Heliophage
Recent Ratings
Check out Heliophage's...
| 46 65% | Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) - Rated 11 Dec 2024 |
| 55 73% | Scrooge (1935) - Rated 10 Dec 2024
"From before features about Christmas were the teeming crowd they have since become, the first talkie "A Christmas Carol". Who better to strike the note than Seymour Hicks, here about 63, who'd spent his Christmas seasons of the last three decades playing Scrooge at over a thousand engagements. There's atmosphere going and stylish ways to express the spirits within its limits (Scrooge in his own shadow when talking to the Spirit of Christmas Future, etc.). Also, Donald Calthrop as Bob Cratchit."
|
| 36 49% | Labyrinth des Grauens (1921) - Rated 10 Dec 2024
"Another film from Curtiz's Austrian period serving as a vehicle for his then-wife Lucy Doraine. I'm afraid it doesn't do much to change my overall impression of this run: very nice looking, but a narrative mess of so much melodrama being tossed here and there that it's hard to follow or care about the thread of it. Does still makes for some nice stills, indoors and out, and there was a man with a gun climbing on an industrial smokestack eventually."
|
| 60 78% | Evensong (1934) - Rated 09 Dec 2024
"In the 20s and 30s, Evelyn Laye was the West End's leading lady of operetta, and her vehicles of the period generally frothily reflect that. This one, though, is a little different: a fictionalized Nellie Melba analogue in a decades-spanning biopic format. There is still plenty of singing (favorite arias and a bit of sentimental singalong). But also drama especially as we get into the phase the title hints at: clinging to a career and past glories in the face of age and a public that's moved on."
|
| 26 30% | Lights of New York (1928) - Rated 06 Dec 2024
"The story of how this snoozy B picture wound up as Warner's first all-talky is a more interesting than the film itself. Bryan Foy (oldest of the siblings) was on to direct vaudeville shorts. But he also wanted to try out doing a feature, and so while making a two-reeler while the bosses were out of town... he did just that, tossing together an extra four reels of gangster whatever on the fly. It isn't very good, but it made 24k into 1 mil on novelty value, setting Foy to be head of B-production."
|
| 70 87% | And the Villain Still Pursued Her; or, The Author's Dream (1906) - Rated 04 Dec 2024
"Endearingly wacky and imaginative business with a few tricks along the way. Who wouldn't love a woman who can save you with a home trepanation on the fly, leap to a rooftop with ease, and still find time to enjoy a cup of tea while dragging her pursuer along in a dummy-waiter. Ooh, and they're a hot-air balloon (paper cutout animation included)."
|
| 35 46% | The Cavalier's Dream (1898) - Rated 04 Dec 2024
"Blackton playing at being Méliès as Mephistopheles arrives to play a bunch of stop-tricks, as he usually does."
|
| 25 27% | Little Mischief (1899) - Rated 03 Dec 2024
"One of the very earliest Vitagraph productions from Blackton, which, going by the records looks to have distributed by Edison. Very basic prank playing the father's vigorous overreaction for a quick laugh (see also: that ubiquitous hose prank à la Lumière). This being the old open-air rooftop studio, one may note the theatrical backdrop blowing in the breeze a bit."
|
| 10 1% | Tearing Down the Spanish Flag (1898) - Rated 03 Dec 2024
"From the humble beginnings of Vitagraph, one of the very first things from Blackton's newly founded studio. With Edison pumping out a mix of actualities and dramatizations thereof on the war with Spain, it was time to be timely and scramble to do the same. As only a few seconds of a small flag changing before a cheap backdrop, this is practically just a bit of decorative filler to toss in along with those sorts of things."
|
| 31 38% | When the West Was Young (1932) - Rated 03 Dec 2024
"Serviceable B Western, if just. Mostly notable for being Randolph Scott's first lead, and Henry Hathaway's first time directing. A decent cast for the time, and Sally Blane's scenes come off a bit better than the rest of it. It falls apart when something active or dramatic is called for, though. Worth a chuckle when it's a clumsily handled bear attack that comes out of nowhere (along with a fake-looking cliff), more counterproductive when it's what should be a big dramatic death landing poorly"
|
