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Disney's animated movies have a rich history dating back to 1937, with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs being their first fully animated film. Disney's films cover a wide range of genres and storytelling styles, from musical masterpieces like Fantasia to heartwarming tales like Bambi. Many of Disney's classic animated films are available to watch on platforms like Disney+, YouTube, Google Play, Apple TV, Vudu, and Amazon Prime Video.

Watching Disney's animated movies in order reveals the studio's incredible track of animated features. Established in 1923, The Walt Disney Studios has produced a huge library of films that have become an established part of many people's lives. Their animated movies can serve as a comfort, with their memorable storylines and lovable characters.

From musical masterpieces to sweet animal stories to brave princess tales and everything in between, Disney has some of the most iconic stories ever told in animation form. This includes...

The effort to restore neglected films doesn’t get more rewarding than this 4K rebirth of Lewis Milestone’s version of the acclaimed Somerset Maugham story. Loaned from MGM, Joan Crawford tries on the role of Sadie Thompson and holds her own opposite Walter Huston’s fire & brimstone preacher. It’s still a major achievement of the pre-Code era, an adult story that doesn’t water down its ‘dangerous’ themes: it’s exactly the kind of show that the censors didn’t want made.

Rain

Blu-ray

Mary Pickford Foundation / Vci

1932 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 94 + 76 min. / Street Date September 27, 2022 / Available from Mvd / 29.95

Starring: Joan Crawford, Walter Huston, Fred Howard, Ben Hendricks Jr., William Gargan, Mary Shaw, Guy Kibbee, Kendall Lee, Beulah Bondi, Matt Moore, Walter Catlett.

Cinematography: Oliver Marsh

Art Director: Richard Day

Film Editor: W. Duncan Mansfield

Original Music: Alfred Newman

Screen adaptation by Maxwell Anderson from the play by John Colton,...

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“I Can’T Give You Anything But Love, Baby”

By Raymond Benson

It boggles this reviewer’s mind that Bringing Up Baby, released in early 1938, was considered a “flop” at the time. Was it really, or is that Hollywood PR nonsense? The truth is that it did fine, but perhaps not as well as the studio, Rko, had hoped. Shortly before its release, the Independent Theater Owners of America had deemed star Katharine Hepburn (and other popular leading ladies) “box office poison.” This bit of nastiness may have had an impact on Baby’s earnings in 1938.

The movie was re-released in the early 40s after the success of The Philadelphia Story (1940) and did much better. When television began broadcasting Bringing Up Baby, the picture’s reputation shot through the roof. Today, it’s considered one of Hollywood’s greatest screwball comedies, and fans...

Few ’30s classics have held up as well as this MGM blockbuster, a costume thriller that in spirit is quite faithful to the great Charles Dickens novel. Heroes don’t come more sophisticated or noble than Ronald Colman’s Sydney Carton, nor as vile as Basil Rathbone’s Marquis St. Evrémonde. David O. Selznick’s impeccable production hits all the right notes and even downplays the ‘save the royals’ sentiments. This is the one where the Bastille gets stormed and a chortling hag cheers every drop of a guillotine blade. The show even has a connection to producer Val Lewton. Just remember that activities like capitol-storming and public executions need to stay back in the 18th century where they belong.

A Tale of Two Cities

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1935 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 126 min. / Street Date February 9, 2021 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Ronald Colman, Elizabeth Allan, Edna May Oliver, Donald Woods,...

(See previous post: Fourth of July Movies: Escapism During a Weird Year.) On the evening of the Fourth of July, besides fireworks, fire hazards, and Yankee Doodle Dandy, if you're watching TCM in the U.S. and Canada, there's the following: Peter H. Hunt's 1776 (1972), a largely forgotten film musical based on the Broadway hit with music by Sherman Edwards. William Daniels, who was recently on TCM talking about 1776 and a couple of other movies (A Thousand Clowns, Dodsworth), has one of the key roles as John Adams. Howard Da Silva, blacklisted for over a decade after being named a communist during the House Un-American Committee hearings of the early 1950s (Robert Taylor was one who mentioned him in his testimony), plays Benjamin Franklin. Ken Howard is Thomas Jefferson, a role he would reprise in John Huston's 1976 short Independence. (In the short, Pat Hingle was cast as John Adams; Eli Wallach was Benjamin Franklin.) Warner...

The restoration of a newly rediscovered director’s cut of the 1931 The Front Page prompts this two-feature comedy disc — Lewis Milestone’s early talkie plus the sublime Howard Hawks remake, which plays a major gender switch on the main characters of Hecht & MacArthur’s original play.

His Girl Friday / The Front Page

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 849

Available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 10, 2017 / 39.96

His Girl Friday:

1940 / B&W /1:37 flat Academy / 92 min.

Starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, Porter Hall, Ernest Truex, Cliff Edwards, Clarence Kolb, Roscoe Karns, Frank Jenks, Regis Toomey, Abner Biberman, Frank Orth, John Qualen, Helen Mack, Alma Kruger, Billy Gilbert, Marion Martin.

Cinematography Joseph Walker

Film Editor Gene Havelick

Original Music Sidney Cutner, Felix Mills

Written by Charles Lederer from the play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur

Produced and Directed by Howard Hawks

The Front Page:...

Depraved convicts ! Crazy Manhattan gin parties! Society dames poaching other women's husbands! A flimflam artist scamming the uptown sophisticates! All these forbidden attractions are here and more -- including Bette Davis's epochal seduction line about impulsive kissing versus good hair care. It's a 9th collection of racy pre-Code wonders. Forbidden Hollywood Volume 9 Big City Blues, Hell's Highway, The Cabin in the Cotton, When Ladies Meet, I Sell Anything DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1932-1934 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 63, 62, 78, 85, 70 min. / Street Date October 27, 2015 / available through the WBshop / 40.99 Starring Joan Blondell, Eric Linden, Humphrey Bogart; Richard Dix, Tom Brown; Richard Barthelmess, Bette Davis, Dorothy Jordan, Berton Churchill; Ann Harding, Robert Montgomery, Myrna Loy, Alice Brady, Frank Morgan; Pat O' Brien, Ann Dvorak, Claire Dodd, Roscoe Karns. Cinematography James Van Trees; Edward Cronjager; Barney McGill; Ray June Written by Lillie Hayward, Ward Morehouse, from his play; Samuel Ornitz, Robert Tasker, Rowland Brown...

Pat O'Brien movies on TCM: 'The Front Page,' 'Oil for the Lamps of China' Remember Pat O'Brien? In case you don't, you're not alone despite the fact that O'Brien was featured – in both large and small roles – in about 100 films, from the dawn of the sound era to 1981. That in addition to nearly 50 television appearances, from the early '50s to the early '80s. Never a top star or a critics' favorite, O'Brien was nevertheless one of the busiest Hollywood leading men – and second leads – of the 1930s. In that decade alone, mostly at Warner Bros., he was seen in nearly 60 films, from Bs (Hell's House, The Final Edition) to classics (American Madness, Angels with Dirty Faces). Turner Classic Movies is showing nine of those today, Nov. 11, '15, in honor of what would have been the Milwaukee-born O'Brien's 116th birthday. Pat O'Brien and James Cagney Spencer Tracy had Katharine Hepburn.

Gary Cooper movies on TCM: Cooper at his best and at his weakest Gary Cooper is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” star today, Aug. 30, '15. Unfortunately, TCM isn't showing any Cooper movie premiere – despite the fact that most of his Paramount movies of the '20s and '30s remain unavailable. This evening's features are Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Sergeant York (1941), and Love in the Afternoon (1957). Mr. Deeds Goes to Town solidified Gary Cooper's stardom and helped to make Jean Arthur Columbia's top female star. The film is a tad overlong and, like every Frank Capra movie, it's also highly sentimental. What saves it from the Hell of Good Intentions is the acting of the two leads – Cooper and Arthur are both excellent – and of several supporting players. Directed by Howard Hawks, the jingoistic, pro-war Sergeant York was a huge box office hit, eventually earning Academy Award nominations in several categories,...

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. ca. 1935. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was never as popular as his father, silent film superstar Douglas Fairbanks, who starred in one action-adventure blockbuster after another in the 1920s (The Mark of Zorro, Robin Hood, The Thief of Bagdad) and whose stardom dates back to the mid-1910s, when Fairbanks toplined a series of light, modern-day comedies in which he was cast as the embodiment of the enterprising, 20th century “all-American.” What this particular go-getter got was screen queen Mary Pickford as his wife and United Artists as his studio, which he co-founded with Pickford, D.W. Griffith, and Charles Chaplin. Now, although Jr. never had the following of Sr., he did enjoy a solid two-decade-plus movie career. In fact, he was one of the few children of major film stars – e.g., Jane Fonda, Liza Minnelli, Angelina Jolie, Michael Douglas, Jamie Lee Curtis – who had successful film careers of their own.

Given how revered Disney's "Pinocchio" is today, it's hard to believe it was a flop when it was first released exactly three quarters of a century ago. Upon its New York City premiere, on February 7, 1940, critics hailed the film as a masterpiece, and even to this day, many prefer it to Disney's pioneering first animated feature, 1937's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Yet it took the film many years and multiple re-releases to make a profit.

Today, of course, the legacy of "Pinocchio" is inescapable. Everyone's image of the puppet-boy with the nose that grows when he lies comes not from Carlo Collodi's original novel but from the kid with the Tyrolean hat and the Mickey Mouse gloves, as drawn by Disney animators. And the opening tune, Jiminy Cricket's "When You Wish Upon a Star," is ubiquitous as the theme music played before every Walt Disney movie and home video release.

