My Ten Favorite Movies About Writers

My being a writer probably explains my fondness for movies about writers.  Today, I'm sharing the list of my ten favorite movies about or involving writers -- some authors of fiction, some screenwriters, some columnists or newspaper reporters, but all writers!

1. Laura (1944)  While solving the murder of beautiful Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) falls in love with her memory, mainly thanks to the worshipful reminiscences of Laura's mentor, venomous columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb).

2. Saving Mr. Banks (2013)  Author P. L. Travers (Emma Thompson) struggles to let go of her specific vision for her book Mary Poppins as Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) works to make it into a movie.  My favorite description of what writers do ("We restore order.  We instill hope, again and again.") comes from this movie.

3. The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017) Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens) needs money. And he needs his career to stop fizzling. And he needs these grumpy characters in his head (especially Scrooge, played by Christopher Plummer) to cooperate. And he needs people to stop pestering him so he can just write his next book. A completely charming, relatable look at the writing process!

4. The Gazebo (1959) A playwright (Glenn Ford) gets blackmailed over some scandalous old photos of his actress wife (Debbie Reynolds) and decides to kill the blackmailer rather than keep paying him. Which leads to very dark comedy that has me in absolute stitches, though my husband didn't find it nearly so funny because he said that Glenn Ford was too good at portraying fear and worry, and so my husband just kept feeling afraid and worried for him. YMMV.

5. Romancing the Stone (1984) Bestselling romance novelist Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) sets out to rescue her kidnapped sister from the South American drug lords who kidnapped her.  A disillusioned mercenary (Michael Douglas) reluctantly helps her out in exchange for a treasure map Joan's sister sent to her before she was kidnapped.  Romance and adventure and some pretty funny dialog ensue.

6. Moulin Rouge! (2001) An aspiring novelist (Ewan MacGregor) falls in love with a consumptive courtesan (Nicole Kidman) and courts her with the help of Toulouse-Latrec (John Leguizamo) in 1890s Paris, while singing and dancing to modern 20th-century music because director Baz Luhrmann can make that work.

7. Paris When it Sizzles (1964) A screenwriter (William Holden) tries to cure his writer's block and write his next smash hit with the help of a typist (Audrey Hepburn) with quirky and funny results. I feel like Alex and Emma (2003) is basically a remake of this movie, though I suppose they might both just be inspired by the true story of Fyodor Dostoyevsky writing a book under a tight deadline with the help of a stenographer that he fell in love with and subsequently married.

8. Miss Potter (2006) Beatrix Potter (Renee Zellweger) falls in love, writes stories, paints cute pictures, publishes books, and refuses to let anyone stop her from doing any of those things. It's a sweet, fun mix of cuteness and determination.

9. Roman Holiday (1953) Bored and lonely Princess Ann (Audrey Hepburn) runs off alone in Rome to have a taste of what life is like for ordinary people.  American newspaperman Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck) takes her under his wing before anything bad can happen to her, and he thinks he's got the scoop of a lifetime once he realizes who he's rescued. 

10. Knives Out (2019) A wealthy mystery author (Christopher Plummer) dies, and everyone in his large and weird family (Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, et. al.) suspects everyone else of having killed him. Only an enigmatic private detective (Daniel Craig) has any inkling of the truth for a long time. 

Are there any movies about your particular profession?  Or, are there any jobs you really love to watch movies about?

This has been my second entry for the On the Job Blogathon hosted by myself and Quiggy at the Midnight Drive-In this weekend!

My Ten Favorite New-to-Me Movies of 2022

Happy New Year!

No time like the present to look back over my movie-watching for the past year and share what my ten favorite new-to-me movies were, right?  Here we go!

1. The Prisoner of Zenda (1952) A British hunter (Stewart Granger) masquerades as the king (Stewart Granger) of a small European nation so that the king's enemies (including James Mason) can't usurp the throne while the king lies ill.  Things get complicated when the fake king falls in love with the woman (Deborah Kerr) who is intended to marry the real king.  Much swashbuckling ensues.

2. 36 Hours (1964) A high-ranking Allied officer (James Garner) is kidnapped by Nazis just before the Normandy invasion so they can try to trick him into telling them where the Allies intend to invade.  This movie kept both my husband and I on the edges of our seats, in the best way possible.  Absolutely terrific.

3. Hamlet at Elsinore (1964) Marvelous production of Hamlet actually filmed in the Kronborg Castle in Helsingør, Denmark.  Hamlet (Christopher Plummer) must figure out if his uncle-stepfather Claudius (Robert Shaw) actually killed his father or not.  He's assisted by his friend Horatio (Michael Caine), but eventually loses his throne to Fortinbras (Donald Sutherland) after all.

4. Paris When it Sizzles (1964) A screenwriter (William Holden) tries to cure his writer's block and write his next smash hit with the help of a typist (Audrey Hepburn) with quirky and funny results. I feel like Alex and Emma (2003) is basically a remake of this movie, though I suppose they might both just be inspired by the true story of Fyodor Dostoyevsky writing a book under a tight deadline with the help of a stenographer that he fell in love with and subsequently married.

