Beneath most great comedians lies a great actor. Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, hell even Don Rickles showed his chops in “Casino”. Melissa McCarthy continues that legacy with her Oscar nominated performance in CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? Based on a true story, McCarthy plays writer Lee Israel. Frequently drunk, living in the past and running on empty, Israel has seen better days. Her pet projects are on topics no one under 65 could possibly care about and opportunities are running dry. Jane Curtin is Lee’s agent, unleashing the truth that Lee needs to explore another line of work or make a serious course correction. Lee finds that new path by easing into and then thriving on fraudulent pieces of history. She creates notes by the likes of Cole Porter or Dorothy Parker, doing her best writing in years by impersonating their unique humor. When the fake letters and inscriptions start paying the rent and more, Israel begins a long rush headlong into criminal deception and fraud. Lee’s partner in crime is the man at the next bar stool in their favorite NYC dive. Jack Hock (the Oscar nominated Richard E. Grant) is flamboyant, hilarious, sad and ready for any adventure. Lee and Jack’s verbal sparring is the heart of the film. The more you love dark sarcasm and sadistic wit, the more you’ll enjoy the movie. It’s definitely my sense of humor! Writers Nicole Holofcener (the terrific “Enough Said”) and Jeff Whitty (Avenue Q) thread the line between biography, crime drama and character study with deft words and nice tension as Lee’s fraud attracts the attention of the FBI. McCarthy is terrific, sans any polish or social skills and barreling her way through Manhattan streets and her own morals at a desperate pace. Her chemistry with Grant as two lonely barflies yields a ton of laughs and profane interactions. The fact that her most emotional moments on screen involve her cats says a lot about Lee. I loved the final scenes that offer a glimpse of the real life Lee Israel’s story after the events depicted in the film. As a sucker for well acted/written dramas with redemption at their heart, but not necessarily in their final act, CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME is a quiet, small film with a big, emotional center, perfectly filled by McCarthy. She’s incredibly talented. Can’t wait to see what she does next. It gets an A.

Beautiful to look at and full of adventure for the whole family, 2020's THE CALL OF THE WILD is a great outdoor adventure. Adapted from Jack London's classic novel, it's the story of huge but lovable Buck. Dog-napped from his pampered existence living with a wealthy judge (Bradley Whitford) and his family, he's taken to Alaska to become a sled dog. The scenes of his capture and the violent man that dominates him were a bit too intense for our 6 year old grandson, even though the violence takes place in the form of a shadow. Buck escapes and his adventures in the Yukon territory are off and running. He first works as a sled dog for the Canadian postal service, under the kind eye of Perrault, well played by Omar Sy (Jurassic World) and his beautiful partner Francoise (Cara Gee). When she is pulled under an ice flow, Buck's rescue attempt becomes the first of many large scale action sequences, all leveraging $130 million+ in CGI effects. I can't tell how much of this film was shot in real settings or how many of the animals ever actually existed, but everything looks incredible and the outdoor settings are jaw dropping. Buck eventually finds his way to John Thornton, a lonely man reeling from the death of his son and the end of his marriage. Seeking solitude, he and Buck cross paths again and again, until they finally connect far into the Northern territories. Harrison Ford is at his big-white-beard, grizzled old man best, bringing real heart to the story. Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey, Beauty and the Beast) is a clueless. wealthy guide who crosses paths with Buck and John once too often. His outrageous costume is made with an actual swath of cloth from the time period. I guess there was no "blending in" for the English on a quest for gold back in the day. At a brisk 100 minutes, the film is loaded with jaw dropping scenery, animal encounters of every variety and enough frigid weather to make you reach for your coat. Composer John Powell (Jason Bourne, United 93) wraps everything in a big adventure score and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List) makes the most of every landscape, putting you on the rapids in a canoe, hurtling across ice covered lakes and capturing solitude in the middle of nowhere with equal skill. Buck is a fully digital rendering, which makes Ford's acting even more impressive when you realize he's playing off a stick. Between this and "The Lion King" the days of animal actors are over. Visually impressive, fun for all ages, but maybe a bit too intense for the youngest in the audience, THE CALL OF THE WILD gets a solid B.

