Month: July 2022

Journalist John Cusack travels to Savannah to research a piece for Town and Country on one of Kevin Spacey’s lavish Christmas parties. On the evening of the party after the guests have all left, local prostitute Jude Law is found dead with Spacey holding the gun. I had forgotten this was based on a nonfiction book and was really expecting a courtroom drama a la John Grisham. Instead, it plays more like a travelogue of Savannah and the eccentric characters who live there; the murder and trial being a secondary focus. Told from the perspective of a square outsider over the course of more than two and a half hours, it lacks focus and doesn’t seem to have much to do after introducing the quirky residents.  

At the behest of a Middle Eastern prime minister, hieroglyphics expert Gregory Peck reluctantly accepts a job to decode a cipher for shipping magnate Alan Badel. While under Badel’s employ, Gregory meets his mistress Sophia Loren who seems to be playing all sides in this case of international intrigue. It’s not the most noteworthy or unique in the spy genre with a narrative that seems to just catapult Peck from situation to situation. The leads pair well together with Peck as the clueless, but intellectual every man and Loren as the gorgeous, well dressed operative. 

Ignoring his live-in girlfriend Kerry Washington’s reluctance to introduce him to her family, Craig Robinson follows her to her family’s annual gathering in Sag Harbor. Relying on mostly cheap jokes, it comes across as a milder version of Meet the Parents. Its entertainment value rests mostly in the appeal and interactions of its cast. Luckily, supporting the leads is a talented cast that includes S. Epatha Merkerson and David Alan Grier as Washington’s parents and Diahann Carroll and Melvin Van Peeples as her grandparents.