Movies

[Rusty]

32 - White Shadows in the South Seas - 7.5/10 - A decent film from the late 1920s where a doctor who dislikes how many of the white men treat the natives in Polynesia is set adrift on a boat in a storm. He is shipwrecked on a previously undiscovered island and befriends the natives. He also finds love.


33 - Night Train to Munich - 8/10 - A scientist and his daughter escape to England just before England enters the war. They are captured by the Nazis and smuggled to Germany. A British spy tries to get them back out again. A pretty nice drama from 1940.

[Rusty]

34 - To Be or Not to Be - 8.5/10 - A polish acting troupe goes through a lot of shenanigans to try and avoid trouble from the Nazis and escape to England after Germany invades Poland. Lots of madcap fun with Jack Benny and Carole Lombard.

[Rusty]

35 - The Little Fugitive - 7.5/10 - A woman has to go off to visit a sick relative for the day, leaving her 12 year old son in charge of his little brother. When the older brother and his friends play a prank that makes the younger boy think he killed his older brother, the younger boy runs away to Coney Island where he spends the day playing games and riding rides. It was pretty good.


36 - Way Out West - 7.5/10 - Laurel and Hardy travel to an old Western town to deliver the deed to a gold mine to a young woman whose uncle died. They are met with a couple of chiselers who try to steal the deed from them. Plenty of humor and physical comedy.


37 - Bye Bye Birdie - 8/10 - I enjoyed this film version of the musical inspired by Elvis Presley getting drafted.

[Rusty]

38 - Alita: Battle Angel - 8.5/10 - I thought they did a really nice job adapting the manga. The visuals were great and the story was good. Hopefully it does well enough to get sequels so that they can continue the adaptation.


39 - 55 Days at Peking - 7/10 - A somewhat lackluster epic featuring Charlton Heston about the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900 where a movement to expel foreigners from China led to a 55 day siege of foreign troops.


40 - Our Dancing Daughters - 7/10 - Joan Crawford and Johnny Mack Brown are two of the stars from this late silent era film. Crawford plays a young woman named Diana who is pretty shy and decent. She falls in love with Ben (played by Brown), a rich former high school football player. He loves her as well, but falls for the fake charms of Ann, a member of Diana''s circle of friends. Diana cheats on Ben consistently and he eventually catches on and regrets his rejection of Diana. It was a decent film.

[Rusty]

41 - Fury - 8.5/10 - A man is driving through a small town on his way to meet his fiance when he is arrested for suspicion in a kidnapping case. A mob storms and destroys the jail in an attempt to kill the man. The people responsible were caught on film and are brought to trial. Unbeknownst to them, the man escaped during the chaos and is staying in hiding hoping to get his revenge. A very nice movie starring Spencer Tracy.


42 - Libel - 8.5/10 - Sir Mark Lawdon is a British Baronet who was captured at Dunkirk and escaped from a German camp in 1945. The war had an effect on his memory. A Canadian man who was with him in the prison sees an interview on tv years later and is convinced that the man is an imposter, a man named Frank Welney who was a fellow prisoner and one who looked much like Mark. A libel trial follows with a variety of evidence provided. It was very well done.


43 - Khartoum - 7/10 - Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier star in this movie about a rebellion against British rule in the Sudan in the 1880s. It was beautifully shot, but rather dull.

[Rusty]

44 - Gunfight at the O.K. Corral - 7.5/10 - A pretty decent fictionalized portrayal of the famous incident in Tombstone, Arizona in 1881 along with events leading up to the gun battle.

[Rusty]

45 - Day of the Dolphin - 7/10 - A scientist has raised a dolphin from just after it was born and the dolphin has learned to speak and understand limited English. Bad guys steal the dolphin in a plot to destroy the Presidential yacht. A decent thriller.

[Rusty]

46 - The Rains Came - 7/10 - In India during monsoon season in the 1930s a great storm arrives and unleashes a lot of devastation which is followed by a plague. Good special effects but kind of a dull story.