1978's CALIFORNIA SUITE features four different stories of folks checking into a west coast luxury hotel for the weekend, all created by the witty pen of Neil Simon. Alan Alda and Jane Fonda are a separated couple bickering over where their teenage daughter is going to live, in NYC with career mom Fonda or in LA with easy going dad Alda. Both actors are good, and their segment is witty and serious, but as with most Simon flicks, real people don't talk like this. Our second couple, Maggie Smith and Michael Caine, are terrific as an Oscar nominated actress and her husband in Los Angeles for the Academy Awards. Caine is always slightly in her shadow and has at least one big secret he is hiding (not too successfully) in the darkness. Walter Matthau scores the film's biggest laughs, trying to hide a drunken hooker in his bed that his brother sent to the room the night before. When wife Elaine May arrives a half day early, the physical comedy and the laughs are frequent. These two classic comedians play off each other to perfection. Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor round out the cast as brothers-in-law who are both doctors and constantly competing at everything. Their sports, room and verbal one-upsmanship is fun to watch. Overall, California Suite a very enjoyable, relaxing two hours, as long as you buy into Simon's witty but showy wordplay and excuse some of the more dated moments. It's a great cast that checks in for the weekend and earns a B-. (but Matthau gets an A+!)

Four years after Robert Altman packed theatres with his biggest hit M*A*S*H, he brought Elliott Gould and George Segal together as a couple of gamblers in 1974's CALIFORNIA SPLIT. Segal plays Bill Denney, a guy with a respectable job and home who has more than a bit of a gambling habit. One evening at a bar, he meets Charlie Waters (Gould) who seems to kind of have a house with two hookers, no job at all and a hilarious, if reckless life. Soon Segal and Gould are betting on anything and everything, from every card game they can find to how many of the 7 Dwarfs they can name! The first hour I really had a hard time getting drawn in, becuase basically there aren't too many things to like about these two, but the film draws pulls you in slowly & quietly. By the final half hour with Segal playing for both of them in a very high stakes game in Reno, the suspense was really well done! Damned if Altman didn't make me care about what happened. The film is populated with real gamblers and many real people that make it seem almost like a documentary at times. Funny, a bit maddening, but pretty damn good. We'll deal it a full house and a B.

In 1973, John Wayne only had three more years left in his film career when he brought his last truly traditional western to the screen with CAHILL: UNITED STATES MARSHALL. The Duke stars as JD Cahill, a by the book lawman who spends nearly everyday on the road tracking down bad guys. He's like George Clooney in "Up in the Air", never home and devoted to his job (but with less suits and airplanes and a lot more horses). Unfortunately, his young boys are starved for attention, never seeing their dad except for a quick stop between jobs. 17 year old Danny falls in with the wrong group, led by George Kennedy (Airport, Cool Hand Luke) as Fraser. Manipulating Danny, Fraser gets them all locked up for a night and plans a daring bank robbery. Danny is very well played by Gary Grimes, who broke out on screen several years before in "Summer of '42". He's a very good actor in what could have been a cliche role. Kennedy is terrific and menacing, chewing the hell out of a cigar and threatening Cahill's boys with false loyalty and explosive violence. Soon Danny's little brother Billy is pulled into the bank plot and Cahill comes home to find Danny in jail and Billy in trouble. When Fraser and his men escape, Cahill must track he and his gang down, racing against time to make sure the right men serve justice. It's surprisingly well constructed, written by the same screenwriters that wrote the first three "Dirty Harry" films. It's also badly dated at times, with Neville Brand (Birdman of Alcatraz) forced to play a half-Indian tracker in the worst ethnic makeup since Mickey Rooney played Mr. Yunioshi in "Breakfast at Tiffanys". Elmer Bernstein (The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven) delivers a rousing Western music score that suits the Duke. Wayne is at ease throughout, playing an old fashioned lawman as comfortable sermonizing on right and wrong as he is blazing across the trail with both six guns blazing. Wayne followed this film up with two modern detective films, "McQ" and "Brannigan" before filming one more western, "The Shootist" in 1976. If you love the Western genre, CAHILL's a great example of what Wayne always did best, providing family friendly, old-fashioned entertainment with a message layered just beneath the action. Cahill rounds up a B-.

