Month: June 2022

Fired from her job as a dance instructor, Dolly Parton drops her useless boyfriend Michael Madsen and heads to the big city of Chicago in pursuit of something better. Finally hired as a receptionist at a radio station, she stumbles into a studio and successfully takes over for their new talk therapist. The rest of the plot centers on hiding her lack of qualifications (something she doesn’t want to do) with more men treating her badly, including James Woods in one of the strangest romantic pairings in existence. Luckily Dolly is so utter charming because she’s the absolute only reason to watch, but she does indeed make it watchable.

Eccentric amusement park mogul Geoffrey Rush invites six random people to a former psychiatric institution to celebrate his wife Famke Janssen’s birthday. As an enticement, each guest is offered one million dollars if they manage to spend the entire night in the allegedly haunted building. A remake of the 1959 same titled film, Rush does his best to fill in for the unparalleled Vincent Price. His snarky interactions with Janssen are the best part of the film. This version accentuates the supernatural aspects of the story to its detriment. The CGI at the time does not hold up to what is being attempted and it builds to more and more silliness. The cast is filled with a bunch of beautiful, but forgettable, interchangeable characters, especially in the case of similar looking Ali Larter and Bridgette Wilson-Sampras who I spent more time than I should have trying to figure out which one was which.     

The sole member of his department, Eddie Marsan’s job concentrates on attempting to locate the next of kin for dead residents. Living an entirely solitary life himself that parallels the lives of the people he researches, it all gets disrupted when his last case is for a neighbor at the same time his job is being downsized for being too expensive and time consuming. It’s premise is very similar to the novel How Not to be Alone. The film manages to be a gentle reflection on loneliness and death. The film rests entirely on Marsan’s shoulders and he does an incredible job conveying the closed off loneliness of his character as he slowly begins to open to something more.

Against the warnings of his superiors, doctor Hugh Grant attempts to figure out the circumstances that brought a mysterious homeless patient to his ER. He soon finds his personal and professional life threatened on all levels as he gets closer to the truth. It’s a fairly middling medical thriller that is silly when it strays from the expected. For better or worse, it stays nearer the expected where I couldn’t be certain I haven’t seen it before. With Gene Hackman as the prime baddie backed up by David Morse in yet another law enforcement role, it does have an appealing cast and it’s nice seeing Sarah Jessica Parker in a more intelligent and more serious role than her usual.  

On advice from a friend, architect Lenny Von Dohlen buys a top of the line computer to get more organized. A mishap when he was trying to download an entire database from work causes the computer to become sentient and Lenny finds himself fighting with the computer for the affections of Virginia Madsen, the attractive musician who lives upstairs. There’s a quirky 1980s vibe to the film with a fun soundtrack, great visuals, montages, and a unique perspective on the forthcoming cyber age. Von Dohlen is excellent in the lead role showing off equal levels of intelligence and bewilderment at varying times.    

For over 60 years, Betty White has spent Valentine’s Day at the train station where she last said goodbye to her husband who went missing in action during World War II. When cynical journalist Jennifer Love Hewitt is assigned the story as a personal interest piece, she gets caught up in the romance and helps Betty learn what happened to her husband. I had very low expectations for this Hallmark movie, but went in just wanting to see White’s performance. It delivered on almost all points. It’s overly sentimental and dramatic with an added dose of unnecessary Christianity thrown in for measure, but Betty is quite lovely in the dramatic role of a grieving widow. Unfortunately Hewitt’s character and her story arc, as cliched as it possibly can be, is the main focus and is very limited in interest.  

Running away from her philandering, gold digging husband William Hudson, rich heiress Allison Hayes discovers a mysterious satellite with a later encounter causing her to grow to ginormous size. Society uses Hayes’s weaknesses against her. When she first encounters the orb, she is disbelieved because of a drinking problem and mental illness that are extraordinarily exacerbated by the gaslighting and abuse she receives from her husband. She uses her newfound power to take back what others have tried to steal from her. The special effects in the film are often low budget and dated, but have moments of incredibleness. Watching the enlarged Hayes moving through miniature sets is a fun experience.