Frivolous and Fun movies to ring in the New Year (quality not required)

If your looking for serious fare, there are lots of best of movies lists floating around right now. This list goes in another direction.

It is time to ring in the new year. A time for reflection and planning. My movie goals for next year include watching long neglected classics and pushing through the subtitles to watch foreign films no matter how tired I am, instead of watching whatever is new on Netflix. But that can wait until tomorrow! Today I am recommending movies that may not be classified as“good” but can be enjoyed because of their frivolity. I realized after making my list that with the exception of Abandoned (1949) (the only movie on this list I recommend without reservations) the success of the other three has a lot to do with casting.  Days of Thunder features outstanding work by the great Robert Duvall. Plus spouses to be Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman who met on set show how much sparks can fly onscreen. Spanish import Mia Culpa has plenty of sparks, Spanish ones that put Hollywood YA movies to shame.  Also star ? Is eminently watchable. Ready or Not features a breakout performance by its star Nicole Wallace.  Last but not least Heartbreakers has heavyweights Sigorney Weaver, Ray Liotta and Gene Hackman hamming it up as only great actors can. If your looking for frivolous entertainment I have got you covered. Read the rest of the post and see what grabs your interest.

First up is my romantic movie pick. There is little to justify the existence of Spanish import Culpa Mia (My Fault) 🦛🦛 (Streaming on Amazon Prime) except to acknowledge that it is undeniably sexy and if you find forbidden love romantic, romantic too.  The script is all over the place plot wise and full of characters that are no more than place holders for mom, dad, best friend, ex boyfriend, rival, villain etc.  If you can get over all that you’re in for some smouldering entertainment.  The story based on Mercedes Ron Lõpez Culpables book series feels a little like it was meant to be a YA effort in the forbidden/innocent vein 50 Shades of Grey popularized.  It starts with Noah, played by the very fetching and engaging Nicole Wallace, being forced by her mom (Marta Hazas) to move across the country to move in with her new husband (Iván Sánchez).  How seventeen year old Noah has never met the husband of her single parent Mom makes no sense but if you start asking questions you’re going to be quickly frustrated, just don’t bother.  The new stepdad is a nice guy, uber rich and comes with a twenty one year old son Nick (Gabriel Guevara).  Noah’s understandable frustration at being moved away from friends and all she knows translates to moody bitterness towards her new step brother.  Glares soon turn to glances as Nick in particular finds himself infatuated by his new step sister, much to his consternation.  The premise of “forbidden love” is that they are step siblings but anyone paying attention will know that by marriage only does not count, they are literally strangers.  It may get you curious glances at parties if you date your step sibling by marriage but there is nothing wrong with it morally or scientifically. Again don’t start thinking or you’ll ruin the fun.  There is partying, street gangs, a subplot involving Noah’s lunatic Dad. They are all conveniences, introduced and discarded as it suits the plot and the only real plot is Noah and Nick’s eroding efforts to keep their hands off each other. Guevara is sexy in a brooding bad boy way. Wallace is sexy in a sweet innocent way and I thought both did a rather excellent job with material that includes the line “This is wrong your seventeen” and the reply “Then kiss me until I’m eighteen.”  I love that line. I know it is ridiculous but sometimes I enjoy a ridiculous romance and these two really sell it. I was impressed by the work of first time feature director Domingo González.  You can’t call this movie well directed as a whole but directing this script which ironically he wrote is like writing with both hands tied behind your back.  Individual scenes work well and everyone gives a convincing performance.  The inevitable sex scene which I expected to include nudity (it is a Spanish movie) does not in a way that adds a tenderness and innocence to what could easily have been another ho hum sex scene. The scene does get away from González but it was sweet well it lasted. He even had a great final scene until the lame tacked on look out for the sequel addition.  Is the movie good? No.  Did I enjoy it? Yes.

Important viewing tip: be sure watch it in Spanish.  My Amazon Prime account started the movie in English and the dubbing was so awful I was going to turn it off until I realized it was dubbed, I switched to Spanish and subtitles and the movie improved 100%.

