QUICK BEFORE IT MELTS (1965)

Oliver (Robert Morse) is a reporter for Sage Magazine, whose slogan is The Magazine that Thinks for You. He's dating Sharon, the boss’s daughter. When his boss sends him to Antarctica to embed himself with the workers at a research station, he tries to get Sharon to sleep with him, but she steadfastly refuses to have sex before marriage. His companion on the trip is photographer Pete (George Maharis) who is a gregarious playboy whom we first see being tossed out of a car by an angry woman fed up with his behavior. Despite their different personalities, they bond quickly when they meet before heading to New Zealand, both promising to forget about women for the duration, which is just as well as the admiral in charge of the South Pole operations (James Gregory) hates women. But the plan falls apart when Oliver falls for a half-Maori woman named Tiare (Anjanette Comer) and Pete falls for Diana Grenville-Wells (Janine Grey), the first woman with a hyphen in her name that he's ever met. At the South Pole, they soon acclimate to their surroundings: -50 degrees temperatures, a penguin who delivers messages round the camp, a seal who needs to have its temperature taken. They meet Mickey (Michael Constantine), a friendly Russian scientist, and our boys agree that getting him to defect could be the story that would make them well known. Meanwhile, starved for female attention, Oliver and Pete talk the admiral into bringing in a planeload of women as a publicity stunt, and of course, they make sure that Tiare and Diana are on that plane. Complications, some of a slapstick sort, ensue.

Though this is based on a novel, the whole thing feels like the creators just dumped a bunch of comedic and/or satiric situations together in a blender and hoped for the best. At times it's entertaining, mostly due to the actors, but the narrative is loose and baggy, and I just couldn't bring myself to care much about the characters and their outcomes. Maharis is top-billed and he's handsome and, depending how you feel about playboy types, charming, but Morse is more central to the story—this was a couple of years before HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS would make him (briefly) a leading man, so Maharis has slightly more cachet, thus first billing, and also seems more comfortable on screen. They work surprisingly well together and are fun to watch. The other performances that work well come from James Gregory (Inspector Luger on Barney Miller) as the hard-assed military man, Bernard Fox as a friendlier military man, Michael Constantine as the Russian, and Yvonne (Batgirl) Craig as Sharon. Comer, who went on to a long if undistinguished career, doesn’t really make much of an impression as the exotic Tiare. Norman Fell plays a rival reporter and the craggy-faced Howard St. John is amusing as Morse's boss. There is some second-unit location shooting involved here, but the actors almost certainly never left the studio, which is OK. There's an absurd but amusing bar fight scene, and of course, the penguin (who the men call Milton Fox because, well, that's his name!) steals all his scenes. Best line: when the boss calls his daughter and Morse answers, the boss asks what he’s doing there. Morse replies, "Trying to seduce your daughter," to which the boss wishes him luck. Mildly funny, but not recommended to folks who aren't already fans of 1960s sex farces. Pictured are Morse and Maharis. [DVD]

BROKEN LULLABY (1932)

At a church ceremony in Paris on Nov. 11, 1919, the first anniversary of the WWI armistice, the crowd is told that it's time to forget the past and look toward tomorrow. But afterward, French soldier Paul Renard (Phillips Holmes, pictured at left) confesses to a priest that he is still struggling to get past a traumatic memory of having killed a German soldier in the trenches. The boy dies with a book about Beethoven on his person and Paul finds letters inside giving his name, Walter, and the address of his parents. The priest tells Paul he has not sinned and should not feel guilty, but Paul decides to go to Germany and meet Walter's family, not quite knowing what his goal is. In Germany, there is still much anti-French sentiment and when Paul visits Walter's father, Dr. Holderin (Lionel Barrymore), and introduces himself as a Frenchman, the doctor angrily orders him out of the house. But Elsa (Nancy Carroll), the doctor's nurse and former fiancée of Walter's, says that she saw Paul putting flowers on Walter's grave and the family believes that Paul and Walter were friends in Paris, so they accept his presence, letting him stay in the house and soon treating him as if he was an adopted son. Paul's guilt, however, is not assuaged, even as he and Elsa begin to fall in love. Will Paul eventually confess and risk losing this new family?

This is a rare drama from Ernst Lubitsch, who is better known for his sophisticated comedies. I associate him so much with frothy romance that it's difficult to recognize this as a Lubitsch work, but there is interesting camerawork throughout. The anti-war sentiments are not subtle, and some of the performances get a bit overwrought, especially by Holmes and Carroll—Holmes almost always looks distraught and ready to cry—but Barrymore actually underplays and Louise Carter as Walter's mother is fine. The opening, showing Walter's death, is effective, and the final sequence is powerful, in part because Lubitsch sort of lets the camera do the acting. Despite their occasional overacting, Holmes and Carroll work together well. With Zasu Pitts and Emma Dunn in small roles. IMDb says Marjorie Main is in it, but I didn't see her. Recommended if for no other reason than to see a thematic anomaly in Lubitsch’s career. [Criterion Channel]

COVER UP (1949)

On a bus to a small town, insurance investigator Sam (Dennis O'Keefe, pictured) chats up town native Anita (Barbara Britton). Sam is investigating the suicide of Roger Phillips, which Sam thinks looks more like murder—no gun found, no burn marks on the body. Sheriff Best (William Bendeix), though amiable on the surface, isn't much help, though when Sam threatens to get a court order to exhume the body, Best comes up with a couple of bullets which were fired from a Luger, a gun that the sheriff happens to own. Anita takes Sam to her folks' home for dinner and it comes out that her banker father Stu owns a Luger, or used to, as he claims he gave to Dr. Garrow who is currently out of town. Sam, while sparking with Anita, comes to realize that Phillips was not a well-liked man. Complicating things further, Phillips' niece Margaret had, the night of the murder, eloped with a man that Phillips didn’t like, and Margaret stands to inherit more money if Sam can prove that the suicide was actually murder (thanks to that pesky double indemnity clause). Then Anita discovers her father's Luger is actually hidden in the house. Finally, Sam plants a fake story in the local paper saying that a chemist is coming to town to test the carpet the body was found on, hoping to draw out the killer. This is a bit of an oddity in the noir canon, if it even belongs there. It's set at Christmas, leading TCM to describe it as It's a Wonderful Life brushed with noir dust, though the holiday trappings are fairly subtle. But aside from the small town and the dark streets, there's little here that is truly reminiscent of Wonderful Life or of film noir. It's a fairly straightforward mystery that is fun to watch, both for the story and the performances, but the ending, though satisfying, winds up being a bit anti-climactic which takes some of the edge off the proceedings. Bendix gets top billing despite being a supporting character (an important one but still supporting) and he's fine. O'Keefe and Britton work well together, and Virginia Christine and Russell Arms make a mark as the eloping couple. The director, Alfred E. Green, was a prolific journeyman filmmaker even if he never really got around to making a classic. This will certainly not be on my list of mandatory December viewing, but as a crime film with romantic elements, it’s worth a viewing. [TCM]

THE OUTRAGE (1964)

During a nighttime storm, three people are standing at a train station somewhere in Old West: a disillusioned preacher (William Shatner), an old prospector (Howard Da Silva), and a traveling lightning rod salesman (Edward G. Robinson) who used to sell a healing herbal elixir until three people died from using it. They talk about what happened earlier in the day when a Mexican outlaw (Paul Newman, pictured at left) had been tried and executed for murder in a nearby town, and three witnesses told three conflicting stories about what happened. What doesn't seem to be in question is that a man with money (Laurence Harvey) and his wife (Claire Bloom) were on the road in a horse and buggy when Newman stopped them in the road and offered to sell Harvey a valuable Aztec knife. The two go off together in a wooded area and when Harvey doesn't return, Bloom goes looking for him. She finds her husband tied and gagged against a tree. She gets hold of the knife and threatens Newman, who responds by pulling a gun and raping her. Eventually, Harvey winds up dead, a knife in his chest. At the trial, Newman and Bloom tell different stories of how Harvey wound up dead. Then an old Indian shaman tells a third version from the dead husband's point of view. Finally at the train station, Da Silva has yet another account which he didn't tell at the trial because he stole the Aztec knife. Each version says something different about people's personalities and motives. Do we accept Da Silva's version? Or is there some truth in all of the accounts?

