Star Reporter (1939), Howard Bretherton.

Sleazy criminal defense lawyer and crook go gut to gut.  Medium shots abound in this one.

A total misfire!  Titular young reporter is colossally clued out, leading to the greatest case of onscreen dramatic irony not counting any Three's Company episode.  How ironic, because the criminal whose case he is covering is in fact his long-lost father!  As they say in Mad Magazine: Blechh!  

A Serious Man (2009), Ethan and Joel Coen.

Is this about F-troop?

I couldn't pull my eyes away from the screen when I, along with about four other people, was watching it a couple weeks ago.  So much gaudy detail and fabulous colours. 

But not a perfect film.   Larry Gopnik, the central protagonist in search of the meaning of life, is too much of a cipher to compel us to sympathize with him.  He the inverse of Tarantino's The Bear Jew: he can't get mad.  He's a gawky physics teacher who writes formulas on the black board in herky jerky chicken scratch with his ass thrust out.  He takes us right back to the stereotype of male Jew as spineless schmo.  But worse in terms of storytelling, he's almost unreadable.  During the film, he doesn't have any real conversation with his kids or his alienated wife, or colleagues or anyone.  Who is this guy?  What the hell does he think of everything going on around him?  What we do know is that his life is falling apart and he is deeply driven to understand "why me"?  But if Job was a boring dipshit, would we care?

Phenix City Story (1955), Phil Karlson.

Surely taught in all the Film 101 classes.  Another one that steals its visual approach from the documentary still photography found in Life, Look and Time Magazine.  Tells the story of a lawless town located in Alabama, next to an army base, ruled by VICE:  girls, gambling, dope, violence.  Locals try to clean the town up, but face increasingly terrifying tactics from whoever is profiting (an interesting reference is made that implies the local toughs are only running the show for fatter, unseen cats).  Based on fact.  The leads are very strong and well-acted.  How unfortunate that the pristine heroes portrayed here in fiction later in reality advocated for segregation and resisted all progress in the civil rights movement. 

Director Karlson has a diploma from the world of B-movies, having worked on many Monogram pictures.

Body and Soul (1947), Robert Rossen.

Ugh.  Flashbacks, montages, cliches ...  John Garfield is a beloved movie lefty of mine but story-wise this one reeks.

But it's visually interesting.  Boxing scenes, both in the ring and in the locker room, have a contemporary photojournalistic quality: high contrast, stark lighting.  Looking like the flash bulbs just went off.  Above: a scene from the movie, and below: a pic by Ronny Jaques from a photostory that ran in Montreal-based newspaper Standard's 1945 coverage of up and coming boxer Gus Mell. 

Tales of Manhattan (1942), Julien Duvivier.

A beautifully tailored tailcoat, cursed by its maker to bring bad luck to any wearer, ties together several short stories in this film.   A lovely set of tales each very different in tone, from a kooky segment where WC Fields gets a lot of society folks loaded off "coconut milk" to a harrowing Cinderella story, in which a skid-row alcoholic, played by Edward G Robinson, gets one evening to don the tailcoat and one opportunity to pass himself off as a legitimate member of society to his successful university friends at a twenty-five year reunion.  Duvivier's gorgeous visions in black and white, shadow and smoke give this film a pictorial quality.  Followed a year later by Flesh and Fantasy, another Duvivier film that also takes the format of short stories tied together by a narrative device; it also uses some of the same actors.  It's a pity these films are difficult to locate because they are so lovely and unusual.

Doomed to Die (1940), William Nigh.

Two cliches: the "Chinese" detective and the spunky female reporter.

Let's just be glad that Boris Karloff didn't go with the Chinky Chinky China Man accent.  Dull B-mystery told through static, unimaginative shots from the Let's Just Stand Around and Someone Can Film This school of film-making.  The owner of a shipping company is found dead after one of his passenger ships goes down in a fire, and nobody knows if it's murder or suicide.  When the over enthusiastic chief of police hastily arrests a competitor's son, Mr Wong is hired to find the real killer.  A later entry in the Mr Wong series.

The Little Giant (1933), Roy Del Ruth.

$45 a night?  Well, I'll show them $45 a night...  Bugsy uses the hotel towels to shine his shoes to get his money's worth out of his expensive suite.

Just clever as hell send-up of Edward G Robinson's gangster persona.  With Prohibition over, beer runner Bugsy Ahern decides to cash in, sell the machine guns to "some guys in Mexico," pay off his moll, take off to sunny California and retire.  In his attempt to shake off the "stench of the gutter," Ahern takes up with the horsey set (complete with horsey accents) and purchases anything and everything that may raise his social standing.  Great dialogue, with a few eyebrow-raising lines muttered under the breath, such as:  "How did you get to know that monkey speak?"  "Well, I used to own 10% of a French dame."  I have to say, I just about fell off my chair in disbelief when I heard the word "FAGS" spat out in one scene. Must have been before Joe Breen came to town.

Odd remark, but unusual to see Edward G Robinson in so many casual clothes, although I wanted to undo that top button on every polo shirt (the man looked like he was suffocating).  Mary Astor gets to wear some darn lovely lightweight knits.  Quite a fun romp - who doesn't want to imagine themselves on a spending spree in idyllic California in the 30s!  I'll take it! 

The boys from Chicago try their luck at polo.

The Verdict (1946), Don Siegel.

This mediocre picture shudders along on a patchy script, but its strange twist ending is genuine and arresting.  Remakes be damned, but this one would be a good candidate.   A pretty ordinary whodunit, but Peter Lorre and Joan Lorring's scenes together add a little sparkle.