A to Z Challenge 2023
A Month At The Movies
Hello and welcome to A Month at the Movies, my contribution to the A to Z challenge for 2023.
This year I am copying from a myriad of other a to z challengers by reprinting the same synopsis about my theme with every letter. You can skip over this part if you want to. I love movies and have decided to share with you a movie each day that I have enjoyed to one degree or another. With each entry, I'll give a brief synopsis of the film, share a positive and negative review from Rotten Tomatoes ( a website, I didn't use much at all until preparing for the challenge), discuss its resiliency (the theme of the A to Z challenge this year), and other tidbits like whether the film may appear in my top 100 film list, which I have been revamping this year. I think that's enough in the way of introduction, considering you'll be reading it (hopefully) 25 more times this month.
Film: Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Director: Frank Capra
By Photographer not credited - <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://archive.org/stream/cinemundial28unse#page/156/mode/1up">Cine Mundial, April 1943</a>, Public Domain,
Link
Arsenic and Old Lace premiered on September 23rd, 1944. This was exactly 20 years before I premiered. It's a funny story actually, my Dad and my 9 months pregnant Mom were at an Arsenic and Old Lace 20th anniversary party when ... No, Just kidding.
Cary Grant stars in this dark comedy/ screwball comedy that was the first Frank Capra film I ever watched. The basic gist of the film is that Mortimer Brewster (played by Grant) is a theatre critic and avowed bachelor who at the beginning of the film marries the girl next door to his boyhood home in Brooklyn.
"The Fun" begins when Grant discovers his beloved salt of the earth aunts are actually serial murderers and is then also reunited with a few other of his sanity-challenged relatives.
Positive Tomato: It's not mere hyperbole to state that Frank Capra's Arsenic and Old Lace ranks as one of the funniest films ever made. Matt Brunson - Film Frenzy
Negative Tomato: Not one of Capra's best. Grant is too hammy and out of control, and without Boris Karloff as Jonathan Brewster, the joke is lost. Bob Bloom - Journal and Courier (Lafayette, Indiana)
I really enjoyed this movie watching it on T.V. as a kid. In recent viewing, I found it a little long and a little uneven but still enjoyed it and would probably watch it again, especially with folks who have not seen it before.
Resiliency: Mortimer Brewster shows a lot of resiliency throughout the film trying to figure out how to best deal with his family situation since he literally knows where the bodies are buried.
Top 100: I don't think this will make my top 100 list. I'm a Big Frank Capra fan and while it's not one of my favorite Capra films, I do think that maybe it would make its way onto the bottom 100 of my top 200 film list.
For more A to Z Challenge click here.
Next Time: B is for Bike Movie
