Red Beard

 Leonard Maltin was harsh on this movie but I liked it. Does every Akira Kurosawa movie have to be an epic?  This is about the relationship between a clinic director (Toshiro Mifune) and a doctor. It also has some pretty interesting side stories about the patients. It was long though over three hours.   

Linda (1929)

I liked this Dorothy Davenport silent. It's about a mountain girl who has to marry an older man. The movie wants you to fall for the two of them getting along but honestly, I felt there was no chemistry between the two. The girl eventually leaves the guy when he is mistakenly taken as a bigamist. She ends up getting together with the doctor we meet at the beginning of the movie. However, it isn't with the knowledge of the old husband coming back to her. This was all right. It's on youtube.

The Hoodlum

 

I liked this movie because it was different from most movies of its kind in that the character has no redeeming qualities. He rapes his brother's fiancee for example. After he is released he is once again planning to commit a crime again. This time it's with a bank. His family tries to help him but it's completely useless. It wasn't the best noir I've seen but it was an ok way to spend an hour.

Sisters of the Gion

 

This is another fallen women movie from the director Kenji Mizoguchi. It deals with two sisters, one is who helping a bankrupt man while the other uses men to raise her position in life. What she doesn't see coming is the vengeance of a former client. This was good but not as great as Mizoguchi's later masterpiece on prostitutes Street of Shame which I reviewed earlier. 

The Monkey's Uncle

 

The best part of this movie is easily the beginning where Annette Funicello sings with The Beach Boys. This is a sequel to the much better The Misadventures of Merlin Jones. I should watch that movie again. In The Monkey's Uncle Annette's nerdy boyfriend helps the football team pass their tests with "honest cheating." He also makes a flying machine. I really like Annette Funicello. She had a wholesome charm.

The Ghost of Rosy Taylor

 This was an all right Mary Miles Minter silent. It's pretty short too. Minter takes on the identity of a cleaning woman Rosy Taylor to get some income without knowing that she is dead. It all starts to unravel when someone recommends Mary Miles Minter for work. Only this is met with shock when the other woman says isn't Rosy Taylor dead. This isn't Minter's best work but it's all right.

A Girl's Folly

 This was a pretty generic movie. There is nothing incredibly unique about it. It's a silent movie about a girl who realizes that getting into movies isn't as easy as she thought it was going to be. She has a crush on Robert Warwick but it turns out he's not all that great. Soon she is heading back home. I saw this on youtube. 

The Pirate

 

I just wasn't impressed by this movie. In this, she falls for an actor pretending to be a pirate. Little does she know the man she is betrothed to marry is an actual pirate. The song "Be a Clown" is easily the best thing in the movie. I've seen better Gene Kelly and Judy Garland movies.

Street of Shame

 

Machiko Kyo was one of my favorite actresses in my early 20's. She was a fabulous Japanese actress who worked with the best directors like Yasujiro Ozu, Akira Kurosawa, and here with Kenji Mizoguchi. This movie is about the prostitutes of a brothel.  In this, she plays a cynical prostitute. For some reason, she isn't the most popular prostitute in the place even though she's the most lively. The scene where her father confronts Machiko about the shame she is bringing to the family is easily the best scene of the movie. This was the director's last film.