It’s rather nice to have Warren Beatty back, and in a film he both directed and wrote—Rules Don’t Apply (2016)—he co-stars as a man who has long fascinated him: Howard Hughes.

Not a Hughes biopic, really, it involves two would-be lovers, Marla (Lily Collins) and Frank (Alden Ehrenreich), who gain important associations with the aging, dementia-afflicted Hughes.  Marla shows up to do a screen test for him, but, although a devout Baptist, she also loses her virginity to the weird billionaire. . . Beatty deserves credit for revealing a vast America made up of mini-worlds that are sometimes in conflict with each other.  Marla and her mother (Annette Bening) are Virginia residents spending time in secular Hollywood—and are confused and angered by what goes on there.  But conflicts are numerous:  Frank, for his part, is a business-minded and seemingly religious Methodist who eventually fights with the Marla he is smitten with.

Rules Don’t Apply is a unique and fizzy work which, by and by, comes apart at the seams.  The sequence in which Marla slowly gets drunk tells us how necessary it might be to start suspending disbelief in the plot, as indeed it is.  During the first hour the film can be entrancing, but Beatty really doesn’t understand people who are committed to God.  Rules is handsome-looking, though, and the cast is estimable.  Bening, Collins, Matthew Broderick and Martin Sheen are a delight to see.

Based on a novel, directed by Ang Lee, Ride with the Devil (1999) is a savage, engaging Civil War movie. It shows us the bloody confrontation between Missouri loyalists to the South and Union occupiers—and I do have several questions about it. For example, what do the Confederate loyalists, known as bushwhackers, do to prevent insubordination, such as that committed by the film’s main character, Jake (Tobey Maguire)? Nothing, it seems.

There is naturalism in Ride, even if not exactly enough. Anti-black racism exists but it wanes pretty easily (as, again, in Jake). Thematically the film is about the assault of war on individuals. The battle and shoot-’em-down scenes are splendidly electric, conflict, as James Bowman says, looking “real in its messiness, its confusion, its pointlessness.” The characters, moreover, grip the attention, and how quickly we lament that fierce assault on individuals I just mentioned. Though no great history lesson, Lee’s effort is close to being one of his best films.

Wes Anderson‘s comedic The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) is about grudge holding and forgiveness (in a family) and burn-out following worldly success. It’s a pretty good movie except it is finally too sanguine and unrealistic. Moonrise Kingdom is unrealistic too, but we readily accept that its oddball settings bear little resemblance to the world we live in. In my view, Anderson is a minor artist, but admittedly TRT is enjoyable for its cleverness.

Wes Anderson‘s comedic The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) is about grudge holding and forgiveness (in a family) and burn-out following worldly success. It’s a pretty good movie except it is finally too sanguine and unrealistic. Moonrise Kingdom is unrealistic too, but we readily accept that its oddball settings bear little resemblance to the world we live in. In my view, Anderson is a minor artist, but admittedly TRT is enjoyable for its cleverness.

Merrily they live in the 1938 Merrily We Live, directed by Norman Z. McLeod. The members of the rich family in this screwball comedy do what they darn well please and never genuinely suffer for it. That is, they don’t until at first Constance Bennett‘s Jerry is denied the love of a handsome man believed to be a tramp (Brian Aherne)! How topsy turvy things become.

Reportedly the picture is a lot like My Man Godfrey, a work I have not seen in full. Although this may be to its disadvantage (derivativeness?), Merrily is wholly amusing and boasts a fun cast. Such actors as Clarence Kolb (the family patriarch) and Alan Mowbray (the butler) are talented farceurs. The women are delightful. Still, the film is not very good at leading us to see what its raison d’etre is.

Available on Tubi.