5. Lilies of the Field (1963) A wandering handyman (Sidney Poitier) gets conned into helping a group of German nuns build a new chapel.  This is an oddball movie, and no mistake, but filled with sweet charm.

6. Gold of the Seven Saints (1961) Two fur trappers (Clint Walker and Roger Moore) find gold and then try to keep two different bands of outlaws from finding and stealing it.  It's a story that's been told onscreen quite a few times, but I love that the treasure didn't actually make these two friends have a falling-out AND there is one line that Clint Walker says at the end that is so unequivocally perfect and unexpected and wonderful that I must love this movie.  Also, Roger Moore as a fur trapper must be seen to be believed.

7. The Beautician and the Beast (1997) A New York City beauty school teacher (Fran Drescher) gets hired to teach the children of an East-European Dictator (Timothy Dalton) because one of his aides thinks she's a science teacher.  I love how they fall in love because she's the first person who has told him the straight truth and treated him like a person in a very long time, and how her kind heart keeps her truth-telling constructive instead of destructive.  

8. Wild Harvest (1947) Two friends (Alan Ladd and Robert Preston) own and lead a group of combine harvesters who travel around harvesting crops for farmers.  They have a falling out over a woman (Dorothy Lamour) who marries one of them but desires the other.  Yes, it's a movie about guys harvesting crops.  Yes, the whole thing is held together by the buddies-to-enemies dynamic between Ladd and Preston.

9. Top Gun: Maverick (2022) An unruly pilot (Tom Cruise) teaches a bunch of hotshot pilots how to not get killed on an important mission.  Actually has more of a plot than the first Top Gun (1986), and I love how they were able to include Val Kilmer despite his health problems.

10. The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) A British hunter (Ronald Colman) masquerades as the king (Ronald Colman) of a small European nation so that the king's enemies (including Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) can't usurp the throne while the king lies ill.  Things get complicated when the fake king falls in love with the woman (Madeleine Carroll) who is intended to marry the real king.  Much swashbuckling ensues.

Um, yes.  Two different versions of The Prisoner of Zenda are on this list.  And what makes those wilder is that they used the exact same shooting script for both of them.  I like the 1952 better, mostly because I like all three leads much more, but the 1937 is really excellent too.

Some years, it's tricky to come up with a top ten because I watched so many good new movies, I have trouble deciding on ten.  Some years, it's easier because I didn't watch that many new-to-me movies that I loved.  This was one of those years -- I think I came up with 12 possibles for this list, so narrowing it down to ten wasn't hard at all!

Movie Music: Henry Mancini's "Charade" (1963)

Is there any composer at all who embodies '60s cool so completely as Henry Mancini? Yeah, didn't think so. And nowhere does his music exude cool so much as in the soundtrack for Charade (1963).  It's a thrilling adventure that stars Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn and James Coburn and Walter Matthau and George Kennedy, and if you want to know more about it, you can read my review here.

If you like cool '60s movies OR rompy mysteries OR classy, sassy movies with a Hitchcock vibe, then you need watch this movie. But if you don't have time to watch it just this minute, you can hang out here and listen to a few of my favorites from the soundtrack. 

"Main Title" has this sexy, lounge-y theme set over some very tense and insistent percussion. Like someone telling you to run away from the bad guys, but be sure to look really fetching while you do so. 

"Megeve" has that mellow '60s sound going on -- a good rhythm to keep life moving along, but overall it's laid-back and happy to just hang out in the background while you sip a few cocktails and discuss who's cooler, Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin. 

"The Drip-Dry Waltz" comes from that super-famous scene where Cary Grant takes a shower, fully clothed. Oh yes, he does, in his own charming Cary Grant way, and it's a scene almost guarantee it will make you laugh (and want to watch the whole movie -- that's what happened to me. I saw this scene in some sort of PBS program when I was a teen and could not rest until I'd found and watched the whole movie). But anyway, the song is a frothy little bit of adorableness that perfectly matches the scene in every respect. 

If you want, you can listen to the whole album here on YouTube!

(This review originally appeared here at J and J Productions on May 10, 2016.)

"Charade" (1963)

Some people call Charade (1963) "the best Alfred Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made."  I can see why -- it's got so many of the same ingredients of classic Hitchcock suspense films.  Exotic European locales? Check.  Confused, innocent person pursued by hitherto unknown Bad Guys?  Check.  Beautiful woman in danger?  Check.  Chic costumes?  Wry humor?  Cary Grant?  Check, check, checkity check.

