The Sydney Pollack film, Jeremiah Johnson (1972), is very involving as it tells of a war veteran who becomes a mountain man. He fights one Indian after another, which to him is no problem. No wonder. The script makes him indestructible. What would cause terrible physical injury, and undoubtedly death, to an actual man leaves Jeremiah feeling essentially okay. The film is far less realistic (or naturalistic) than A Man Called Horse and it shouldn’t be. It is not quite settled on a point of view. Really, it is a bit leftist—like Robert Redford, who plays Jeremiah—as original scriptwriter John Milius is not, except Milius’s screenplay was rewritten by Edward Anhalt.

As usual, Redford’s acting shines, and JJ is well-made. In fact, congrats to all the actors. I like them better than the movie.

I’ve never read John Steinbeck’s novel The Wayward Bus and won’t be doing so. I did wish to see the 1957 film version of it and am glad I did. It is an entertaining piece about a driver and his passengers on a problematic, life-changing bus ride. The driver, Chicoy, for example, needs a better marriage to one who eventually becomes a passenger: his perturbed wife, Alice (Joan Collins). The bus ride is one of infatuation, growing or potential love, and reconciliation. Ably screenwritten by Ivan Moffat, the film is about when relationships represent hope—and it’s about waywardness.

Beautiful Collins is not quite beautiful, for some reason, until near the end of the flick. Her acting is a trifle too much on the surface, although the scene where she is at the door of her diner after her frustrated husband zips away in the bus is a poignant one. Rick Jason is pretty effective as Chicoy, and at least passable is gorgeous Jayne Mansfield as a stripper. Dan Dailey never disappoints as a traveling salesman who gets fresh for a while with Mansfield, and elderly Will Wright is a character actor par excellence. The Wayward Bus had an un-wayward, Russian-born director in Victor Vicus, whose work I don’t know.

Spike Lee‘s Jungle Fever (1991) is about an interracial illicit romance, and it’s an overwrought joke. Most, but not all, of the black characters here are estimable; including the less than believable architect, Flipper Purify (Wesley Snipes), who cheats on his wife with a white woman (Annabella Sciorra). Nearly every white character is foolish and/or mean. The best sequence in the film presents a group of black young women discussing black men and their relationships. In one of the worst sequences, several Italian-American dudes are blabbing hysterically and are like profane, monstrously racist Jersey Boys. The movie is stupid—with, however, a nifty credit sequence—and even features constantly inappropriate music.

The 1954 film noir, Pushover, was adapted from two stories by different authors and so, presumably, real credit must go to Roy Huggins for the smooth script. Here, Fred MacMurray is all right but certainly not great as a police detective whom a bank robber-murderer’s girlfriend (Kim Novack) talks into running off with her. Oh, and they’ll abscond with the bank robber’s stolen money. Novack is all short-haired glamor and has an intelligent-looking beautiful face. Her acting is menacingly cool.

I detected nothing wrong with Richard Quine‘s directing. The black-and-white visuals are glossy and thus attractive. The pic is sobering and involving.

A Kind of Loving (1962) may be British director John Schlesinger‘s best film; I don’t know. Cold Comfort Farm is good too, but Darling, Marathon Man and, probably, Midnight Cowboy (which I’ve resisted watching in full) don’t cut it. Loving, based on a novel, is an exquisitely wrought production in which Alan Bates stars as a working-class man who, because of her pregnancy, marries a girl (June Ritchie) whom he inconsistently cares for. For six months the marriage is miserable, but it’s primarily due to the couple’s having to live with the girl’s unpleasant mother (Thora Hird). The acting is superb. Aspiring thespians should study Bates for his range. Ritchie and Hird make the women flibbertigibbets but not just that. The look of the movie is enticing, with Schlesinger savvy at filming space—not outer space, just space—influenced perhaps by Antonioni.