The Battle of the River Plate. Michael Powell. 1956.

I got a box set of Powell/Pressburger movies, and… this is one of those movies. I’ve seen a handful of them, and they’re wildly uneven. They’re a Weird Mob has to be seen to be believed (but don’t), but then there’s the big classics.

This film is very them. It’s a grand spectacle with a cast of thousands. Well. Dozens. It’s all about chasing a German war ship around, and as usual, they portray the Germans in a pretty positive light. I mean, for murdering bastards.

But it could definitely have had more like interest. It feels a bit like that Mob movie I mentioned: It’s supposed to appeal to a very specific segment of the public, and beyond that there’s not much here.

It’s pretty, though, even if there’s way too many scenes on sound stages pretending to be at sea.

Glorifying the American Girl. Millard Webb. 1929.

This is yet another public domain movie from that box set I bought. I’m kinda sorta trying to get through them all to make room for other old movies on my schedule.

It makes no sense, I know.

Oh, wow, this is from 1929. It had to be part of the first wave of talkies. I wouldn’t have guessed: It seems to natural, as if they’d make making talkies for years. I would have guessed that this was from at least five years later just based on the audio quality and how natural the actors seem.

That said, this isn’t a very thrilling movie. It’s got some good dance routines and some passable music, but the funny bits aren’t funny enough.

This is based on a Florenz Ziegfeld (he of the Follies) stage production? Hm, no, it just features a lot of his players.

“I’ve got all my relatives out there. And a few gentiles as well.”

That’s a 1929 joke.

The movie goes totally off the rails for the last fifteen minutes when a totally unrelated skit about buying a suit is spliced in. It’s the funniest bit in the movie, but it has nothing to do with anything. Very odd. Was this really in the movie or did the people who put this DVD together just put in a random short?

The Goonies. Richard Donner. 1985.

I bought a blu-ray of Gremlins, and this movie was included. It’s not something I would have considered (re-)watching: I just barely vaguely remember watching it as a teenager and (I think) feeling that it was the lamest thing ever.

But when I’m watching it now, I think… that’s it’s super-lame.

It’s offensively lame. There’s so much shouting. So much drama. So many lines that are meant to be jokes that barely register as such.

There’s some good points. The kids are good. Did all of them go on to become stars? Let’s see… Sean Astin: Check. Josh Brolin: Check. Corey Feldman: Er… I don’t know how to categorise him. Jeff Cohen: No. Ke Huy Quan: I guess not.

That’s a pretty good percentage, though. Let’s call it 50%.

And Anne Ramsey is iconic.

Perhaps I should give it props for having pretty ugly cinematography and design work. I mean, real: The dirt looks dirty, the neighbourhoods looks muddy, and some of the actors’ hair moves.

Exactly:

It’s a charmless exercise: director Richard Donner turns the kids into shrieking ferrets

And it’s a bit on the racist side? But the main problem is that it’s tedious and annoying.

Right:

While I did manage to catch bits and pieces over the years (namely the opening of the film), it wasn’t until college that I got introduced to the film in its entirety. And, as many fans often do, it was pitched to me as “the greatest movie ever made!” So I sat there, baffled for 114 minutes that my friends – folks I know well and respect – were so taken by such a boring, surprisingly dull little movie. Even after the film had ended my friends couldn’t really tell me what they liked about the movie. They just…liked it. In fact, all they could do was agree that most of the film was pretty weak.

The first four hours of this movie were pretty annoying, but the last seventeen hours were a bit more exciting. But it’s pretty charmless. Perhaps you have to be twelve to enjoy this.