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The Black Pirate
(1926)
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Star Staff
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Dramatic and thrilling are inadequate to express these new acrobatic feats which the agile “Doug” has to offer.
Posted Mar 22, 2023
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The Dark Angel
(1935)
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Robert B. Phillips, Jr.
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The picture... succeeds chiefly because it attains that requisite shrewd acting, a series of lovely settings and astutely directed scenes.
Posted Mar 10, 2023
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Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
(1953)
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Jay Carmody
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Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, whatever its defects, is the perfect representatives of Lorelei Lee, and... Dorothy.
Posted Mar 08, 2023
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Sayonara
(1957)
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Jay Carmody
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Warners should find themselves rolling in money, popularity, and the old conviction that there is nothing wrong with the movies that a good picture cannot correct.
Posted Mar 02, 2023
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Flower Drum Song
(1961)
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Jay Carmody
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It is sweet, sentimental, sad and seemingly endless.
Posted Feb 27, 2023
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Safety Last
(1923)
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Star Staff
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Never before in the history of the Industry, perhaps, has there been a picture made that so successfully combined the highest degree of thrills and laughter and held those two elements at a continuous pitch of tense interest for so long a period of time.
Posted Feb 21, 2023
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Requiem for a Heavyweight
(1962)
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Jay Carmody
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“Requiem for a Heavyweight” is assured a top rung among 1962’s movies.
Man's subhumanity to man is the theme of the film.
Posted Feb 14, 2023
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Back to Bataan
(1945)
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Jay Carmody
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This is the story of the Filipino refusal to give up, a blending of fact and fiction which adds up to a dramatic spectacle of gallantry of an appeal rarely achieved in its field.
Posted Feb 01, 2023
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Diabolique
(1955)
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Jay Carmody
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This is a superbly chilling slice of life, one indeed to challenge the best of Alfred Hitchcock. It is a tale of murder which turns the innately innocent setting of a boarding school into a hair-raising labyrinth of passion.
Posted Jan 31, 2023
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Main Street
(1923)
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Star Staff
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... Yet there is a subtle humor in this silver-sheet version that was lacking in the written page, and the audience sees a bit of fun poked slyly at Carol Kennicott, the idealistic heroine, as well as at the typical, narrow Main streeters.
Posted Jan 25, 2023
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Frankenstein
(1931)
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E. de S. Melcher
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A blood-curdling drama which so out-Draculas Dracula that the latter might as well be a Sunday afternoon parlor game.
Posted Jan 18, 2023
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Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
(1937)
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Jay Carmody
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There is uproarious comedy, heartbreaking poignance, suspense, excitement and a dozen other elements fused into a masterpiece that involves more imagination than has gone into the making of all other films to date.
Posted Dec 21, 2022
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My Four Years in Germany
(1918)
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Star Staff
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Painstaking care has reproduced, even to the most minute detail, events of import from the pre-war days, on through to the almost overnight change of front on the part of Germany from a "peace-loving" nation to "the war beast."
Posted Nov 16, 2022
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The Maltese Falcon
(1941)
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Jay Carmody
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Young Huston establishes himself immediately as a director who can teach a lot of tricks to his elders. They add up to the major trick of producing a melodrama that is chockfull of entertainment... which masks the fact that it was made once before.
Posted Nov 11, 2022
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Meet Me in St. Louis
(1944)
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Patricia Simmons
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It’s a picture that will bring tears to your eyes, but send you away proud of them. It’s also a picture whose principal appeal hinges on a store of wonderful youthful memories which you probably thought you had forgotten.
Posted Nov 10, 2022
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Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
(1939)
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Jay Carmody
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The Capra genius for creating unforgettable incident manifests itself in a dozen sequences in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
Posted Nov 09, 2022
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King Kong
(1933)
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E. de S. Melcher
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The "trick" photography in this is the nearest thing to a miracle the cinema has produced. We defy you to figure out just how it has been done.
