Divorce American Style (Bud Yorkin, 1967). I had my reasons for watching this, but expectations of quality wasn’t one of them. That’s fortuitous since hints of quality were hard to come by in this comedy steeped in creaky examination of social issues. Four years before he transformed television with All in the Family, Norman Lear copped an Oscar nomination (with Robert Kaufman) for penning this screenplay that centers on one man careening towards divorce from his combative wife. The film’s point of view is scattered and confused, seemingly in an attempt to cover every bit of ground in consideration of the societal shift happening as divorce became more prevalent. Instead of thoroughness, it gives the impression of being hopelessly muddled. One of the only ideas that sticks is that the problems all derive from these nutty women’s libbers, probably not the thesis that noted lefty Lear wanted to take prominence. Dick Van Dyke and Debbie Reynolds are no better than adequate in leading roles. Jason Robards, by contrast, demonstrates the ease with which he can make even the slightest role feel lived in as an impoverished but surprisingly good-natured veteran of the divorce wars.

Fat City (John Huston, 1972). There’s an appealing seediness to Huston’s film about the lugs toiling on the lowest part of the undercard on the boxing circuit. Stacy Keach gives a sensational performance as a washed up old boxer who romances a crumbling barfly while edging towards a comeback. It’s a role that could have been tackled effectively with little more than brutish pathos, but Keach aims for something trickier. There’s a tender intricacy to his work, a sense of showing the wheels turning even if those wheels are turning a little slowly. He’s magnetic in his quiet invention. Susan Tyrrell got an Oscar nomination for playing the soused dame he’s entangled with, but her performance is jut a shade or two too showy and broad. It’s the kind of thing that plays effectively at awards time, but doesn’t always age well. Huston’s directing is rock solid, the pure craftsmanship of a seasoned master.

A Night at the Opera (Sam Wood, 1935). I once had a college professor insist that Duck Soup was the only Marx Brothers movie that fully succeeded as a movie instead of a collection of bits. The reason, he explained, was that it was the only one without drippy romance and distracting musical interludes. A Night at the Opera certainly reinforces that theory. When the film is focused on the well-honed comic routines, it’s downright energizing (damned if that stateroom scene, arguably the most familiar Marx gag, doesn’t still work splendidly). When the swooning Italian lovers peripherally connected to the proceedings move to the forefront, it’s unbelievably dull. Still, this is right in the era when Groucho, Chico and Harpo were in peak form. You’ll rarely find a performer with a better array of perfectly delivered punchlines than Groucho Marx.

Appaloosa (Ed Harris, 2008). In the vernacular of modern westerns, Appaloosa is going for 3:10 to Yuma rather than The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, meaning it’s less revisionist and more of sturdy exercise in the familiar elements of the genre. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially when the movie is focused on the interplay between Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen as longtime partners specializing in cleaning up troubled frontier towns. There are some gimmicky elements of that–Harris’s tendency to ask Mortensen to help him come up with words that are eluding him is amusing the first couple of times, increasingly tiresome as it gets overused–but generally they work together with a warm rapport. The plot holds few surprises and is as quickly forgettable as any number of the westerns churned out during the studio system heyday when that genre was the surest way to fill matinee seats. It’s the execution that matters. In that respect, the director Harris is a stolid (and far from infallible) as the gunslinger he plays.

Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954). Now here’s a western that swings wildly away from the norm. It’s got Joan Crawford as an imperious saloon owner on the outskirts of town, awaiting the railroad and the swell of business she’s sure it’ll bring. It’s Sterling Hayden as her returning former lover, toting a musical instrument instead of six shooters given his tendency to go a little gun crazy. There’s Mercedes McCambridge as Crawford’s seething rival. And there’s a gang of scuffling silver miners recast as a band of outlaws. Ray captures it all with a florid earnestness, tinging with overtones of proto-feminism and condemnation of McCarthyism. It’s all wild-eyed enough that it’s hard to call it cohesive or even fully successful. But it’s never dull.

(Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”)