Donovan's Brain 1953  N/R, 83 min.
Genre: Horror / Thriller
Director: Felix E. Feist
Cast: Lew Ayres, Gene Evans, Nancy Davis, Steve Brodie, Lisa Howard, Tom Powers, Michael Colgan, James Anderson, Victor Sutherland, Peter Adams, Harlan Warde, Shimen Ruskin
Scientist Dr. Patrick Corey (Lew Ayres) specializes in brain research and has successfully kept a monkey's brain alive. When a ruthless millionaire dies in a plane accident, Corey notes that brain waves are still active and removes the brain for experimentation. The brain stays alive and even begins to control Corey–who continues the millionaire's corrupt work in a Jekyll/Hyde-like situation. As the brain becomes ever more powerful, it influences others to do its bidding. A good film based on Curt Siodmak's novel and was filmed previously as "Lady and the Monster" and later as "The Brain" a.k.a. "Vengeance." This film is closest to the novel's storyline.
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Fiddler on the Roof 1971  G, 180 min.
Genre: Family / Drama / Musical
Director: Norman Jewison
Cast: Topol, Norma Crane, Molly Picon, Leonard Frey, Paul Mann, Rosalind Harris, Michele Marsh, Neva Small, Paul Michael Glaser, Zvee Scooler, Ray Lovelock, Elaine Edwards, Candy Bonstein, Louis Zorich, Shimen Ruskin
Jewish milkman Tevye (Topol) and his wife Golde (Norma Crane) find their world in Russia changing in 1905. Not only is Russia modernizing, but their daughters Hodel (Michele Marsh), Tzeitel (Rosalind Harris), and Chava (Neva Small) are also going against tradition and choosing their own husbands. Tzeitel is in love with poor tailor Motel Kamzoil (Leonard Frey), but Tevye has arranged for her to marry wealthy Lazar Wolf (Paul Mann). Meanwhile, Chava wants to marry Fyedka (Ray Lovelock) who is a not Jewish. While Tevye disapproves of their choices and has tried to arrange more "proper" marriages, he is forced finally to change his way of thinking when the anti-Semitic Czar forces his family and their Jewish neighbors out of their village. The film won three Academy Awards (Best Cinematography, Music, and Sound) and was nominated for five others–including Best Picture, Actor (Topol), Director, and Supporting Actor (Frey).
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Lady from Louisiana 1941  N/R, 82 min.
Genre: Drama
Director: Bernard Vorhaus
Cast: John Wayne, Ray Middleton, Ona Munson, Henry Stephenson, Helen Westley, Jack Pennick, Dorothy Dandridge, Shimen Ruskin, Jacqueline Dalya, Paul Scardon, James C. Morton
A lawyer, John Reynolds (John Wayne), leaves New England and travels to New Orleans where he looks into the lottery with plans to fight the local crime syndicate that is skimming off profits. On the trip to New Orleans, John meets Julie (Ona Munson) and falls in love. But, problems develop because Julie just happens to be the daughter of General Mirbeau (Henry Stephenson) who runs the gaming business that John is trying to clean up.
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Love and Death 1975 PG, 85 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Olga Georges-Picot, Harold Gould, Jessica Harper, Shimen Ruskin, James Tolkan, Howard Vernon, Zvee Scooler, Alan Tilvern
Set during the 1812 Napoleonic invasion of Russia, this film is good satire on Russian politics and literature. Diane Keaton plays the strong Sonja who is loved by the weak, intellectual Boris (Woody Allen). Boris is falsely accused and then executed for the "death" of Napoleon.
