2025 - ETERNITY, another afterlife comedy/romance/fantasy

Apparently in these Hollywood movies about the afterlife you just don't get to go to heaven and enjoy yourself you still are faced with all sorts of decisions about what kind of eternity you are going to enjoy and who you are going to enjoy it with.  This is the dilemma for The Scarlett Witch herself Elizabeth Olsen who has passed on and has to pick who she will spend eternity with her last husband who she was married to for 65 years or her first husband who was the passionate love of her life before he died early.

There's a whole bunch of these afterlife films.  The weird Robin Williams film What Dreams May Come which has a love story/suicide plot line.  Albert Brook's very funny Defending Your Life with Brooks as an advertising executive who ends up in Judgement City.  At time of his death he was screwing around with the CD player in his car instead of paying attention to the road.  

Made in Heaven has Timothy Hutton and Kelly McGillis as a couple of unborn souls who fall in love and have to find each other when they are on Earth or else they will get yanked back to Heaven.  Made in Heaven was directed by Alan Rudolph so you can be sure it's going to be on the strange side.  

A quick shout out to Powell and Pressburger's Stairway to Heaven a very impressive World War II film made at the peak of their skills.  That should go near the top of the list. 

For my money the best afterlife film is Heaven Can Wait the Ernest Lubitsch film. This is not strictly an afterlife film although it starts in the afterlife.  Don Ameche is a philandering husband who has to relate the story of his life to the Devil before he goes to hell.  This is a terrific film filmed in beautiful 1940's technicolor. 

 Let's get back to Eternity.  Yeah it's okay, the actors are decent the world building of the afterlife is some sort of train station.  That's kind of interesting.  It drags in the middle as we have to wait for Elizabeth Olsen to make her husband decision although it's fairly apparent who she will pick.

Eternity was written by Pat Cunnane and David Freyne, the running time is 114 minutes. 

1936 - LIBELED LADY, a big MGM all star comedy

This is a big and very popular comedy from MGM.  It's got four top stars, Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy and Spencer Tracy.  Since it's an MGM production the sets are elaborate and the fashions particularly the women's clothes are really glamorous.  MGM wasn't the number one studio in the 1930's for nothing.  If the film has a drawback it's with the screenplay that sets up a wacky situation and then doesn't seem to know how to resolve it.

Lets go to the videotape as they used to say.  Myrna Loy is a heiress who has been wrongly slandered by managing editor Spencer Tracy's newspaper.  Loy decides to sue the paper for five million dollars.  Tracy gets the big idea to hire William Powell to set her up in an actual scandal.  Throw in Tracy's fiancee played by Jean Harlow and you have lots of running around and lots of misunderstandings.  Libeled Lady is a screwball comedy since these top performers were put through some really silly situations.

This film has a real 1930's cast.  Myrna Loy was a good looking performer who as it turned out was also a very good comedian.  Spencer Tracy was one of MGM's top stars and was considered an actor's actor.  Then there was the interesting case of William Powell and Jean Harlow.  At the time of this film Powell and Jean Harlow were romantically involved.  The romance didn't have a happy ending when Harlow died in 1937. 

Watching Libeled Lady today I was struck by the professionalism of the cast.  Talk about squeezing blood out of a rock.  This is not what I would call a film with a real clever and funny screenplay.  However the actors milk every bit of humor out of the story that they can find.   A measure of the unsatisfactory nature of the film is that the film literally just stops and fades to black without an ending.

The film was written by Maurine Dallas Watkins, Howard Emmett Rogers and George S. Oppenheimer.  

The running time is 98 minutes.   

2026 - THE SHEEP DETECTIVES, bah bah (what else).

Hugh Jackman is a sheep herder who lives in a caravan in some rural town in England.  He spends all  his days tending to a flock of sheep.  In the evening the sheep gather round and Jackman reads mystery stories to them.  Well surprise surprise when the sheep are by themselves they talk in the Queen's English.  Jackman is murdered and suspicion falls on his estranged daughter from America who has come for a visit.  It's up to the sheep to solve the murder of Jackman and somehow communicate to the police whodunit. 

