You Can't Take It with You (1938)

Academy Awards, USA
Year	Result	Award	Category/Recipient(s)
1939	Won	Oscar	Best Director Frank Capra
			Best Picture (Columbia).
	Nominated	Oscar	Best Actress in a Supporting Role Spring Byington
			Best Cinematography Joseph Walker
			Best Film Editing Gene Havlick
			Best Sound, Recording John P. Livadary (Columbia SSD)
			Best Writing, Screenplay Robert Riskin

Columbia Pictures
Directed by Frank Capra
My rating: 3.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Sony)

Jean Arthur and Jimmy Stewart are well-paired as lovers from opposite sides of the track. He's the son of a wealthy banker during the Depression years, a vice-president with a comfortable job and not much to do. She is his free-spirited secretary. When his stuffy father and mother meet her eccentric family chaos ensues. This eventually forces them apart. It's up to her grandfather, Lionel Barrymore, to get them back together again, and all it takes is a well-timed harmonica duet. It features many classic Capra scenes, the courtroom drama and the final harmonica scene in particular, but a stage-bound feel and occasional forced sentimentality keep it a tad below his best films.

Fate Is the Hunter (1964)

Academy Awards, USA
Year	Result	Award	Category/Recipient(s)
1965	Nominated	Oscar	Best Cinematography, Black-and-White Milton R. Krasner

20th Century Fox
Directed by Ralph Nelson
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Turner Classic Movies)

Glenn Ford is an idealistic ex-pilot/airline executive tasked with finding the cause of a crash that killed not only innocent passengers but his best friend the pilot, played by Rod Taylor. His investigation turns into a mission to save his friend's reputation when he is blamed for the crash. Ford tracks down the people who saw him last, with a parade of characters, mostly women, providing a series of vignettes and recollections. There is a lengthy flashback to his war years as a pilot on a bomber. In the end, Ford recreates the doomed flight with the only survivor, stewardess Suzanne Pleshette, and the mystery is revealed, but unfortunately it's way too obvious and the ending is anticlimactic. Curiously, the special effects are poor model miniatures and poorly photographed, despite being nominated for an Oscar!

The Sea Wolf (1941)

Academy Awards, USA
Year	Result	Award	Category/Recipient(s)
1942	Nominated	Oscar	Best Effects, Special Effects Byron Haskin (photographic) Nathan Levinson (sound)

Warner Bros.
Directed by Michael Curtiz
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Turner Classic Movies)

Edward G. Robinson is the definitive Wolf Larsen, sea captain of the Ghost who rules his crew with an iron hand and reads Nietzsche in his cabin. Alexander Knox is his intellectual foe, held on board against his wishes after surviving a collision between the Ghost and a ferry. Knox and Robinson argue over the meaning of existence and whether it is better to "reign in hell than to serve in heaven". Meanwhile Ida Lupino and John Garfield fall in love but have to escape the clutches of the omnipotent captain. Things come to a head in the symbolic climax. Moodily photographed in foggy black and white by Sol Polito, it's one of Curtiz' best films.

Shanghai Express (1932)

Academy Awards, USA
Year	Result	Award	Category/Recipient(s)
1932	Won	Oscar	Best Cinematography Lee Garmes
	Nominated	Oscar	Best Director Josef von Sternberg
			Best Picture (Paramount Publix).

Paramount
Directed by Josef von Sternberg
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Turner Classic Movies)

A train full of wealthy passengers attempts to travel from Peking to Shanghai during a revolution. However, Warner Oland is actually the leader of the rebels. He stops the train and takes British officer Clive Brook hostage. Marlene Dietrich is still in love with old flame Brook, and he with her, but they struggle to acknowledge their feelings. I thought Marlene's dialogue and delivery was self-conscious and unintentionally hilarious. Every time she uttered a sentence I was in stitches. There is almost no chemistry between her and the stoic Brook, so the basic premise of the film falls apart.

