amount at this silly story of a dead body that a lot of people know about but nobody particularly worries about. An amusing dark comedy that probably shocked folks in the ’50s with its casual disregard for a corpse. Gets a little long even at just over ninety minutes though. 

1962 – Cape Fear – I’d, of course, seen the Scorcese remake, but I’d never circled back to see the original. And I was missing out. This is a terrific and terrifically dark, mean little number. I’m surprised it got released in ’62… the Hays Code must have burst into flames instantly. Seedy, dark, violent, pure noir. And a script that said everything it needed to say without being able to explicitly say it. 

1966 – Torn Curtain – Hitchcock not exactly at his best, but he manages to keep the plates spinning for the first two acts (not counting the hour long strangling scene). The third act is a chore… but up to that point, I was pretty engaged with the cold war spy antics. 

1970 – The Aristocats – catching up on some Disney Classics I’ve missed out on… though pretty sure I didn’t miss much. This one has a great song, a little racism, and a lot of time wasting filler. Not a fan. 

1972 – Frenzy – a pretty good (but hardly great) Alfred Hitchcock film… advertised as his first R rated film (last time I saw a movie that advertised itself like that, Marky Mark was talking to a plastic house plant). Has some weird pacing issues with how it follows the potential criminal, the actual criminal, and the police inspector… seems we spend a lot of time investigating clues the audience already knows. But not bad at all. 

1973 – Robin Hood – a very poor example of how mid-grade Disney was in the 70s. Somehow I never got around to seeing this as a kid or a teen, or an adult until now… and I didn’t miss much. And I’ve run out of things to say about it.

1975 – Barry Lyndon – I’ve been avoiding this film for fear it’d be an over-mannered stuffy three hour slog of a film. And it sometimes it that, but never with the intent of mocking everything it represents. I enjoyed this – I’d feared every minute would feel like ten. I shouldn’t have doubted Stanley Kubrick.

1977 – The Rescuers – Certainly better than I expected from a 70s Disney animated flick. I’d previously seen its sequel in 1990 and never had any interest in going back to see how it all began. Not a lot to see… but at least it was fun, had some cool animation, and entertaining (if familiar) villains. Terrible songs though. 

1981 – Das Boot – Nope, never seen this classic u-boat thriller… mainly because it always intimated me with its 3 1/2 hour run time in German and its claustrophobic submarine setting. Pretty solid movie with some very good suspense… though later submarine movies may have defanged the impact compared to how it must have played in ’81. 

1986 – The Great Mouse Detective –  better than I thought given how low my regard is for 70s and 80s Disney animated films. Pretty generic hero in Basil (though I approve the name… Rathbone-wise) but I liked the more… flamboyant… Ratigan the villain more. Pretty good flick.