What movies did you see last week? (4/15-4/21)

The Locksmith (2023)
Bob Marley: One Love (2024)
Drive-Away Dolls (2024)
Last Hurrah for Chivalry (1979)
French Connection II (1975)
War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024)
Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver (2024)

 Absolutely correct. Haters of Con Air probably were held by their mothers too much or not enough and were picked last at kickball. Happiness for them hurts.

Harriet Craig (1950) - Crawford plays a tyrannical perfectionist housewife who drives everyone away because of her daddy issues. Crawford is the main (and only) event but it's worth seeing for her. 7.5

The Catered Affair (1956) - Gore Vidal adapts a Chayefsky kitchen sink teleplay for this early Richard Brooks film. Surprisingly wonderful melodrama about poverty and money and how it ruins everything, when Bette Davis gets it into her head to give daughter Debbie Reynolds an extravagant wedding that threatens to upend the family and their community. Has some incredibly touching moments and Ernest Borgnine and Debbie Reynolds are the MVPs in touching and moderated performances. Some like Bette Davis too, but she felt really out of place to me as this working class Irish mother. 8.5

Escape from Fort Bravo (1953) - another disappointing John Sturges. Civil War-era western where the contentious North and South has to finally unite against their common indigenous enemy in the West. Has some lovely desert-y cinematography from Robert Surtees but the story never comes together. I watched for Eleanor Parker but she's got nothing to do but be the love interest caught in the middle of a North & South love triangle. 5

With a Song in My Heart (1952) - diegetic musical biopic about Jane Froman (played by Susan Hayward), a singer and entertainer who performed for US troops in WWII and was crippled in an airplane crash. It's a fairly basic film but where it surprises is in Haywayd's charismatic performance and Ritter as her staunch #2 in the backhalf as a feisty army nurse who gets Froman back on her feet (well, not literally). The music and costumes are also beautiful, and there's a pair of really heart-tugging scenes involving a shy army kid in Froman's audience before and after shellshock. 7

The Horse's Mouth (1958) - Alec Guinness is having so much fun playing a gruff hermit artist in this British art farce penned by Guinness himself. Feels a bit long and unfocused with all of the artist's shenanigans and it's rarely laugh-out-loud funny, but Guinness's fun is infectious. 7.5

The Caine Mutiny (1954 REWATCH) - always loved this one. The melodrama on the side with momma's boy Keith and his beau is mostly a waste of time, but whenever we're on the boat or in the court martial the drama is absolutely electric. Love Bogart's performance as the neurotic captain with his little metal rolling balls (1954's version of a fidget spinner), especially his testimony in the court martial which slowly breaks down from this illusion of confidence into a paranoid rant, but I also love that the signs of paranoia even break through Queeg's façade like how he seems to describe everyone as "disloyal" or "unreliable" (a performance of a performance). It was wrong to nominate Tully when Ferrer was right there killing it as the defense attorney who publicly humiliates Queeg and feels awful for it. I just love with how much confidence Ferrer reads his lines. He's all business and he knows what he's doing, there's guilt but no doubt, especially not in himself. And the disdain with which he annihilates Fred MacMurray in the climax is just iconic. Brilliant supporting turn. 8.5
(only reason I don't rate it higher is because of the Keith/May stuff and I wish Maryk's role had been fleshed out more)

"If you want to do anything about it, I'll be outside. I'm a lot drunker than you, so it'll be a fair fight"

The Fugitive (1993). What a ride! One of the best thrillers I've seen in years. 8.5/10