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July 2017 in Films
I watched way too many movies in July. Not only did I watch a lot of new-to-me films, I also did a ton of rewatching. This uptick in movie watching had a few factors: 1) holy wow we had a lot of good films on TCM last month! 2) I use movies to cope when I am stressed and current events are making me very stressed. 3) I broke my foot, so I stayed in a lot. As always, you can see all the films I watched in July after the cut, as well as some of my favorite first time watches.
Oscar Vault Monday – The Hollywood Revue of 1929, 1929 (dir. Charles Reisner)
This is such a strange film. It was MGM’s second feature-length musical and one of the studio’s earliest sound films. Unlike most MGM musicals, this film really has no overarching plot. Like the title suggests, it’s just a revue – a series of skits, songs and dance numbers by basically everyone on the MGM lot (the only major MGM stars of the era missing are Lon Chaney, Ramon Navarro and Greta Garbo). The film was only nominated for Best Picture and the other films up for the top prize that year were Alibi, In Old Arizona, The Patriot (now a lost film) and winner The Broadway Melody (also an MGM musical).
From The Warner Archive: Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 6
The Forbidden Hollywood collections have been bringing us some of the greatest pre-code films to DVD for the first time for almost a decade. Originally released through the TCM Vault Collection, the last few editions have come from the Warner Archive Collection. Vol. 6 has been out for a few weeks now, but I was finally able to sit down and watch the four films included: The Wet Parade, Downstairs, Mandalay and Massacre. It’s a pretty great collection – all of films I hadn’t heard of before. Vol. 7 will be coming out shortly (and I will hopefully report on that collection as well). After the cut, I’ll briefly discuss the four films that are included in this excellent manufactured on demand set.
the diary of a film history fanatic 