A Letter to Three Wives, Kwaidan, Touchez pas au grisbi, & The Scarlet Pimpernel

A Letter to Three Wives is the movie Joseph Mankiewicz made the year before All about Eve, one of the classics, and one of the few times I didn't hate Bette Davis. This one also won an Oscar, but I really don't know why. I mean, yeah, it's a movie from 1949 all about infidelity, but I think we should all have been beyond that. I mean, Kirk Douglas just gets to play an insufferable ass of a schoolteacher. Beh to the movie.

Kwaidan is a collection of four Japanese ghost stories made in 1965 and so not really scary as much as very creepy. They were all good in their own ways, but they have the moral of don't lie or cheat and be faithful and make sure your ears are covered with the holy word when you think a ghost is coming or else you won't have any ears. And really, really, don't mess with anyone who says that they'll kill you if you tell a secret, because they just might. And everything was done on a soundstage, which was obvious most of the time, which was intentional, but still somewhat distracting.

Touchez pas au grisbi felt like just another French heist film. Or at least a post-heist film. It just suffers from comparison with so many other, better French heist films. I'm sure I should have liked it more, but I just didn't.

The Scarlet Pimpernel is something I am pretty sure I had seen before, but back a long time ago, when I was watching stuff like The Fighting Prince of Donegal all the time. When I would watch anything because there were some sword fights. My taste wasn't entirely discriminating. Anyway, watching it now wasn't too bad, because it had Ian McKellan as the bad guy, who was awesome, and Jane Seymour who was hot. Even if her hair was enormous.