This is sort of a family film which has a lot of whimsy make that a whole lot of whimsy.  The sheep all have individual personalities and they are voiced by actors British and American actors.  Besides Jackman, Emma Thompson, Nicholas Braun and Conleth Hill are the actual human actors. 

Obviously the sheep are animated.  The director Kyle Balba started his career in film working for Industrial Light and Magic and had animated films like A Bug's Life, Mars Attacks and Monster's Inc. so he knew his way around integrating computer animation with live action. 

There's nothing particularly bad about this film although I have to say I didn't particularly care for it.  The Sheep Detectives just seems to have a very serious case of "the cutes.''  The film at times wallows in it's own sentimentality and cleverness.  Yes it has some funny stuff in it.  However you also have to endure a lot of sheep talk about their place in the universe.  I enjoy fantasy films as much as the next film nerd but even I have my limits.  And come on, this is a film about talking sheep.

 As an aside, I've spent some time around actual sheep and I can state that they are very stupid creatures.

 The film was written by Craig Mazin, the running time is 109 minutes.  

1920 - NEIGHBORS, Buster Keaton's version of Romeo and Juliet

After sitting through the almost 3 hour version of Romeo and Juliet called West Side Story it is a relief to see Buster Keaton's version of Romeo and Juliet.  Let's face it West Side Story gets mighty pretentious at times for a musical.

Keaton's film is set in the courtyard of a tenement building where Buster is in love with the girl next door. As in Shakespeare's story the families are feuding and Buster and the girl are forced to see each other on the sly.  There are a lot of very impressive slapstick scenes.  The tenement courtyard isn't really conducive as a location for humor.  However Keaton and his co-director Edward Cline came up with some really amazing stuff.  The film climaxes with Buster balancing the girl on his shoulders while being chased by her family.  What makes this chase special is that Keaton is on the top of two other individuals as they are being chased down the street.  Apparently these men were part of an acrobatic act.

 

The worst thing I can say about this film is that it has some stupid blackface humor which I never care for.  I did spot Buster's father Joe Keaton playing who else but Buster's father.  Neighbors gets the job done as another version of Romeo and Juliet and Keaton does Shakespeare one better, he has a happy ending instead of all that young love suicide stuff in the original.  Let's see the Bard top that.  Neighbors is available on YouTube.

 

The film was written by Buster Keaton and Edward Cline, the running time is 18 minutes.  

1974 - THE CASTAWAY COWBOY, another mediocre live action Disney film

Another live action Disney film made after the death of Walt.  I really don't understand these live action films they are just so poorly conceived and executed.  It's like the Disney organization needed to keep the movie pipeline going.  For the most part they put very little thought into the screenplays of these films.  The actual film making is at best dull. 

 

The Castaway Cowboy is just so typical of these films.  James Garner is what else, a castaway cowboy. Garner washes up on the Hawaiian island of Kauai where he ends up on the farm of widow Vera Miles.  Naturally Miles has a son badly in need of a male authority figure.  Garner uses his cowboy skills to round up cattle for Miles who is going to lose the farm to evil businessman Robert Culp.  The sale of the cattle will help her pay off the mortgage on the farm.

As you can tell, this film has a fairly decent cast.  It was filmed on location in Hawaii but the plot is just so lame.  Garner has to train a bunch of natives to be cowboys and there's a cattle drive you have to sit through.  This whole film could have been set in Texas instead of Hawaii but then the actors wouldn't have had a nice vacation in Hawaii.

 

This film was directed by Vincent McEveety a proficient and for the most part decent television director.  However his feature films are mostly forgettable in particular his Disney films.  Disney live action films were always considered safe entertainment for the entire family.  However what kid ever wanted to go see boring family films with their parents?

The film was written by Don Tait, the running time is 91 minutes.  

2026 - VOICEMAILS FOR ISABELLE, rom-com time

Zoey Deutch races around San Francisco like a "manic pixie dream girl" (do they still use that term?) bemoaning that she can't keep a boyfriend.  Never mind the fact that she looks like a movie star with makeup and a wardrobe that would be the envy of any single woman living on an assistant chef's salary.  At one point you want to scream at the television set and tell her to calm down and take some Adderall.

