Watching Movies 2/16

Anthology of love letters to Paris. There's too many films and many are too short to really sink in or offer more than a poignant moment, but there are enough celebrities popping up now and then to keep you interested, and a few of the shorts are gems. I wish they were all connected somehow with the different characters, even if they were just in the background, to give it some cohesion.

Sean Penn infiltrates the Irish mafia in Hell's Kitchen. This is Gary Oldman's first American role and he steals the movie, but the acting from Penn, Ed Harris and Robin Wright is solid across the board. The story, however, is just all the typical gangster stuff, and it's never clear what Penn's ultimate goal is with going undercover. If it was just to take down Ed Harris he could have done that long before the conclusion.

An overwrought Tennessee Williams drama where Katherine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor babble endlessly about what happened last summer, and you wish they just made a movie about last summer. Or may not because what happened is pretty weird. Easily the worst Joseph Mankiewicz movie I've seen so far, but the actresses emote up a storm of insanity. Montgomery Clift is mostly wasted as a doctor/psychiatrist repeating everything they say back as a question.

A poor man's Mutiny on the Bounty (instead of an island full of women you just get Ida Lupino) adapted from a Jack London novel that's weakened by dual protagonists, neither of which are fully developed, although this gives the villain Edward G. Robinson ample room to chew the scenery. The story is weakened by a weird subplot about Robinson's brother hunting him down that never really makes sense, but it's otherwise a great high seas adventure.

If you've ever heard of the Church of the SubGenius, you'll probably want to see this. It's a parody cult started by some hippy weirdos in the 1980s that nearly became a real cult, but managed to stay irreverent and underground for decades. Originally created as a rejection of normalcy, the creators acknowledge that in the age of Trump, the world has turned so upside-down that rejecting normalcy has become pointless, or at least no longer funny.

Surreal, six-episode British comedy set in a hospital that's a spoof of 80s television helmed by a Stephen King-like author.  The weird stories, bad acting, and choppy editing are all hilarious, and it ends long before the whole concept starts to wear thin. Matt Berry is one of the doctors.

Buster Keaton short set in snowy Alaska that came out before Chaplin's Gold Rush. It's basically a collection of gags, only a few of which are notably clever, but Keaton surprisingly plays a villainous character who steals, cheats, and murders, which is ultimately forgivable because "it's all a dream."