Woody Allen seems to have found freedom in his new partnership with Amazon Films, turning out one of his best looking and sweetest films in recent memory, CAFE SOCIETY. Jesse Eisenberg is our proto-Woody this time around as Bobby Stern, the young and impressionable nephew of Hollywood studio boss Phil Stern (Steve Carell). Bobby arrives in Hollywood anxious to learn and soon finds himself a capable assistant for all things Phil. He meets many tinsel town players, along with Phil's stunning young assistant Vonnie, capably played by Kristen Stewart. Vonnie and Bobby are great together, but their relationship grows complicated when the married man Vonnie's been seeing turns out to be all too familar to Bobby. The structure of the film is clever, almost giving us two complete Bobby stories in one. I won't say a word about the second, as its directly fed by the events of the first. Carell is great in a funny and dramatic turn as Phil, Blake Lively is beautiful and terrific as a second Veronica in Bobby's life, Corey Stoll (The Strain) is rowdy fun as Bobby's much more worldly and violent brother and Woody Allen tops it all off with some heartfelt and funny narration. It's the first time in 30 years he's narrated a film without appearing in it. For me the weakest part of the film is Eisenberg, and I think its just me. I liked him in "Adventureland" and "Zombieland' but between his performance here and recently as Lex Luthor, I just find him grating. I may never get over how bad that Batman V Superman debacle was....anyway, I digress. This is mild, witty, perfectly photographed to bring old Hollywood alive in high def and really enjoyable. Kristin Stewart has really grown on me. She's getting close to making me forget about those horrible sparkling vampire movies that I've never seen. Sit back and enjoy nostalgic good writing and plenty of romance in one technicolor package. CAFE delivers a tasty B.

It had been a few years since I'd seen Caddyshack and I forgot just how damn funny this 1980 comedy classic is from beginning to end! Rodney Dangerfield is at his all time film best (although Back to School is a close second) with the greatest golf bag of all time and some of comedy's best lines. "I imagine if you buy that hat you get a free bowl of soup, looks good on you though!" "Maybe I should have yelled TWO!" "Mr Wang, I thing this club is restricted, don't tell 'em your Jewish". Then there's Chevy Chase at the top of his physical and verbal comedy game, Ted Knight in his blustery best "Spaulding!" and of course, Bill Murray as Carl, the worlds greatest groundskeeper/gopher hunter. Murray was the biggest surprise for me watching it again, every moment with him is just flat out hilarious. The scene with Chevy Chase visiting Carl in his "house" is one of the best in the film. Mix in some Kenny Loggins 80's tunes, Lacey Underall, a dancing gopher, the Bishop and a Baby Ruth and you've got 18 holes of comedy gold. "So I got that going for me, and that's pretty good....: A hilarious hole-in-one that gets an A+ on our scorecard and a spot in my all-time Top 100.

1969's CACTUS FLOWER introduced the world to Goldie Hawn and won her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her debut! This is a pretty funny film and while some of the music and settings haven't aged well, the comedy is timeless and still generates some nice laughs. Walter Matthau plays NYC dentist Julian Winston, a confirmed bachelor who has told his girlfriend Toni Simmons (Hawn) that he is married, but getting a divorce. To not get caught in his lie, he asks his long devoted office assistant Stephanie (Ingrid Bergman in ALL her glory) to pose as his wife. As things tend to do, this one time meeting escalates completely out of control and the deception builds on itself, very hilariously. Matthau, Hawn and Bergman are all sharp comics here and get some great support from Jack Weston and Vito Scotti. By the time they all meet in the bar with their assorted partners, it reminded me of some classic moments in Tootsie, with Dustin Hoffman. This is a real time capsule of the late sixties (just dig those references to "flower power" on the poster!) and a great debut of the adorable Goldie, who went on to become one of the most intelligent, groundbreaking women in Hollywood. Here, she is just damn cute, damn funny and damn smart. Cactus Flower blooms with a B.

First of all, no SPOILER ALERTS are necessary for my review of THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, the brilliant new horror movie from Joss Whedon (Buffy, Firefly, writer of The Avengers). There is no way I would share one secret of this incredibly smart, gory, fun, amazing, CLEVER flick! Take all the cliches you have come to expect in a horror movie, including a weekend in a dark, secluded cabin, the five stock slasher film characters (nerd, jock, cheerleader, virgin and stoner), the scary town person they meet before the get to the cabin, etc etc....Now blow ALL those cliches up and blend them back into themselves in ways that you will never see coming. To say anymore is to spoil the surprise. Just fasten your seatbelt, accept that you only THINK you know where this thrill ride is going and get ready. Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford are hilarious in roles I can't even describe without giving something away. This is a lot of fun, splashed with a LOT of blood, horror, laughs and clever twists. It's not often I would use the world brilliant for a horror film, but The Cabin in the Woods earns it. When you find yourself in the main room and all the elevator doors get ready to open at once, prepare yourself. One of my fave films of 2012 and a gore splashed A.