[Rusty]

47 - Mission Impossible: Fallout - 8.5/10 - Ethan Hunt and his crew are searching for three stolen plutonium cores. They are saddled with an agent from another agency. Plenty of double crosses, twists and turns and action as expected in another entertaining entry in the series.


48 - Equalizer 2 - 8/10 - We get to see McCall in action in a variety of contexts. He saves a kidnapped girl, interacts with a young man who may end up in a gang, acts as a lyft driver and plenty more. I thought it was just as good as the first movie.

[Rusty]

49 - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom - 7/10 - The plot was pretty flimsy and it wasn't as good as the last one in the series, but it was still entertaining enough with plenty of spectacle.

[Rusty]

50 - The Doorway to Hell - 7/10 - A decent pre-code crime drama starring Lew Ayres with James Cagney as his best friend.


51 - The Young Lions - 7.5/10 - A World War II movie starring Marlon Brando as a German ski instructor who becomes a lieutenant in the German army, but has reservations about it and Montgomery Clift as a Jewish American soldier who is subjected to anti-semitism and abuse during basic training. Their paths don't cross until the end of the film. Overall, it was a pretty good movie. A bit slow moving, but good.

[Rusty]

52 - They Were Expendable - 8/10 - This film came out just after WWII ended and features the Battle of Bataan in the Philippines toward the beginning of the war from the viewpoint of PT boat crews. It stars Robert Montgomery, John Wayne and Donna Reed and is pretty well done.


53 - The Happytime Murders - 6.5/10 - A somewhat predictable movie where the cast of an old puppet tv show are being killed off one by one. The tagline "No Sesame, all Street" was pretty accurate. I enjoyed the movie, though it isn't great by any means.


54 - Hotel Artemis - 7/10 - Jodie Foster plays a nurse who operates a secret hospital for criminals in a near future LA. Dave Bautista plays her orderly/bouncer. It was a decent movie with plenty of action.

[Rusty]

55 - The Narrow Margin (1952) - 8.5/10 - A police detective tries to get the wife of a dead mobster to Los Angeles by train and keep her safe from the killers on the train who are gunning for her. It was pretty well done and entertaining.


56 - Destination Moon - 7/10 - An attempt by private enterprise to build a rocketship to the moon. They tried to be pretty accurate with the science and included a lot of scientific facts in the film, though the final result was a bit dull. The Woody Woodpecker cartoon that was included was pretty funny.


57 - Marooned - 7/10 - Three astronauts are stuck in orbit when their engines don't work when they try to return home. A somewhat clunky drama with decent special effects, though overall it was okay.


58 - The Walls of Malapaga - 7.5/10 - After killing his mistress, Pierre stows away on a ship and ends up in Italy. He is robbed soon after arriving, but is befriended by a young girl (Cecchina) and her mother (Marta). Pierre and Marta fall in love, but their time together is fleeting as the police are on his trail. It was a good film, but the print was pretty bad.

[Rusty]

59 - Ralph Breaks the Internet - 8/10 - This was just as much fun the second time around.


60 - Flight Commander (aka The Dawn Patrol) - 7/10 - British pilots during the World War I live a dangerous life as they battle the German. The movie had some nice aerial sequences, but I found the overall acting a bit dull.


61 - The Harder They Fall - 8/10 - Humphrey Bogart stars as an out of work sportswriter who is hired by the mob to help promote a large foreign boxer who is new to the country and while large and strong, has no real boxing talent. The fix is in and the mob helps him move up in the ranks to get a title shot. A pretty nice drama based in part on real events from the 1930s.

[Rusty]

62 - Them (1954) - 7/10 - Giant mutant ants become a big problem in New Mexico after atomic testing. It was okay.


63 - There Goes My Heart - 7/10 - A romantic comedy about an heiress who runs away from her grandfather and ends up getting a job in his department store. She becomes involved with a reporter who is trying to track her down for a story. I thought it was a fun movie.


64 - Topper Takes a Trip - 6.5/10 - The sequel to Topper sees Topper's wife go off to Europe with another man. Topper goes after her with the aid of the ghostly Kerbys. This wasn't really all that great, though it had its moments.