Movies
An early war epic. Fans of war cinema (and silents) will find a real treat here, as The Big Parade is a blueprint of many a famous war film that followed in its wake. It's certainly overlong, but the build-up is meticulous and the scenes in the trenches bring the usual mix of boredom and terror. I'm not really a big fan of these war epics, but I was surprised to see so many familiar elements in such an old film, executed properly too. The usual gore and massive battles aren't here, of course, the scale is a lot smaller, but the structure and themes are very recognizable. It's a shame the film is so long, otherwise, I might've liked it better.Read all
A classic film about film. Hollywood loves to put itself in the spotlight and does so in the most uninteresting way possible. Show People is a genre mashup that seems tailored to please audiences. There's a bit of romance, some comedy, a little slapstick, and a bunch of cliché characters that make everything feel easy and comfortable. The constant music drove me nuts, the film isn't funny at all and the plot felt like it was well past its prime (yes, even for a film from 1928). At least it was short, slickly paced, and rather light, so there wasn't much time to get fully annoyed, but that's about all the positive I can muster right now.Read all
Classic melodrama that felt extremely rudimentary. The kind of film that prompts me to visit Wikipedia right after watching it, curious to find out whether it holds some kind of historic value. I find it hard to come up with a reason why else this film might have survived as one of the ultimate classics of the 20s. Performances are extremely basic, so is the drama. Everything is spelled out to the extreme, emotions are broad and unsubtle, the dramatic turn of events are predictable to a fault. It's a film that merely goes through the motions. It may have been one of the first to do so, but its motions were never very attractive to begin with. Poor.Read all
Another generic Western, one that isn't even all that liked by core Western fans. But it did gather some critical acclaim and it appears that that is something pretty tough to get rid of. And so here we are, almost 80 years after its original release. The only conclusion I have is that films like this aren't going to make me like the genre any better. The performances are terrible, the dialogues are so bad they're almost funny (and that's coming from someone who rarely cares about dialogues. The setting isn't for me either, and the runtime is excessive. There's really nothing at all I liked, apart from the fact that I was able to skip the overture.Read all