I watched only three movies last week.
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- I’m not really a fan of Lucio Fulci, to be honest, and that didn’t change with Don’t Torture a Duckling. I don’t think the only interesting thing about the movie is its title, but nothing else about it is as interesting.
- As screwball comedies go, The Mad Miss Manton could stand to be a little screwier. The jokes don’t all land, and the murder mystery feels more than a little confused. It has its moments but feels more like a dry run for the much better chemistry between Stanwyck and Fonda in The Lady Eve.
- There are pretty good performances in The Stranger, but it’s very unsatisfying, both as cat-and-mouse police procedural and as “undercover cop in too deep.” It does both of those things just well enough to be compelling for most of its run—even if it is so whispery and mumbly, on top of the Australian accents, that I had to turn on subtitles by the end—but it doesn’t quite work as either.
I also re-watched Charade, which is still as delightful as ever. They don’t call it the best Hitchcock film that Hitchcock never made for nothing.