Stalag 17

Stalag 17

Paramount

June 6, 1953

War Comedy

DVD

C

Although this is not really my genre, I did appreciate the dark humor, as well as the interesting cast.  Billy Wilder directed and co-wrote.

Honolulu

Honolulu

MGM

February 3, 1939

Comedy, Musical, Romance

DVD
C+

A big old WTF of a movie, at times hilarious and charming but also racist and nonsensical, like one minute where we're watching Gracie Allen dressed as Mae West singing with men dressed as four Marx Brothers (with two Grouchos), and then the next Eleanor Powell is tap-dancing in blackface.  George & Gracie are in separate plot threads, with Robert Young as lookalikes, so they don't meet up until three minutes before the end.  And then Gracie has a twin sister!  Oh, and did I mention the straitjacket and Sig Ruman as a psychiatrist?  Edward Buzzell directed.

That Uncertain Feeling

That Uncertain Feeling
United Artists
April 20, 1941
Romcom
DVD
B-

I said that Nothing Sacred was a romance and a comedy but not a romcom.  Well, I think this is, although, yes, with the Lubitsch touch.  It is a triangle where an insurance-salesman (Douglas, going from boring to scheming) woos and tricks his wife (Oberon, lovely and fun), who's strayed with a "genius" musician (Meredith, both irritating and surprisingly sexy).  Although slow-moving at times (something I've noticed in other Lubitsch movies), it is witty and at times laugh-out-loud funny, with a good cast, including, yes, a scene-stealing Eve Arden.  The movie bombed at the time, but while I don't think it's on the level of Design for Living (reviewed here https://reviewingeverymovieiown.blogspot.com/2014/02/design-for-living.html), it is better than I expected, especially compared to the other "comedy classics" so far.

Nothing Sacred

Spoiler on the original poster!

Nothing Sacred
United Artists
November 25, 1937
Comedy, Romance
DVD
C+

I really don't know what I think of this movie and I was on the C/C+ fence in the first ten minutes and the last ten minutes.  Ultimately, I can marginally recommend it, for its cast and some of its script.  I like some of the offbeat humor, like the Calvin Coolidge joke (yes, I am the world's oldest 52-year-old), as well as its observations about the press.  Given the title, I guess I shouldn't be too shocked that a couple has a fistfight, while declaring their love, even though he keeps telling her to shut up and she's lied to him and the world, especially New York City, about having radium poisoning.  This is that odd movie that is a comedy and a romance without at all being a romcom, although, yeah, it's got a heck of a meet-cute.

William A. Wellman directed this eighteen years before Blood Alley.