Well let's get the synopsis out of the way.  Zoey is a chef working for a Hitler like master chef.  She has a terminally ill sister who she talks to on the phone all the time.  When the sister passes away, Zoey continues to call her sister's phone and leave voicemails to cope with her grief.  Little does Zoey know that her sister's phone number has now been reassigned to a cute real estate salesman who listens to the voicemails and falls in love with Zoey.  He arranges to meet her and we get the usual falling in love montage between the two of them.  Will the cute guy fess up to Zoey about the voicemails so we can get to a happy ending as quickly as possible?

 

 While viewing this I could hardly believe Zoey Deutch was the same performer who did such a good job playing actor Jean Seberg in Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague.  Deutch's over the top performance would probably keep any normal guy from ever getting involved with such a disturbed nutcase.

  

The plot owes a lot to You Got Mail and the Ernest Lubitsch film The Shop Around the Corner.  I will give the writer/director Leah McKendrick credit for injecting enough humor and clever moments to make this film watchable.

The running time is 118 minutes.  

1988 - MARRIED TO THE MOB, a gangster comedy

Michelle Pfeiffer has to play "straight man " to a bunch of eccentric performers in this gangster comedy.  She's married to a young Alec Baldwin who is working as a hit man for gangster Dean Stockwell.  But Baldwin is also having an affair with Stockwell's mistress which is a bad idea.  Stockwell kills Baldwin, but Stockwell's bigger problem is his very scary wife played by Mercedes Ruehl.  Throw in an eccentric FBI agent played by Matthew Modine who gets romantically involved with Pfeiffer.  Well it's funny stuff.

 The director is Jonathan Demme who learned his trade working for Roger Corman.  From Corman Demme learned how to mix comedy, violence and action.  He brought a light touch to this nutty version of The Godfather.  Married to the Mob was a turning point for Demme.  After this film he moved into more serious film making with The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia and the probably ill advised Beloved.  For the most part he really didn't make entertaining films like this later in his career.

 

For a woman who started her career as a beauty pageant winner Michelle Pfeiffer turned out to be a very good actor.  She manages to hold her own with this incredible cast.  Former child actor Dean Stockwell is the scary but goofy mob boss.  One minute he's hitting on Pfeiffer after her husband's funeral and the next minute he's putting down an attempted assassination.  Not to be outdone is Mercedes Ruehl who plays it very broad as Stockwell's extremely jealous wife and is definitely not a person to be trifled with.  Matthew Modine is the FBI agent keeping an eye on Pfeiffer and at times he's growling like a tiger in his pursuit of Stockwell for no particular reason.

 

This kind of story is extremely hard to pull off but everyone in this film was on top of their game.  A very funny film. 

The film was written by Barry Strugatz and Mark R. Burns, the running time is 104 minutes. 

2026 - OFFICE ROMANCE, standard rom-com stuff made for streaming

I watched this because why not.  Nobody is going to confuse this with a classic romantic comedy.  In fact nobody is going to confuse this with anything.

 

Jennifer Lopez at 56, still looks great in a two piece swimsuit but probably getting a little old for this stuff, is the head of an airline that is being sued for some reason.  British actor Brett Goldstein remembered for playing Roy Kent in Ted Lasso is the attorney who is representing her company in the lawsuit.  They fall in love, the road to a happy ending is sort of rocky but it will all work out.

 

Some of the jokes are funny most are not.  A few interesting actors show up like Bradley Whitford, Edward James Olmos, Amy Sedaris and Betty Gilpin.  They manage to steal the show from the two leads but that didn't take much.

 

For a "watch with your significant other rom-com" there is a level of raunchy and not particularly funny humor throughout the film.  The photography is pretty.  This film will slide into the abyss of streaming films that show up for a week and are then forgotten.

The film was written by Brett Goldstein and Joe Kelly.  The running time is 115 minutes is should have really been shorter.