Posted Nov 09, 2022
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The Shop Around the Corner
(1940)
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Harry MacArthur
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The Sullavan touch and the Stewart touch mean quite as much to The Shop Around the Corner as the "Lubitsch touch."
Posted Nov 08, 2022
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Stalag 17
(1953)
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Jay Carmody
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It is a comedy drama that is both comic and dramatic.
Posted Nov 05, 2022
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The Thief of Bagdad
(1924)
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Star Staff
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Two hours of superb diversion.
Posted Oct 26, 2022
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The President's Mystery
(1936)
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E. de S. Melcher
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It is stated by a popular magazine that our Chief Executive was responsible for the plot of... The President’s Mystery. If this be so, then he had a good idea and followed it up to the hilt. Nor did R-K-O leave him in the lurch.
Posted Oct 25, 2022
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A Study in Scarlet
(1933)
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Star Staff
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[A] well-directed and most modern of Sherlock revivals. Mystery film fans will like it.
Posted Oct 22, 2022
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Shanghai Express
(1932)
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E. de S. Melcher
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The picture itself ranks high among the really artistic creations that the screen has put forth -- and this through the uncanny direction of Josef von Sternberg, who has vitalized it into something far removed from the ordinary.
Posted Oct 21, 2022
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Peter Pan
(1924)
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Star Staff
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The spritely and evanescent spirit of childhood has been coaxed Into a celluloid film at last, with Incomparable beauty and appeal, as Peter
Pan.
Posted Oct 20, 2022
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The Toll of the Sea
(1922)
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Star Staff
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Many of the vistas are so artistic that for a moment the spectator might think he was looking at a rare water color from the hand of a master, until a wind-tossed pine branch or rippling wave remind him that this is even more wonderful.
Posted Oct 18, 2022
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Village of the Damned
(1960)
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Jay Carmody
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Behind this rather silly title lies one of the period's truly exciting screen tales, chillingly imagined and icily visualized in direction and performance.
Posted Sep 28, 2022
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The Cat and the Canary
(1927)
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Star Staff
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The picture has so much motion that when one thrill goes out the window another one comes out the door.
Posted Sep 28, 2022
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Cobra Woman
(1944)
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Jay Carmody
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The most impressive thing about Cobra Woman is that Miss Montez plays two roles, those of twin sisters. Neither of the girls is complex in any way, which makes Miss Montez's work less difficult than if Bette Davis were called upon.
Posted Sep 20, 2022
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House on Haunted Hill
(1959)
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Harry MacArthur
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People who go to the movies to be scared to death ought to find to fault with this one.
Posted Sep 20, 2022
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High Noon
(1952)
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Jay Carmody
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High Noon achieves a shattering tension. It is a remorselessly deliberate pace at which Zinnemann follows his story's hero along the desperately lonely trail of courage against ever-mounting odds.
Posted Sep 20, 2022
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A Raisin in the Sun
(1961)
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Jay Carmody
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Dramatically superior... gains truly in the deepened sympathy with which Poitier infuses his role.
Posted Aug 23, 2022
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Private Property
(1960)
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Jay Carmody
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Mr. Stevens is a film maker who takes deadly aim on a lean, chilling, dramatically pointed narrative that is hypnotically holding from the opening scene to the end.
Posted Aug 03, 2022
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Gigi
(1958)
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Jay Carmody
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In cast and direction, the Lerner-Loewe standard could not be more vivaciously served than by such players as Maurice Chevalier and Leslie Caron, and by a story painter as sure-eyed as Vincente Minnelli.
Posted Mar 25, 2022
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From Here to Eternity
(1953)
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Jay Carmody
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It represents the screen at its best in every department, including one of the most compulsive musical scores.
Posted Mar 17, 2022
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The Apartment
(1960)
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Jay Carmody
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Mr. Wilder, possessor of Hollywood's sharpest eye for the witheringly ironic comment on human behavior, is richly blessed with the opportunity to use it in The Apartment.
