GRAND HOTEL (1932)

Produced by Irving Thalberg from the novel to Broadway and eventually this film GRAND HOTEL is, to my knowledge, one of the earliest full length films that not only had an all star cast (and what a cast it is!) but also employed the storytelling technique of having multiple smaller stories centered around a central theme.  The theme here is the luxurious Grand Hotel in Berlin where, as the doctor at in the opening scene says "People come and go. Nothing ever happens."  Of course that's bullshit cause tons of stuff happens.

One of the people that come and go is Greta Garbo as a famous dancer who's career has seen better days.  She still has wealth though and part of that wealth (a pearl necklace) is the object of desire for hotel thief John Barrymore.  He gains access to the necklace, but at the same time falls in love with Garbo.  I mean who wouldn't?!  The same day industrialist Wallace Beery hires a stenographer (Joan Crawford)  who herself falls in love with John Barrymore.  At the same time Lionel Barrymore, who is a employee of Beery's, is spending his life's savings on an extravagant vacation at the Grand Hotel because he knows that he's going to die very soon.

That's just a bare outline, you should really watch it for yourself. The sets live up to the description of "grand", the story is fun and the acting is fantastic.  Required viewing for all classic Hollywood fans.

Also GRAND HOTEL holds the odd distinction of being the only film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture without it or its participants being nominated in any other category.  But then again back in 1932 the Oscars were still in their infancy and only had like 12 categories.

Double-feature with DINNER AT EIGHT.

IMDb lists Allen Jenkins as "Hotel Meat Packer (uncredited)". As best I can tell this is him.

CALL NORTHSIDE 777 (1948)

Two men are wrong accused of a murder and sentenced to 99 years in prison even though the only evidence was a bunch of bullshit handled by crooked cops.  Imagine that.  Eleven years later the mother of one of the men has saved up $5,000 scrubbing floors and she places an ad in the paper offering the 5 g's as a reward for any information about the real killer(s).  The editor of the paper sees the ad so he assigns reporter Jimmy Stewart to look into it.  Once he starts looking into the story it's pretty clear that the evidence doesn't line up at all.

Based on a true story CALL NORTHSIDE 777 hasn't aged too well.  In fact I'll just go ahead and say it: it's boring.  We all know right from the beginning how the story is going to end, so any suspense is thrown out the window.  The semi-documentary filming style doesn't help things at all either.  Added onto that the numerous loose ends and the lack on a concrete bad guy CN777 is pretty slow going.  Stewart's performance is fine, as is Lee J. Cobb's, but even so I can't think of any reason in the world why I would ever want to watch this film again.  If you need me I'll be in my room watching THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION.

EXCISION (2012)

Kinda like the AMERICAN BEAUTY of gore and perversion (except for the fact AB is one of the greatest films ever and this film is only so-so), EXCISION tells the story of an outwardly normal upper-middle class suburban family that is actually all fucked up...especially the eldest teenage daughter, Pauline.  Pauline barely has any grasp on reality and spends most of her time fantasizing about gore and blood and a whole flock of other perversions.  Despite the fact that she is clearly off her rocker, she still attends normal classes and is even allowed to roam around without multiple armed guards in riot gear.

I'm not going to give away the story, but I really enjoyed the first two acts of EXCISION, especially the awesome fantasy scenes.  The last act, not so much, but that's just my personal feelings maybe you'll think it was great.  Personally I wish it had been done a little bit more dreamier.

I was impressed by the fact that not only did the filmmakers center this story around a female, but they were able to find one as beautiful and talented as AnnaLynne McCord to play the lead.  I knew she was talented from her brief stint on "Nip/Tuck", but she was truly impressive here and quite brave to be so uglied up for nearly the entire film.  Also, I was really impressed with Traci Lords acting in this film.

Not the greatest gore perversion film of all time or even in the Top 50, but still an fun ride filled with quite a few laughs.