ferulebezel Reviews

Ezra (2023)

Good but not great.

[5/10 · 22 May 2024]

This feels like an autobiography even though it's not stated. It starts as a stock story of the hip underacheiving dad, Max, and his burgher Karen of an ex-wife ,Jenne, fighting over the care of their disabled kid, Ezra. In this case its autism. Naturally the ex-wife sides with officialdom believing the "experts" know what's best. This is the setup, back story, or whatever you want to call it. The editing is strange for this part. It felt like I was watching a trailer.

The movie really starts when the boy hears the ex-wife's burgher boyfriend joking about knowing a guy who will kill the Max. The kid hears this runs into the street and gets hit by a car, which brings in the bureaucrats with credentials. They want to send max to a day-institution and put him on anti-psychotics. Max punches the corrupt doctor who wants to drug Ezra. As a restult of this Max has to let them medicate Ezra and accept a long restraining order preventing him from seeing Ezra or do time to which Max capitulates to his almost immediate regret,

This is where Max takes on a road trip where Ezras symptoms are mitigated through several interactions with normal people, normal meaning not the credentialed know-it-alls who actually only know procedures. The road trip ends with the FBI, of which one of the agents which looks like Suella Braverman, arriving to arrest Max and take Ezra who knows where. This involves more mitigation of Ezra's symptoms but how the confrontation is resolved isn't shown, we only see the results. I don't know what the story teller's analogous term to the physical modeler's term "nernies" is, but but this movie had a few good ones.

I didn't recognize much of the cast. Rainn Wilson is in it and I don't even know why I know who he is. I'd seen the guy who played Max in something. Whoopie Goldberg and Robert De Niro were both in it playing the same types they always play in peripheral roles in this case.

The kid who played Ezra was great. I don't know if he is a real autist who managed to do movie work or if he is a normal kid, or as normal as a child actor can be, who's just really good at acting.

The Rage of Paris (1938)

There's nothing memorable abou this movie.

[3/10 · 3 June 2023]

What can you say about a movie that has so little to offer that you got so distracted that you don't remember anything but the unusual lack of humor from Mischa Auer, or the older comic relief woman not being funny,

I really like Douglas Fairbanks Jr. When he's not buclking swash. He still hasn't topped his performances in Union Depot or Little Cesar.

The rest of the cast are complete ciphers.

Now I have 200 characters to use up. The sets were OK. It's hard to go wrong with DECO, especially back when it was just "new furniture". There's something about women's clothes of the early 30s that is lacking here. I have no idea what it is.

Outcast (1937)

What exective did Warren William Piss Off?

[4/10 · 24 September 2022]

I've never been A Warren William Fan. I was first exposed to him in a number of bad guy roles and since almost all men had the same moustache then I've come to see him as the evil Melvyn Douglas. Even when he plays the good guy he is too stiff and leading man handsome to be wholly believable but at least he was is mostly good movies. Either he was under contract and pissed off some higher up or he lost a bet. Whatever the case I can't believe he was happy to be in this rehash of ground so recently trodden upon by such movies as Fury, You Only Live Once, and They Won't Forget. Once again I find myself faced with the question of crappy original production values or crappy surviving print and not knowing the answer. I suspect the former given that the rest of the cast are journeyman actors and nothing more and the audio is noisy as hell. I'd recommend skipping this one for a rerun of The Facts of Life.

Becky Sharp (1935)

My First Disapointment in Miriam Hoplins

[6/10 · 4 September 2022]

A Star is Born (1937) got me interested in early three strip Technicolor. This movie killed it. I never thought I would abandon a Miriam Hopkins movie. I can't help but chalk this one up to bad direction or a bad script. Since they were all hamming it up I can't help but think it was the former....{later} I only paused it. It turns out the hamming was partially Becky manipulating the swells. It's dialed back for the rest of the movie, not enough to not be noticed but enough to make finishing the movie doable. Becky is a scheming social climber trope. Similar to Lizzie Bennet, Scarlet O'Hara, Lilly Powers, and Stella Dallas. Only they never managed to make her sympathetic like they did Stella Dallas. I guess sometimes the other elements in a movie are so bad that even Miriam Hopkins can't save it.

The Age of Innocence (1934)

Jean Artunr was not playing to her strenths.

[5/10 · 28 August 2022]

I'm used to seeing Jean Arthur as a rom-com girl, playing girls in their 20s when she was close to 40 and pulling it off. Her evil husband was played by a guy who I've only seen play guys on the edge of evil in Frankenstein and Mad Love. The rest of the cast I didn't recognize. It was heading towards being a tragic love story until Jean Athur argued that they should just let another man die in place of her love interest, who may be guilty, so they can go on, At that point her irrevocably character sank in my esteem. They didn't show her love interest argue against it but thy didn't follow through with it. I won't spoil the rest. I didn't like visuals, especially the ham handed cuts to closeup reaction shots. It reminds me of video games for dumb people with big flashing arrows telling you to "shoot here". I'd skip it.

