Motion Picture Reviews (1938)

Eight MOTION PICTURE REVIEWS college comedy, for it brings sympathetic understanding to a never certain age. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Entertaining Perhaps © THE STORM O O Charles Bickford, Barton MacLane, Preston Foster, Tom Brown, Nan Grey, Andy Devine, Frank Jenks, Samuel S. Hinds. Original story by Daniel Moore and Hugh King. Screen play by Theodore Reeves, Daniel Moore and Hugh King. Direction by Harold Young. Universal. Stark melodrama consisting of a succession of violent scenes could have appeal only to those whose imagination is inured to blood and thunder. Others are apt to find it unendurably exhausting. After viewing the fights in water-front cafes over gambling debts and cheap women, the collision with an iceberg, the explosion of inflammable cargo, and the surgical operation which is performed by radio instruction during a violent storm, you drag what is left of you out of the theatre, granting that the leading character may have had conspicuous merits but wondering whether the proof was worth the time spent on it. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Unsuited No * THE SUNSET TRAIL O O William Boyd, George Hayes, Russell Hayden, Charlotte Wynters, Jane Clayton, Robert Fiske. Original story by Clarence E. Mulford. Direction by Lesley Selander. Paramount. Among Westerns, the Hopalong Cassidy pictures have an excellent rating, and this one is better than usual, because, in addition to the features of adventure, fine riding, and beautiful California mountain scenes, William Boyd has a chance to vary his part by imitating a tenderfoot in a very ludicrous manner. In the story he is sent to rescue a widow, who has been bereft by the slickhaired gambler and saloon-keeper not only of her husband but of a $30,000 fortune. She has been advised to open the first “dude ranch,” and to this resort come Cassidy and an assortment of odd and peculiar Easterners. At the proper moment he reveals himself with Windy and Lucky as avengers of the innocent. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Entertaining Exciting Cl TARNISHED ANGEL O O Sally Eilers, Lee Bowman, Ann Miller, Alma Kruger, Paul Guilfoyle, Jonathan Hale. Direction by Leslie Goodwins. RKO-Radio. Reaction to this picture will depend upon the credulity of the audience. An ordinary gambling-club hostess, hounded by the police from the bright dens of Broadway, hides with her associates under the cloak of re ligion and becomes a spectacularly successful revivalist. Her life is then changed through the faith she has inspired in her followers. The story is swift in action and not without interest, but the characterizations are not especially interesting or convincing and the result is just another picture for an idle hour. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 No value Mature © THANKS FOR THE MEMORY O O Bob Hope, Shirley Ross, Chas. Butterworth, Otto Kruger, Hedda Hopper. Based on a play by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich. Direction by George Archianbaud. Paramount. The old problem of man's complex against being supported by a woman is introduced in this light social drama. A young writer who finds that the futility of social life and the demands of a salesman’s job have undermined his ability to write, decides to break away from both. His wife returns to her job as a model while he attempts to finish his book at home and run the house. They are nice people but their story is commonplace, lacking any novelty in treatment to intrigue the spectator. It will be remembered longest for the popular song-hit, “The Sleepy People.” Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Mature and little No interest interest © UP THE RIVER <* O Preston Foster, Tony Martin, Phyllis Brooks, Slim Summerville, Arthur Treacher, Alan Dinehart, Eddie Collins, lane Darwell. Based on original story by Maurine Watkins. Screen play by Lou Breslow and John Patrick. Direction by Alfred Werker. 20th Century-Fox. The exact moral influence of a prison film is often difficult to measure. Sometimes a picture serves to stimulate a morbid curiosity or to evoke sentimental pity for those who deserve punishment more than it serves to warn those with criminal leanings. It is doubtful if “Up The River” will have much influence one way or another on any mature person, for it is such absolute farce. Most of the action takes place in a penitentiary, showing the pleasanter side of prison life; a light opera given by the inmates and the big football game of the prison conference. Preston Foster, Albert Treacher and Slim Summerville are all amusing and have absurdly funny lines. There is even a very human little romance between a young offen3er and the girl who waits outside. A picture of a type which will probably never be made again and never should be, it nevertheless contains a good deal of spontaneous humor. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Unsuitable theme No, indeed