It's been many years since I saw Akira Kurosawa's RASHOMON, the Japanese classic that this Hollywood remake is based on. The title Rashomon itself has become pop culture shorthand for a story told in different ways by different people, in which the truth is either hidden or remains ambiguous. Here, the unsolved question is, who killed Harvey, and why? Did Newman stab Harvey in a fair fight? Did Bloom do it in anger because he felt she was to blame for being raped and perhaps didn't fight back hard enough? Did Harvey kill himself because his wife was planning on leaving with Newman? Or was Harvey's death an accident? All the accounts can be seen as being slanted to make one or another person look good or bad, and at the end, we're left in uncertainty, which is both delicious and frustrating. The movie, directed by Martin Ritt, is beautifully shot in black & white by the masterful James Wong Howe on limited sets: the train station, the wooded area of the attacks, and a town square where the trial takes place. The acting is a mixed bag. Newman certainly looks the part of the scroungy outlaw, with a little bit of the Newman charm seeping through now and then, but his Mexican accent is ridiculously overdone (it may have felt like realism in 1964, but now it feels borderline offensive). I'm not a fan of Laurence Harvey—I find him wooden and unappealing—and this movie does nothing to change my mind. The rest are fine, especially Bloom who goes through a range of emotions, and Edward G. Robinson who provides a good audience for the tales told. William Shatner's acting abilities are sometimes denigrated, but he fits quite well the role of the preacher whose faith has been shaken. This may be the first use of the charming phrase, "Don’t get your bowels in an uproar" in mass media. Not essential viewing perhaps, but worth your time. [TCM]

TARZAN'S THREE CHALLENGES (1963)

Tarzan (Jock Mahoney) parachutes out of a plane over a field in an Asian country. He's there in response to a call for help from Tarim, the leader of his people who is on his deathbed and is preparing the way for his successor, the pre-teen Prince Kashi—the country is not named, and although the film was shot in Thailand, the rules of succession seem more Tibetan. Tarim fears that his ruthless brother Khan (Woody Strode) will harm Kashi and install his own son as the heir. On his way to the leader's monastery, Tarzan's entourage is attacked on the river with loss of life, though Tarzan escapes. Accompanied by his guide Hani (who, unbeknownst to Tarzan is actually a spy for Khan), Tarzan arrives at the monastery where he must undergo three challenges testing skill, strength and wisdom to prove himself worthy of the mission. One is an archery test, one is a Zen word problem to solve. The most grueling challenge is when Tarzan is tied between two posts and the ropes are attached to two buffalos who pull in opposite directions (pictued at right). He endures and is accepted by Tarim. Accompanied by Hani, a monk, and a nursemaid, Tarzan sets out to bring Kashi to the monastery, a trip that Kahn's men are trying to sabotage. But Tarzan is up to the task, and when he brings Kashi back, after the death of Tarim, there are more challenges to face, including a climactic one-on-one fight with Khan on netting stretched over barrels of boiling oil that will have to be a fight to the death.

Mahoney only played Tarzan twice (the first time being in TARZAN GOES TO INDIA) but he looms fairly large in Tarzan trivia. He played a villain in the earlier TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT, he was the oldest actor to be cast as a new Tarzan (he was 44 in INDIA), and he became deathly ill during the making of this movie, getting dysentery from swimming in a polluted river, even after his co-star Woody Strode warned him not to. Many viewers report how ill and weak he looks in the latter scenes of this film which was mostly shot in chronological order—it supposedly took him over a year to fully recuperate—but he was always more lithe than muscular, and I didn't think he looked much different by the end than he did at the beginning, though maybe I couldn't see beyond the oil and sweat that he's frequently covered in. I think it's a little ironic that the one of the best Tarzan torture scenes in the whole canon is here where he's not being worked over by bad guys, but by good guys. The stretching scene, the oil barrel fight, and an earlier scene of a major jungle fire are three of the best action sequences in any Tarzan movie, so for those alone, I'd rate this fairly high in Tarzan movie rankings. As I noted in my review of INDIA, Mahoney is a literate and laid-back Tarzan and part of me is sorry Mahoney didn't continue in the role (though if you squint, I think you can see a bit of Mahoney in Ron Ely's TV Tarzan), but then again, because he didn't return, we got the hottest Tarzan of all, Mike Henry. But that's another review. Woody Strode deserves mention for embodying one of the most threatening bad guys in the Tarzan films, and he also plays, briefly, a second role as the dying brother. Ricky Der (Kashi), who couldn't have been more than 9 or 10, is notable for his ability to look profoundly serious all the time. More pluses: almost no comic relief, almost no cute animal antics (though Kashi does bond with a baby elephant that they call Hungry). Definitely among the 4-star Tarzan movies. Best line: "Pride is the evil shadow of greatness." [DVD]

ANY WEDNESDAY (1966)

Businessman Jason Robards lives in New Jersey and works in Manhattan, but every Wednesday, he stays overnight to enjoy some extramarital pleasures, and fakes a long-distance phone call to his wife who thinks he's out of town on a business trip. One Wednesday night, at a cocktail party, he ropes lovely young Jane Fonda into helping him by calling his wife and posing as a long-distance operator, so his check-in call will seem as if it's coming from Chicago. They flirt but she resists becoming his mistress, and when he offers to send her flowers, she says she hates watching flowers die and wishes someone would send her balloons instead. When Fonda winds up in the hospital with hepatitis, Robards sends her balloons, and she finally relents. Two years later, the two are still meeting every Wednesday at her apartment, which Robards has had his company buy as an overnight executive suite, which only Robards uses. But this Wednesday, Dean Jones, the owner of a company that Robards has bought, has been sent by Robards' secretary to use the suite. Arriving that afternoon, Jones is surprised to find Fonda there and assumes that she is a prostitute present for his use. As the two argue, Robards' wife (Rosemary Murphy) arrives, also sent by the unwitting secretary. Assuming Jones and Fonda to be a couple, Murphy insists they join her and Robards for dinner. Complications ensue.

This is a fairly entertaining sex farce, from an era filled with such films, and it's largely Jane Fonda's delightfully light performance that makes it work so well. She pulls off a kind of naughty innocence that is central in keeping the audience on her side. The underrated Dean Jones (who got stuck playing fairly flat characters in Disney movies) goes for a kind of sexy Jimmy Stewart thing and it mostly works. Robards is the weak link; he's a little too crusty to be effective, and he doesn't make the character very sympathetic. Rosemary Murphy is much better as the wife who rolls quite well with the punches. Based on a stage play, there's only one other character of note, the secretary, played by Ann Prentiss, the look-alike (and act-alike) sister of Paula Prentiss. Jack Fletcher has a brief scene (that some today might find offensive) as a shriekingly gay interior designer. Though the film is largely stagebound, the director (Robert Ellis Miller) occasionally uses split-screen to good effect, even comically splitting the split screens. Fun line, from Murphy about the possibility of an affair with her gardener: "No woman has had any luck with gardeners since Lady Chatterley." This is fun, but at 110 minutes, it feels about 20 minutes too long. Pictured are Fonda, Jones and Robards. [TCM]

HUNT THE MAN DOWN (1950)

After the bar Happy's Place closes for the night, two employees, Bill and Sally, are cleaning up and counting money. She seems sweet on him but he is reluctant to open up too much to her. A thief known as the Paper Bag Bandit sneaks in to steal the day's earnings and Bill manages to shoot him dead. He's declared a hero in the newspapers until his past comes to light: he's actually Richard Kincaid (James Anderson), a fugitive who vanished twelve years ago when he was found guilty of murder, a crime he swears he didn't commit. He is held and appointed a public defender, Paul Bennett (Gig Young), and we see his story in flashback: Richard meets a friendly group of folks out on the town who invite him back to a house for further merrymaking where they all have a few too many. Joan, one of the women, is alone and dances with Richard, but her jealous husband Dan arrives at the house and pulls a gun on Kincaid. Richard disarms him but says he'd kill him if he could. The next morning, Dan is dead and Richard is arrested. Largely on the somewhat uncertain testimony of the partyers, Richard is about to be found guilty when he takes off. Paul thinks he has a fighting chance of helping Richard and enlists the help of his father, a retired cop, to track down the other partygoers to get them to testify at a new trial. As Paul and his father dig further, secrets turn up and lives are threatened before a final courtroom climax.

