Reviews

I found this a very enjoyable early crime drama. Students of the genre will want to compare this to "Little Caesar" and/or "The Front Page". Transitions within scenes and from one scene to another flow better in "The Racket" than in many other silent films.

I agree with earlier comments about the new scoring. There is too much brass and too much forte.

The film itself is about 83 minutes long, much longer than we thought during the 76 years that it was out of circulation. The restoration job on the film is one of the best that I have seen, especially for a film as old as this one is. I hope it is released soon on DVD.

This short film won an Academy Award for best animated short. It consists of a series of animated reproductions of major art works, primarily from the 20th century, and has an unusual technique for moving from one picture to another. I have been to most of the world's major art galleries. While I am certainly not an art historian, I was able to recognize a majority of the artists and the works portrayed. I was not able to recognize all of them, and I wish they had been labeled.

I recommend this film to anyone studying art or art history for a different twist on the subject matter. The movie is available on VHS from pyramid media, and it is overpriced.

Animation changed greatly after the major studios (Warner Brothers, Disney, MGM, etc.) stopped producing their own animated works. This 30 minute short is one of the best of the period since the major studios regularly produced animated shorts based on cels.

This 30 minute, Oscar-winning production of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is an animated portrayal of a French "Johnny Appleseed", who did his work among the turmoil of World War I. Both men, Johnny Appleseed and Elzear Bouffier, the subject of this film, were real men who appreciated the importance of trees on the land.

This film is not widely available. Videotapes can be ordered from Direct Cinema in Harriman, New York.

This is an Oscar-winning short with an unusual and unexpected ending. Even without the ending, it is a film worth watching. I find it very similar to the scenes in "To Fly!" (1976) where a man soars in a balloon over the countryside of the Eastern U.S. However, in Up, you are soaring over the Western U.S. using a different and more modern means of transport. The views are those that you simply cannot get from ground level allow you to float like a very high-flying butterfly or, more appropriately, a high flying bird. I recommend this movie for its scenic views, although the ending can be a basis for discussion. Pyramid Media offers this for sale and rent. Unlike many of the films they distribute, this one has a somewhat reasonable price.

This is a difficult film for me to review, and I did not appreciate it at first. Most of the movie seems like a documentary and it is not until the end that you realize this is a regular short drama instead. The unusual aspect is that most of the actors and actresses are obviously severely mentally retarded in their real lives. It is not an enjoyable film per se; however, once you recognize that it is not a documentary, you recognize the true value and merit of the film. It must have been an unusual challenge to produce and direct this work, and that is probably why it received an Oscar. Board and Care is difficult to locate, but it is available from Pyramid Media.

If you do not like classical music, avoid this film like the plague. If you do like this music, you should try and obtain a copy - it is available from Pyramid Media. I believe that it should be mandatory viewing for any high school or university student in an orchestra.

The first part of the film consists of short conversations with Maestro Zubin Mehta and members of his orchestra concerning Bolero. This gives insights into how various instruments and sections of the orchestra work together on Ravel's famous masterpiece. The second part consists of the orchestra performing the work. The close-ups of various members gives you a view that simply cannot be seen in a concert hall. This is absolutely one of the best short films I have ever seen, and it fully deserved the Oscar that it won.

This provides a somewhat interesting glimpse of prosperous urban life in the 1920s. Films are always a partial reflection of the era when it was produced, and this is certainly the case here - it did receive an award from the Catholic Church, and I understand why the pre-Vatican II Church liked it. According to Susan Sacket in "Box Office Hits", it was the fourth most popular film of 1950; however, it does not pass the test of time. I can not understand why it did so well at the box office. There is no real plot. Instead, it is more a collection of short incidents from a period in the life of a well-to-do family with ten children. While somewhat enjoyable, it is does not stand out in any way, and I found that my mind wandered frequently, especially toward the end of the film.

I had not seen this short before, and it is an overlooked gem. The short is based on the nursery rhyme about the three little kittens who lost their mittens. Their mother sends them to their rooms without dinner. From there, they sail on to the milky way for plenty of milk and other dairy products. Unlike some of cartoons of the era, it is easy to understand the voices of the "characters" and the technicolor hues are still vivid. Walt Disney won the Oscar for Short Subject (Cartoon) for the first eight years it was awarded (1932-39); this cartoon broke his streak and is clearly one of the best cartoons of the era. I saw it on Turner Classic Movies during the annual "31 Days of Oscar" broadcast. Hopefully, it will be distributed on DVD in the near future.

This film won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short in 1945, and I believe it is the worst film ever nominated for an Oscar. This was a War Department film produced for our occupation troops in Germany, at a time when they were not allowed to even speak to a German. The premise is that there are still thousands (millions?) of Nazis out in the population, and we must keep them from letting another Hitler lead Germany. With a message like that for our troops, it's a wonder that the(West)Germans were our allies in the cold war. The film is available on videotape, under the title "Your Job in Germany", from International Historic Films in Chicago and is very rarely shown on Turner Classic Movies..

This is a predictable film in the Crime Does Not Pay series produced by MGM during the gangster era. It deals with insurance scams, and the word "torture" in the title is not very descriptive. The movie won an Oscar for best 2-reel short, and it is one of the better shorts in the MGM series. Still, I only gave it a 7 because it doesn't really stand out in any way.

This is a feel-good short about a teacher in a one-room school. I have no idea why it won an Oscar (one reel short). Maybe it was lack of competition. There is nothing really wrong with the film, but nothing terribly right with it either. I saw this on TCM during the "31 Days of Oscar" series. It will almost certainly be shown on TCM at least once in February in future years.

This is a predictable short of the "Crime Does Not Pay" series. No surprises, but it does hold one's interest for the 15-20 minutes of the film. It also provides an historical perspective for our current consumer protection laws. This short is broadcast occasionally on TCM.