This reminded me a lot of Not as a Stranger, both stories focusing on the lives of doctors. This film is a lot more focused in story, centering on a hospital’s old pathologist played by Frederic March who is less than eager to train his replacement, Ben Gazzara. Instead of getting bogged down in the melodrama of the doctors’ personal lives, it keeps the drama close to the hospital, following a couple of different cases that all intersect with the pathology department. The production won’t blow anyone’s mind, but is entertaining and includes some smaller performances from Dick Clark, Eddie Albert, and George Segal all as doctors.

This movie is great for what it is. It’s exactly what you’d expect from an early 2000s thriller starring John Travolta and Vince Vaughn as the former and current husbands of Teri Polo. Vaughn is perfectly menacing as the criminal who has pushed his way into Travolta’s family and terrorizes John’s teenage son. As expected, the actions of the characters don’t make a lick of sense, but there’s plenty of tension and the pacing is on point. At an hour and a half, it doesn’t overstay its welcome and even has a small role for Steve Buscemi as a former associate of Vaughn’s character.

The plot of this film is so batshit crazy that I think it could only have been made during a singular time and place. Alan Arkin is a widowed Puerto Rican living in poverty with his two young boys. He is weighed down by all of his responsibilities: being away all day working multiple jobs, wanting a better place for his family to live, trying to keep his boys from a life of crime, loving his girlfriend but knowing if they wed that there would eventually be even more mouths to feed. So he concocts the most dangerous and ridiculous plan possible in order to give his sons the better life that is otherwise impossible for him to give them. Arkin brings a needed manic energy to his role that, while not necessarily making the story believable, makes his actions understandable. The kids are cute and their chemistry as a family works. Rita Moreno is the voice of reason and sanity in the whole endeavor, so sadly her role is small.

I know the joke is corny and old, but this movie is far from flawless. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robert De Niro have great chemistry as sparring neighbors, a transgender woman and bigoted former cop respectively, who find themselves thrown together after De Niro’s character suffers a stroke and seeks help from Hoffman. Hoffman is particularly lovely and sensitive in his role. The rest of the story involving criminals and stolen money drags the acting quality seen in that relationship deep into deep dirt and doodoo. Simply mix in Hoffman’s group of catty friends and it could instead have been a better version of As Good As It Gets.

Following some of the themes from my most recent watch (FBI agents, terrorism, undercover agents), here we have Debra Winger as an FBI agent infiltrating a farming community filled with white supremacists. She meets and falls in love with Tom Berenger while on assignment and things then start to turn bad for her. I gained a new appreciation for Winger’s work as she really boosts the quality of the story. John Mahoney and Ted Levine are creepy as some of the members of the local cell. There are some seemingly over the top events undertaken by the supremacists, though I might be too naïve here and need reminding that I live in a nation where Black men are shot by gangs of white men just for jogging on their street and militia groups plot to kidnap sitting governors.

It’s hard to talk about this movie without revealing some of the twists and turns the plot takes. Don Cheadle is a Muslim, Sudanese-American who joins up with a terrorist organization and is thus tracked down by FBI agent Guy Pearce. It follows an unsurprisingly common thread for the early 2000s. I enjoy anything Don Cheadle is in and he carries this film on his back. Pearce manages a fairly decent portrayal as American law enforcement, giving Cheadle something to play against. Jeff Daniels and Archie Punjabi add quality in roles that could have been beefed up to the film’s betterment.

I haven’t watched a Barbara Stanwyck film in awhile and this was a pretty good one to revise my love. Babs is a news writer who against her better judgment falls in love and marries good-natured cop Sterling Hayden. She truly loves her husband but she hates the dull monotony that is the life of a suburban housewife in the 1950s. She instead directs her energy and ambition toward moving her husband up the ranks in his division. Raymond Burr is shrewd as the police inspector who sees behind her ruse and their chemistry in the film is truly excellent.

There’s a whole lot of unevenness in the story here that makes what could have been a really entertaining film about a mother-daughter con artist team into an overly-long mess with only occasional moments of good. The story takes too long to get started and some of the con parts are drawn out for way too long, while others are blink and you miss it. Sigourney Weaver is underutilized as the mother part of the duo and Jennifer Love Hewitt, squeezed into any number of mini dresses, is shoehorned into a love story with Jason Lee. I do really enjoy the power and energy Hewitt brings to her role and Weaver gets to show her comedic side. There is also a great mix of supporting characters played by a good number of well-known actors.