Loosely based on an actual FBI sting operation, struggling FBI agent Alec Baldwin devises a scheme to entrap mobster John Gotti by pretending to be a movie producer. He hires wannabe screenwriter Matthew Broderick (in what I’ve come to think of as his standard middle age schlub role) to unwittingly help with the ruse. I often find films about making movies fascinating but this isn’t one of the good ones. The potentially interesting tale doesn’t try to go beyond the silliness of the concept. The cast, which includes Toni Collette and Ray Liotta, is obviously filled with talent, but the script doesn’t require much of them nor brings forth anything but average performances.

Beatlemania comes to New York and four friends, each with a different motivation, are desperate to get tickets for The Beatles’ debut on the Ed Sullivan Show. With my own recent Beatles obsession, it seemed an opportune time to watch director Robert Zemeckis’s first feature film. I’m incredibly surprised that I had never seen this before and how perfect it was in encapsulating that one specific pop culture moment while barely even showing the actual musicians. I remember reading that the foursome on Sex and the City television show tried to cover the various opinions that women would have on any subject and the four girls here do the same: stereotypical Beatles fan Wendy Jo Sperber dreaming of a future as Mrs. Paul McCartney, ambitious Teresa Saldana trying to get a rare photo of the band, cynical Susan Kendall Newman staging a protest at their mere existence, and engaged Nancy Allen wanting one last fling with her friends. Aside from being relateable, it’s also incredibly entertaining.    

At first honored to be chosen for the job, James Coburn soon discovers that being the President’s analyst is the loneliest job in the world and makes a run for it with spy agencies from across the world on his tail. I had started this thinking it was going to be a straight-forward narrative like an Analyze This but with the President. Instead, the President isn’t ever shown and it doesn’t take long for the film to firmly establish itself as being part of the swinging, psychedelic 1960s. Coburn is fantastic in his role with a wide grin that appears as he slowly begins to lose his grounding. There are many weird, but hilarious parts, but William Daniels as a gun-toting, suburban liberal is pure awesomeness.

Jennifer Lawrence is serenely renovating the home she shares with writer husband Javier Bardem when Ed Harris shows up and starts impeding on their lives, bringing his family and then more and more people with him. I had been fairly certain when this film was released that it would not be my type of thing, but eventually I caved and discovered I was correct in my initial assumption. I enjoy most of director Darren Aronofsky’s work, but is him at his most arty pretentiousness. Very heavy in allegory, particularly of the biblical variety, it does not allow a moment to breath by constantly inundating the viewer with brutality forced onto Lawrence’s character all for the sake of blatant metaphor. 

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.