The New Pictures

Welcome Home. Significant character study is the hardest thing to find in the cinema. This picture, adapted from Edna Ferber's and George Kaufman's play Minick, is another fruitless search. The central character is an old man come to live with his married son. The subtleties of old age in the middle classes escaped even the directorial discernment of James Cruze.

The Crackerjack. Johnny Hines is said suddenly to have become popular through the country to the extent of becoming a First National star; also, this picture is his best. He manufactures pickles, sells them by thousands to South American revolutionists, discovers that the jars are jammed with cartridges. All this with the characteristic Hines rapidity.

William Tell. The first Swiss film has arrived with a lot of good scenery. The actors are blonde and somewhat unappealing to our svelte and darker tastes. The story is about the apple, etc. For sheer majesty of background beauty, the film would be hard to surpass. Dramatically you may justly prefer Zane Grey.

Baree, Son of Kazan, is another example of the dog wagging the actress, or something of the kind. Anita Stewart is) the lady in the same old dog story: childhood attachment, rescue of the heroine, etc. The subtitles are terrible but the dog is a grand actor.

My Wife and I. Irene Rich is the chief excuse for this sombre study of domestic difficulties. Her husband starts tripping after the same girl who has tossed her son because the same father had cut off his allowance because he was spending it on the same girl. There is, too, a villain after the wife. She gets a good cry out of it but the spectators really did not care much one way or the other.

Black Cyclone. One more good animal actor was herewith added to the lists. He is Rex, called the wild horse and looking the part. He gets himself a wife, fights for her with The Killer, bites into a puma and a pack of wolves and is in general vicious and attractive.