When adultery becomes, or is seen to be, a dead end; when it is an unfortunate salve; the appeal and hard responsibility of family—this and more is what the John Curran film, We Don’t Live Here Anymore (2004), is about. It revolves around some Oregon people’s marriages (two of them) and inexorable adultery.

With vivid flavor Laura Dern enacts Terry, the picture’s only sympathetic adult character. Mark Ruffalo is Jack, Terry’s English-teaching husband, said by critic Stephanie Zacharek to be “too shapeless to evoke either our anger or our pity.” To me this doesn’t matter: it’s enough that we don’t approve of naughty Jack until, well, we do, in the film’s moving last minutes. Ruffalo’s performance is incisive.

Naomi Watts and Peter Krause are also in this movie adapted from two Andre Dubus stories. The sex shots are tedious, but Larry Gross deserves credit for the screenplay.

Christian America in the 19th century needed to be more Christian—an implication, this, in John Ford‘s Stagecoach (1939). A prostitute (Claire Trevor) and a drunken doctor, Boone (Thomas Mitchell), are legally kicked out of a nicely developing town by its prim ladies. They take their places in the stagecoach headed for Geronimo’s land! It’s a good thing John Wayne‘s Ringo, also on the stagecoach, is a crack shot.

In an earlier review, I opined that this movie is a fairy tale—a palatable Old West fairy tale. And although it says little, really, about society, it does focus on personal change and the proving of oneself through a crucible.

Ford’s direction is wonderfully workmanlike. The bloody fate of Luke Plummer, a murderer, is excellently done. Except for the almost mechanical Wayne, among the principal actors the work ranges from decent (Louise Platt) to superlative (Mitchell).

With undeniable charisma Paulette Goddard plays Toni, a nice, smiling, extroverted schemer who’s attracted to Brad (Ray Milland), another woman’s beau. The Crystal Ball (1943) has her trying to lure him via filling in for a fake fortune teller (Gladys George). For Toni it’s all in a day’s work, and Brad does like her. . . Elliott Nugent‘s movie is comedic froth but it really ought to be funnier. Its cakes and ale should be a bit richer. Still, it is interesting and it has verve and Goddard. As a rom-com actor, Milland is not better than Cary Grant, just different. More authoritative—and as handsome as Grant—he is a manly charmer. Grant, I concede, is more aristocratic, though.

I’m breaking away from the reviewing for a moment to remind my fellow conservatives that it’s a good idea to write your Congress person. And I mean write a letter, a respectful one addressed to The Honorable So-and-So. Forget email—and phone calls. They don’t make an impression. Too, the letter ought to be short.