Month: December 2021

For years, I had seen this available to watch on Prime and passed it over, but I’m so glad I finally gave it a chance. In the vein of The Adventures of Robin Hood, a delightful Danny Kaye is the underappreciated minstrel of a band of rebels who masquerades as a court jester to infiltrate the usurper king’s court. Glynis Johns is given a rare opportunity to shine as a cunning, female commander in the rebel gang. It’s gorgeously shot in VistaVision. There’s a few songs, lots of slapstick, hilarious jokes, wordplay, and plenty of general hijinks. A special addition comes in the form of beautiful Angela Lansbury as the usurper’s daughter with Mildred Natwick as a witch and her collaborator. In all of Kaye’s filmography the only live action film I’d previously seen was White Christmas. I’ll be much more willing to watch his work after seeing this one.

For someone clamoring for a film about Abbie Hoffman twenty years ago, this would have probably sufficed. Though I can’t attest to its veracity, it covers a lot of the events of Hoffman’s life from his days as a counterculture activist to being on the run from the authorities after a cocaine possession arrest. I found the later half interesting in the family that developed between Hoffman, his second wife, their son, and the woman who supported him while he was in hiding. Vincent D’Onofrio gives a solid performance as Abbie, as do Janeane Garofelo and Jeanne Tripplehorn as the two women in his life. Overall though I think I found a deeper portrait of Hoffman in the concise story shown in The Trial of the Chicago 7.

For some reason, manic pixie hat maker Winona Ryder falls for much older restauranteur Richard Gere. Unfortunately she has a tumor weakening her heart and she’s dying. Though maybe it’s not unfortunate because there’s no other circumstance propelling the story. They have absolutely no chemistry and Gere’s character is unlikable pretty much through the entire film. I can’t think of a single thing to recommend it unless someone is trying to complete either of the leads’ filmographies.

As another entry in the pantheon of killer monster films, Piranha is the tale of a school of deadly genetically altered piranhas who are accidentally released into a river, threatening a summer camp, resort, and a large number of local inhabitants. With its woodsy setting, it reminds me a lot of Grizzly though it seemed to manage the balance of horror and campiness better. It smartly includes skinny dipping teenagers, a mad scientist, abandoned governmental experimentation, and plenty of carnage. It also knows not to over-show the actual fish, instead relying on pools of blood and the imagination of the viewer.   

When dim-witted Colorado gubernatorial candidate and son of a US senator Chris Cooper fishes up a corpse while making a campaign video, private investigator and ex-reporter Danny Huston is hired to investigate the case but also keep any of the candidate’s skeletons from making waves. It’s not Sayles’s best nor most enthralling work. Cooper is playing a character very similar to George W. Bush, being controlled by power and money behind the scenes. I had hoped to see much more of Cooper but the story rests with Huston meeting with a large cast of characters: Richard Dreyfus, Daryl Hannah, Kris Kristofferson, Miguel Ferrer, and more. At its core, it’s a twisty mystery that squanders it’s cast to take on more issues than it should: political corruption, corporate power, environmentalism, and undocumented workers. 

There’s a lot of heart in this quirky, coming-of-age tale of a Jewish boy growing up in 1960s Manitoba. It includes many sweet little touches involving the young man’s adventures as he grows as an adult in his community from navigating the outsider status as a Jewish person in his small town to befriending and playing a piano duet with a Catholic classmate. It’s definitely a bit low budget but there’s a lovely earnestness in the telling of the tale.

Kyra Sedgwick is an assassin tasked with recovering her boss’s girlfriend, Robin Tunney, and whose job becomes much more difficult when the girlfriend murders the boss’s son. There’s quite the stellar cast (Robbie Coltrane, John Ritter, Philip Seymour Hoffman) in this twisty, bloody crime-world story that skirts the line between drama and comedy. What really shines is Sedgwick and her relationship to partner Stanley Tucci. 

I have always gotten this confused with Rio Bravo. Other than being named for the same river and featuring John Wayne, they have little in common. In the post Civil War era, Wayne is the colonel on the Texas frontier, tasked with protecting settlers from nearby Apaches. Complications arise when his teenaged private of a son is assigned to the post, followed by his mother and Wayne’s estranged wife Maureen O’Hara. The father-son relationship is reminiscent of Wayne’s role most recently seen in In Harm’s Way. The battles against the Apaches are engaging albeit a bit stereotypical. Despite my general like for her work, O’Hara’s character draws away from the story and is an unnecessary addition.