This noir film is perhaps best enjoyed as a kind of character study. Most of the partyers are now, twelve years later, living shabbier lives than they might have expected and there is some genuine pathos in seeing these people in reduced circumstances: the football hero was blinded in the war and works as a bookbinder, one is an associate at a small marionette theater, one is a drunken bum, and one has had a nervous breakdown. Only one couple has moved up in the world, to a mansion with a pool, but they don't seem particularly happy. When Eddie Muller introduced this on TCM's Noir Alley, he noted that the sheer number of supporting characters and backstories would make this ideal for a current-day streaming miniseries. While I understand his point, I would not encourage such an idea, as these series are always at least 2 hours too long. Here, at just 70 minutes, the characters remain mostly surface sketches, but there's little wasted time or energy. Top billed Gig Young is a bit colorless as the lawyer, and among the actors playing the witnesses and suspects, only Cleo Moore stands out. But James Anderson (pictured) is quite good as the hapless Richard, who in giving a low-key performance, manages to outshine Gig Young. [TCM]

CLEOPATRA (1912)

This is one of the first feature-length movies made in the United States, and probably the oldest complete movie I've ever seen. The film is shot like a series of tableaux with very little action and long intertitles to explain what's happening. It winds up being of more interest historically than for its narrative or style, and as always, I cannot vouch for its biographical accuracy. As the film opens, a slave fisherman named Pharon has been tossing flowers at Queen Cleopatra to win her love. But Iras, the queen's attendant, also loves him. Cleopatra eventually takes him as a lover, but for ten days only, after which time he must kill himself. He accepts, but when the time comes to take his poison, Iras gives him an antidote and says that Cleopatra has spared his life but he must leave Egypt. Meanwhile, the Roman general Marc Antony has requested that Cleopatra meet him at Tarsus to answer to conspiracy charges against Rome (the military matters here are not always well spelled out). When they meet, sparks fly—an aide to Antony says that Antony's army is not as powerful as Cleopatra's eyes. Antony stays with Cleopatra ignoring Rome's battles with Octavius—an intertitle says that Antony "lingers in the land of the lotus, forgetting every tie to the past"—but when Flavia, Antony's wife is reported dead, he goes back to Rome. As we all know, passions continue to be inflamed and by the end, Antony, who has gone back to Cleopatra, is killed, and Cleopatra uses a poisonous snake to kill herself. This will seem stagy and primitive to anyone who is not already a silent movie fan, but for me, its 90 minute running time went by quickly. Modern eyes will not find either Antony (Charles Sindelar) or Cleopatra (Helen Gardner) especially appealing, in looks or acting (lots of emotions are registered by the tossing of heads and the wringing of hands), but once you adjust to the era's standards, you do get wrapped up in the story. Gardner was a major silent film star and also the first woman to establish her own production company. This restoration, funded in part by TCM, has a problematic modern score. Some of it has the feel of hip-hop trance music by Phillip Glass, but when vocals are featured, having no apparent connection to the action, it becomes irritating. [TCM]

THE BLACK DOLL (1938)

Rex Leland (William Lundigan), wastrel playboy stepson of the wealthy Nelson Rood (C. Henry Gordon), begs his stepfather to pay off yet another gambling debt. Nelson agrees, but warns Rex that he's now cut off. Rex's mom Laura is on his side, but Rex has already forged a check from his stepfather that Nelson will soon find out about. Meanwhile, Nelson's daughter Marion (Nan Grey) is seeing detective Nick Halstead (Donald Woods) on the sly—for some reason, he's camping on the Rood property—and when Nelson catches them smooching, he orders Nick to leave. Then a scary looking black doll with a small knife plunged into its chest shows up on Nelson's desk. He summons his old business partners Walling and Mallison; years ago, the three were involved in the death of another partner named Barrows just before they got rich off a Mexican mine. The black doll disappeared with Barrows and Nelson knows that its reappearance means trouble. That night, Nelson is stabbed to death with a knife and practically everyone in the house has a motive: Walling and Mallinson, Marion, and even the servants who have been badly treated by Nelson. Or, as some wonder, could Barrows still be alive and has he returned to get revenge? Nick is on the case, helping the bumbling local sheriff track down clues, and after a second death, Nick discovers a couple of family secrets that may point in a specific direction. 

This B-mystery is an entry in the short-lived Crime Club movie series from Universal in the 1930s. Like others I've seen, this is light and well-paced and decently acted, with one glaring exception, that being the grating comic relief of Edgar Kennedy as the sheriff. He's OK in small doses but he has way too much screen time here and his delivery never varies. But Kennedy doesn't appear until about halfway through, letting the other actors show off for a while. Donald Woods makes an appealing detective and he and Nan Grey (both pictured) have a nice chemistry. C. Henry Gordon, one of my favorite B-movie villains, is well cast as Nelson as is a young William Lundigan (in one of the eleven movies he made in 1938) as the dissolute Rex. This almost has the feel of an "old dark house"movie, though the visual atmosphere is never as creepy as it should be. [YouTube]

STREET OF CHANCE (1930)

John Marsden (Willian Powell), a wealthy bond broker, is secretly Natural Davis, a big-time gambler. We first see him betting with his friend Dorgan on whether the next cab they see will have an odd or even license plate number. He has a reputation of never cheating, and never tolerating those who do. At a high-stakes game, he exposes Al Mastick as a cheater, and though Mastick offers to pay everyone back, Marsden sets his men on Mastick, who is found dead the next day. Marsden's wife Alma (Kay Francis) is preparing to leave him because of his gambling, but he promises to quit. However, his kid brother Babe has just arrived in town with his new wife for a visit. Marsden had sent Babe a large cash wedding gift to be invested, but Babe, not knowing of Marsden's activities as Natural Davis, wants to bet it all and win a huge chunk of money. In an attempt to scare Babe away from the gambling life, Marsden winds up masterminding a night-long poker game engineered to make Babe lose. But when his cheating is discovered, Dorgan decides to treat him as a welcher, just as Marsden treated Mastick. There is not a happy ending. This is a chance to see Powell play more of  a scoundrel than in the movies he became known for later (THE THIN MAN, MY MAN GODFREY, LIFE WITH FATHER). In many of his pre-Code films, he played a charming and slick lead who was also often morally ambiguous, if not downright bad, but his looks and charm kept audiences feeling empathetic for him. I like the way the blogger at Frank's Movie Log refers to Powell’s "mix of urbane charm and streetwise edge," and that's exactly what he has here. Even though he orders a hit on a gambler, we still have positive feelings for Powell, both for his chemistry with Francis (though his best movie with Francis is probably JEWEL ROBBERY) and for the fact that the cheating that causes his downfall is in the service of good. Francis doesn't have a lot to do but looks good not doing it. Regis Toomey (Babe), normally a favorite supporting actor of mine, is a bit lightweight here. Jean Arthur, before her leading lady days, also has little to do as Toomey's wife. Definitely watchable but a bit of a trifle. Pictured are Francis and Powell. [Criterion Channel]

THE ART OF LOVE (1965)

Paul (Dick Van Dyke) is a struggling American artist living in Paris with his friend Casey (James Garner), a struggling American writer. Zorgus, an art dealer, tells Paul somewhat facetiously that if Paul killed himself, his paintings would start selling. Paul wants to give up and go back to the States to his rich fiancée Laurie (Angie Dickinson) but Casey suggests that Paul fake a suicide, then sit back while the money rolls in. One night on a bridge over the Seine, Paul sees the lovely young Nikki (Elke Sommer) jump into the river and he plunges in to save her. Meanwhile, Casey, who saw Paul jump, thinks he actually committed suicide and when his 'death' hits the front pages, starts a brisk business with Zorgus selling Paul's work which indeed sells like wildfire. Complications ensue: Laurie arrives for a surprise visit with Paul, not knowing he is 'dead';  Paul and Nikki strike romantic sparks; Casey starts to fall for Laurie. When Paul surfaces, Casey talks him into staying in hiding and producing more paintings, which he does, but soon the police are considering the idea that Casey killed Paul (especially when someone sees Casey saw a mannequin in parts and throw it in a fire, and mistakes the dummy for a real person). Because this is a comedy, we assume things will turn out OK, but when Casey is found guilty and Paul decides not to come forward, it's a close call, with Casey winding up on the gallows (complete with a cackling, knitting hag out of Tale of Two Cities sitting in the front row) before Paul tries to save him.

