Sally Field and Kevin Kline are delightful in the 1991 screwball comedy, Soapdish. Field enacts Celeste, a big fish in a small pond, an egocentric soap-opera star who needs more stability in her life. As Jeffrey, Kline is the put-upon actor who returns to the soap long after Celeste, his former lover, forced him to leave.

Penned by Andrew Bergman, the movie’s plot is too ramshackle and odd, but the farcical scenes and sight gags are hilarious. Most of the actors are riveting—not Whoopi Goldberg—even if Cathy Moriarty‘s role is a stinker. Robert Downey Jr. is in the cast and does not disappoint. Celeste is driven by narcissism; Downey’s David Barnes, a producer, is driven by lust. But the lust isn’t overplayed.

Soapdish being a comedy, the principals here are en route to a happy ending. Noises Off this isn’t, but I can deem it happy-making. Directed by Michael Hoffman.

Jean Raspail‘s The Camp of the Saints (1973) is, perhaps, a racist book, albeit it is also strikingly relevant to the present time. As of mid-2022, the Biden administration has done a famously awful job of lessening illegal immigration—it wants such immigration—and who knows to what this will lead? It leads to nothing good in Raspail’s powerful French novel, wherein masses of people from India are sailing to France to live and take advantage of the country’s prosperity. In point of fact, Third Worlders everywhere are migrating to Western nations, and the powerless Left welcomes them.

“A framework of international cooperation, socialistically structured” is called for. Curiously, the immigrants clamor for “one religion,” globally, and it isn’t Christianity. These elements remind me of something that was written in National Review magazine in 2013: “while multiculturalism is not necessarily antagonistic to religion per se, it is united with Marxism in a hatred of Christianity specifically.” Welcome to The Camp of the Saints’ new West.

The Nancy Mitford novel, The Pursuit of Love (1945), is a winningly written entertainment—indeed, an artistic entertainment—with characters based on Mitford’s family. Alas, it has little to say and yet ’tis an intelligent comedy-drama. For sure, reading Pursuit is not a waste of time.

Violent scenes in Michael Winner‘s rowdy 1971 Western, Lawman, are quite exciting, and the flick boasts an agreeable cast. It is sometimes—often?—clumsily shot, though, and puts a dull emphasis on the non-heroic. Gerald Wilson’s scripted tale, even so, comes close to being a brutal tragedy. It made me think.

Available on Tubi.

Although I have no regrets—at all—for sympathizing with Israel, I know little about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I am damn certain the makers of Black Sunday (1977), a political caper film, also know little about it, but by no means is the picture wholly ridiculous. Just frequently ridiculous.

A neurotic Lebanese terrorist, Dahlia, recruits her neurotic American “lover,” Lander, an ex-POW, to kill thousands upon thousands of Americans at the Super Bowl. How does Dahlia manage to make so much headway against Israeli agents in the hospital and sundry U.S. workers? Is Lander’s super-competence with a phone explosive he uses to murder a freighter captain believable?

There is first-rate acting in this John Frankenheimer film by Marthe Keller, Steven Keats, Bruce Dern and Robert Shaw. Frankenheimer directed well, but the writing by Ernest Lehman, though often entertaining, is unmemorable and with bland dialogue. He actually did better with North by Northwest. And it’s more fun.