1958 - INDISCREET, a polished production of a very slight story

This should have been an entertaining romantic comedy.  The leads were Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman.  The producer/director was Stanley Donen a man of taste and style.  The writer was Norman Krasna an old pro at this romantic comedy stuff.  The cinematographer was F.A. Young who was usually associated with David Lean's super epics, it looks very pretty in technicolor.  The end result of all this effort is a very mild film with lots and lots of talk.

Bergman plays what else, a world famous actress who enters into an affair with rich banker Cary Grant who is apparently married. The film's contrived plot hangs on the premise that Grant actually isn't married but is pretending to be married to avoid having to get married, well something like that.  

 

This film was made under the Cary Grant, Stanley Donen production company Grandon.  It was the first of their three films which included The Grass is Greener and Charade.  The idea seemed to be to film sophisticated and very glossy entertainments of "the privileged class enjoying their privileges" as they liked to say.

For all the good looking clothes and impressive London locations the film just doesn't really come off with it's dumb premise.  Grant and Bergman make a good looking couple but they don't really have any genuinely witty dialog to work with.  They are supported by English character actors Cecil Parker and Phyllis Calvert who are much better at delivering Krasna's lame dialog and frankly when they are off screen they are really missed.  I guess if you are a fan of classic Hollywood stars like Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman the film is sort of enertaining.

The running time is an overlong 100 minutes.   

202 - NORMAL, another shoot em up with more of a sense of humor than usual

Normal is sort of the third part of a Bob Odenkirk action trilogy.  Odenkirk is an unlikely action hero for this stuff.  In a previous incarnation he was a comedian the first part of his career.  He hit his stride as sleazy attorney Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad and it's spinoff  Better Call Saul.  Odenkirk pivoted into the action film franchisee with the Nobody series about a retired government hit man.

Normal finds Odenkirk as a a temporary sheriff in a small Minnesota town called Normal.  As it turns out the town of Normal is actually a holding area for gold and money that the Yakuza have been using to launder their ill gotten gains.  To make matters worse the entire town is in on the money laundering scheme and is armed to the teeth to keep their secret safe.  Let the shooting begin and there is a lot of shooting to be sure.

 

Odenkirk takes a producer credit on the film along with a story credit.  The director is Ben Wheatey a Brit who is an expert at staging shoot outs which he twists around with lots of bizarre violent humor.  He's found his perfect partner in Odenkirk who contributes his own brand of unconventional humor.  It's a match made in action movie heaven. 

The film is entertaining it does have a really warped sense of humor between all the gun play and body counts.  Odenkirk's wry sense of humor is definitely and asset.

The screenplay is by Derek Kolstad, the running time is 91 minutes.

1954 - THE MAGGIE, aka High and Dry aka Highland Fling

A production from the famous Ealing Studios in England made during their top period which ran from the late 1930's to the end of the 1950's.  Ealing was noted for it's modestly budgeted but well written and directed comedies primarily set in England.  The pictures they produced were usually at a very high standard technically and creatively.

 

The Maggie was one of their best pictures directed by one of their best directors Alexander Mackendrick.  Mackendrick was an American who as a child had being raised in Scotland by his grandfather.  He eventually ended up in the British film industry where he worked his way up to directing.  He had what I would call a humanistic approach in film making concentrating on the actors and the story.  He was apparently a perfectionist which caused him to be fired off of several projects towards the end of his career, he ended up in California teaching film.

 

The Maggie is an extremely charming  and cleverly written film.  It's the story of a small just about broken down cargo ship about to be repossessed.  The captain manages to trick a rich American business man into letting him transport his cargo to a castle he has purchased.  The ship named the Maggie is in such a dilapidated condition it may sink at any moment.  The American discovering he has been tricked by the captain pursues him.  This all ends up in a series of clever and humorous encounters.

 

The film was well cast with Paul Douglas as the American businessman.  Douglas was probably nobody's idea of a leading man but he was an excellent actor and knew his way around performing in dramas and comedies. The ship's captain was played by the Scottish actor Alex Mackenzie in full "old sea salt" mode.  The encounters between these two performers are very amusing.

The Maggie is an extremely enjoyable film and highly recommended.