Despite a promising cast and a script by Carl Reiner, this farcical comedy never really gels. One big problem is Dick Van Dyke who, as one IMDb reviewer put it, comes off like Rob Petrie in Paris. As funny and charming as Van Dyke could be (his 60s sit-com, Mary Poppins, Bye Bye Birdie), he was basically a one-note comic actor and he fails to stretch enough here. Garner tries and comes off a little better, but they are both at sea in the hands of director Norman Jewison who can't quite handle the mix of romantic comedy, slapstick, and seriousness (Garner's character comes uncomfortably close to getting hung). Dickinson, though lovely, is underused here which leaves Sommer as the actor who comes off the best. Ethel Merman has a little bit of fun as a Parisian madam who helps the boys with their schemes. Jewison has too heavy a hand to make this as fizzy as it needs to be (and that knitting hag bit is hammered at way too many times). Jewison has been quoted as saying that the plotpoints about art and suicide doomed to movie as a mass appeal product, but I disagree. That dark comic plot is the most interesting about the movie, but the acting and directing don't support it. Not unwatchable, but not nearly as much fun as it should have been. Pictured are Garner and Van Dyke. [TCM]

RIDE A CROOKED TRAIL (1958)

On the run from the law after a bank robbery, Joe Maybe (Audie Murphy) sees lawman Jim Noonan fall to his death. Joe takes the man's horse and belongings, including his sheriff's badge (a star with a missing point). Moseying into the town of Webb City, he is challenged by crusty Judge Kyle (Walter Matthau) who is looking for Joe, but when he recognizes the badge, he assumes that Joe is Noonan, and talks him into staying around as the town's marshal. The next day, a saucy lass named Tessa (Gia Scala) arrives by riverboat and recognizes Maybe, whose last name she calls out. She recovers quickly by saying she called him "Baby," and the two pose as a married couple. Actually, she's in town to case the place for a bank robbery planned by her lover and old rival of Joe's, Sam Teeler (Henry Silva). During a celebration for the arrival of the railroad to Webb City, Teeler and his gang ride in, primed for robbery. Maybe is caught between two desires: getting in on the robbery or going straight and taking his lawman duties seriously. Tessa is also conflicted between the two men, especially because a young orphan boy has taken to Tessa and Joe and hopes to be adopted by them.

I like Audie Murphy quite a bit (RED BADGE OF COURAGE, THE QUIET AMERICAN), but this is the first western of his I've seen (and westerns were pretty much his specialty). It took a while to get used to him in Old West duds, and he lacks the gravitas that more traditional Western lead actors had—honestly, his persona here would have been a better fit in one of those B-westerns that were cranked out with assembly-line speed in the 30s and early 40s, maybe even as a singing cowboy. But I got used to him eventually, even though he was never really convincing as an outlaw, which dissipates the impact of his eventual redemption. Gia Scala is fine as his eventual romantic interest, though Silva makes for a somewhat weak bad guy. Eddie Little, as the orphan boy, gets a very nice moment near the end when he shows off his ability to wield a gun. This leaves Matthau (pictured above with Murphy) who is problematic here. Not quite 40 in real life, he is made to seem closer to 60 and he chews the scenery like mad, using an exaggerated drawl and often adopting a W.C. Fields accent, particularly noticeable when he actually says, "Never give the other guy an even break" (a rewording of the title of a Fields movie). It took me almost half the movie to get used to him, and I still think a subtler performance was called for here. But it seems likely that the filmmakers were going for a fairly light tone, as opposed to other westerns of the 50s which often emphasized darker psychological details, and Matthau does keep things light. At one point, we get a rather prosaic explanation of Joe's last name, devoid of the ambiguity that would have added depth to Joe's character. Not exactly a classic but enjoyable. [DVD]

THE VIRTUOUS SIN (1930)

St. Petersburg in January, 1914, a few months before the outbreak of WWI. The lovely, wealthy Marya (Kay Francis) is back in town and attracting attention. She meets up with old friend Victor (Kenneth MacKenna), a scientist doing research on TB. Though obsessed with his work, he proposes to Marya, saying that even though he knows that she is not in love with him, their passionless relationship could work as a kind of experiment. She agrees, but a few months later, when war is declared, Victor is called up as a reserve soldier despite his insistence that he is worth more at home doing research. Marya goes to ask General Platoff (Walter Huston) to give him an exemption, but she is lost among the dozens of women asking for similar requests for husbands and sons. When Victor is insubordinate to Platoff, he is imprisoned and sentenced to die. Marya, desperate to free him, poses as a prostitute at a notorious club—she is told, "All the officers go there; the prima donnas can't sing, the chorus girls can't dance"—where she flirts with the general, gets into his good graces (and then some), and starts to soften him up to the point where he begins granting exemptions for the wives and mothers who approach him. But when Marya asks for mercy for Victor, things get melodramatic for all concerned: Platoff resents being manipulated and Victor berates her for unfaithfulness even though their relationship had been platonic. Is there a happy ending in store for anyone?

[Spoilers follow] The original New York Times review of this film calls it a comedy, and there are some light moments here and there, but it mostly plays out like a romantic melodrama. Granted, the ending is indeed more or less happy for all three: Marya falls in love with the general, he with her, and Victor allows himself to be saved, then steps aside to let Marya be with Platoff. So in the classical sense, this has the ending of a comedy, but there aren't a lot of laughs along the way, except involving the madam of the club/brothel (Jobyna Howland). George Cukor, the co-director, referred to this as one of his worst movies, and indeed its pace may feel a bit off to modern viewers—at 80 minutes, I was ready for it to be over at 65 or before. The movie is probably of most interest for pre-Code fans for its fairly blatant depiction of the brothel and for Marya's extramarital activities. The central trio are fine, especially Kay Francis. I was unfamiliar with MacKenna who does a fine job playing a somewhat irritating character—a year after this movie was made, he married Francis though they only stayed together for a couple of years. Pictured are Francis and MacKenna. [Criterion streaming]

AN AMERICAN DREAM (1966)

War hero Stuart Whitman is now a popular TV commentator who answers phone calls on the air; his current crusade is exposing links between the Mafia and the police department. During his current show, he gets a taunting call from his drunken wife (Eleanor Parker, pictured) as she dallies with another man in her bed. They're separated and she's just back from Europe but won't give Whitman a divorce. On the phone, she babbles almost incoherently, calling him a "boy crusader" and wondering how he became a war hero when he's "such a whimpering baby, baby, baby." After the show, he heads to her place where they have an argument right out of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. On her balcony, they come to blows. He tries to strangle her, but she winds up falling off the balcony where she hits the street and is then hit by several cars, causing a pile-up. Whitman tells the police that her fall was an accident, then he says she was trying to kill herself because she had cancer. As it happens, one of the cars in the pile-up is occupied by one of the Mafia dons that Whitman has been attacking, and accompanying him is Whitmans' ex-mistress (Janet Leigh), whom Whitman knocked up and abandoned a few years ago. The two start to get close again which doesn't make the Mafia guy happy. The cops, also unhappy, are out to get Whitman because of his accusations of corruption. Meanwhile, Parker's rich father is willing to use his power to subvert the suicide verdict because otherwise, the monsignor can't give Parker a Catholic burial. In the midst of all this, it's getting difficult for Whitman's agent to get him top dollar with a new contract. It seems that Whitman's American dream might be turning into a nightmare.

