Month: December 2021

Public defender Cher is assigned to the case of homeless and deaf Vietnam vet Liam Neeson, accused of murdering a Justice Department clerk. The facts of the case are small and during the trial, Dennis Quaid, a lobbyist and one of the jury members, begins to illegally assist Cher in finding the truth. It’s a somewhat twisty, compelling mystery thriller that is sold by Cher’s solid performance. I only wish she had done more films during this era when she was at the height of her acting career. I also enjoy seeing a young Neeson in his earlier roles where he plays more of a supporting role but his star quality still shines.   

It seems a little weird that I watched three films with the letters F O G in their titles in one day, but such is the way of things sometimes. On the eve of a northern California beach town’s 100th anniversary, a mysterious fog rolls into town bringing with it death. It’s an entertaining scream-fest where the residents, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Hal Holbrook, and Adrienne Barbeau, battling against a natural force that slowly creeps up on them.  

Looking up the film Frog on Prime ,I stumbled across this title that seemed worth checking out. Wildlife photographer Sam Elliott is canoeing around the island estate of the Crockett family when a mishap with some of the younger family members has him being invited up to the house where patriarch Ray Milland is celebrating his birthday. The appearance of an unusually large number of frogs portends the murder of the island’s human inhabitants by its vengeful wildlife. It’s a delightfully fun and entertaining but weird entry into the pantheon of killer animals, though I’m thrown off whenever I see Elliott without a mustache.   

Travelling from Ohio to New York City for a job interview, Jack Lemmon and his wife Sandy Dennis suffer every possibly imaginable difficulty in their travels. Most of these begin with their own incredibly poor decision making and overreliance on systems working as they should (leaving important medications and money in their checked baggage, assuming they’ll arrive on time, etc.). Because their issues originate from their own decisions, it’s difficult to be on the couple’s side when more complications arise. Their insufferable attitudes towards life in a large city and particularly Lemmon’s rigidness to his original expectations made me just want it to quickly end.

My housemate has fond memories of this film from his childhood and we finally got around to watching it together. Scott Grimes is a young herpetologist who purchases a talking frog, voiced by Paul Williams, who was cursed by a witch 600 years ago. Grimes decides to use his new friend to help him win a science fair, but also tries to help the frog get a kiss from a girl to break the curse. Add in a cute love interest for Grimes and it can’t help follow the expected formula. I’m sure as a kid this could have been delightful. As an adult, it’s a rather short, harmless bit of 1980s nostalgia.