The Mouse That Roared (1959) Peter Sellers, Jean Seberg, directed by Jack Arnold

Directed by Jack Arnold who directed The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Incredible Shrinking Man and numerous episodes of Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch. He was well-regarded in Hollywood. I found it surprising that he worked on those TV shows, but I always like their look, beautifully directed one-camera sit-coms. 

I was a little disappointed. I imagined a more creative or surprising way in which the Grand Duchy of Fenwick would conquer the United States than stumbling upon America's football-like doomsday bomb. It was like a less realistic proto-Dr Strangelove, but they kept talking about what nice people Americans were. I've been to Canada a couple of times and felt like the biggest jerk. I don't know about other countries, but Canadians are so much nicer than us. Leaders of the Duchy thought they'd declare war on the U.S., be quickly defeated then benefit from a sort of Marshall Plan because Americans are so generous. I don't know how British audiences felt about this after the UK went through years of poverty paying their massive war debt to the United States.

With Peter Sellers playing multiple roles and Jean Seberg just one year before Breathless.  

Filmed in Britain. 

When Harry Met Sally... (1989)

It must have been December 15th. I went with my sister and her husband to a local production of Oklahoma! A friend's son was in it. We stopped and ate on the way home and somehow got on the subject of the films of Rob Reiner. I didn't care for them. I couldn't stand Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men, I thought The American President was a morbid romantic fantasy about Bill Clinton dating again after Hillary dies; Spinal Tap just didn't interest me. I know he made others. 

They told me I should watch When Harry Met Sally. They were sure I'd like it.

We went home and were in the living room. I opened my laptop and looked at the news. Two people were found dead in Rob Reiner's home. The police wouldn't say who they were, but they did tell their ages which were the same as Rob Reiner and his wife. Variety was the first site I saw that stated that Rob and Michele Reiner had died.

My brother-in-law asked if I wanted to retract what I said about Reiner's movies. I didn't. It was unrelated. I sometimes separate the art from the artist. 

So, after all this time, I finally watched When Harry Met Sally..., about two terribly unlikable people who start dating. It wasn't his fault, but Billy Crystal was not romantic leading man material. 

When it came out, it was compared to the films of Woody Allen, but Woody Allen's characters generally had careers and families, parents, friends---they didn't just walk about talking and talking about how men were from Mars and women were from Venus. 

The big gag in it, where Sally makes a spectacle of herself in a crowded restaurant, didn't really make sense. No one would do that. Earlier in the movie, Harry and Sally were in another restaurant and she was humiliated when she blurted out something about her sex life attracting the attention of other diners. Maybe it showed her character arc, how much she had grown and changed.

I feel a little hurt that my sister thought I would like this thing. 

Written by Nora Ephron. Free on a streaming channel called Cineplex. 

Hothead (1963)

Frank (John Delgar) is a hothead. He's very unpleasant, a terrible jerk. He's angry about his father having abandoned him and his mother, leaving her to work her way into an early grave. Frank had to go to work himself when he was twelve. Now he lived his aunt, his father's sister. 

Frank has the day free after he's fired from his job. He drives around in his big old car. He and his friends, Tom and Iris (Robert Glenn and Barnara Joyce) spend most of the movie dressed in swimwear. They pick up a pleasant, well-dressed middle-aged hobo (Steve Talbot) and take him to the beach. He calls the kids to hang around in a beach house he just broke into. They have liquor. With Tom passed out. the hobo tries to sexually assault Iris who runs drunkenly from the house and finds Frank who's sitting on the beach losing his mind. He thinks the hobo is his father.

Frank is completely unsympathetic. He probably didn't need to be. He could have been a nice guy who came to believe a hitchhiker was his father who deserved to die. 

The movie was the only credit for the director and most of the cast. One actor, Robert Pearson, appeared in 2001 a Space Odyssey as an actor in the inflight movie. Barbara Joyce was a regular on The Ken Berry Show and appeared in a TV series, Legends of the Superheroes (1979). Robert Glenn was in The Last Picture Show and Larry Buchanan's A Bullet for Pretty Boy.

It's free on Tubi and available on DVD.  Still available after all these years. That says something for it.

Claude Chabrol's Blood Relatives (1978)

The novel by Ed McBain was set in New York but Chabrol changed the setting to Montreal. Donald Sutherland as a police detective who investigates the murder of a 17-year-old girl which was witnessed by her cousin. The Canadian police were surprisingly polite even while interrogating Donald Pleasance playing a convicted child molester. It was kind of nice for a change. 

