Jeanne Engels was really great, and there's rarely a posthumous nomination that doesn't add a sense of tragedy to the film. Engels died way too young, but I'm glad she had a great showing here that proved she was a great early talent.

We live in a world where The Leatherneck is an Academy Award nominee. This is the type of movie that a review is needed for, because I'm going to forget I saw it otherwise.

Absolutely horrific acting by anyone other than Paul Muni! It unironically increased my enjoyment of the movie tenfold, because some of the line delivery here might genuinely be the worst I've ever seen. I'm working on a video covering the second Oscar ceremony, and I might just make an entire montage of this film's best line deliveries, because...

Very minor William Boyd comedy that may have been better without William Boyd. The story was silly, but I loved all of the early scenes atop the skyscraper.

Man, I loved this. This is so niche; a faux-documentary showing life of Siamese tribes fending for themselves and their families within a grueling jungle. It's worth it for the shots of animals alone, which are so immensely impressive given 1927 limitations. This is truly a spectacle of a film, and it is CRIMINALLY underseen and underrated. It currently holds the distinction of being the sole documentary to be up for the Best Picture Academy Award (though it is not fully a documentary, and it was actually up for the Best Artistic Picture award only seen in the first Academy Awards; still, it's well-deserved!).

A stodgy and stilted look at immigrants and the problems they face in America. This gets silly fast, with pipe bombs and war heroes and a court case, all in a choppy 70 minutes. I didn't -hate- this, but Louise Dresser's Academy Award nomination is the only reason I watched it, and she's not anything special.

One of the four or five best Chaplin films. I didn't appreciate this as much in previous viewings, but it's just so light and fun. Sure, it's mostly just 68 minutes of circus gags, but the gags are so good! My favorites are the lion cage and tightrope bits.

Incredibly dry romance. The only interesting note really is that this is one of Greta Garbo’s earliest talking roles, but it’s not even her strongest film of the 1930 ceremony!

There’s a lot of sadness in this when you consider it was Mary Pickford’s only real recognition at an Academy Awards (not counting her lifetime achievement award). Her performance was not good at all, either. Sorry to say, Pickford fans.

Nancy Carroll is actually surprisingly good here as a gold digger who (lamely) finds her interesting aspects reformed as she falls for a strait-laced man with no inspiring qualities. It’s very generic and not particularly memorable, but it takes place at the Grand Hotel, which proves the existence of the GHCU (Grand Hotel Cinematic Universe).

Really terrible early sound film. Conrad Nagel would get me-too'd so hard these days.