One series, eleven movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, Hallmark, Netflix, YouTube.]

A Man on the Inside (created by Michael Schur, 2024). An eight-episode series with a silly premise: Charles, a retired professor of engineering (an ultra-natty Ted Danson), answers a newspaper ad and goes undercover to investigate a theft in a retirement community. Anyone who’s been around the world of assisted living and memory care is likely to find this series’s representations true to life (and death). There are funny complications: the private investigator employing Charles poses as his daughter, which means that his daughter has to pose as his niece; a cranky resident sees Charles as his sexual rival. The best moments: Charles’s conversations with fellow residents Calbert (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and Gladys (Susan Ruttan), and his recitation of the “seven ages” speech from As You Like It. ★★★★ (N)

*

Strange Way of Life (dir. Pedro Amodóvar, 2023). A short, in which a sheriff, Jake (Ethan Hawke), and a rancher, Silva (Pedro Pascal), once lovers, reunite after twenty-five years apart. But it’s Jake’s hunt for Silva’s son (a suspected murderer) that brings about the reunion. A witty queer western, with all the proper tropes, even a three-way standoff. Best line, spoken by Silva: “Years ago, you asked me what two men could do living together on a ranch.” ★★★★ (N)

*

The Whale (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2022). From a play by Samuel D. Hunter, in which Charlie, a morbidly obese teacher of online English composition classes, hides from his students (claiming a faulty webcam) and from the world. An estranged daughter (Sadie Sink), a friend and caregiver (Hong Chau), and a missionary from an end-times sect (Ty Simpkins) become frequent visitors, and Charlie’s hard-drinking estranged wife (Samantha Morton) drops in just once. Present in memory is the now-dead male partner for whom Charlie left his wife and daughter. A credible performance from Fraser, but the other principals are unconvincing, the dialogue stilted, the production stagey, the storyline improbable in so many ways (call 911, dammit), the ending absurd, and the talk about honest and amazing writing so patently ridiculous that I remembered what I heard a person in the row in front of me whisper to a companion during a (Broadway!) performance of ’night, Mother : “I can’t believe people are taking this seriously.” ★ (N)

*

From the Criterion Channel’s Pre-Code Columbia feature

Ladies of Leisure (dir. Frank Capra, 1930). Barbara Stanwyck is Kay Arnold, a “party girl” (we might say “escort”); Ralph Graves is Jerry Strong, an aspiring painter from a wealthy family. Chance brings the two together, and the differences in their stations in life threaten to pull them apart. Marie Prevost as Kay’s roommate and Lowell Sherman as a client bring some comedy to the slow-moving proceedings. Best scenes: the painter’s studio, seen through a rainy window, and Kay’s impassioned speech to Jerry’s mother. ★★★

Forbidden (dir. Frank Capra, 1932). Stanwyck again, as Lulu, “old lady four-eyes,” a small-town librarian who uses all her savings for a cruise to Havana and finds herself in a cabin across the hall from Bob (Adolphe Menjou), a charming older man. Their romance continues ashore in Havana and back in the States, but Bob is married (of course) and has political ambitions. Menjou is no “Bob” (such a strange name for such a glamorous man), but Stanwyck is great as a woman torn between preserving a relationship and preserving her dignity. Ralph Bellamy appears as a cruel newspaperman and Bob’s rival. ★★★

Shopworn (dir. Nick Grinde, 1932). “A waitress — oh, my heart!” Barbara Stanwyck can’t catch a break: here she plays Kitty Lane, waitressing in a college-town café, where a romance develops with medical student David Livingston (Regis Toomey). His mother (Clara Blandick) doesn’t approve, but not to worry: everything gets worked out, and surprisingly so, in a mere seventy-two minutes. Best moment: the mother and her lawyer walking to Kitty’s humble house. ★★★★

*

Best. Christmas. Ever! (dir. Mary Lambert, 2023). Heather Graham and Brandy Norwood play one-time best friends whose families spend Christmas together because of faulty driving directions. Weird inappropriateness, abundant stupidity, and snow that seems to appear and disappear. An incoherent mess. And I’ll never think of the words “moving furniture” without thinking of this movie. ★ (N)

*

Meet Me Next Christmas (dir. Rusty Cundieff, 2024). The premise: strangers Layla (Christina Milian) and James (Kofi Siriboe) met in an airport lounge and promised to meet next Christmas for a Pentatonix concert if they’re unattached. But tickets are scarce, which means that Layla must hire a personal concierge, scruffy Teddy (Devale Ellis), to find a ticket so she can meet tall, handsome James. And you can already guess that it will be Teddy who carries the day — but you could not have guessed that the quest for the ticket will require Layla and Teddy to compete in a drag-heavy lip-sync contest. As Elaine observed, the members of the Pentatonix serve as the gods in this story, watching over the mortals as they lip-sync their way to happiness. ★★ (N)

*

The Only Girl in the Orchestra (dir. Molly O’Brien, 2023). A short documentary portrait of Orin O’Brien, double bassist, the first woman to join the New York Philharmonic (in 1966), about to retire after fifty-five years as her frankly adoring niece was making this film. O’Brien must be one of the coolest octogenarians in the world: she’s smart, funny, ultra-energetic, still devoted to her students and her instrument. Fun fact: O’Brien, who never sought stardom, is the daughter of early movie stars George O’Brien (who starred in Sunrise ) and Marguerite Churchill. I’m always interested in films that show people doing their work — Crumb, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and ‌Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb come immediately to mind — and this movie does that, beautifully. ★★★★ (N)

*

Internes Can’t Take Money (dir. Alfred Santell, 1937). Barbara Stanwyck is Janet Haley, gangster’s widow, ex-con, factory worker, searching for the little daughter her late husband took away. Joel McCrea is Dr. Jimmie Kildaire — the screen’s first Dr. Kildaire — and once again a relationship develops across class boundaries. Plenty of barroom talk and gangsterism, and some lewd talk using popcorn as a metaphor (at least they weren’t talking about moving the furniture). Along with McCrea and Stanwyck, the Art Deco hospital is a star in this movie. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Night Walker (dir. William Castle, 1964). Barbara Stanwyck’s final big-screen role, as Irene Trent, the wife of a spooky blind inventor. Irene dreams of a lover; her husband dies in an explosion (or does he?); and the imaginary lover appears to Irene in what might be called waking dreams. Only a kind lawyer (Robert Taylor, Stanwyck’s one-time husband) is there to stand by Irene through this strange ordeal. Sheer craziness, lots of screams, several real scares, and a screenplay by Robert Bloch, writer of the novel Psycho. ★★★ (YT)

*

Karen Kingsbury’s Maggie’s Christmas Miracle (dir. Michael Robison, 2017). I subject myself to a random Hallmark movie every “holiday season,” but alas, this one was not as bad as I’d hoped, with its predictable elements (sad backstories, an endearing waif, the Black friend, moments of awkwardness) offset by some genuinely grown-up moments between the two (straight, white) principals. There is also an ample helping of weirdness: a diner that becomes a pop-up Christmas shop in winter, a tradition called the Christmas Stroll for which the stores on Main Street close (?!) and the storekeepers hand out cider and cocoa, the insane number of Christmas decorations in the male lead’s apartment (count the trees), and the miracle that ties the elements of the story together. ★★ (H)

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Raindrop.io)