Jean Arthur films on TCM include three Frank Capra classics Five Jean Arthur films will be shown this evening, Monday, January 5, 2015, on Turner Classic Movies, including three directed by Frank Capra, the man who helped to turn Arthur into a major Hollywood star. They are the following: Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take It with You, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; George Stevens' The More the Merrier; and Frank Borzage's History Is Made at Night. One the most effective performers of the studio era, Jean Arthur -- whose film career began inauspiciously in 1923 -- was Columbia Pictures' biggest female star from the mid-'30s to the mid-'40s, when Rita Hayworth came to prominence and, coincidentally, Arthur's Columbia contract expired. Today, she's best known for her trio of films directed by Frank Capra, Columbia's top director of the 1930s. Jean Arthur-Frank Capra...

Mary Boland movies: Scene-stealing actress has her ‘Summer Under the Stars’ day on TCM Turner Classic Movies will dedicate the next 24 hours, Sunday, August 4, 2013, not to Lana Turner, Lauren Bacall, Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Esther Williams, or Bette Davis — TCM’s frequent Warner Bros., MGM, and/or Rko stars — but to the marvelous scene-stealer Mary Boland. A stage actress who was featured in a handful of movies in the 1910s, Boland came into her own as a stellar film supporting player in the early ’30s, initially at Paramount and later at most other Hollywood studios. First, the bad news: TCM’s "Summer Under the Stars" Mary Boland Day will feature only two movies from Boland’s Paramount period: the 1935 Best Picture Academy Award nominee Ruggles of Red Gap, which TCM has shown before, and one TCM premiere. So, no rarities like Secrets of a Secretary, Mama Loves Papa, Melody in Spring,...

Chicago – It’s a cause for celebration amongst film buffs when any picture—however minor or unremarkable—is miraculously resurrected from the dead, enabling us to view a lost piece of cinema history. That being said, there are countless titles more worthy of being reborn than “Perfect Understanding,” the latest alleged classic released by Cohen Media Group.

At first glance, this 1933 talkie promises to be fascinating. After making the intimidating transition to sound, while scoring two Oscar nominations in the process, one would imagine that Gloria Swanson’s career was on fire. Yet her popularity was waning with audiences, inspiring the star to form her own production company to make this comeback vehicle with a young up-and-comer named Laurence Olivier. Apparently the film fizzled during its initial release, inspiring Swanson to make only two more pictures before disappearing for nearly a decade.

Blu-ray Rating: 1.5/5.0

It wasn’t until 1950 when Swanson...

A Tale Of Two Cities (1935) Direction: Jack Conway Cast: Ronald Colman, Elizabeth Allan, Edna May Oliver, Reginald Owen, Basil Rathbone, Blanche Yurka, Donald Woods, Lucille La Verne, Henry B. Walthall, H. B. Warner, Walter Catlett, Fritz Leiber, Isabel Jewell, Tully Marshall, Mitchell Lewis, Robert Warwick Screenplay: W. P. Lipscomb and S. N. Behrman; from Charles Dickens' novel Oscar Movies Highly Recommended Jack Conway's A Tale of Two Cities Although not as widely known as other Old Hollywood spectacles, David O. Selznick's film production of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, set during the time of the French Revolution, is far, far better than most of the other period dramas made during the studio era. Starring former silent-screen heartthrob Ronald Colman; featuring respected supporting players such as Edna May Oliver, H. B. Warner, and Basil Rathbone; directed by MGM's reliable and unfairly forgotten Jack Conway, by...

Howard Hawks's films – The Big Sleep, His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby – are among the most enjoyable ever made in Hollywood, with sublime performances by Bogart and Grant and Bacall. Just don't call him an 'artist'. By David Bromwich

Howard Hawks took legitimate pride in a certain professionalism, but "artist" and "work of art" were alien terms for him. He appreciated the wit of Faulkner's saying to him the first time they met: "I've seen your name on a check."

Setting it up and putting it together, working with actors and the script: these were his elements of film. Hawks knew what a cameraman should do – Lee Garmes brought to Scarface the desert surface Hawks knew he wanted – but he made no pretence about placing lights or finding angles. He was an experimenter whose greatest successes were happy accidents. The standard genres – comedy, melodrama, western, film noir – he took...

Jedi, goofy flight attendants, a possessed young girl, and two journalists on the brink of discovery are among the characters to be honored for film preservation. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has named 25 motion pictures to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.

Among the films to be preserved are George Lucas' "Return of the Jedi," "Airplane," William Friedkin's "The Exorcist," and Alan J. Pakula's "All The President's Men." This year.s selections bring the number of films in the registry to 550.

Each year, the Librarian of Congress, under the terms of the National Film Preservation Act, names 25 films to the National Film Registry that are "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant, to be preserved for all time. In other words, these films are certainly not the "best" (but we can argue that each movie truly represented high quality) but they are works of art...