Single forty-something Ed Helms interviews Patti Harrison as a potential surrogate for his unborn child. I almost gave up early on in this film. There’s an awkwardness to the beginning, particularly Harrison’s character whose delivery is very stilted and gawky in somewhat off-putting ways. Helms’s character is played a bit too much as if future Andy Bernard was cast. The intimate moments don’t really feel earned. But there is a sweetness to the story and there’s chemistry between the leads. Despite them making a deal of their age difference, they move like a couple together, even in a platonic way.

Told through the testimony of witnesses at a murder trial, this film is about woman disfigured as a child whose bitterness turns her to a life as a blackmailer. After reconstruction surgery, she turns away from crime and finds love. I’m not a big fan of Joan Crawford, but she looks her softest here over all and does a fine job portraying both sides of the woman’s character. The story is somewhat meh as it seems to suggest that looks guide a person’s character. I hadn’t realized it was a remake of a Swedish film, which explains why it was otherwise inexplicably set in Sweden. Some of the scenery was very beautiful, particularly when showing gondolas flying over mountain rivers.

The last of the Paul Robeson: Portraits of an Artist set that I hadn’t seen yet, this film only contains Robeson as an off-screen narrator and singer alongside various dramatizations detailing numerous attacks on the Bill of Rights, particularly against workers and unions. While being a somewhat dry pro-union piece with some of the dramatizations being overly long, it’s an interesting artifact enumerating Anti-American activities committed by people with power and fits well in displaying Robeson’s years as an activist.