Yet another roundup of classic films…

1904 – The Impossible Voyage – an amusing distraction and follow-up to to George Méliès own A Trip to the Moon. There’s not much to say for this silent bit of sci-fi hooey, but it is an amusing little watch. Just lacks the cinematic historic importance of Trip.

1942 – Saludos Amigos – waaay better than expected and certainly better than the other Disney animated shorts rolled into a movie from the same unfortunately era. Probably only works due to it being short and each short being equally short… any longer longer and everything would have overstayed its welcome.

1944 – Arsenic and Old Lace – I was so very wrong about what this movie was… I’ve always thought it a gothic, lurid potboiler about a murderous old lady in a decaying mansion. How wrong could I be? Cary Grant goes waaay over the top… also a huge surprise. Triple surprise… Frank Capra. The only thing wrong with this flick is there’s just so much of it. But I laughed quite a bit and that counts. 

1946 – Make Mine Music – some decent classics in this yet another Disney wartime collection of shorts. But also an aggressive number of nothingburger wastes of time.

1947 – Fun and Fancy Free – a mixed bag of two animated Disney shorts… Bongo the bear is unbearable (yeah, I said it) and the Mickey and the Beanstalk bit was quite a bit better and made me laugh a few times (Donald losing it is always good for a chuckle). 

1948 – Melody Time – another classic Disney animation of a bunch of stodgy, old-fashioned fuddy duddy musical sketches. The animation is good, the music is lousy. The Roy Rogers sequence about Pecos Bill was amusing at least. Not my cup of tea. 

1948 – Rope – a surprisingly great Hitchcock film that I’d long downplayed in my head as a stodgy drawing room thriller and an early example of a one-take gimmick film. It’s not… it’s a sly, well-crafted, well-acted thriller that doesn’t fall prey to the usual traits of 1940s melodrama or thrillers. 

1955 – Killer’s Kiss – an early Stanley Kubrick who’s working in a surprisingly generic crime noire territory for a guy most known for high concept films. Not a bad flick, certainly a whole lot better than his awful Fear and Desire just two years earlier.

1965 – Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! – Russ Meyer’s cult classic of cheap exploitation, fast cars, and even faster women. It’s not as extreme or as trashy as its rep… but that’s me in 2023 talking about a film released to the virgin eyes of 1965. Must have been a lot of pearl-clutching and finger tutting in its time.

1969 – Topaz – it starts out well and has a solid second act but falls apart in the third. I can’t argue that the slog of a third act wasn’t necessary to tell a complete story, but dear lord was it a never-ending cavalcade of stuffy guys talking in offices. Hitchcock who?

1973 – Don’t Look Now – a horror/thriller with a reputation that the movie didn’t earn for me. Partly that’s due to knowing the twist in advance… which I shouldn’t take out on the movie. But, regardless of that, I found the movie slow and unfocused.

1976 – Family Plot – a rather limp final film from Alfred Hitchcock. I liked the premise and even liked the characters but, as far as a dark comedy goes, it fell flatter and flatter as the movie went along.

1988 – Oliver & Company – the last film before the Disney Renaissance and it shows. One foot closer but a mile wide gap  between it and The Little Mermaid… but also certainly more entertaining and modern-feeling than other 70s/80s era Disney.