The Arrangement (1969)

Eddie's a rich ad-man with everything he could want materially, but nonetheless attempts suicide. His desperate wife calls in therapists and lawyers, but Eddie just wants to be left alone. When he gets word that his father is ill, he flies across the country to be with him and basically sees his future in front of him. In this setting, he's also reminded of his past and has to contend with his own present self. 

It's a fucking lot. It's also a fucking indulgent mess.

D+

Spencer (2021)

I really dislike unreliable narration -- that feeling of "is this real or fantasy?" just frustrates me and takes me out of the story. Since this whole film relies on that off-balance feeling, I could not get into it. It's a vast improvement over Jackie, the director's earlier Oscar bait, but that's not enough to recommend it.

I do watch "The Crown," and it occurred to me that I could've been rather lost if I didn't have that show informing me here. For example, because of that show, I know that Diana suffered from bulimia -- that she wasn't simply sick from nervousness at the stress of this holiday with a group hostile to her.

C

The Holiday (2006)

The first time I saw this, I was pretty hung up on the fact that I didn't like Diaz's and Black's characters. This time, I was in a much more festive mood, apparently, because I wasn't at all bothered. Instead of being annoyed, I was charmed.

B

Special Correspondents (2016)

A bad-boy radio journalist and a technician are assigned coverage of an uprising in South America, but lose their passports and tickets on the way to the airport. So, they hole up across the street from the station and fake their on-location broadcasts -- eventually being forced to fake their own kidnapping in order to keep the fiction going.

The story is interesting and the dim restauranteurs who house the pair made me chuckle a few times. But, unfortunately, the script never really allows the situation to be played at full force. The technician's wife is a horrible opportunist, but we only see what the public does and must infer the rest. Kelly McDonald, as a love interest, is muted to the point of almost being non-existent. It's a missed opportunity with some truly surprising violence near the end. 

C-

Shiva Baby (2021)

A college-age "sugar baby" goes to a shiva with her parents and ends up running into the "daddy" she'd just been with -- along with his wife and infant daughter. The premise is a whole lot more interesting than what this film did with it. 

Everything that can goes wrong does: she gets a cut on her thigh and has to remove her ruined pantyhose... she gets an entire cup of coffee spilled on her... she is pushed into a cabinet, causing a glass vase of flower to break... she loses her unlocked phone so that her sugar baby account and recent nude selfies can be found... the bracelet her "daddy" just gifted to her is recognized by his wife as being the same as one she owns... on and on and on. If that weren't bad enough, I also hated every single person we met and most of the dialogue seemed to be improvised by people new to the concept of improvisation. It had the same feeling as when you see extras "walking" down the street, but their arms don't swing convincingly and their steps are a bit too short. Just awkward and obviously fake.

Unfunny and irritating. I was so relieved that it was barely an hour and a quarter.

F

The Courier (2021)

Based on the true story of a British businessman being enlisted to act as a go-between for a Russian officer and both MI6 and the CIA. It's a compelling story with some excellent acting, but it's told pretty squarely. That I was able to connect with the characters at all had everything to do with the portrayals and nothing to do with the story construction.

B

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Grant plays a buttoned-up paleontologist hoping to secure a big donation for his museum. During a golfing excursion with a representative of the donor, he meets Hepburn -- a fast-talking woman who creates chaos everywhere she goes. Eventually they wind up at her estate in Connecticut with a leopard named Baby and a brontosaurus bone that's been buried by the dog. And the shenanigans are only just getting started.

It's a template for screwball comedies -- a complete delight.

B+

Raw Deal (1948)

Rick puts together an escape plan for Joe, who's in the state penitentiary after taking the fall for Rick. Rick is banking on Joe to either get shot going over the wall or recaptured once on the lam -- but the plan is definitely not intended to actually allow Joe to get free in order to collect the $50k he's been promised.

