The story of a multi-term, corrupt politician running in his last campaign isn’t particularly new. Even with John Ford at the helm and Spencer Tracy as the mayor of an unnamed New England town as the lead, this doesn’t offer much new to the genre. It hits many common notes: the political machine doing the dirty work of the campaign while the candidate is under the delusion it’s for the greater good, a young upstart using modern means to finally give the incumbent a run for his money, and the mayor using his power and influence in selfish and unselfish ways. It’s certainly a watchable political film, but there are more engaging ones out there.

Although there’s plenty of films where he’s not, I always expect Edward G. Robinson to play the tough guy. Here he gets to do both as a mild mannered clerk who just happens to share the same face as a ruthless killer. There’s sometimes a bit of unevenness in his meek portrayal, particularly when he’s ‘interacting’ with the gangster, but it’s great to watch him work both sides. Jean Arthur brings her spunky best as his co-worker and love interest. The story is light and takes some inexplicable jumps (Donald Meek plays a character that only shows up in the beginning and end), but it’s worth watching Robinson act against himself.

While I’ve never read the book this is adapted from, I did watch the 2019 miniseries within the last year, so I was already familiar with this story revolving around a squadron based in the Mediterranean during World War II. Compared to that longer version, this film is much more nonlinear and chaotic in nature. There isn’t as much time for character development, so the first hour jumps from episodes introducing one over the top character to the next. Alan Arkin’s Yossarian starts neurotic and there’s only brief glimpses as to what led him to the breaking point. The rest of the cast are all played by a slew of well-known actors including the extremely young looking Martin Sheen, Charles Grodin, Bob Newhart, and Bob Balaban . The whole film has the feeling of a crazier and darker version of MASH. Without having seen the miniseries, I would have had a difficult time following the thread of events.

It’s not surprising that this later was later adapted into a television show. It feels like a long episode of any television police procedural over the years and easily works as a pilot movie. Focusing on both the professional and personal aspects of a day in the life of Jack Hawkins’s Scotland Yard inspector, it’s interesting that it came so soon after my viewing of Working Girls, another movie focusing on one day in a worker’s life. While watching this one, I somewhat imagined an episode of some other television show juxtaposing the days of these two individuals employed on opposite sides of the law. That has the potential to be a bit deeper and engaging than this watchable, but relatively lightweight police drama.

I didn’t think I’d enjoy an over two hour, silent version of a title I’d seen only a month ago, but I surprisingly really liked this version and found the time passed quickly. A brown-faced, dressed like an over-enthusiastic yoga instructor Douglas Fairbanks leads this film and even at the age of 40, his athleticism is impressive. While I often find the emoting in silent films to be over excessive, there’s something about Fairbanks’s smile and posturing that, while bordering on hammy, seems much more natural to his personality. The set design and costuming is lavish and it ranks high in the list of black and white films I sincerely wish I could see in color. While there are some off-putting racial caractures, the cast seems rather diverse for the time period, including Anna May Wong, Sôjin Kamiyama, Noble Johnson, and Matilde Comont playing one of the male suitors.

I have no idea how, but I started this thinking it was a documentary. Instead, it’s a fictional account of one sex worker’s double shift at a NYC brothel. It’s quite a low budget film and took me a bit to get into the film. The soundtrack is amongst the most jarring I’ve ever heard and the acting is often times stilted to the degree of cheap porn. Unlike porn, the sex scenes are possibly the most unerotic ones ever filmed. The male characters are almost uniformly caricatures, so that the film focuses instead on aspects of 1980s capitalism and how the shrill boss’s control, real and imagined, over her workers is all based on the almighty dollar. I had a hard time throughout ignoring the setting and how there was almost no security or private areas for the staff. I’m by no means an expert in the field, but it all seemed like really poor safety design. It did turn the brothel into a very mundane workplace, complete with petty jealousies and various aggravations.

For better or worse, some people find themselves thrown onto a singular life path that is almost impossible to stray off from. That is what happens to Tyrone Power’s Martin Maher. Upon immigrating to the United States from Ireland, he gets a job at West Point and for the next 50 years, that is where he stays. On one hand, it’s a casual telling of the history of West Point through one man’s experiences, as he watches class after class of cadets graduate and shape world events. On the other, it demonstrates the cyclical of each person’s life and the consequences of the decisions that they may or may not have the free will to make, for better or worse.