Heliophage
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| 68 86% | Monte Carlo (1930) - Rated 30 Aug 2024
"The famous of the five or so Jeanette MacDonald musicals hurried together in 1930 to follow up on '29's The Love Parade is naturally the reunion with Lubitsch. A smaller production than last year's, and eminently fluffy (as is our star's hair, duly fluffed by her beau in the hairdressing scene). Ah, but that opening does fool you for a bit, and the charming train sequence with "Beyond the Blue Horizon" is new and magic for the year, as is everything about how musical numbers are shot in this."
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| 35 48% | Her First Biscuits (1909) - Rated 30 Aug 2024
"Ah, Griffith comedy. See, the joke is that her biscuits taste really bad, but everyone keeps eating them, and going into the sort of conniptions that pass for comedy chez Griffith. Not great, but you get to see the bulk of the Biograph stable circa 1909 acting goofy."
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| 32 41% | The Son's Return (1909) - Rated 30 Aug 2024
"There's this one very cliché morality play melodrama plot where a desperate man unwittingly attempts to burglarize the home of his greatest benefactor, and then repents on realizing what he'd done. Griffith, corny fellow that he was, used it quite a lot. Here, we get a bizarre new spin on it, as an old man unwittingly attempts to murder his own son, who came to help him out. Oh well, at least we get a young Pickford frolicking outside along the way."
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| 25 29% | New Blacksmith Shop (1895) - Rated 29 Aug 2024
"From when mere motion itself was the novelty, as that man just nonchalantly rolling the wheel through the middle of things make clear."
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| 68 86% | King Neptune (1932) - Rated 29 Aug 2024
"Neptune, jolly yet puissant tyrant, stages an all-out assault of animals and elements upon a rowdy pirate ship to rescue an imperiled member of his topless mermaid harem. Not a singing crustacean in sight, though they do rain from the sky in a bombing raid. The move to Technicolor embraced with the previous Flowers and Trees proved just what was needed to reinvigorate this series's popularity as a showcase for more elaborate animation."
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| 37 54% | Trader Mickey (1932) - Rated 29 Aug 2024
"Trader Horn having been one of the major blockbusters of last year, Mickey too must go on location in Africa... and the main thing Disney knows how to do there is the theme they've done four or five times since Alice Cans the Cannnibals. They always go with these same designs, though here they're extra detailed and exaggerated—which should probably shove this one an extra bit further to the back of the file drawer. Resolving the problem with music was a cute spin on the usual formula, though."
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| 57 76% | Mickey's Nightmare (1932) - Rated 29 Aug 2024
"It's that same setup about a mischievous gaggle of children seen in Oswald's Poor Papa and Mickey's Orphan, done well enough. Though the framing with Mickey whispering his evening prayers in his nightshirt with his ears in perspective from behind feels more a dream of styles to come than the more familiar business in the rest of it."
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| 38 55% | The Merry Jail (1917) - Rated 29 Aug 2024
"Preserved from when Lubitsch was shifting into that operetta tone he made his own. And what better place to start on that than with what feels more or less like Die Fledermaus minus the music? Though it does have some young ladies rollerskating on the dance floor at one point (take that, Xanadu!)—while having paper "snowballs" tossed at them (wild party). Is it as polished or as effective at holding attention as his many, many films to follow in its footsteps? Hardly. But it does point the way."
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| 48 68% | Elstree Calling (1930) - Rated 29 Aug 2024
"The revue fad quickly faded behind more narrative and cinematic musicals, but that doesn't mean a British studio didn't have time to get in on it. Fairly representative of live vaudeville fare (that amusing little signature trifle from Hitchcock notwithstanding). A bit of alright song and dance, so-so comedy, and a whole lot of chorus girls. The number of American acts is representative of just how many were either parked in London semi-longterm or passing through in those days."
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| 46 67% | Bestia (1917) - Rated 27 Aug 2024
"Only survivor of eight films Pola Negri made in her native Poland. Not the only one featuring a young woman named Pola who runs off to become a dancer and demi-mondaine to tragic result. Rather old-fashioned production for 1917, though acting is better, even if plot is quite soapy. You can see the appeal that opened the way for more lucrative and polished success abroad. A couple minutes of dance including a clear callback to the gaucho dance from The Abyss, matching dress, cowboy, rope, and all"
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