Helping Joe is a mob moll in love with him. Along for the ride is another woman they've kind of taken hostage so she won't squeal... she's also in love with Joe and he's starting to think he might be in love with her too. There's nothing really wrong with this movie, but it's also not really anything special. There are, however, some really striking camera angles and shots.

C+

Tall, Dark and Handsome (1941)

A Chicago mob boss, notorious for offing rival gang members, meets a woman at a department store. Before he knows what's happened, he's hired her as his nanny even though he hasn't got any kids. He enlists a performer at his nightclub to take the role of housekeeper and a tough-talking delinquent is hired to play his son.

This is just tons of fun. The one weak spot is that his love interest isn't on the same level as the rest of the cast -- but it doesn't hurt things much. I had a great time.

B

Evil Dead II (1987)

Ash and his girlfriend go off on a romantic getaway to a remote cabin that he knows about. The thing he didn't know is that the owners opened up a portal and let evil loose. 

You have to completely forget about the earlier film as this is more "same universe" than "sensible timeline," but it's still pretty fun in the campiest of ways. Campbell is the entire show as the effects are downright terrible and the plot is just constant pummeling of the people by evil in the form of reanimated corpses, walking trees, and dismembered body parts.

C+

A Quiet Place Part II (2020)

We begin with a flashback to the day the creatures arrived in their town, after which the story picks up almost immediately following the events of the first film. The Abbott family -- with a recent infant addition and patriarch subtraction -- decide to leave their farm to find others. Once they do so, they split up: some to find the source of a broadcast, one back to town to get supplies, and the infant and another stay put. Of course things go poorly.

All of the tension felt forced: especially when the climaxes for dual locations occurred in back-and-forth scenes. I was pretty bored with the poor decision-making and with how long people took to carry out the obvious tasks. It was all geared toward "big moments" rather than natural reactions.

C

Underworld (2003)

During a shootout with werewolves, Selene -- a vampire -- notices that the wolves seemed to be after a human. This realization is followed by the discovery that there might be far more wolves than the vampires had assumed.

There's kind of a cool story here with the questioning of the status quo of Vampires vs. Werewolves, as well as a nifty "reign share" between vampire elders. But the human in question is boring and the constant gloominess just made everything feel pretty monotonous.

C-

Giant Little Ones (2019)

Franky and Ballas have been best friends nearly all of their lives and enjoy the privilege of popularity. But, after a drunken sexual encounter with each other, Franky finds that Ballas has made a point of painting Franky as a predator -- which changes his social standing and puts him in physical danger.

What I liked most about this movie is the fact that there's no big "answer" here. The truth doesn't come to light and things don't tie up nicely. Franky has to navigate his new reality by trial and error and he finally finds some empathy for his father, who left the family when he realized he was gay. It's a big subject handled in a personal and realistic way.

B+

Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)

The champion baseball team has a new, strict owner who has the audacity to be (gasp) female. Sinatra and Kelly as the star players are aw-shucks charm & icky smarm, respectively. It's fun enough, but the quartet of Kelly, Sinatra, Jules Munshin, and Betty Garrett did the musical romcom better later this same year with On the Town.

B-

Clue (1985)

Guests gather at a remote mansion for a dinner party thrown by an unknown host. They soon find out that they have something in common with each other, but don't know who to trust as bodies pile up.

I know that I'd seen this before when I was much younger and remembered it as being extremely funny, but I'm wondering now if my memory was simply influenced by the gif below, which always makes me giggle. This watch I noticed that it has this weird mix of being both manic & lowkey -- which, though quite an accomplishment, doesn't make much sense.

Flames Clue GIFfrom Flames GIFs

C+

On Body and Soul (2017)

Two lonely slaughterhouse workers: a manager with a useless arm and a woman whose Aspergers (I'm guessing) has left her completely isolated, discover that they have been dreaming the same dream. Though they're both excited about this, social constraints and their own ineptitude prevent them from fully conveying that excitement to each other.

I've literally never seen anything like this before. It's simply wonderful. What a mystery we humans are -- and what a thing to celebrate when we find another with whom we can move through life.

A