Easy Living (1937)

How have I never heard of this one?

[8/10 · 12 August 2022]

{Available on Youtube as of this writing, and a good print too.} I'm amazed I've never heard of this one. I'm also amazed at how often Jean Arthur play so much younger than she actually was and got away with it. The plot is standard charming thirties style rom-com fare. I'd seen hints of Edward Arnold's comedy abilities in one of my Riskin/Capra binges with You Can't Take it With You. I guess it was just bad direction or writing that let him down in Roman Scandals. The only other actors I recognized were Franklin Pangborn playing his usual stuffy character, the woman who played the secretary in Crime Without Passion and the guy who played Uncle Charlie in My Three Sons and a jerk cop in a Charlie Chan movie set in L. A.. The writer's name rang a bell too, Preston Sturgis. This one's a you should definitely see.

The Good Earth (1937)

Not my style of story.

[6/10 · 12 August 2022]

It's disconcerting seeing a bunch of obvious non-Asians playing in Asian roles, especially Walter Connolly since he had such a distinctive voice making it impossible to look the other way. One or two is tolerable but the whole principle cast is too much. I think it's neat that Phillip Ahn and Keye Luke were both in this and in Kung Fu though.

I don't like these family chronicle stories. This one is a slice of life of some Chinese peasants in, I'm guessing, 1900ish to 1920ish. People meet, stuff happens, story ends. I much prefer a more conventional plot structure, where the conflict is set out in the beginning and we get to see it resolved, one way or another. The fact that it lacks that pretty much puts a cap on how much I'm going to like it, no matter how good the other aspects of it are.

Two Wise Maids (1937)

I'm nut used to movies of which I've not heard having this high a rating and actually being good.

[8/10 · 30 July 2022]

It's now a tired trope. A teacher is unappreciated, being forced out or quitting finds him/herself encouraged by past students. Perhaps this movie started the trope.

Amazingly I've never heard of any of the cast. It was a minor studio. The production values were pretty low. The acting wasn't always the best, Yet it was a very good movie.

The version I saw was about 15 minutes short and the audio was pretty noisy. I don't know if this is just because it is a crappy last surviving print or if they didn't spend on quality equipment or film stock.

Despite it's shortcomings it's a melodrama worth watching.

Captains Courageous (1937)

Spencer Trace is so much better than the tough guys he usually plays.

[8/10 · 23 June 2022]

I've long been an advocate of movie before book. One is rarely disappointed that way. A novel which takes a day or two to read or several to have read to you is going to have more and richer detail than a 1.5 to 2 hour movie. There is no escaping that. However I can't see Kipling creating a father like the one portrayed by Melvyn Douglas. I might have to read it. I always find in jarring at first how casual they were with accents in these early movies, in this case how such an obviously American sounding man had such a British sounding Child. Otherwise its a fairly standard story about how a spoiled rich kid suddenly has to earn his keep when thrown in with a bunch of proles and develops some character and his father realizes how he failed him. It seems that Spencer Tracey's best work was in his early career. It's definitely worth a watch.

Flash Gordon (1936)

Fun Guilty Pleasure

[7/10 · 10 June 2022]

Bad dialog, bad effects, bad consumes, bad fight choreography, bad music, bad acting, and a bad plot. Somehow it's still huge fun. I think it might just be a relief from all the heavy handed message sci-fi we're fed now days.

Lloyd's of London (1936)

Dollar Store Dickens.

[5/10 · 10 June 2022]

A boy grows to manhood waiting tables in the cafe that becomes Lloyds of London. He learns the value of being honest and forthright in the insurance business. Not long after this I stopped watching.

Gold Diggers in Paris (1938)

Usual terrible Gold Diggers of whatever without the dance numbers.

[5/10 · 29 May 2022]

One doesn't watch the Gold Diggers of ??? Movies for the plots. They're just there for the Busby Berkely numbers. The problem is that they seemed like a step backwards. The great Berkely numbers weren't about the dancing but seeing a bunch of pretty girls executing complex marching band formations.

Absolutely Anything (2015)

An unacknowledged remake of The Man Who Could Work Miracles.

[2/10 · 16 May 2022]

It's one of those rare instances of the remake being better than the original, but not by enough to justify actually doing it. The ancient gods are aliens and the travails of the man are different but the central conceit is the same, humanity being tried on the actions of one man being given magical powers. The producers owe the H. G. Wells estate and/or the original production company some licensing fees.

They also threw in some Monkey's Fist elements. At least in this case we're saved the preachiness of H. G. Wells and the ending was different than the original.

As long as they're doing pointless remakes of movies with Roland Young, Simon Pegg is probably around the right age to play Topper.

The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936)

It beats watching paint dry.