Posted Mar 16, 2022
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Cleo From 5 to 7
(1961)
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Jay Carmody
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Cleo, from 5 to 7, is a French film of all sorts of special distinctions. Two of these are the performance of lovely, young Corinne Marchand as Cleo and the direction of the film by Agnes Varda, who also wrote the screenplay.
Posted Feb 17, 2022
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Porgy and Bess
(1959)
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Jay Carmody
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Verve and vitality have been sacrificed in the big picture directed by Otto Preminger in favor of spectacle and sentimentality.
Posted Jan 20, 2022
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Nightmare Alley
(1947)
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Jay Carmody
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What happens to these proud, seedy carnival characters compares with the life of vaudevillians as glee wine to absinthe. Absinthe spiked with heroin.
Posted Dec 03, 2021
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West Side Story
(1961)
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Jay Carmody
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West Side Story comes to the screen with the same gem-like brilliance that made it both a fine and popular work of art on the stage. The film version... does this not by merely echoing the original but by adding a transforming inspiration of its own.
Posted Dec 01, 2021
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The Bridge on the River Kwai
(1957)
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Jay Carmody
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Mr. Lean's direction of Bridge on the River Kwai is a piece of sheer magic down to such a careful detail as the contrast between the natural beauty of its landscape and the man-made horror that takes place on it.
Posted Nov 17, 2021
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Marty
(1955)
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Jay Carmody
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Under Delbert Mann's direction, these familiar movie land marks burst suddenly into moving and unfamiliar life.
Posted Oct 18, 2021
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The Wizard of Oz
(1939)
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Jay Carmody
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The world of yesterday's, and perhaps tomorrow's, dreams created decades ago in the imagination of Frank L. Baum comes to the screen as a triumph of the movie camera in the realm of fantasy.
Posted Oct 14, 2021
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Sunset Blvd.
(1950)
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Jay Carmody
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Not in many a year has so large a cast and such extravagant production been utilized to tell a story of such dazzling drama that one forgets its few minor flaws.
Posted Oct 11, 2021
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Leave Her to Heaven
(1945)
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Jay Carmody
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There is no question that [Tierney] is in there trying every second to find the writhing emotional essence of the character. The quality is so elusive, or repugnant, however, that the effort is vain.
Posted Sep 29, 2021
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Them!
(1954)
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Jay Carmody
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With ants of such drawing power as these, Warner Bros. might have skimped on cast costs in the production of Them. To its credit, it did nothing of the kind.
Posted Sep 28, 2021
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The Incredible Shrinking Man
(1957)
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Jay Carmody
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The moviegoer who is not a science-fiction addict might well come to the conclusion that he should disappear before the film's hero does. Or, better still, not show up at all.
Posted Sep 24, 2021
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The Thing
(1951)
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Harry MacArthur
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The players, headed by Kenneth Tobey, as the Air Force pilot who gets into more trouble than most, and Margaret Sheridan are uniformly good and Director Christian Nyby proves himself an adept man at building suspense.
Posted Sep 21, 2021
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The Little Fugitive
(1953)
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Jay Carmody
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This is the motion picture that was made on a shoestring and turned out to be worth its weight in emeralds. It is as simple as it is fascinating.
Posted Sep 16, 2021
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Redes
(1936)
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Harry MacArthur
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The story, [Paul] Strand's camera work and the musical score by Sylvestre Revueltas has been blended together to lend a poetic flow to the force of the drama of the photoplay.
Posted Aug 25, 2021
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The Littlest Outlaw
(1955)
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Harry MacArthur
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Director Gavaldon has managed to linger over a picture here and there that doesn't do much to advance the action, too, without noticably damaging his picture's pace. This is a good trick if you can do it and Mr. Gavaldon obviously can.
Posted Aug 23, 2021
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