This bizarre melodrama is best appreciated as camp. It's hard to pin down what's wrong with it, although Whitman's wooden performance is a good starting place—his character is charmless and uninteresting. The direction, by Robert Gist, is lackluster, and there is no coherent visual style to the movie, though Parker's apartment is pretty fabulous. This will sound like a contradiction, but Parker's performance is the best and worst thing in the movie. In her short fifteen minutes at the beginning, she starts at level 11 (out of 10) and goes up from there. At first, I found her grating and artificial, but her drunken hysteria set a kind of anti-Zen trance mood, during which I couldn't keep my eyes off of her. She is terrible and wonderful and riveting at the same time, and is ultimately the main reason to watch the movie. Much as I like Janet Leigh, she can't compete, especially given her under-written character. Barry Sullivan, as the main cop, is fine, as is Murray Hamilton as Whitman's agent and Lloyd Nolan in what is basically a cameo as Parker's father. George Takei appears briefly as a cop. Without giving away the context, I'll quote the last line of the movie, which is classic: "What did you expect from a whore?" Gist, the director, has a very small role in MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET as the guy placing reindeer figures in the shop window when Kris Kringle stops to chat, and was the director's assistant in THE BAND WAGON. [TCM]

MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET (1939) / I WOULDN’T BE IN YOUR SHOES (1948)

During the last week of each year, I usually try to review a classic-era Christmas movie but I think after 22 years of blogging, I've run out of them. But TCM showed these two rarely-shown films during December. They're not traditional holiday films with Santa and magic and angels; actually, one is a film noir and the other is noir-adjacent, but they were both interesting discoveries.. MIRACLE is a low-key melodrama which starts by introducing two couples. Wealthy suburbanite Walter Abel marries Jean Brooks on Christmas Eve. We leave them behind to follow Margo, a cooch dancer at a carnival attraction called the Streets of Cairo, and her husband (Lyle Talbot), who runs the show. When Talbot gets busted for selling a cop liquor, he punches out the cop and goes on the run. Margo is stuck with trying to pay rent for their apartment. Her kindly landlady (Jane Darwell), lets her slide a bit, but lets her know she'll need to find a legit job. At church on Christmas Eve, Margo finds an abandoned baby in the church creche and takes it home, uncertain of her future. Some time passes. Margo is barely getting by with some sewing jobs, and goes out to Pepito's restaurant go ask for a job as a dancer. She doesn't get it, but she meets Abel, drinking alone because his wife has left him. Sparks start to fly and soon he gets her a job designing clothes and wants her to move in with him. With Talbot still on the loose, she can’t entertain the idea of divorcing him. Eventually, Talbot does return and wants Margo to ask Abel for $500 to flee to South America. Complications ensue. This is practically an archetypal B-picture: cheap sets, second-class actors, a script with plotholes. But it’s classed up with some interesting visual flare (an early shot at the carnival travels from the outside through the interior and backstage in one shot). Margo is fine and Abel gives an understated performance which is miles away from his hyper role as the agent in HOLIDAY INN. Two Christmases bookend the narrative (and the ending is a bit rushed) though the holiday is still a fairly minor part of the story. Jane Darwell is fine as the landlady, and Wynne Gibson and Veda Ann Borg provide comic relief as two other dancing girls. Pictured are Abel and Margo.

I WOULDN’T BE IN YOUR SHOES takes place in more solidly noir territory. Don Castle (pictured at left) and Elyse Knox are married dancers just getting by. One night, a frustrated Castle throws a tap shoe of his out the window to silence a yowling cat. The next morning, an old miserly neighbor is found dead outside, with Castle's shoe print in the mud next to him. Castle, not knowing about the murder, finds a wallet stuffed with cash and he and Knox decide to spend some of it. Unfortunately, the cash is all old bills that can easily be traced to the old man, and Castle is picked up for murder. Regis Toomey is a cop assigned to the case who has a bit of a crush on Knox—she calls him Santa Claus for all the little gifts he's brought her at the dance club. Castle is found guilty and has an execution date set. Desperate to clear Castle, Knox impulsively tells Toomey that she'll marry him if he can find evidence that will get Castle released. That's all I can say without spoilers. Christmas is a fairly small part of this movie, but if airing it on TCM's Noir Alley in December helps get it attention, that's fine with me. Don Castle was a busy B-lead in the 40s (LIGHTHOUSE, MADONNA OF THE DESERT) and he's very good here, even if he has little to do in the last half. Knox (leading lady of THE MUMMY'S TOMB) does a good job with what is mostly a one-note role as a desperate wife. Toomey, a very busy character actor, is surprisingly good as the cop who we come to realize is a little too obsessed with Knox for his own good. It's short and moves quickly and is based on a story by Cornell Woolrich who wrote the story Rear Window was based on. It's too late to watch these for this holiday, but if TCM runs them again next year, you should give them both a shot. [TCM]

MUCH ADO ABOUT CHRISTMAS (2021)

In London (which looks a lot like Bucharest where this was filmed), Haley Lloyd is the daughter of wealthy businesswoman Leona Lloyd, but she likes to stay out of the spotlight by running a charity organization called the Hope Chest which sells used and donated items. Meanwhile, Don, the head of the start-up ad agency Blue Skies, and his two best buddies/assistants, Claude and Ben, have snuck into a Lloyd Company event and managed to schedule an appointment to pitch a campaign for a perfume to Leona. This is a make-or-break deal for them and they're certain they've got a winner, but the obnoxious but handsome and more polished Niles is angling for the campaign, too. Haley is volunteering at the event and meets Claude (more shaggy/cute than handsome). She is charmed by him and, as she's manning a hot chocolate stand, she doesn't tell him her real identity, calling herself Haley Logan; she's tired of guys coming onto her because she comes from money and wants to see how things go with a guy who doesn't know her family baggage. Well, things go very well—he particularly likes how honest she is—until he snaps a cute candid shot of her sitting in the snow and adds it to an ad for the perfume campaign. When Leona sees it, she blows up thinking he was deliberately using her daughter to get the account; for his part, Claude feels used, and thinks of Haley as dishonest. Leona turns Blue Skies down, Claude breaks up with Haley, and the ad agency may not survive the debacle. But it’s Christmas, a time for miracles, especially in made-to-TV movies!

The publicity for this Great American Family movie promotes its connection to Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing to give this fairly average Christmas romance some cultural cachet. As in the play, there are mistaken assumptions causing problems. The names of the protagonists, Claude and Haley, are based on Claudio and Hero. A more direct tie to the play is the comic relief secondary romance between Ben (Benedict) and Haley's friend Beatrice (Beatrice). But you don't need to know Shakespeare to get what's going on here, which is just another variation on the crossed signals Christmas romance. Susie Abromeit as Haley is fine at first, but her alternating of smiles and grimaces got weary after a while; conversely, I didn't care for floppy-haired Torrance Coombs (Claude) at first, but he grew on me. Even better are James Rottger as Ben and Sakura Sykes as Beatrice. I would like to have seen their stories fleshed out more; it's implied that they had a past romance that fell apart, but it's not delved into. The Bucharest exteriors are gorgeous—it's nice to see a non-Canadian setting for a change. The Christmas trappings were also among the best I've seen in a holiday TV-move. The ad agency is called Blue Skies in the dialogue, but their in-office signage just says Blue Sky. Aside from the visual style, this was mostly just about average. [GAF]

JOUEUX NOEL (2023)

Mark (Brant Daugherty) is a star reporter, known as Moody Mark by his colleagues for his seriousness about his profession. Lea (Jaicy Elliot) is a copyeditor at the same paper who yearns to write her own feature story. She soon gets her chance (and I'm a little fuzzy on the details here, as this is a slightly more elaborate background story than usual for Hallmark, so bear with me). She is intrigued by an old painting in a local museum done by an anonymous French painter only known by "F," of a woman in the snow walking through a French Christmas market. At an antique store, Lea buys a music box which contains a sketch done in the same style as the painting, and pages from a journal by someone named Francois. The journal seems to tell a magical love story of F and a woman named Ana who met at a Christmas market in Rouen, France in the mid 50s. The painting is of Ana, but the last pages of the journal are missing, so Lea proposes to her editor, who is desperately searching for a lead holiday story, that she go to France to try and find out what happened to this couple. The editor says yes, but makes her pair up with Mark, who sees the story as beneath his talent. The two don't exactly hit it off—she's powered by instinct, whereas he privileges fact-gathering; she's green and he, as has been established, is moody. At their hotel, a charming little girl named Sophie starts to soften up Mark by telling him stories about magical Christmas gnomes, and Lea begins to see the advantages of using hard research to get her story. There is a legend that the Christmas market brings lovers together, and Lea hopes her story will bear that out. But as they track the movements of Francois and Ana through the village, their story becomes less magical. The trail leads to a church where the two were supposed to meet and elope, but Mark finds evidence that Ana stood Francois up, so Lea's big story winds up with an unhappy ending. At first, Mark hides this from Lea so as not to disappoint her, but when she finds out the truth, she feels angry and disrespected. Can any good come of this situation?

