Director : Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor

Writer(s) : Hal Roach, Sam Taylor

Genre : Action, Comedy, Family, Romance

Cast : Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Bill Strother, Noah Young, Westcott Clarke

Summary : After Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, the silent film era’s “third genius” was Harold Lloyd, who stars in this Horatio Alger-style story of an average country boy trying to make good in the big city. The Boy (Lloyd) leaves his sweetheart, The Girl (Mildred Davis, later the real-life Mrs. Lloyd) in Great Bend while he pursues his fortune in a teeming metropolis. The Boy lands a job as a clerk at a fabric counter of DeVore’s, a huge department store, but he lies in his letters home to his beloved, pretending to be the store’s manager and spending his earnings on lavish gifts. The Boy’s roommate, The Pal (Bill Strother) makes money as a “human fly,” performing attention-getting stunts. Promised 1,000 by DeVore’s real manager if he can devise a publicity gimmick, The Boy convinces his friend to climb the 12-story establishment and split the winnings with him. On the day of the event, however, The Pal is busy dodging The Law (Noah Young), forcing The Boy to make the arduous climb solo. Dodging a variety of obstacles, The Boy climbs higher and higher, eventually dangling from the store’s clock tower, in the film’s most memorable image.

Director : Frank Capra

Writer(s) : Joseph Kesselring, Julius J. Epstein

Genre : Comedy, Thriller

Cast : Cary Grant, Josephine Hull, Jean Adair, Raymond Massey, Peter Lorre, Priscilla Lane, John Alexander, Jack Carson, John Ridgely, Edward McNamara, James Gleason, Grant Mitchell, Edward Everett Horton, Vaughan Glaser, Chester Clute

Summary : Arsenic and Old Lace is director Frank Capra’s spin on the classic Joseph Kesselring stage comedy, which concerns the sweet old Brewster sisters (Josephine Hull, Jean Adair), beloved in their genteel Brooklyn neighborhood for their many charitable acts. One charity which the ladies don’t advertise is their ongoing effort to permit lonely bachelors to die with smiles on their faces–by serving said bachelors elderberry wine spiked with arsenic. When the sisters’ drama-critic nephew Mortimer (Cary Grant) stumbles onto their secret, he is understandably put out–especially since he has just married the lovely Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane). Given the homicidal tendencies of his aunts, the sinister activities of his escaped-convict older brother Jonathan (Raymond Massey) and the disruptive behavior of younger brother Teddy (John Alexander)–who is convinced that he’s really Theodore Roosevelt, and runs around the house yelling “CHAAAAARGGGE”–Mortimer isn’t keen on starting a family with his new bride. “Insanity runs in my family,” he explains. “It practically gallops.” Further complications ensue when the murderous Jonathan Brewster arrives home, with his snivelling accomplice Dr. Einstein (Peter Lorre) in tow. When Jonathan learns that his darling aunts have killed twelve men, he is incensed–they’re challenging his own record of murders. Though the movie rights for Arsenic and Old Lace were set up so that the film could not be released until 1944, director Capra shot the film quickly and inexpensively in 1941, so that his family could subsist on his 100,000 salary while he was serving in World War II.

Director : Martin McDonagh

Writer(s) : Martin McDonagh

Genre : Comedy, Crime, Drama, Thriller

Cast : Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, Clémence Poésy, Jérémie Renier, Thekla Reuten, Jordan Prentice, Zeljko Ivanek, Elizabeth Berrington, Rudy Blomme, Olivier Bonjour, Mark Donovan, Ann Elsley, Jean-Marc Favorin, Eric Godon

Summary : Having just carried out a particularly difficult hit in London, two hitmen seek shelter in Bruges, Belgium, only to find their views on life and death permanently altered by their interactions with the locals, the tourists, and a film crew. Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Ralph Fiennes star in an action comedy from director Martin McDonagh.

