Month: August 2021

A film with Robert Mitchum and Marilyn Monroe is hard to pass up. Sadly there is quite a bit of unevenness in this production. Visually, it is stunning. The location, Canadian scenery, and Ms. Monroe’s costumes are all beautiful. Marilyn herself is also one of the strong points; I enjoy her roles best when there are smarts and strength beneath the ditziness. Mitchum on the other hand is mostly phoning it in, burdened with a story that doesn’t offer him much to do. He wanted to start a farm with his newly recovered son and instead Monroe’s fiance comes and steals his horse and gun, so of course he must set out on a revenge mission to recover both. There’s also a group of anonymous Indians whose only job is to provide a menace to propel our characters along.

Nora Ephron’s directorial debut is rather light and cute, fitting well in the rest of her filmography. Julie Kavner is a single mom and aspiring comedian who cashes in a small inheritance to move to Manhattan, eventually finding a bit of success in her desired career to the chagrin of her teenage daughter. Samantha Mathis and Gaby Hoffman elevate fairly stereotypical child roles. Dan Aykroyd and Carrie Fisher add funny bits to the production as comedy agents. It’s good for the film that there isn’t too much time on Kavner’s stand-up act because the bits that are shown aren’t particularly funny.

Less than a week ago, I had watched Hard Rain and thought how they don’t make films like that anymore. While I still assert that that is generally true, here is a film sitting firmly in that same category. A thriller with a not-quite natural setting, a completely nonsensical plot, and bad guys who are so supernatural that they have to killed them a dozen times before they stop their pursuit, the whole thing is a mess if you spend too long thinking about it. But at the same time, it remains an entertaining way to spend less than two hours. Angelina Jolie is a smokejumper, who after experiencing tragedy the year before, has found herself protecting a young boy being tracked by assassins for reasons. The good guys are helped by other good guys, the bad guys are mobilized by a Tyler Perry cameo.

It is hard to know if I’d previously seen this film or not, though I’m pretty sure I have. It is one in a series of films with an über intelligent Anthony Hopkins matching wits with a potentially worthy foe. Sir Anthony plays an engineer who shoots his unfaithful wife, certain he will get away with it; Ryan Gosling, with a nonsensical Southern accent, is the young upstart district attorney who is assigned to the case. Aside from finagling himself into job at a high profile firm, there is little sense that Gosling is up to this mental challenge. The slapdash finale supports that conclusion.

Thank god for Paul Newman. The plot of these Harper films are so convoluted and would be worthless without him. Of course, I would not be watching them if he weren’t the star. In this one, we have our private eye travelling to Louisiana in order to investigate who is blackmailing an ex-fling of his (played beautifully by Joanne Woodward). While down there, he instead gets drawn into intrigue involving an oil magnate and a missing account book. There is a drawn out climax in a pool of sorts and a young Melanie Griffith overacts with a poor Southern accent.