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My action pick is technically far better but. Still not be great movie but it does sustain logic. When describing Days of Thunder 🦛🦛1/2 (streaming on ParamountPlus) to my boys who wanted to know if they would like it, I described it as Top Gun but with NASCAR cars instead of Navy jets.  Any movie about NASCAR is going to be a nichè one.  Like most sports you’re either a fan of NASCAR or you can’t believe people pay money to watch.  If you’re in the latter category Days of Thunder is unlikely to be a conversion moment.  Directed by action auteur Tony Scott and staring Tom Cruise this movie is made for a very specific audience; people who like things that go fast and blow up.  The surprise here is the depth it manages to have.  It is a shallow depth compared to serious dramas but to be fair let’s compare it to Top Gun.  Cruise plays Cole Trickle a slightly lost soul and damn fine rookie NASCAR driver.  Compared to Maverick in Top Gun Cole is a cornucopia of emotional depth.  You can see that Cruise is really trying to bring emotion to the role and he succeeds in spite of the fact that we never actually learn much about Cole other then he drives well and is human enough to fear death but hero enough to overcome said fear.  The credit for this is due to screenwriter Robert Towne, you know the guy who won an Oscar for writing Chinatown.  You might wonder what he is doing on an action picture like this but Towne has a very diverse resume and as usual he delivers here.  Other then Towne the single best thing about this movie is the presence of the great Robert Duvall.  Duvall as the pulled from retirement crew chief does an amazing job and gives this movie a gravitas it doesn’t really deserve.  Add to this a solid role call including Randy Quaid, Micheal Rooker, and John C. Riley in a small part and you’ve got a cast that is really working for you.  Also notable for giving a perfect performance of a smirking shit is Carey Elwes in a totally thankless role.  Last but not least is a young Nicole Kidman.  This is the movie where Cruise and Kidman met and the sparks between them jump off the screen.  The performances are often more exciting then the racing sequences.  The story follows a predictable formula right through to a predictable ending and that’s okay because you should have known from the poster what you were in for.  I feel that had someone wanted to there was a maybe great movie to be made here.  The raw materials are there.  If you think about that to much you might see it as a shame.  Better to take this movie as it is and be delighted by the surprising highlights, a great scene here, a terrific performance there, a surprising moment of maturity or vulnerability.  Is it a good movie?  That’s a stretch for me but I can’t help but like it, and I watched it a lot when I was younger.  It was a go to rental for me in the pre-streaming days.  Revisiting it confirmed that I do like it better then Top Gun, I love Top Gun for what it is to me and most everyone else who grew up in the 80’s but this movie made 4 years later has a maturity I prefer and a script that provides better moments.  My 13 year old after seeing this assured me that Top Gun is in fact better because it has jet fighters and those are just better than fast cars.  I think my 13 year old self would have thought so too but my 47 year old self is grateful for scenes like when Duvall talks to the car about how it needs to take care of his driver because the driver isn’t in a good head space and he (Duvall) can’t handle losing him.  It’s a great moment and one of surprisingly many in what is otherwise a typical things go fast and blow up movie.

Thoughts? Feel free to weigh in!

My Horror pick has a suitable amount of blood and gore to merit the category but it intentionally has more laughs than scares. A good premise and an engaging lead performance almost get Ready or Not 🦛🦛1/2 (Streaming on Disney+) all the way to 🦛🦛🦛, almost. You can read the full review on my Substack page.