The film was written by William Rose one of Ealing's top screenwriters, the running time is 92 minutes. 

1967 - THE CAPER OF THE GOLDEN BULLS, an entertaining heist film

This is a very decent heist film but it's no classic like Rififi, The Killing or Le Cercle Rouge.  The cast is a collection of  character actors and if the leads weren't exactly at the top of the movie star list they got the job done.

I.E. an American living in Spain since the end of World War II served as a bomber pilot.  During the war he and his crew accidentally blow up a cathedral.  To make amends this group robbed a number or banks to rebuild the cathedral.   Now operating a restaurant in Spain the American is blackmailed into performing one last robbery.  He reassembles his crew and we get the usual master planning, execution of the robbery and some close encounters with the police.  This is all pretty standard stuff for this genre.  

The cast had a lot of "seen them all before actors" who had shown up in many movies.  Vitto Sotti seemed like he was in about every movie and TV show from the 1940's on.  If you needed someone to pay a stereotypical Italian, Scotti was your guy.  Henry Beckman had also been working in movies and TV since the 1950s, he was the definition of a working actor, no part was too small for him.  Leon Askin is chiefly remembered as General Burkhalter on Hogan's Heroes.  Walter Slezak early in his career had worked for Hitchcock in his propaganda film Lifeboat.  Frankly in this film the list of character actors is endless.

The leads were Steven Boyd as the American and Yvette Mimieux as his girlfriend.  Boyd's career started out strong with Ben Hur, Billy Roses' Jumbo and The Fall of the Roman Empire but kind of petered out after awhile.  Still he was always a reliable performer for the most part.  Yvette Mimieux was an attractive blonde who was groomed to be a star in the studio system.  The problem was that the Hollywood studio system was falling apart in the late 1950's and early 60's so her career kind of drifted off into television .  

 The Caper Of The Golden Bulls was never going to win any awards but it does entertain and the gorgeous on location filming in Pamplona shot during the running of the bulls makes it a very good looking film.  The film is fun to watch because the makers were smart enough not to take this story seriously.  I'm sure everyone had a very nice vacation filming this picture in sunny Spain. 

The film was written by Ed Waters and David Moessinger, the running time is 106 minutes.    

20126 - THEIR FINEST, there will always be an England especially during World War II

Their Finest is a film set in London during World War II.  Gemma Arteron is a woman who manages to get a job in the British Government's propaganda department as a secretary.  Being a bright young thing she works her way up as a screenwriter working on a film about the evacuation of Dunkirk. The film's plot involves the making of this Dunkirk film which is hampered by lots of story compromises and issues that arise from the British Government's interference in the film making.

 

Gemma Arterton is the main character the film focuses on as she manages her professional and personal life.  Bill Nighy is the hammy actor cast in the film, he gets all the funny stuff.  Richard E. Grant and Jeremy Irons play the usual stuffed shirt government officials trying to control the making of the film, you can't have an English film without them.  There's a love interest for Arterton and lots of amusing film making jokes for the movie nerds watching.  There's even a thinly disguised portrait of legendary Hungarian film producer Alexander Korda who relocated to England before the war.    

  

This is a modest and enjoyable film for the most part although I think the ending was kind of a mistake .  Gemma Arteron is really the glue that holds this film together with her understated and effective performance.  Arteron should really be a bigger star but her appearances in some big budgeted Hollywood films didn't seem to do it for her.  

 

Written by Gaby Chiappe, the running time is 117 minutes.

1963 - CHARADE, excellent romantic thriller

This is an excellent and very entertaining comedy thriller made by Hollywood professionals at the peak of their abilities.  It starred Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn and who ever had the inspired idea to team them up as a romantic couple should have gotten a big bonus.  Here are two stars who really deliver the goods.  Cary Grant had done enough Hitchcock films so he knew how to balance the comedic and suspense elements in this story.  Audrey Hepburn was no slouch either.  She had also performed in romantic comedies and dramas with great success.  These two performers were very experienced actors when it came to making films and they really knew how to deliver the romantic couple goods.

