[7]

Rodney Dangerfield stars as a corporate tycoon who enrolls in college to help inspire his son (Christine‘s Keith Gordon) to stay in school. Now, I’m hard on comedies and I honestly don’t like very many of them — but I really enjoyed Back to School. It’s a terrific vehicle for Dangerfield and his direct, throw-away sensibility. When a stand-up comic is featured in a narrative film, the formulaic plot usually ends up constraining the talent and strangling all the fun out of the movie. But Back to School keeps things loose enough for Dangerfield to shine. It even allows him to keep his balls after the obligatory third-act character catharsis. (Learning lessons can be so castrating.)

¡Three Amigos! (1986)

November 29, 2013

[5] John Landis (Animal House, An American Werewolf in London) directs comedy heavyweights Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short in this goofy flick about three silent film stars who accept a job in Mexico only to realize it's not…

Career Opportunities (1991)

November 27, 2013

[4] Frank Whaley (Pulp Fiction, Field of Dreams) stars a high school grad who freeloads off his parents until a menial overnight job at Target introduces him to the love of his life, played by the stunning Jennifer Connelly (Labyrinth,…

Kiss Them For Me (1957)

November 5, 2013

[4]

Cary Grant stars in this post-war feel-good flick about three beleaguered naval officers whose precious 4-day shore leave is threatened at every turn. At first, it’s disappointing to see Grant slumming it in a party movie, but then there’s a little anti-war sentiment that threatens to elevate the material… before ultimately sinking it. Kiss Them For Me is ultimately an overbearing message movie, with Grant’s character repeatedly explaining to lay people and press alike that war isn’t glorious. Maybe the film served an important function counterbalancing war propaganda from the ’40s, but taken on its own, the message gets tedious very quickly. The line should have been drawn after Grant’s first dramatic outburst (a fine moment for him and the movie), and well before a wounded soldier is wheeled out for exhibition, full of hope and oblivious to his terminal diagnosis.

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

November 4, 2013

[8] Tim Robbins (The Shawshank Redemption) stars as an unwitting mail room clerk thrust into the office of CEO at a mythical uber-corporation when the board members decide to send the company's stocks into a nose dive. But the board,…

High Anxiety (1977)

October 4, 2013

[6]

Mel Brooks sends up Alfred Hitchcock in High Anxiety, a spoof centered around a psychiatrist who uncovers shenanigans at ‘The Psychoneurotic Institute for the Very, VERY Nervous’. Brooks plays the shrink, a man who must cope with his own ‘high anxiety’ while getting to the bottom of a murder mystery before the Institute’s nefarious head nurse and former administrator order him killed! Cloris Leachman and Harvey Korman are stand-outs as the villains. In one scene, you see the hunch-backed, mustached Leachman don a Nazi uniform when she lashes the bound Korman during a clandestine S&M session.

Don Jon (2013)

October 4, 2013

[7]

Future Oscar-winner (I’ve been saying this since 2001’s Manic) Joseph Gordon-Levitt makes an auspicious writing/directing debut with Don Jon, a character study of a young New Jersey guy whose addiction to pornography takes its toll on his relationships with women. Gordon-Levitt pumped up to play the title character, but I hope he drops the muscle mass soon — his head’s too small for a body that big! The film is superbly cast. Scarlett Johansson impresses me for the first time ever here, playing a sex-pot who knocks Jon off his feet. Tony Danza and Glenne Headly are great as Jon’s parents, and the ever-reliable Julianne Moore is memorable as a quirky but sullen older woman who competes for Jon’s affections as the story wears on.