Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (1944)

I have been continuing my obsession with WWII pilot movies, but Thirty Seconds over Tokyo kind of sucked. It's soooo long, and it's way more about Van Heflin and his wife than it is about the bombing. The truth is that the title is right, and I should have believed it. All we get is thirty seconds over Tokyo. No joke. The 1942 Tokyo bombing takes up very little space in this film, but wow! The bombing is so so so so so cool. Like in the middle of it I was screaming This is so cool!!! The effects in this movie are incredible. But then the movie goes back to being super boring... with an hour left in it.

Mister Roberts

I had been avoiding this film for years thinking it was going to be a bunch of Jack Lemmon silliness. (He's just not my thing. I recently, for example, watched Blake Edwards' The Great Race and was completely annoyed by the Lemmon idiocy at its twinned center.) But Mister Roberts was nothing of the kind: Just an old school, sentimental, whimsical Hollywood picture, co-directed by Mervyn LeRoy and John Ford.

My favorite bit of dialogue in the film:

Henry Fonda: Ok, ok. Any minute now you'll start quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson.
William Powell: That's a lousy thing to say!

I found this thoroughly enjoyable.