Casablanca -- 1942 -- NR

Recognize these quotes?

Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she had to walk into mine.

• Kiss me. Kiss me as if it were the last time.
  
• Round up the usual suspects. 
  
• Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. 
  
• Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
  
• Play it, Sam.
  
• Here's looking at you kid.
  
• 
  

And let's not forget the timeless classic "As Time Goes By" made enormously famous for its use in this film. Casablanca is a work of genius in terms of character, humor, and intriguing plot. It is no wonder it won Best Picture in 1942. Even though we can't relate to the war time propaganda, the basic storyline is a classic that is eternally relatable. Definitely a film worth watching.

The Mummy Sequels -- 1940-1944 -- NR

The Legacy edition of the Mummy included its four sequels between 1940 and 1944, each more disappointing and ridiculous than the preceeding one. Rather than waste four posts on these moves, I'll just summarize them in one.

The Mummy's Hand -- 1940 -- This first sequel set the stage for the travesties that followed. We have clips from the Mummy's backstory rewritten and occasionally reshot to fit the new storyline. Now there's a cult that keep a Mummy named Kharis alive to protect the tomb of Ananka. This first film does make an effort to create a good picture, but instead of the intelligent whole dangerous man that Imhotep was, Kharis is just a Mummy with a limp and a bad arm. This cult is dedicated to keeping Kharis alive and killing anyone who gets at Anaka's tomb. As luck would have it, that's just what happened. It flows decently until the end when the characters suddenly all take stupid pills to increase the drama. The cult leader steals the girl (don't know why). The hero fires shots at the Mummy to stop him from getting at the magic leaf potion (instead of taking two steps to the right and kicking the stand over). This was the only good effort of the bunch.

The Mummy's Tomb -- 1942 -- We bring back the hero from the last movie to spend 10 minutes of this 60 minute film recapping the Mummy's Hand. Now a new cult leader brings Kharis to the USA to kill the hero's family, who are all so two-dimensional that it's impossible to care when anyone is killed. This movie tries really hard, but ultimately fails by throwing in a mob chase scene we had almost escaped from when we left the silent era. We wipe out the moster by bruning down the family mansion. Yeah, that was smart. And of course, the leader kidnaps the girl for no apparent reason, and most of the action occurs under the cover of the brightest full moon you'll ever see in your life that resembles the afternoon sun.

The Mummy's Ghost -- 1944 -- Now, we are quickly descending into modern monster sequels by bringing in the teenagers played by late twenty year olds (?). Now a new cult leader (blessed by the same cult leader that dies at the beginning of the last film) has to bring Kharis back to Egypt along with Ananka's body. The characters might possibly be one-dimensional (though a good effort was made to fill out the hero to almost two-dimensional...we're shooting for three), but at least they found a reason to kidnap the girl. The premise derails the continuity of the previous movies, and it ends in a ridiculous mob chase scene where the mob clairvoyantly finds where the Mummy and the cult leader are hanging out just after the Mummy betrays the cult leader. For further unexplained reasons, the girl ages until she dies of old age. What!? 

The Mummy's Curse -- 1944 -- Maybe there is an unwritten rule that states that all sequels must be worse than the last one, but this one succeeds on that point alone. EVERYTHING in this movie happens without explanation or apology. Mummy wanders around looking for Ananka. Ok. Chick who was Ananka reincarnated rises from ground and likes sunlight. Dunno why. There is no character development among any of the characters in this film, and we all got zinged with an obligatory romantic involvment between two characters that was hardly hinted at throughout the film. 

The real kicker if you get down to the dates of these films (and I love this):

The Mummy's Hand happens in 1940 (presumably).

The Mummy's Tomb is 30 years later, so 1970.

The Mummy's Ghost gives no dates at all, so we'll stick to the same year.

The Mummy's Curse is another 25 years later, but those are some seriously vintage cars for 1995.

King's Row -- 1942

Another film I watched primarily due to it having Ronald Reagan in it also finds itself ensconsed in the era it was made. An amusing point I found while watching this one was a moment where a pair was walking down the street and a pole crossed between them. The male immediately dipped back with a "whoops", ran back around the pole to the correct side and said "bread and butter." I might have missed this joke had I not seen a Popeye cartoon only days before where Popeye was complaining about Olive Oyl being superstitious and not going out on Friday the 13th. Well, at the tale end of the episode, the punchline was Popeye and Olive walking down the street hand in hand, and a pole crossed between them. With a "whoops," Popeye walked back around the pole with a "bread and butter." Ah, the culture of old...

Anyway, this film is about a small town by the name of King's Row where our characters live. We have an aspiring doctor (Parris) who is in love with the little girl down the street (Cassie). We also have the rich kid who is a no goodnik (Drake) in his own right, and the girl from the wrong side of the tracks that they hung out with as children (Randy). They all grow up and all find trouble in their young adult years. Cassie lives with her father, a doctor, who keeps her mother locked away in an upstairs room. Well, mother eventually dies, but the father starts locking Cassie up as well. When Parris gets older, he studies with her father and learns about psychiatry, eventually going to Vienna to study this new field. Drake ends up losing his family fortune in a banking embezzlement and working in a train depot while living with Randy and her father and brother. When Parris comes back to town, he wants to stay in Vienna, but goings on at home envelope his full attention, and he is forced to try and set things right in King's Row before he can consider whether he wants to return to Vienna or not.

I know that was a short, somewhat confusing synopsis, but this is a film that endeavors to introduce and fill out every character to the point that we get at least a glimpse into most of them and understand where they're coming from. There are a lot more subplots within this narrative that I could scarcely touch on without spoiling something as one plot point flows into another with absolute fluidity.

I will say the movie does get a little confusing now and again because I was trying to keep up with everything, but it's also a case of "wait and see" and once you allow the movie to clear up it's own points, it's very understandable and very satisfying to watch.