Set during the rise of Nazi Germany, in a dimly lit, adult club oozing decadence and sex, CABARET is one of the darkest musicals to ever find success with audiences. Joel Grey is the Master of Ceremonies, painted like an evil clown and luring us and the audience into the temptations inside the Kit Kat Klub. Director Bob Fosse brings his own unique style to the film and the dance, shattering every concept of a traditional "feel good" musical as the dark cloud of Nazi oppression swallows up Germany. Liza Minelli is American singer Sally Bowles, falling in love with her new roommate Brian (Michael York) and a rich Baron Maximillian (Helmut Griem). Marisa Berenson (Barry Lyndon) is a wealthy socialite discovering her Jewish heritage is becoming a terrifying liability. For a musical, there are less songs than you'd expect, with most of the story taking place outside the club. This isn't a "people breaking into song for no reason" musical, all the songs take place in the club, expanding on the story. York (Logan's Run) is terrific as a very sheltered and shy Cambridge student struggling with his sexuality and Minnelli is over-the-top as Sally until you see her world start to fall apart and you realize that its all a facade. "Money" was added for the film by Kander & Ebb and its just as strong as the rest of the songs. CABARET won Best Actress (Minnelli), Best Supporting Actor (Grey), Best Director (Fosse), Best Cinematography (Geoffrey Unsworth) and four other Oscars in 1972, thirty year before Kander & Ebb would strike movie gold again with the film adaption of "Chicago". Part drama, part WW2 film, part musical, CABARET welcomes you to very slimy nightclub and a very twisted stage show focused on the darkest sides of human nature. If you're looking for happy, you better go next door. If you like twisted, bievenue, Welcome.... CABARET gets a B.

Funny and touching, 1995's BYE BYE LOVE chronicles one long weekend in the lives of three divorced dads, their ex-spouses kids and dates. The three buddies are Dave (Matthew Modine) with two young children, a beautiful young girlfriend and a wandering eye; Randy Quaid as Vic, whose three kids are encouraging him to date again and Danny (Paul Reiser) currently suffering through the teen years with his daughter. For anyone that's been through a divorce, there are a lot of details the film gets right, including the drop off and pick up and trying to find the right blend for all the players to get along. But writers Gary David Goldberg & Brad Hall (Family Ties, Lou Grant) (Frasier, Watching Ellie) know how to craft a feature length version of a sitcom. Quaid's dinner with blind-date-from-Hell Janine Garofalo is a hilarious standout. Garofalo's never been better than she is here, battling with a waiter as Quaid deadpans his responses. Dave's Saturday night with every woman he's dated or dating showing up at once is well structured, with laughs and awkwardness piling up in equal measure. Rob Reiner lands a funny running bit as a marital advice radio show host whose commentary weaves through the weekend. Most of the drama side of the film is saved for Reiser and he handles it well, keeping the schtick to a minimum. The soundtrack is loaded with great music, including songs from Jackson Browne, The Everly Brothers, Mary Chapin Carpenter, CSNY and Linda Ronstadt. The mid 90's yacht rock floats you enjoyable through this mild but enjoyable movie that's a pretty decent blend of laughs and heart. BYE BYE LOVE gets a B. Garofalo and Quaid deserved their own movie!

A funny blast from the past, with enough nostalgia and laughs to make you smile for most of its running time, BYE BYE BIRDIE captures 1963 in a bottle. When the biggest rock and roll star in the world, Conrad Birdie is drafted, his management team sets up a television contest in which he'll visit a small town and kiss one girl before he leaves. Luckily for us, that girl is Kim McAfee, played by a very young and very talented Ann Margaret. Paul Lynde is hilarious as her father, who is trying to figure out how to plug his local store during the TV broadcast. Dick Van Dyke is excellent as chemist and part time songwriter Albert, who pens a song for Birdie to sing, while trying to balance his domineering mother (hilarious Maureen Stapleton) and girlfriend Rosie (Janet Leigh). The film is filled with music sung throughout by its stars and Van Dyke has some of his best film moments here with classics like "Put On a Happy Face". The only problem with the movie is our "rock and roll star Conrad Birdie, played here by Jesse Pearson, who has the stage presence of a pet rock. Ed Sullivan shows up as himself, hosting the big TV show and promoting the big Kiss. He's funnier than you might expect, obviously having fun playing off his real life persona. Paul Lynde steals nearly every scene he's in, the man was damn funny and puts in a different performance than his usual shtick. Definitely a lightweight movie that captures a different time and national sensibility, this was definitely a more innocent era! Fun, fast and well done, BYE BYE BIRDIE gets a nostalgic B.