Anything Goes (1936)
★ ★ ½
First film adaptation of classic Broadway musical ditches the plot and most of the songs for a pre-Road musical rom-com. Crosby is here - he also stars in the superior remake - and the Bob Hope part has Charles Ruggles. The women are Ethel Merman and Ida Lupino. It mostly rambles like a sub-par Marx Bros. film (Margaret Dumont even shows up), but finds some laughs and Crosby and Merman do a playful version of "You're the Top." Like too many 1930s musicals, this is ultimately undone by the racist finale, "Shanghai-Dee-Ho", which is as offensive as it sounds.
The Purple Heart (1944)
★ ★ ½
The box set of Milestone war films gets even bigger. The Purple Heart is bald-faced propaganda, but interesting under those conditions and considering it was released during the war. It's about an American Bombing squad captured by the Japanese and put on trial for war crimes they didn't commit. There are unmoving Japanese bad guys, but also a number who are secretly sympathetic to the side of Justice. Stars Dana Andrews, Richard Conte and Farley Granger. Locations are limited, but it's quite visual.
Halls of Montezuma (1951)
★ ★
Inspired by Milestone's treatment of war, I added this. Turned out to be his most by-the-numbers effort. There are moments lifted from his earlier films, and the overall mission of searching a Japanese island for a rocket base has the walking and talking of A Walk in the Sun. Ensemble cast is largely under-served. Richard Widmark, Karl Malden, Jack Palance, Robert Wagner, Richard Boone, Jack Webb and Neville Brand.
I keep harping on the idea of a wartime Box Set because few people have seen anything by All Quiet on the Western Front, and that's just a slice of some eye-opening pie. So once again, I would like to recommend the Box Set of...
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
The North Star (1943)
Edge of Darkness (1943)
The Purple Heart (1944)
A Walk in the Sun (1945)
Pork Chop Hill (1959)