(Prime/VOD) Winsome depression-era period piece about a con man and his hanger-on. Sparkling dialogue, great chase sequences in a film that doesn’t need them, and surprisingly touching performances from Ryan O’Neil and his daughter. Peter Bogdanovich was on one hell of a roll.
Comedy
PILLOW TALK (1959)
(VOD) I’ll always love the use of a party line as a complicating device, regardless of how foreign the concept may be nowadays, so of course I was pre-disposed to enjoy this Hudson/Day tête-à-tête. PILLOW TALK is also notable for spending so much time with the primary characters in ‘splintered’ and ‘internal’ spaces, and it has some interesting visual framing and reframing work. A lot of it hasn’t aged well, especially the last 15 minutes — hell, it was almost certainly considered problematic even in 1959 — but at its best, it’s a surprisingly experimental and satisfying rom-com.
Full disclosure: I once wrote an entire horror radio play around the use of a party line.
SEEMS LIKE OLD TIMES (1980)
(VOD) Feels like Neil Simon’s THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, but slightly more insufferable. As a screwball comedy it ultimately works, partially due to some damn fine quips, but mostly due to Goldie Hawn’s ebullience. Chase’s smugness is extraordinarily suffocating at first, but that gets worn away roughly halfway through the film. Not a great movie — allegedly Simon doesn’t even remember writing the screenplay — but it’s a breezy fun time.
BREWSTER MCCLOUD (1970)
(VOD) An icarus story with a serial killer MacGuffin, Altman’s follow-up to MASH is even more chaotic and irreverent, while also being extremely impenetrable. The weirdness worked in my favor, but your mileage may vary.
AN EVENING WITH BEVERLY LUFF LINN (2018)
(Netflix/VOD) A little too aggressively idiosyncratic for my tastes, although Hosking is clearly talented and one hell of an auteur. Regardless, Matt Berry has a rather lush role, and he gets to sing some Dr. Demento-worthy songs, which made it worth my time.
HERBIE: FULLY LOADED (2012)
(HBO MAX/VOD) A surprisingly horny take on the HERBIE THE LOVE BUG franchise, penned by THE STATE’s Thomas Lennon and directed by DEBS’ Angela Robinson. Despite the story existing mostly to sell ESPN, NASCAR, Volkswagons, and Cheetos, it’s silly fun. While the cast is vastly over-qualified — including a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him Scoot McNairy — they give it their all.
STAY TUNED (1992)
(Prime/tubi/VOD) A surprisingly sweet script that’s basically an excuse for a bunch of blipvert parodies.
ALL OF ME (1984)
(hoopla/kanopy/tubi) Winsome mostly because of Reiner’s light touch and Tomlin’s cagey performance. Even for a male/female body-swap(-ish) film, the end is pretty messed up.