Hypocritical confession time. I often complain that Hallmark Christmas movies are all the same. This one is, as others I've reviewed recently, different (if not necessarily original) and my first reaction to it was negative. I am a big fan of the handsome Brant Daugherty who is unfailingly appealing and charming, but his romantic opposite, Jaicy Elliot, breaks the mold of the Christmas female lead: she is plump and short and plain-looking, and I'm a bit embarrassed to say that her physical qualities put me off at first. She seems more like the best friend than the heroine; her dialogue delivery is drab and monotone, and there is little chemistry between the two leads. But eventually, I came to realize that this might be part of the point of the movie. Romantic sparks, which usually start flying by the 15-minute mark, never really happened. Until the last 10 minutes, there is no real indication that these two will or should get together. When they do get together, it seems more like a lazy way to meet the genre expectations. If you approach it as a story not of romance but of mutual education (she learns about reporting, he learns that intuition can be useful), it works better. I found their eventual last-minute kiss to be unrealistic, in part because the requisite sparks never flew. Having said all that, I'd still recommend this. Daugherty is always welcome in my home; there is a minor random Black gay character (Michael Obiora) who is fun for the 2 minutes of screen time he has; the bulk of the film's exteriors appear to have been shot on location in France which adds to the atmosphere; the music box magically plays a nice role in the conclusion. Brant and his wife Kimberly wrote the script, which I think is better than the overall execution it gets, though as I noted above, the backstory, which is basically the McGuffin, is a little convoluted. Give it a chance—the parts start working together pretty well by the halfway point. [Hallmark]

A BILTMORE CHRISTMAS (2023)

In 1947, Harold Balaban's studio made a Christmas movie called "His Merry Wife!" In 2023, the studio, now run by Harold's grandson Michael, is about to remake it, but Lucy, the screenwriter (Bethany Joy Lenz), has given the new version a downbeat ending and Michael does not approve. Since the original movie was shot at the famous Biltmore estate in North Carolina, the boss decides to send Lucy there for a few days to soak up the atmosphere and get inspired. While on a tour of the main house, Lucy is enamored with a large hourglass that was used as a prop in the movie. At one point when Lucy is in the room by herself, the hourglass gets knocked over and Lucy finds herself transported to 1947 as the film is being shot. Pretending to be an extra, Lucy gets to know the stars: the debonair Claude Lancaster, the lovely Ava Hayward, and the handsome newcomer, Jack Huston (Kristoffer Polaha). Ava is hoping this will be a comeback for her after being declared box-office poison (Lucy knows it will) and Jack is hoping for a career boost (Lucy knows he gets good reviews but dies on Christmas of 1948). Lucy stays in the past for only one hour, and when the sands have run through the glass, she returns to 2023. With the help of an enthusiastic "Merry Wife" fan also staying at the Biltmore, Lucy decides to go back and forth in time (even appearing in a scene as an extra) and soon discovers that there was an alternate ending. While trying to find it, she accidentally breaks the hourglass and is stuck in the past until the propmaster can fix it. Finding herself falling in love with Jack, she starts to wonder if she really wants to go back.

This is one of the best Hallmark Christmas movies of the past few years, mostly because it's a little bit different from the model: there's a fantasy element, location shooting at the Biltmore, a bunch of clever movie references, and of course the presence of Polaha, one of the best members of the Hallmark repertory company. Fans of the classic Christmas movie The Bishop's Wife will love this as His Merry Wife, which we see black & white clips of, is based closely on that, with Polaha in the Cary Grant role of an angel—though he channels equal parts Grant and James Stewart, as there is at least one plot echo of It's a Wonderful Life. Polaha and Lenz are great together, and there's a strong supporting cast: Colton Little as Lancaster, Annabelle Borke as Hayward, Jonathan Frakes (Riker from the Star Trek universe) as the Biltmore manager, and Robert Picardo (the holographic doctor from the Star Trek universe) as Harold Balaban. There is a fun reference to Turner Classic Movies and the Criterion Channel. When Lucy's friend is worried that Lucy won't fit in in 1947, she replies, "I've seen His Girl Friday—I'll just throw around a lot of "busters" and "fellas." When Lucy poses in the past as an extra named Sandra, she says her last name is Bullock. The plot is perhaps a bit overstuffed with incident, leading to some minor plotholes (for example, I was a little confused by the rules of time travel via hourglass), but overall, this is quite enjoyable. Yay to Hallmark for their breaks from the norm (even the opening is different—no drone shot of a city, and the title doesn't appear until after the first scene). [Hallmark]

#XMAS (2022)

In a small town in Oregon, Jen runs Jen.uine, a design business specializing in clothing restoration. Needing some publicity and encouraged by her sister and business partner Ali, Jen enters a social media contest on the Hygge at Home podcast to find a hot new design influencer. With help from her incredibly handsome platonic best friend Max, a photographer, Jen and Ali make a video featuring a fake persona, claiming to have a husband (Max) and a new baby (Ali's new baby). The contest's judges, married couple Charlie and Zoe, choose her as one of the finalists and spring a surprise on her: they're coming to Oregon to spend a couple of days with her. Panicked, Jen gets Max and Ali to play along to present a picture of domestic bliss. Of course, things start to snowball from there: she gets thousands of new followers who want to see her life unfold; her mother, ecstatic that Jen has married her best friend, comes to spend Christmas with her; and long-buried feelings between Jen and Max, who briefly dated many years ago, come to the surface. But we soon learn that Jen isn't the only faker: Charlie and Zoe are secretly separated and contemplating a divorce. Will Christmas day bring happy endings for all? As Hallmark Christmas movies go, this is about par for the course. The pluses: it’s a fairly clever reworking of the classic film Christmas in Connecticut (with social media standing in for a magazine), right down to the borrowed baby; Brant Daugherty (Max, pictured) always improves a movie; the actress playing Ali, Anna Van Hooft, is a breath of fresh air and needs her own Christmas movie to shine in; the Hygge couple's plotline is good. The minuses: Clare Bowen (Jen) is a little disappointing, partly because she's too whiny and teary; the Christmas element is not highlighted enough—this could have been set at any time of year; the ending feels a bit rushed. This has a rating of 6 out of 10 on IMDb and that feels right. But Brant makes it worth watching. [Hallmark]

CATCH ME IF YOU CLAUS (2023)

If you can get past the dumb title, you’ll find a Hallmark Christmas movie that is somewhat original and a bit more ambitious than the average holiday romance. Its main premise, that Santa Claus is real and his handsome son is taking over the business, is not especially new, but it's carried off with more style than one might predict. Avery (Italia Ricci) is about to get her first chance at doing the weekend morning news at the Dayton channel where she works—the movie opens with a shot her apparently reading the local news on TV, but we discover really she's just practicing. When she gets home that night, she finds a hunky man who has apparently broken into her house. She thinks he's the 'Santa thief' who's been in the news lately, but he insists that he is Chris (Luke Macfarlane), the son of Santa, on his first solo Christmas Eve flight. She ties him up with surprisingly strong strings of Christmas lights (see picture at left) but slowly she comes to believe him and the two go off hunting for the real thief who has absconded with a jump drive that belongs to—well, it's just the MacGuffin that gives them an excuse to bond, and for her to break a big story about local political corruption that might lead to her getting a permanent spot on the news. The writing here is a notch above average, and the director (Bradley Walsh) even gets to show off some visual flair now and again. The supporting cast includes a helpful elf named Dylan, a villainous mayor, a best friend, an acting troupe having a midnight celebration in Dickens garb (with a 7-foot guy as Tiny Tim), and Chris' dad, and there is clever use of a light therapy mask (I didn’t know such a thing actually existed). I liked that there is no jealous conflict that rears its head at the 90 minute mark as is the norm for these films. Ricci and Macfarlane are good together, though Macfarlane is so hot, I'd forgive him anything—he seems to have kept the muscles he displayed last year in the feature film BROS. It’s all very cute and Hallmark should be rewarded for trying something a little different. [Hallmark]