[6/10 · 8 May 2022]

This is typical H. G. Wells patchiness. I wonder if he is where Roddenberry got it. The patchiness ruined the story. That, and it was just a variation of the Monkey's Fist parable.

What saved it was the effects, which were excellent for the time, especially when one considers the other physical aspects of the filming. The sound was noisy and the film grainy, which seems to be an issue with most British films of the era.

Camille (1936)

Not worth finishing.

[5/10 · 8 April 2022]

It's probably because Garbo was such an emotionless Scandinavian. I'll never understand why she was popular. Here are some superfluous words. As Mischa Auer said in You can't take it with you. It stinks.

Heavy Metal (1981)

It's great if you're a teenage boy...

[4/10 · 23 January 2022]

....and that's when I first saw it in the theater and thought it was an "adult" cartoon. If you like stories about the super duper tough guy who has hot naked women throwing themselves at him it's for you. Don't look for the characters to go through a struggle and grow.

Heroes for Sale (1933)

Too many themes in a single movie

[6/10 · 18 September 2021]

It starts with a WWI scene where a guy freezes in a bomb crater while his comrade does the difficult part of the mission mission, gets shot and the first guy finishes the mission to all kinds of accolades and promotions. He tries to refuse them but is accused of showing false modesty. At the end of the war he meets the one who did the difficult part of the mission on the boat home and is forgiven. Right there is a premise for a whole movie. Instead they had to add in a vignette about opium addiction, another premise for whole movie, but it resolved and dropped in a few cuts of medical records.

It eventually degenerates to a high school edgyboi's critique of economic freedom. The only saving grace of this part is the leftie who abandons his principles as soon as he gets some wealth and power. I could see him wearing "Tax the Rich" regalia to a Met Gala type event.

Nevertheless it's not terrible. It's better than average but not by much. I used to think of movie making as a series of stages where each one could only make it as good as the previous one, a good editor couldn't make a good movie from a poorly shot one, a good director couldn't shoot a good movie from bad writing. Well, William Wellman proved me wrong before my parents were even born, another simple paradigm shot to hell. I'm amazed at how many movies of this era had Ward Bond in them, speaking and uncredited. There has to be some juicy gossip behind that.

The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936)

Don't know how historically accurate it is and I don't care.

[10/10 · 22 August 2021]

This movie has all the tropes of the genius scientist tropes and they are listed on TV tropes. Tropes are tropes because they are proven good storytelling. After having only seen Paul Muni as tough guys in Angels with Dirty Faces and Scarface. I am truly surprised that he got the Oscar because I'm used to them going to 'stars' who play the same guy repeatedly and not real actors. Warning. This is one of those movies that will make your hay fever act up.

Der blaue Engel (1930)

Good for...

[3/10 · 19 August 2021]

I frequently find myself torn between rating something simply for what's in front of me or for what it could have been with better resources and more experience from the creators. I saw the "English" version which means I saw the version where they re-shot, in English, parts where the dialog was necessary to move the plot along and not just for conveying nuances of feeling. This was probably a matter of schedule and budget.

It's from 1930 when everyone was a beginner in making movies with sound and it shows. The opening and closing of doors controlled a binary representation of the sound from the other room. The ordinary sounds of the action are either too pronounced or absent. I guess Foley artistry hadn't been mastered yet.

The first half of the story is a light comedy and the second is a tragedy. Both are very well written and acted although some of the extreme makeup and hammed up facial expressions from the silent are persist in parts.

The physical quality of the images is pretty poor. I don't know if it is the ravages of time on the prints or bad lighting and processing to begin with.

It reminded me of Breakfast At Tiffany's. Both show the wreckage the Manic Pixie Dream Girl leaves in her wake.

If they had better technology and were better at using what they had I would have given it an 8 instead of a 6.

Seven Days Leave (1930)

I don't have much to add.

[6/10 · 17 August 2021]

I don't disagree in any substantial way with the other reviewers. I only wish they had separate ratings for the physical quality in which this one fares poorly. I don't know if it was a low budget production. The print I saw was a bad copy or if all the surviving prints are bad and this was the best of them.

Were it not for the sound and images that went from being too dark to washed out I'd have given it an 8.

The Mad Parade (1931)

The Whole Might Have Been Good but It's not Likely.

[3/10 · 14 August 2021]

These women are written like men and that makes them unbelievable. A couple of them might as well have been Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney in drag. I don't know of what I saw was the from the only surviving print that has decayed and been worn or if it was a low budget production. The audio quality is especially poor but this is from a time when competing technologies offered different levels of quality so again I don't know if it was a bad artistic choice or just limitations of budget or access to technology. It's only an hour long so I'm assuming that parts are lost.

I don't know if I've ever seen a movie where the only men are off screen voices but this is the first of which I'm aware.

A better and complete print might move this to above average stars.