Month: August 2022

After the deaths of her parents, Maureen O’Hara travels to the titular locale to join her aunt Marie Ney whose husband runs the inn. Unbeknownst to O’Hara, her uncle uses the inn as the headquarters for a gang of wreckers who engineer shipwrecks which they then plunder. While it doesn’t share most of the hallmarks of director Hitchcock’s well-known films, it’s relatively entertaining in its own right. It has a few captivating scenes, such as the initial shipwrecking, and a charmingly over the top performance from Charles Laughton as the pompous local justice of the peace. 

Undercover cop Jason Patric pairs up with inexperienced Jennifer Jason Leigh to bring down the drug trade in a Texas town. Based on an actual scandal from the 1970s, the two become addicts themselves and eventually falsify evidence under pressure from their chief of police. I’ve had this on my radar for a long time and I’m not sure why since I didn’t know anything about it going in. I seem to recall that around the time of its release the performances were highly praised and indeed they are praise worthy, even for the smaller roles like those of Greg Allman and Sam Elliott. I never understand why Jason Patric hasn’t had a more stellar career. When given the chance, he really knocks it out of the park as he did here and is well matched by Leigh. 

Wall Street trader Tom Hanks gets lost driving girlfriend Melanie Griffith home from the airport and a series of events ends with her driving over a Black teenager. On the other side of town, down on his luck journalist Bruce Willis uses the story, which becomes a rallying point for district attorney F. Murray Abraham’s attempts to improve his image in the Black community, to get in good with his editor. I know this film has a bad reputation, but I had no idea how deserved it was. Every single one of the main characters is horrendously miscast in the film that it’s hard to believe anyone thought it would work. I’ve never read the source material, but for such a success, I can’t imagine its plot is as muddied and tone so incredibly uneven as this film turns out to be.

Having rented a theatre to rehearse Richard III for a potential comeback to the stage, Christopher Plummer’s John Barrymore quickly descends into erratic drunken ramblings about his life and career. In a mostly one man show, Plummer gives a powerhouse of a performance. Plummer doesn’t particularly look like John, but it didn’t take long for him to completely disappear into the role. While I’m just getting more familiar with this Barrymore’s work, the monologues go far in detailing the weight and talent associated with the family name. I especially love the parts where Plummer as John imitates his wives and siblings. His Lionel was amazingly spot on.