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 The Producers 1968   N/R, 88 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Kenneth Mars, Dick Shawn, Lee Meredith, Christopher Hewett, Estelle Winwood, Renee Taylor, Frank Campanella, Andreas Voutsinas, David Patch, William Hickey, Barney Martin, Shimen Ruskin, Josip Elic
Mel Brooks won the Oscar for Best Screenplay in this film about two characters, Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) and Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder), who con people into investing in a non-existent Broadway show: "Springtime for Hitler." Wilder received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. 2 User Reviews
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| | Parts of this are the funniest movie ever made | 1fatts 03/27/2007 | Mel Brooks is a cannon on the loose. It is his strength and his weakness. The 2000-year-old man sketches with Carl Reiner are classic for Brooks' unpredictable leaps from political humor to burlesque inuendo to bizarre non-sequitur. At his best, he can take your breath away. At his worst, he is a runaway train.
Stand-up comedy benefits most from this kind of wildness; movies suffer most. Movies need plot and structure and discipline.
Brooks' best film, as a work of cinema, is probably Young Frankenstein because Gene Wilder shared writing credit and imposed some order which Mel Brooks simply cannot supply -- see all the shotgun "sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn't" humor of "Robin Hood - Men in Tights", "Spaceballs", et al.
But even in a movie that is all over the map (they pretty much run out of central joke and plot in The Producers after the play is a hit), there are a half a dozen scenes that are perhaps the funniest stuff every put on film. Brooks' writing is certainly a major factor, and the other is the casting. Only Zero Mostel was Zero Mostel. He was a life force, a stampede, a landslide. He defined this role . . . and Tevye in Fiddler . . . and Pseudolus in "Funny Thing Happened. . . " Other people may have played his roles, but they were never near the standared. His Max Biolystock is incomparable. His teaming with the young, intensely neurotic Leo Bloom (Wilder), the outrageous Hold Me Touch Me (Estelle Winwood), Kenneth Mars' Nazi, Christopher Hewitt's gay director ("Max, he's wearing a dress."), etc. are the best scenes Brooks has every directed, the funniest filmwork he has ever done.
The first twenty minutes of the film are incomparable. I forgive Brooks all the dead ends and ramblings that may go on elsewhere. I take it as the price we have to pay to be allowed into the near-perfection of the scenes that work.
You can't call youself knowledgeable in comic film if you haven't studied The Producers. |
| | Outstanding | Googleeyes 03/01/2007 | | One of Mel Brooks finest achievements, maybe the best of his achievements. |
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The Sailor Takes a Wife 1945  N/R, 92 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Richard Whorf
Cast: Robert Walker, June Allyson, Hume Cronyn, Audrey Totter, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Reginald Owen, Gerald Oliver Smith, Moyna MacGill, Anna Q. Nilsson, Franklin Pangborn, Lillian Yarbo, Shimen Ruskin, George Sorel, Jack Luden, Phillip Pine
One evening during 1944, a sailor, John Hill (Robert Walker), shares a carriage with Mary (June Allyson), and they fall in love. They marry that night, and John ships out immediately after the ceremony. John is discharged from the Navy a short time later and returns to Mary, but they are basically strangers, and many complications lie ahead.
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 Shaft 1971 R, 100 min.
Genre: Action / Drama / Thriller
Director: Gordon Parks
Cast: Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, Charles Cioffi, Christopher St. John, Gwenn Mitchell, Lawrence Pressman, Antonio Fargas, Arnold Johnson, Shimen Ruskin, Joseph Leon, Victor Arnold, Sherri Brewer, Rex Robbins, Camille Yarbrough, Margaret Warncke
After the teenage daughter of Black, Harlem gangster Bumpy Jonas (Moses Gunn) is kidnapped by the White Mafia, private investigator John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) sets out to track her down. There has been no demand for ransom, and Shaft has no clues as to who actually did the kidnapping when he enters his action-packed investigation through New York City. Isaac Hayes' theme song for this film won the Academy Award for Best Song.
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| 1. Donovan's Brain (1953)
2. Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
3. Lady from Louisiana (1941)
4. Love and Death (1975)
5. The Producers (1968)
6. The Sailor Takes a Wife (1945)
7. Shaft (1971)
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