This Comedy is my personal favourite on this list. Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt play the Heartbreakers 🦛🦛1/2 (Streaming on Amazon Prime) of the title, a mother/daughter con team who specialize in wooing a rich suitor by being as alluring as possible while withholding sex.  Then after the marriage but before the consummation they arrange a convenient chance for their sexually deprived spouse to cheat, and get caught of course.  This then concludes the marriage with a tidy divorce settlement.  The premise is exactly as silly as it sounds.  I love a good con movie and silly can be okay.  Oceans Eleven (2011) proves that smart filmmaking and a great cast can make silly an asset.  Heartbreakers has a great cast.  Along with Weaver who never seemed to be the star she deserved to be are Ray Liotta and Gene Hackman, the former another who never made it as big as he should have and the latter, a star who aged out when looks re-overtook talent as the most important thing in Hollywood. Each of these people is slumming here but thank God they are because they kill it.  The key to their performances is that they are in on the joke.  Weaver does a terrible Russian accent for part of the movie, but not only does she know it, she knows we know it.  She’s practically winking at the camera.  If you don’t die laughing when she sings “Back in the U.S.S.R” your just not meeting this movie where it’s at.  Liotta plays a love besotted pseudo gangster.  He balances his usual scary with being hilarious.  When asked if he knows what to do with a dead body he responds with derision: “I’m from New Jersey.”  And the scene where he randomly shoots some fish is so out of place it seems improvised.  I am sure it was scripted, it required a prop but it would have looked like bad writing it is if Liotta wasn’t so good. Hackman ever the serious professional literally hacks and wheezes his way through his role as a cigarette mogul who talks seriously about the benefits of getting 9 year olds to smoke.  Hackman manages to make his character gross and hilarious when he could easily have just been gross.  Jennifer Love Hewitt who co-stars is good but honestly she is not in the same league.  Her character of the daughter Paige is meant to be young and conflicted and trying to be someone she really isn’t i.e. a hard hearted con woman.  The writing is a mess and Love-Hewitt simply does not have what it takes to make this script something it is not.  The direction is not much better then the script.  Director David Mirkin doesn’t do anything particularly wrong, other then making this movie to long but he doesn’t do anything particularly right either.  I understand it would have been hard to know what to cut because the whole thing lacks cohesion but the over two hour running time is a bit ridiculous.  Heartbreakers is about women who use their looks as their main tool to get what they want so I am going to address both actresses looks.  Weaver who is remembered best as the ultimate bad ass mother from Aliens is sexy here.  She strips to her underwear, and it is some gourmet underwear, gives suggestive looks and practically purrs.  It is hot stuff and if you’ve only seen her in The Alien franchise you’ll be shocked.  A significant part of Love-Hewitt’s role is literally to look good in a Push-up bra and and a short hemline and she does.  No heterosexual male is likely to forget her memorable portrayal of the sexy secretary.  Again hot stuff.  Last and most certainly least and that’s not a knock, is Jason Lee.  The last in the line of male con victims and the source of much of Paige’s inner conflict Lee’s character Jack is literally a place holder.  Everyone in the movie is more caricature then character but wow!  Lee is 100% likeable in the role and that’s important because there is nothing else there.  Remember how I said I like a good con movie, this it turns out is more a sex farce then a con movie.  Is it worth watching?  As flawed as this movie is I have seen it multiple times.  The cast is so good that I forgive it every time.  Yes it is over long and underwritten but it’s fun.  I like the sweet mother daughter moments, I like to tender romantic moments, I like to sexy bits, I like it’s mercenary edge but most of all I like the cast.  I can’t in good conscience officially recommend it but if your looking for a new guilty pleasure this is one of mine.

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Last and literally not least my mystery/suspense pick is a good old fashioned noir. Paula (Gale Storm) comes to L.A. looking for her sister who ran away from home and stumbles across a baby theft ring run by a society dame with the help of some nasty thugs.  Abandoned (1949) 🦛🦛🦛 (Streaming on YouTube) is heavy subject matter for 1949 and the opening and closing narration that ominously warns that these events happened in a city that might be your own give it a the danger lurks around you dateline vibe.  Paula is all beauty and innocence almost to the point of distraction. Even with the nasty subject matter this movie has a light tone as noir goes.  First timer Irwin Gielgud’s script has all the hallmarks of good noir and you sense he wanted to go even darker, what exactly made Paula’s pregnant older sister run away from the dear old dad? They don’t say but I’m left thinking that a modern remake of this movie could tread a darker road.  A big part of what keeps things light is Dennis O’Keefe who plays reporter Mark Sitko.  Mark shamelessly latches onto Paula when he bumps into her at the police station because she is pretty but becomes genuinely interested in when he notices that she is being followed.  O’Keefe who is something of a master at delivering a snappy quip as well as being a good actor gets lots of great lines, probably from William Power who is credited with additional dialogue and is known for his snappy dialogue.  It is not all lightness and fluff. The shadowy figure following Paula turns out to be local P.I. and low life Kerric (Raymond Burr).  I spent a long summer at a friends house watching Perry Mason daily in my formative years.  His mom was a fan and those were the days of one t.v. households.  Ever since it throws me to watch Burr (a paragon of justice as Perry Mason) play a heavy but he does it incredibly well.  Did anyone lurk in shadows menacingly better then Burr?  He gives another fine example of being nasty here.  I love the scene when he wistfully pines for the days when he just did petty larceny and blackmail not murder and body disposal, yikes.  Joseph M. Newman directs the good cast capably with strong assist from great cinematographer William H. Daniels.  Beyond the original premise events follow a regular routine for movies like this.  A big bonus is that you get not one but two great heavy’s when Mike Mazurki enters the picture.  Noir fans will be delighted when Burr and Mazurki, two of noirs more popular thugs go at it.  More fun then memorable Abandoned arguably would have benefited from having a harder edge but I enjoyed its odd balance of pithy dialogue and danger filled plot.  Even the happy ending didn’t turn me off.  The actors make it work and the biggest disappointment, to common for the time, is that Storm was not given anything to do but look pretty and be rescued.

Note: The full movie is accessible via link below.

I hope you found something on this list to brighten your evening.  If not the good news is that in two weeks I will be back with my list of the “best” movies that I saw for the first time in 2023.  It will be full of classics and newbies all completely worth watching.  Until next time here’s wishing you a happy start to the new year!