A Bullet Is Waiting (1954)

Columbia Pictures
Directed by John Farrow
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Turner Classic Movies)

A sheriff and his prisoner crash land in the Pacific and wash up on a remote sheep ranch in California. Jean Simmons is the pretty sheep herder who lives with her father, an Oxford philosophy professor fed up with mankind. She's never seen a man before, so of course falls for the young prisoner Rory Calhoun. She's soon on his side of the conflict, providing him with a gun and a way out. The man may be innocent anyway, a fact not lost on her father when he returns home. There is some fighting, some philosophizing, lots of rain and overly wrought music by Dmitri Tiomkin. Simmons never cracks a smile and has zero chemistry with Calhoun, ruining the most important relationship in the film. Incredibly, it has a happy ending.

Journey (1972)

Directed by Paul Almond
My rating: 1.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(VHS, VCI Communications)

John Vernon rescues Genevieve Bujold from a river and takes her to his commune to recover. Genevieve sleepwalks through the first half of the film, unable to speak and psychotic, she thinks everything happening is a dream. She does eventually speak and wastes no time in expressing her desire to return to civilization, but not before expressing it for Vernon as well. The film feels more like a documentary on communes than anything else, and includes graphic footage of cows mating, a pig slaughter and a live cow birth. I guess you see those things on a commune, but I don't want to see them on film. Nonetheless, the locations in remote Quebec are often stunning and poetically photographed, but the hippie commune life is dated and often unintentionally funny.

The Iron Mistress (1952)

Warner Bros
Directed by Gordon Douglas
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Turner Classic Movies)

Alan Ladd plays the famous fighter and knife thrower Jim Bowie in this lavish Technicolor production. Bowie travels from his home in the swamps to New Orleans, where he is swept off his feet by aristocrat and all-around fire cat Virginia Mayo. He fights several duels, including a memorable set piece in a darkened room lit only by lightning flashes. He gambles, forges his knife, gets rich but still can't forget about Mayo even when she marries someone else. He eventually ends up in San Antonio to get away from the law on his trail for a questionable race horse bet. The romantic subplots are long and boring, but otherwise fun escapism for a rainy Saturday afternoon.

Assault on a Queen (1966)

Paramount
Directed by Jack Donohue
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Turner Classic Movies)

Sinatra is an ex-Navy officer relaxing and boozing with his pal in the Bahamas. He's approached by a group of salvage hunters after sunken treasure for his diving skills. They don't find treasure, but an old German submarine. They cook up an idea to repair the sub and use it to rob the passenger liner Queen Mary. Way too much running time is spent on the repair of the sub and Sinatra's seduction of platinum blond Virna Lisi. The heist is ill-conceived and predictably fails.

The Lion and the Horse (1952)

Warner Bros.
Directed by Louis King
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Turner Classic Movies)

Horse whisperer Steve Cochran captures a stallion while rounding up wild horses. He wants to keep it for himself but can't afford to buy the horse from his co-horse wranglers. It ends up getting sold to a cruel owner who exploits the horse on the rodeo circuit. Cochran steals the horse and hides out on a ranch to break him. The ranch is run by a friendly old man and his precocious young daughter, ten year old Sherry Jackson. The little girl almost ruins the movie, dumbing it down with ridiculous slang aimed at her peers of the time. Horse meets lion in climactic sequence, but the lion is just a man in a suit or an obvious stuffed dummy. Cut the girl and the lion fight and it's not a bad piece of western nostalgia, in that weird Warnercolor.

Zenobia (1939)

Hal Roach Studios
Directed by Gordon Douglas
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Turner Classic Movies)

Oliver Hardy is a country doctor in the Deep South of Mississippi. His daughter gets engaged against the wishes of the man's parents, who conspire for the rest of the movie to sabotage the couple. Meanwhile Hardy is called to a circus sideshow to treat a sick elephant. It turns out he only had a knot in his tail, but the grateful elephant follows him around afterwards. This leads to the big set piece, a fancy ball in a mansion that Hardy and elephant crash. It's pure fluff with the usual Hollywood stereotypes of Southern aristocrats and their black servants for comedy relief.