Popular reviews

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  Review by eely ★★★

  carole lombard soaking wet in a fireman’s hat in 
  🌈TECHNICOLOR🌈

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  Review by Peter Labuza ★★★ 1

  A weird meshing of great talents that just seem somewhat unsuited for each other: the talky cynicism of screenwriter Ben Hecht and the rough and tumble casualness of director William Wellman. Fredric March's plays too much of a stern type here to make the laughs stick, and a lot of his lines just kind of drop there; Lombard fairs much better, especially the chemistry with Charles Winninger. She feels looser and more manic than March's single track performance. Hecht's best films (the Hawks comedies, though it's also in his Hitchcock thrillers) are built on the fact that every line/action is hit on a very specific beat, a sort of rhythm that demands a not necessarily limited visual/performative delivery, but one…

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  Review by Gentry ★★★★★ 9

  “Take the ice pack off your head and fight.”

  Why are the irradiated girls always the cutest? Exactly how I like my screwball: barely over an hour, all Carol Lombard killer, no filler. A feverishly written Ben Hecht script, which was subsequently reworked by a handful of screenwriters, it still has that signature Hecht bite. I’m not sure what his original, bleak ending was that upset David O. Selznik so much, but I’d like to see it. A rare Wellman comedy, and an even rarer Technicolor Lombard role. Fredric March the disgraced journalist looking to redeem himself. She, the young woman with radium eating away at her bones. [This is at least the second film I know of that uses radium…

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  Review by Travis Lytle ★★★

  A technicolor curiosity from 1937, "Nothing Sacred" is comedy that satirizes media and fame while serving up charismatic performances from Carole Lombard and Fredric March. The film is short and might have contemporary audiences cringing at its near-but-not-quite sexism, but it is a worthy watch for its stars' chemistry, interesting execution, and fresh-feeling themes.

  Revolving around a newspaper man and his unintended relationship with a woman at the heart of a story, "Nothing Sacred" combines romance and satire for some high energy hijinks. Fredric March's reporter, looking to break free of the obituary desk where he toils, takes on the job of profiling a young woman claiming to have radium poisoning. It is all a hoax, but, by the time…

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  Review by eely ★★★

  william wellman is my kind of director bc he knew that simply staging the actors behind a huge tree limb or a giant vase of flowers as they attempt to deliver their lines would imbue the scene with such a specific flavor of comedy that few can appreciate

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  Review by Bryce Receveur ★★★½ 1

  I wish I loved someone so much that I would beat them up so I could be with them.

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  Review by Owen ★★★★½ 2

  I came across a David Thompson review of this earlier today that both stressed its short run time and was so totally at odds with my own lukewarm take on the movie that I felt I might as well spare an hour or so and see if I'd misjudged it. Before I put it on I had a quick glance on here and saw one unimpressed review after another, all of which seemed to have come to the same conclusions about it's flatness that I did when I first saw it and felt cheated of the classic screwball comedy I'd been promised.

  I'm really not sure what had changed with this viewing but it just clicked . The sheer Hechtiness…

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  Review by Sara Clements ★★★½

  contemporary comedians have nothing on carole lombard

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  Review by Jesse Snoddon ★★★½

  "Well he's got a different quality of charm he's sort of a cross between a ferris wheel and a werewolf...but with a loveable streak if you care to blast for it."

  "Keep on suckin' that egg and your conscience will go away"

  When small town woman Hazel Flagg (Carole Lombard) is misdiagnosed with radium poisoning, she decides to let everyone keep believing she is dying to score a sweet sweet trip to New York once she knows otherwise. She accompanies Wally Cook (Fredric March), the reporter who tracked her down to run the story on the voyage and the two develop romantic feelings for one another. 

  The film is at its best when it leans into the screwball vibe for…

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  Review by Bre ★★★★

  I forgot how ridiculously good some of the shots in this movie are.

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★★

  77/100

  [originally written on my blog]

  Lacks the passionate wallop of the truly great screwballs, which have an undercurrent of genuine pain beneath the fast-talking breeziness. It does however bring the funny and the biting, playing for comedy more or less the same idea that Billy Wilder would make grotesque a decade and a half later in Ace in the Hole. Hecht's witty script speaks for itself, but Wellman, pace his reputation as something of a journeyman hack, contributes a beguiling (if somewhat mystifying) formal playfulness, repeatedly placing obstacles between his actors and the camera. Are we being chided for voyeurism, in keeping with the film's patent disgust at the public craning its collective neck to see Hazel bravely dying?…

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  Review by Christopher Moore ★★★★ 11

  I was so on board with the premise. Fredric March plays a journalist who's trying to resurrect his career after taking part in his newspaper's fraudulent scheme involving a fake African prince. He convinces his boss that a young woman dying of radium poisoning would make for a killer story. When he goes up to her small town in Vermont, he implores her to come to New York so she can escape the drudgery of her existence before she dies, where she ends up becoming a morbid celebrity sensation. Only catch though is it turns out she never had radium poisoning to begin with. Oops.

  Of course, the woman in question is played by Carole Lombard, who I adored in…