 

The director Stanley Donen had worked at MGM during it's peak period when they were producing stylish musicals.  Donen along with Gene Kelly had created an impressive body of work with films like On The Town, Singing In The Rain and the underrated It's Always Fair Weather.  On his own he directed Seven Brides For Seven Brothers and Funny Face.   As the musical genre wrapped up Donen focused on sophisticated comedies and in this case romantic thrillers.  Charade was one of his best films.

  

A big part of Charade's success is the screenplay by Peter Stone and Marc Behm which balanced the comedy, romance and suspense elements.  The cinematographer Charles Lang was one of Hollywood's top cameraman who had worked with John Sturges, Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang and Joseph L. Mankiewicz. With this kind of talent Charade could hardly miss.  It was a critical and commercial hit. 

 

The running time is 113 minutes.  

2025 - GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON'T DIE, amusing science fiction comedy

A time traveler from the future (where else) arrives at a diner in Los Angeles to save the planet earth.  He believes that some of the customers at the diner can help even though this is his 117 attempt at averting disaster.  What is exactly menacing earth?  Well Apple cell phones and AI of course.

This is an entertaining film coming from a very quirky filmmaker Gore Verbinski.  Verbinski had some big hits with his horror film The Ring and the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films aka "the good ones."  The writer Matthew Robinson is an equally quirky guy.  He's written The Invention of Lying and Love and Monsters.  Unsurprisingly this is one odd ball of a film.

 

The cast is odd as well particularly Sam Rockwell as the man from the feature and Haley Lu Richadson whose job is to dress up as a sort of Disney princess to entertain little girls at birthday parties.  In a key plot point she has an allergy to cell phones.

 

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is an eccentric film that the studio dumped with a release in February.  Nobody at the studio clearly knew how to market it.  What a disappointment, this film really deserved to be seen by an audience. Hopefully it will be rediscovered in the streaming world.

 The running time is 134 minutes. 

2026 - SOLO MIO, okay romantic comedy

Unlikely leading man Kevin James is a school art teacher who proposes to his long time girlfriend.  The plan is for them to get married in Rome.  During the wedding she leaves him at the alter and he is understandingly depressed.  He meets the owner of a coffee shop named Gia who he bonds with.  Do I have to paint a picture about how this plot is going to end up? 

This is a very mildly pleasant rom-com.  The actors are decent, Kevin James has spent years on TV sitcoms so he has his comedy sthick down fairly well.  The actor playing Gia, Nicole Grimaudo is likable even if she does overdo the excitable Italian woman character thing a bit much.

 

Really the best reason to see this film is the on location filming in Rome and the Italian countryside actually the only reason to sort of sit through this thing. This is one of those films that was made for streaming at home, you don't need to have any emotional investment in the story.  All right I'll say it, it's the perfect film to watch with your significant other.

 

The film was barely written by the directors, John Kinnane, Dan Kinnane and Kevin James, the running time is a brisk 96 minutes. 

1984 - SONGWRITER, entertaining showbiz drama with a country western background

Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson are a couple of singer/composers in this very entertaining comedy/drama.  Kristofferson is a love em and leave em guy bedding one groupie after another.  Willie Nelson is a performer and songwriter trying to reunite with his first wife. Nelson's also trying to get out of a contract he had signed with a promoter some years earlier who now owns the rights to his songs.

Into this mix comes Leslie Ann Warren as a recording artist Nelson is promoting while ghostwriting songs for her.  Warren is also mixed up with a shady character played by everyone's favorite scary actor Rip Torn.  With the exception of Warren and Melinda Dillion playing Nelson's ex-wife, all of these male singer/actors are amusingly playing thinly disguised versions of themselves.

 

The film has a nice laid back feel to it from director Alan Rudolph.  Rudolph was a protege of Robert Altman and uses the same approach to working with actors that Altman did, a naturalistic kind of improvisational method. 

 

This film is highly entertaining, Nelson was not a trained actor but he was a very natural performer in front of the camera.  He was close friends with Kris Kristofferson and they play off each other very well.  The songs in the film were mostly written by Kristofferson.

The film was written by Bud Shrake, the running time is 94 minutes.