WHERE ARE YOU, CHRISTMAS? (2023)

Addy works for a tech company and spends all her time creating Christmas content, the latest example of which is a Christmas Wish app with a ho-ho-ho-ing Santa who pops up on her phone daily. Ironically, her one time of year to get away from the holiday spirit is at Christmas which she spends in the Maldives. This year, however, her brother Connor asks her to come home for Christmas because he's going to propose to his longtime girlfriend Sienna in front of the whole family, so she agrees to postpone the tropical trip until the 26th. (Is that really a thing, proposing in front of the whole family??) She is upset by pressure from her mom to come home more often, and by her father's distant manner (he feels shut out of her life), and even some pressure after a sorta meet-cute with Hunter, an auto repair guy. She makes a wish by her Christmas wish app that there was no such thing as Christmas. Moments later, she's in a minor car accident and when Hunter stops to help her, she discovers that the whole world has gone black & white. She thinks it's a visual injury, but when she gets home, she realizes that her wish has come true: Christmas and all its trimmings are gone. Her mission now is to get people to remember Christmas by sparking holiday memories in them, at which point they turn back to color.

To its credit, Hallmark keeps trying slightly different things. The film is a cross between Pleasantville (mix of black & white and color) and It's a Wonderful Life, with some of the short story Christmas Every Day (or its opposite) sprinkled in. The mix of color with black & white is technically handled quite well and makes for enchanting moments when color comes seeping back into people and backgrounds. The characters, however, are plucked from the same templates as always: Addy (Lyndsy Fonesca) is the woman with big city business pressures, Hunter (Michael Rady) is the grounded small-town guy who works with his hands, and the parents are there to provide both conflict and support. Fonesca is fine though Rady seems to be a little burned out on holiday movies. The handsome Andrew David Bridges shines as the brother, and should get his own Hallmark lead role soon. My favorite moment is a meta-moment that is rare in Hallmark films: in the black & white town, Addy prods her mother to remember the Christmas movie marathons they used to sit through, and Mom replies that, no, it's New Year's movies that are all the rage, and they even start running them in June! [Hallmark]

ANGEL FALLS CHRISTMAS (2021)

Ally (Jessica Lowndes) is an ER doctor who has just gotten a big promotion to hospital administration, to start just after Christmas. Much loved by all in the ER, she is given a big farewell party, but she just can't quite let go, telling her best friend Dawn that she's looking to get an ER shift on Christmas Eve. Ally's not really a Christmas fan, but she's also forgotten that she told her longtime boyfriend Josh (David Reale), an ad man, that she'd spend the holiday with him and his parents. During a dinner at which Josh planned to ask her to marry him, their tensions spill out. He wishes she could see that there's more life than a job, and she wishes he could see that sometimes a job is more than just a job. They split up, but not before their respective wishes trigger magical auras around two angel decorations in the restaurant. Next thing we know, we meet Maureen (Jane Luk) and Gabe (Chad Michael Murray, pictured), two angels sent to help folks during the holiday season. Gabe is working as a barista at a coffee shop Ally frequents and soon the two are hitting it off like best buds as Gabe softens her heart toward the holiday. Similarly, Maureen gets a temp job with Josh's company and she gets him to see that maybe jobs can be fulfilling—the ad job pays well but he's always wanted to be a teacher. Soon, however, Gabe starts to fall for Ally and gives some thought to sticking around on earth, even though, as Maureen warns him, he'll lose his powers (the only supernatural power we see him exhibit is to stop the snow from falling to accommodate a wish of Ally's). But have no fear; everything turns out for the best by Christmas Eve.

Not all TV Christmas romance movies are created equal. Hallmark is still the gold standard, with Lifetime and Netflix sharing second place—what sets their movies apart from Hallmark's is a bit more diversity in casting (though Hallmark is catching up) and some occasional stretching beyond the norm in plotting. This movie was made for Great American Family, a cable network that has only recently entered the Christmas movie field, and based on this film, they are still struggling to find their niche. "Faith and family" is their slogan, which is coded language for, among other things, no premarital sex and no same-sex couples. This is an uncredited remake of the Cary Grant classic The Bishop's Wife (an angel comes to earth at Christmas to help someone through a crisis and is tempted by romantic feelings to give up his angel status). I have to start with Chad Michael Murray, because many of the reviewers on IMDb dislike his performance, calling it cold and robotic. He does indeed give an unusual performance, though it's not really robotic. He's playing a character who hasn’t felt human emotions in years and he's a little blindsided when he starts to fall in love. But I get why some viewers missed this—the character is underwritten and we get virtually no backstory for either of the angels. I liked Murray in this (though I think even he would admit that he's no Cary Grant) and Lowndes is fine as well, even if no real chemistry develops between them. The problem with Josh is also weak characterization and lack of chemistry with the leading lady. Honestly, I had a hard time caring who Ally wound up with, and I blame that more on the writers than the actors. There are some odd editing glitches that indicate a rush job in finishing things up. At one point, Ally orders a latte at a cash register and suddenly there’s almost a smash cut to her sitting down and being served. That’s shoddy work to me. Even the holiday set decorations feel second-rate. I give it points for trying something a little different plotwise, but ultimately it seems to have been beyond the reach of the filmmakers. [GAF]

BACKFIRE (1950)

At an Army hospital, Gordon MacRae (pictured) is undergoing a series of back surgeries. His buddy Edmond O'Brien comes to visit and talk about their plans to buy and run a ranch, but MacRae's nurse (Virginia Mayo) warns O'Brien that MacRae may not be up for physical labor for a long time. Later, around Christmas, MacRae undergoes his last surgery and expresses concern that he hasn't heard from O'Brien in a while. On Christmas Eve, a mysterious woman with a foreign accent enters his room, telling him that O'Brien is in bad shape and needs his help. Groggy from his pain meds, MacRae agrees to visit him, but the next day, the doctor, trying to calm MacRae down, suggests that the woman was a hallucination. He gets a telegram from O'Brien, saying he’s OK, but when he's released, MacRae discovers that O'Brien is the chief suspect in a murder case. The victim was a big-time gambler, and the two were supposedly fighting over $40,000. MacRae starts investigating in earnest, moving into a hotel room that O'Brien had been using and getting help from Mayo, now his girlfriend. Following a lead, MacRae winds up at a mortuary which is run by Dane Clark, an old Army buddy of both men who knew O'Brien as a washed-up boxer. As he keeps investigating, MacRae soon realizes that he may not have really known O'Brien all that well, but he keeps digging and soon places a mysterious gambler named Lou at the center of the circumstances that have O'Brien either in hiding or in captivity. Finally he meets up with his mysterious midnight visitor (Viveca Lindfors) and more of the puzzle pieces start to fall in place.

