It seems a little weird that I watched three films with the letters F O G in their titles in one day, but such is the way of things sometimes. On the eve of a northern California beach town’s 100th anniversary, a mysterious fog rolls into town bringing with it death. It’s an entertaining scream-fest where the residents, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Hal Holbrook, and Adrienne Barbeau, battling against a natural force that slowly creeps up on them.  

Looking up the film Frog on Prime ,I stumbled across this title that seemed worth checking out. Wildlife photographer Sam Elliott is canoeing around the island estate of the Crockett family when a mishap with some of the younger family members has him being invited up to the house where patriarch Ray Milland is celebrating his birthday. The appearance of an unusually large number of frogs portends the murder of the island’s human inhabitants by its vengeful wildlife. It’s a delightfully fun and entertaining but weird entry into the pantheon of killer animals, though I’m thrown off whenever I see Elliott without a mustache.   

Travelling from Ohio to New York City for a job interview, Jack Lemmon and his wife Sandy Dennis suffer every possibly imaginable difficulty in their travels. Most of these begin with their own incredibly poor decision making and overreliance on systems working as they should (leaving important medications and money in their checked baggage, assuming they’ll arrive on time, etc.). Because their issues originate from their own decisions, it’s difficult to be on the couple’s side when more complications arise. Their insufferable attitudes towards life in a large city and particularly Lemmon’s rigidness to his original expectations made me just want it to quickly end.

My housemate has fond memories of this film from his childhood and we finally got around to watching it together. Scott Grimes is a young herpetologist who purchases a talking frog, voiced by Paul Williams, who was cursed by a witch 600 years ago. Grimes decides to use his new friend to help him win a science fair, but also tries to help the frog get a kiss from a girl to break the curse. Add in a cute love interest for Grimes and it can’t help follow the expected formula. I’m sure as a kid this could have been delightful. As an adult, it’s a rather short, harmless bit of 1980s nostalgia. 

For years, I had seen this available to watch on Prime and passed it over, but I’m so glad I finally gave it a chance. In the vein of The Adventures of Robin Hood, a delightful Danny Kaye is the underappreciated minstrel of a band of rebels who masquerades as a court jester to infiltrate the usurper king’s court. Glynis Johns is given a rare opportunity to shine as a cunning, female commander in the rebel gang. It’s gorgeously shot in VistaVision. There’s a few songs, lots of slapstick, hilarious jokes, wordplay, and plenty of general hijinks. A special addition comes in the form of beautiful Angela Lansbury as the usurper’s daughter with Mildred Natwick as a witch and her collaborator. In all of Kaye’s filmography the only live action film I’d previously seen was White Christmas. I’ll be much more willing to watch his work after seeing this one.

For someone clamoring for a film about Abbie Hoffman twenty years ago, this would have probably sufficed. Though I can’t attest to its veracity, it covers a lot of the events of Hoffman’s life from his days as a counterculture activist to being on the run from the authorities after a cocaine possession arrest. I found the later half interesting in the family that developed between Hoffman, his second wife, their son, and the woman who supported him while he was in hiding. Vincent D’Onofrio gives a solid performance as Abbie, as do Janeane Garofelo and Jeanne Tripplehorn as the two women in his life. Overall though I think I found a deeper portrait of Hoffman in the concise story shown in The Trial of the Chicago 7.