Month: September 2021

I didn’t have a lot of expectations for this, thinking that Walter Matthau couldn’t possibly lead in a worthwhile thriller about a subway train hijacking, but I was completely wrong. Robert Shaw, Hector Elizondo, Earl Hindman, and Martin Balsam are fantastic as the diverse hijackers, strangers who come together to perform the job very reminiscent of Reservoir Dogs, color names included. The movie doesn’t bother getting bogged into the details of how or why these gentlemen got together, just that they have a job to do and they intend to succeed. Matthau is a member of the Transit Police whose day is ruined by their activities. He seems mostly annoyed that unlike his normal day, he’s required to use his smarts to thwart their plans. There’s also James Broderick, Jerry Stiller, and Dick O’Neill in fabulous supporting roles. The story is tight and not flashy, totally relying on the excitement and danger inherent to the crime itself.

Jeff Bridges is the recently orphaned heir of a prominent Alabama family. Ostensibly as part of a shady real estate deal, he’s drawn to a body building gym in Birmingham, filled with an array of odd characters: Arnold Schwarzenegger in one of his earliest roles, super adorable Sally Field, and Robert Englund as someone who is not Freddy Krueger. The tone is all over the place as Bridges tries to balance his two lives: the ritzy country club crowd and his quirky new gym friends. There is a side plot regarding the Mr. Universe pageant, which makes this. if nothing else. a nice companion piece to Pumping Iron.

This reminded me a lot of Not as a Stranger, both stories focusing on the lives of doctors. This film is a lot more focused in story, centering on a hospital’s old pathologist played by Frederic March who is less than eager to train his replacement, Ben Gazzara. Instead of getting bogged down in the melodrama of the doctors’ personal lives, it keeps the drama close to the hospital, following a couple of different cases that all intersect with the pathology department. The production won’t blow anyone’s mind, but is entertaining and includes some smaller performances from Dick Clark, Eddie Albert, and George Segal all as doctors.

This movie is great for what it is. It’s exactly what you’d expect from an early 2000s thriller starring John Travolta and Vince Vaughn as the former and current husbands of Teri Polo. Vaughn is perfectly menacing as the criminal who has pushed his way into Travolta’s family and terrorizes John’s teenage son. As expected, the actions of the characters don’t make a lick of sense, but there’s plenty of tension and the pacing is on point. At an hour and a half, it doesn’t overstay its welcome and even has a small role for Steve Buscemi as a former associate of Vaughn’s character.

The plot of this film is so batshit crazy that I think it could only have been made during a singular time and place. Alan Arkin is a widowed Puerto Rican living in poverty with his two young boys. He is weighed down by all of his responsibilities: being away all day working multiple jobs, wanting a better place for his family to live, trying to keep his boys from a life of crime, loving his girlfriend but knowing if they wed that there would eventually be even more mouths to feed. So he concocts the most dangerous and ridiculous plan possible in order to give his sons the better life that is otherwise impossible for him to give them. Arkin brings a needed manic energy to his role that, while not necessarily making the story believable, makes his actions understandable. The kids are cute and their chemistry as a family works. Rita Moreno is the voice of reason and sanity in the whole endeavor, so sadly her role is small.

I know the joke is corny and old, but this movie is far from flawless. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robert De Niro have great chemistry as sparring neighbors, a transgender woman and bigoted former cop respectively, who find themselves thrown together after De Niro’s character suffers a stroke and seeks help from Hoffman. Hoffman is particularly lovely and sensitive in his role. The rest of the story involving criminals and stolen money drags the acting quality seen in that relationship deep into deep dirt and doodoo. Simply mix in Hoffman’s group of catty friends and it could instead have been a better version of As Good As It Gets.

Following some of the themes from my most recent watch (FBI agents, terrorism, undercover agents), here we have Debra Winger as an FBI agent infiltrating a farming community filled with white supremacists. She meets and falls in love with Tom Berenger while on assignment and things then start to turn bad for her. I gained a new appreciation for Winger’s work as she really boosts the quality of the story. John Mahoney and Ted Levine are creepy as some of the members of the local cell. There are some seemingly over the top events undertaken by the supremacists, though I might be too naïve here and need reminding that I live in a nation where Black men are shot by gangs of white men just for jogging on their street and militia groups plot to kidnap sitting governors.