I'll try not to give anything away, but it seemed like a coincidence that I watched this movie soon after the Florida state legislature failed to pass a bill banning marriage between first cousins. 

The victim (Lisa Langois) is an orphan taken in by her aunt and uncle. She shares a bedroom with her cousin (Aude Landry) and there's a male cousin (Laurent Malet) living there, too. 

Ed McBain aka Evan Hunter really cranked out the best sellers. So many of them were made into movies. The best was Kurosawa's High and Low.

Available on a Roku Channel called Movie Vault which may not be around long. An identical channel called Movie Hub was quickly shut down.

Timothee Chalamet vs Orson Welles

I missed the Oscars. I hadn't seen any of the movies, but it's the only time anything interesting or surprising happens on live television. I didn't know it was happening that night until I looked on the computer and saw some news item about someone or other winning an Oscar for one thing or another. 

I watched some of it on YouTube. It looked painful, Timothee Chalamet smiling a bit too broadly as Conan O'Brien mocked his unkind comments about opera and ballet. Chalamet had to show he was a good sport, but it wasn't that funny. He should have practiced in front of a mirror, looking at images of himself when he was genuinely but only slightly amused and learned to simulate that. 

He should have played it cool in the months leading up to it. 

I am reminded of the words of Orson Welles talking with Henry Jaglom about Woody Allen. Welles hated Allen and thought he was arrogant. Jaglom argues that Allen wasn't arrogant, just shy. Weird that Welles would mistake one for the other, but he explained:

“He is arrogant. Like all people with timid personalities, his arrogance is unlimited. Anyone who speaks quietly and shrivels up in company is unbelievably arrogant. He acts shy but he’s not. He’s scared. He hates himself but he loves himself. A very tense situation to people like me who have to carry on and pretend to be modest.” [emphasis added]

Orson Welles had the good sense to pretend to be modest. 

Instead of saying he wanted to be one of "the greats", Chalamet could have said he was trying to improve. Instead of saying he'd been doing "top level shit", he could have said "I've been trying my darndest."

Timothee's a millionaire. His career could grind to a halt and he'd still be fine. 

The Flying Deuces (1939) Laurel & Hardy

Laurel & Hardy are apparently on vacation in Paris. Ollie is terribly upset when a Parisian waitress rejects him for another man. He decides to tie himself to a large rock and throw himself into the Seine and he insists that Stan joins him in death. A French Army officer stops them and suggests they join the Foreign Legion---he'll forget his heartbreak in no time. They do and are soon sentenced to death by firing squad.

Laurel & Hardy made most of their movies for Hal Roach, but this was produced by RKO. The director and Stan Laurel reportedly hated each other and Laurel said the movie taught him to never work with writers who weren't familiar with their movies. I haven't seen their other feature films so I'm not familiar with their work, either. I found them a little annoying. 

Free on Tubi.

The End (1978) Burt Reynolds

I took a class in high school called "Death & Dying". I don't know what year it was, but VCR's were just beginning to take over and we were going to finish the class by watching a movie about death. I think the teacher wanted to get Woody Allen's Love & Death but it was out, so he got The End. We had to get permission slips signed to see an R rated movie. I was eighteen and got to sign my own.

Directed by and starring Burt Reynolds as a shady real estate dealer diagnosed with an incurable blood disease. He has three months to a year to live. His doctor (Norman Fell) tells him his death will be painful so he immediately sets out to kill himself. After seeing his elderly parents (Myrna Loy and Pat O'Brien) and raiding their medicine cabinet, he wakes up in a mental hospital where fellow patient Dom DeLuise, having already killed his father, agrees to help Reynolds end his life.

With Sally Field, Carl Reiner, Kristy McNichol, Joanne Woodward, Robby Benson, and Strother Martin among others. 

It picked up halfway through when Dom DeLuise appears. Much of the humor goes back and forth between Burt Reynolds' overwrought reaction to his diagnosis and people trying to cheer him up. 

When girlfriend Sally Field tells him that she feels that something she did caused his illness, he said, "You don't give someone a blood disease. That's a gift from God," which is pretty mild movie blasphemy. Might give you the feel for this. It's not a realistic dramedy. Becomes slightly serious when he talks to his daughter and imagines her reaction to his death but that doesn't last long.

Burt Reynolds drives a lovely Jaguar XKE (E Type) convertible. 

The teacher could have rented almost anything. Most movies are about death. We could have watched a war movie, a Bruce Lee movie, James Bond, especially On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The Third Man. Almost anything with a dog. I would say The Seventh Seal but it was in a classroom and you'd have to read subtitles from across the room.

Free on Tubi and Pluto.