Director : Woody Allen

Writer(s) : Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman

Genre : Comedy, Romance

Cast : Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Michael Murphy, Mariel Hemingway, Meryl Streep, Anne Byrne Hoffman, Karen Ludwig, Michael O’Donoghue, Victor Truro, Tisa Farrow, Helen Hanft, Bella Abzug, Gary Weis, Kenny Vance, Charles Levin

Summary : On the heels of Annie Hall, the Oscar-winning romantic comedy that rocketed Woody Allen to the front ranks of American filmmakers, Manhattan continued Allen’s romantic obsessions in a slightly darker, more pessimistic vein. Allen stars as Isaac Davis, a TV comedy writer sick of the pap he is forced to churn out and harboring dreams of being the great American novelist. His love life is in barbed-wire territory: he is tormented by his second ex-wife Jill (Meryl Streep), a lesbian who has written a tell-all book about their marriage, and he is dating teenager Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), to whom he refuses to commit, and keeps hinting that a breakup may be imminent. Isaac’s disillusioned (and married) best friend Yale (Michael Murphy) has begun an affair with the cerebral writer Mary Wilke (Diane Keaton). While Isaac makes a last minute, sink-or-swim decision to quit his job and devote all of his time to book writing, and neurotically moans about what the lack of a full time job will do to him (“My parents won’t have as good of a seat in the synagogue,” he moans. “They’ll be far away from God… away from the action”) Yale is crippled by his lack of resolve, as indicated by his inability to leave his wife Emily (Anne Byrne). Meanwhile, Isaac and Mary) begin to fall for one another. Tracy then tells Isaac the basic truth that none of his hung-up friends and past lovers fully realizes: “You have to have a little more faith in people.” Manhattan is both a seriocomic dissection of perpetually dissatisfied New Yorkers and an ode to the city itself, filmed in glorious black-and-white by ace cinematographer Gordon Willis, and set to a score of rhapsodic George Gershwin music.

Director : George Cukor

Writer(s) : Donald Ogden Stewart, Philip Barry

Genre : Comedy, Romance

Cast : Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, Ruth Hussey, John Howard, Roland Young, John Halliday, Mary Nash, Virginia Weidler, Henry Daniell, Lionel Pape, Rex Evans

Summary : We open on Philadelphia socialite C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) as he’s being tossed out of his palatial home by his wife, Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn). Adding insult to injury, Tracy breaks one of C.K.’s precious golf clubs. He gallantly responds by knocking her down on her million-dollar keester. A couple of years after the breakup, Tracy is about to marry George Kittridge (John Howard), a wealthy stuffed shirt whose principal recommendation is that he’s not a Philadelphia “mainliner,” as C.K. was. Still holding a torch for Tracy, C.K. is galvanized into action when he learns that Sidney Kidd (Henry Daniell), the publisher of Spy Magazine, plans to publish an expose concerning Tracy’s philandering father (John Halliday). To keep Kidd from spilling the beans, C.K. agrees to smuggle Spy reporter Macauley Connor (James Stewart) and photographer Elizabeth Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) into the exclusive Lord-Kittridge wedding ceremony. How could C.K. have foreseen that Connor would fall in love with Tracy, thereby nearly lousing up the nuptials? As it turns out, of course, it is C.K. himself who pulls the “louse-up,” reclaiming Tracy as his bride. A consistently bright, bubbly, witty delight, The Philadelphia Story could just as well have been titled “The Revenge of Katharine Hepburn.” Having been written off as “box-office poison” in 1938, Hepburn returned to Broadway in a vehicle tailor-made for her talents by playwright Philip Barry. That property, of course, was The Philadelphia Story; and when MGM bought the rights to this sure-fire box-office success, it had to take Hepburn along with the package — and also her veto as to who her producer, director, and co-stars would be. Her strategy paid off: after the film’s release, Hepburn was back on top of the Hollywood heap. While she didn’t win the Oscar that many thought she richly deserved, the little gold statuette was bestowed upon her co-star Stewart, perhaps as compensation for his non-win for 1939’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Donald Ogden Stewart (no relation to Jimmy) also copped an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The Philadelphia Story was remade in 1956 with a Cole Porter musical score as High Society.