The Adventures of Robin Hood

Title: The Adventures of Robin Hood
Year: 1938
Directors: Michael Curtiz & William Keighley
Writers: Norman Reilly Raine & Seton I. Miller
Starring: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains
Music: Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Distinctions: Oscars for best score, art direction and editing; currently #200 on IMDb’s Top 250
Synopsis: rebel challenges usurper
Length: 102 minutes
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), December 2008
Subjective Rating: 7/10 8/10
Objective Rating: 7/10 (points off for pacing, cinematography and special effects/design)

Slow in places, but fun. The score is perfect. It’s an extremely dated movie (although a hell of a lot better than the Kevin Costner remake), but the DVD makes the most of that by including a period cartoon, musical short and news reel clip.

The Lady Vanishes

Title: The Lady Vanishes
Year: 1938
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writers: Sidney Gilliat & Frank Launder, based on a story by Ethel Lina White
Starring: Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas, Dame May Whitty
Music: Louis Levy & Charles Williams
Distinctions: currently #197 on IMDb’s Top 250
Synopsis: a woman disappears from a train, and no one claims to remember her
Length: 96 minutes
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), November 2008
Subjective Rating: 5/10
Objective Rating: 5/10 (gets points for story, characters, dialog, pacing and acting)

It’s an okay movie, but you wouldn’t be missing anything if you never saw it. The whole conspiracy concept was nice in 1938, but it’s been done so many times since then, both improved on and beaten to death, there’s not much left in it.

Bringing Up Baby

Title: Bringing Up Baby
Year: 1938
Director: Howard Hawks
Writer: Dudley Nichols, Hagar Wilde
Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant
Music: Roy Webb
Distinctions: formerly on IMDb’s Top 250
Synopsis: a man encounters a woman who deliberately destroys his life over the course of two days
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), June 2008
Subjective Rating: 4/10
Objective Rating: 1/10 (gets a point for characters)

The first half is painful to watch (a series of bad things happening to a sympathetic character). Then at one point Grant seems to just give up and go along with it, and that’s nice for a little while (and even made me laugh once or twice). But then the second half just gets boring. It moves at the right pace, but there’s just too much movie. They tried really hard to be witty, but it just didn’t happen. I was a little shocked that Katharine Hepburn wasn’t completely terrible. Not good, mind you, but not completely terrible.