This unsung film noir, if not a masterpiece, is solidly entertaining. It pulls an interesting narrative trick as it seems in the beginning to be setting up O'Brien as the main character, until his vanishing act makes MacRae our focus. Much of the backstory is filled in via flashbacks as MacRae and Mayo investigate. I've never really been a big fan of MacRae’s (best known for musicals like Oklahoma! and Carousel) as he always seems a bit plastic, but he's good here, as are Mayo, O’Brien and Lindfors, and Ed Begley is fine as the police inspector on the case. But stealing the show, in a relatively small role, is Dane Clark (whose screen persona makes me think of him a B-movie or supporting-part John Garfield) who went on to a very busy TV career in the 60s and 70s. He is frequently the bright spot in an otherwise so-so film. This is better than so-so, but Clark is still a bright spot. I saw this as part of the Criterion Channel’s Holiday Noir lineup, and though I'm not sure this has enough holiday oomph for me to classify it as a Christmas movie, it does take place over the holidays. Recommended. [Criterion Channel]

BEGGARS IN ERMINE (1934)

Flint Dawson (Lionel Atwill), one of the head honchos of a steel company, tries to put the kibosh on a merger with another steel company that the board of directors wants to go through. He fears that the workers, most of whom own stock, will be harmed. Even though Flint is a manager, he still has lunch with the men on the construction sites and is a much beloved figure. One night, when Flint shows up to help the night shift workers, Joe, a crane operator who has just been reprimanded for drinking on the job, spills molten steel on Flint, who ends up losing both his legs. (Jim, Flint's associate, who is pro-merger, had subtly put the idea of revenge in Joe's mind, and after the accident, Joe falls to his death from the crane.) From his hospital bed, Flint gives his wife Vivian power of attorney and instructs her to vote against the merger. What he doesn't know is that Vivian is having an affair with Jim, so she sides with Jim in the vote, then takes off for England with Jim and her young daughter. The wheelchair-bound Flint winds up on the streets, selling business pamphlets, but when he meets Marchant, a blind beggar who plays the accordion for money, Flint gets an idea. The two start a movement to sort of unionize the city's beggars, trading their ability to spy on underworld figures for legit peddler's licenses, and getting the beggars to donate to a common pot to help each other out. Years later, Flint, who has been presumed missing or dead, returns to public life when Jim begins acting to cheat the workers out of their stock. 

By the last half-hour, this has become a very Capraesque story, looking forward to the plots and tones of movies like Meet John Doe and You Can't Take It With You, though to my mind, it doesn't match those movies in style (though it also mostly avoids the sappiness that some viewers associate with Frank Capra). Flint and his beggar buddies take action to stop Jim's devious plan, leading to a David vs. Goliath showdown and a moment that would probably not have gotten past the Production Code folks a few months later. There is a side plot romance between Flint's daughter (Betty Furness) and Jim's son (James Bush) but not a lot of screenwriting effort was put into that. Also, lest the specter of socialism raise its ugly head, it's made clear that all the down-and-out in Atwill's union are disabled—if you are of sound mind and body, you can't join up. The best thing about the movie is Lionel Atwill. Normally, he would play someone like the character of Jim here who may be respectable on the outside but villainous inside. Atwill is quite good in the role, and it's a bit of a shame that he rarely got to play a similar role. Recommended as something a little different, unless you are allergic to Capracorn. Pictured are Bush, Atwill and Furness. [TCM]

ARABESQUE (1966)

An Egyptologist named Ragheeb is getting his eyes examined by a substitute doctor named Sloan. Ragheeb is nervous, understandably, as it turns out that Sloan is no eye doctor—he kills Ragheeb, takes off the man's glasses, and finds a bit of microfilm hidden in the frame with a message in hieroglyphics. Sloan then approaches Prof. David Pollock (Gregory Peck), a hieroglyphics expert, asks him to meet with his boss, Arab shipping magnate Beshraavi. David declines, but is later shanghaied into a car by Arabian prime minister Hassan who asks him to go through with the meeting to find out what dastardly plan Beshraavi is up to. Beshraavi, living in a mansion owned by his mistress Yasmin (Sophia Loren), wants David to translate the hieroglyphic message. But Yasmin meets with David in secret and tells him she is sure the message is a deadly one, so David takes the message and 'abducts' Yasmin (who is appears to be being held a prisoner in her own home), beginning a wild chase involving assassination and betrayal and ambiguous identity. Many critics deride this film, a mid-career effort from Stanley Donen, as convoluted (I agree) and poorly acted (I disagree). It actually added to my enjoyment of the film to hear in the TCM introduction that the movie was written with Cary Grant in mind, and that Gregory Peck had doubts that he could pull off the mix of charming humor and deadly action. There are times when you can tell that a particular line would have been perfect for Grant ("If I could find my head, I'd go get it examined!") but Peck generally pulls it off well. The lovely Loren is also quite good as the woman who may or may not be a femme fatale. The supporting actors tend to get overshadowed by the heat of the leads; for the record, Alan Badel and John Merivale are fine as the chief villains. The movie is stylishly shot, like a lesser Hitchcock effort (though frankly, I'd rather sit through this again than the slogfest of the master's North By Northwest). My favorite exchange: Peck, to a cab driver: "Follow that car!"; the driver: "All my life I've been waiting for someone to say that." [TCM]

UNDERWORLD (1927)

Notorious criminal Bull Weed pulls off a bank robbery with the aid of explosives. A falling-down drunk is a witness and Bull takes him back to his hideout. It turns out the guy is a failed lawyer, and when Bull rescues him from being humiliated by Bull's rival, Buck Mulligan, he nicknames him Rolls Royce and brings him into his gang as a sort of valet. At the Dreamland Café, Rolls meets Feathers, Bull's moll. Rolls claims not to be interested in women, but a slow-burn attraction develops anyway. Rolls is soon taking an active part in planning Bull's activities, and one night, at the underworld's annual armistice ball (where all the crooks get along for a few hours), Buck tries to assault Feathers and Bull kills him. When Bull is sentenced to death, Rolls plans a breakout attempt, but Feathers thinks that Bull's death will give her and Rolls a new start together. In the meantime, on the eve of his scheduled hanging, Bull breaks out of prison, fueled by rumors he has heard about Rolls and Feathers, and is determined to get revenge. This silent crime melodrama is directed by Josef von Sternberg and is every bit as visually stunning as his 1930s sound films with Marlene Dietrich (THE SCARLET EMPRESS, MOROCCO. If it wasn't silent, it would feel like the first modern sound crime film, looking ahead to movies like SCARFACE and LITTLE CAESAR and beyond to film noir. The script was apparently based on the life of a real gangster. George Bancroft (Bull) and Clive Brook (Rolls) carry the movie with strong performances as what would become cliché characters—the tough guy gangster and the former straight-and-narrow fellow who gets sucked into the criminal world. Evelyn Brent is OK as Feathers. As other viewers have noted, the narrative is more about the romantic triangle relationship than crime, though you can't really call it a romance, and there is a certain psychological interest presented primarily in the character of Rolls, who is truly torn between his passion for Feathers and his loyalty to Bull. Memorable line, not of dialogue but of title-card narration during the gangsters' ball: "The brutal din of cheap music, booze, hate, lust, made a devil’s carnival." Pictured are Brent and Brook. [DVD]

WINE, WOMEN AND HORSES (1937)

Barton MacLane and Ann Sheridan are old racetrack gambling buddies. When his losses pile up, Sheridan offers to take him out for dinner—she seems to have a thing for him though he is oblivious to it. But he feels like he's hit bottom and he hops a train for the small town of Barrowville to make a new start. He befriends Dick Purcell, another down-on-his-luck gambler and helps Purcell make his rent, so Purcell talks his family into taking MacLane in as a boarder. Even though Purcell's sister (Peggy Bates) is against gambling, she falls for MacLane and turns aside her longtime boyfriend (Walter Cassell) to marry MacLane, who gets a legitimate but boring job as a night clerk at a fleabag hotel. Soon, bored with the job, he starts gambling again, and gets a job taking care of horses at a new racetrack in California. When he promises to stay away from betting, Peggy agrees to move out west with him, but temptation is too great (as is the lure of becoming friendly with Sheridan again) and when MacLane starts gambling, Peggy, newly pregnant, moves back to Barrowville. Eighteen months pass and MacLane, down on his luck again, passes through Barrowville. He discovers that Peggy's baby has died and, though she's never gotten a divorce, she's hooked back up with Cassell. MacLane sticks around, discovers that Purcell is indulging in illegal off-track gambling, and brings home an injured racehorse to nurse back to health. By this time, I had no idea what would constitute a happy ending here. I just knew that second-billed Ann Sheridan (though not as big a star as she would become in a couple of years) would show up again, though who MacLane would wind up was a toss-up. This B-melodrama has tragic-ish overtones but stays fairly light. Constant outlandish plot twists aside, the weakest thing about this is Barton MacLane. I can tolerate him in supporting roles as a cop or a gangster, but he doesn't have the looks or charisma for a lead role, especially opposite someone as lively as Ann Sheridan. Dick Purcell is more interesting here, but even he has a hard time holding interest. Despite the plot machinations, this winds up being pretty rough to get through. Pictured are MacLane and Sheridan. [TCM]