Home on the Range

What a surprise. This seemingly forgotten film turns out to be a delight, a genuinely funny movie with a nicely skewed sense of humor and a tight, consistent story. The sense of humor derives largely from the inspired casting of Roseanne Barr as the lead character; her unique persona gives much of the bite to the jokes. The rest of the cast performs good work, too, in a variety of roles. And the songs, though a bit sparse for a true musical, work really well where they fit in, with good melodies and witty lyrics. (Having contributions from k.d. lang and Bonnie Raitt helped the quality quotient in a big way.) All in all, this one stands out as a very good movie that got a bit lost in the shuffle upon first release. Thank goodness there are such robust secondary sources for films these days; otherwise this one might have unfairly disappeared completely. Do yourself a favor and watch this flick if you’re one of those who missed out on its original run.

Lee Daniels’ The Butler

Kind of like a differently shaded Forrest Gump. In this case, however, the Forrest character is divided up between the titular butler Cecil Gaines and his not-seeing-eye-to-eye son, both of whom get to experience various seminal moments of the 20th century firsthand. The strengths here lie mostly in the performances by the ensemble cast; no one gives a truly outstanding performance--not even a heavy-hitter like Forest Whitaker in the lead role--though everyone acquits himself or herself quite well. The film never quite rises to the epic and important heights to which it wishes to ascend, but it is still an entertaining and admirable work. Definitely worth a look.

Rat Race

It takes a few minutes to get cooking, but once it does it provides plenty of satisfying comedy. And Jon Lovitz has one of the funniest scenes that I have ever seen in a movie.