But I love Charade far more than any of Hitchcock's movies.  In fact, there are no Hitch films on my top 100 list, but Charade is firmly there.  I think that's because there's one key difference between Charade and even my favorite Hitchcock films:  I believe the happiness of its ending.  With all of Hitch's films, with the possible exception of The Trouble with Harry (1955), there's always this lingering... off feeling at the end.  Will the hero and heroine live in peace and happiness now that they're through whatever harrowing ordeal we've watched them survive?  In Hitchcock's movies, the answer is usually 'maybe.'  But with Charade, at least for me, the answer is a total 'yes.'

Regina Lampert (Audrey Hepburn) is suddenly, violently widowed when her husband falls from a train... or is pushed.  At his funeral, some very weird characters (played by James Coburn, George Kennedy, and Ned Glass) show up and behave fairly weirdly near the coffin.  

Then, they start threatening Regina.  They claim her husband had a lot more money than she knew about, and they insist he stole it from them.  The trouble is, no one can find the money.

A handsome, helpful man called Peter Joshua (Cary Grant) helps her out of a couple of jams, protecting and rescuing her from the three weirdos several times.  Peter and Regina had met before, just before her husband died, and she's all to happy to have him around giving her advice and shielding her from harm.

However, things keep getting stranger and stranger.  It's as if Regina is trapped in a kaleidoscope that a little kid keeps turning.  Names, identities, stories, and situations shift without warning, keeping her constantly off-balance.  Without Peter Joshua there to steady her, she would surely lose her footing completely.

Watching Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant together is pure magic.  Grant didn't initially want to make the movie because he felt the 25-year age gap between himself and Hepburn made the film's romance too ridiculous.  The screenwriters added a lot of little jokes about it to appease him, and he agreed to make the movie after all.  Thanks to those jokes, what might have been a slightly weird love story turns into a quirky and charming one, all because the characters acknowledge their age difference and accept it, so we do too.  Completely brilliant.

(Oh, and Regina was planning to get a divorce before her husband suddenly died, so that neatly eliminates any weirdness about her falling in love right after her husband's funeral.  For me, anyway.)

I watched this with my best friend a week or so ago.  I love this movie and have seen it many times, but she had only seen it once and didn't like it.  That made her curious to know why I love it.  I decided it mostly boils down to the fabulous dialog that makes me laugh and laugh and laugh, and the fact that I totally love the two main characters.  The lovely costumes and exciting story are fun bonuses, but they're not what draw me to the story.  I am here for Hepburn and Grant trading snappy, snarky, sassy one-liners and falling in love along the way, and that's all there is to it.

While we watched this together, my best friend commented that she really doesn't understand why Regina keeps trusting Cary Grant's character when his story changes every twenty minutes or so.  He's obviously lying to her -- he admits that repeatedly, and tells her new lies.  Why does she continue to trust him for so long?  I had to think about that for a bit, because it's a good question.  

I finally concluded that she trusts him because his words change, but his behavior doesn't.  He is always, always there for her, ready to help, rescue, shield, encourage.  He cheers her up, makes her laugh, feeds her, comforts her.  His truthful actions speak louder than his lying words, and those are what she trusts.  Only when she thinks she can't trust his actions anymore does her trust in him waver.

(Mild spoilage in this paragraph.)  Also, here's something I never picked up on while watching it all these times, but did while screencapping it -- Cary Grant is nearly always shot facing toward the right of the frame.  That codifies him as being a trustworthy good guy heading in the right direction.  Whenever he and Audrey Hepburn share the screen, he's on the left, looking right, as you can see in my screencaps.  That very subtly lets the audience know that yes, he is a good guy doing the right thing.  Pretty cool.  (It also means that whenever they share the screen, Audrey is looking left and thus signals that she's confused, going backward, or not doing things quite the way she ought, which is also super interesting.)  (End spoilage.)

Is this movie family friendly?  Mostly.  There are a couple of instances of taking God's name in vain, and maybe another mild cuss word or two.  There's this weird scene with people on a riverboat playing a game where they have to take an orange from the other person without using their hands that gets a little suggestive.  And there's a very tense and menacing scene where someone is threatened while getting burning matches dropped on them.  There's a gunfight and some hand-to-hand fighting, all sixties-style and non-gory.

This is my contribution to the Distraction Blogathon hosted by Taking Up Room.  The money in Charade is a MacGuffin because no one in the audience actually cares about it, it's just a reason to have a bunch of guys chase Audrey Hepburn while she trades sparkly quips with Cary Grant.  If you like classic cat-and-mouse movies, but you haven't seen Charade (or haven't seen it recently), it's FREE on Amazon Prime right now!  And it's not expensive on DVD either.

"The Lord of the Rings" 1960s-style

It's here!  The return of the Great Imaginary Film Blogathon, hosted all weekend long by Connie and Diana at Silver Scenes.  You may remember this event from a couple of years ago, when I dreamed up a film noir version of Hamlet and a '50s cast for The Avengers.  This year, I had intended to do a double-feature of Alan Ladd playing two of my favorite detectives, but then I had an even more fun idea.  What if Hollywood had made a movie of The Lord of the Rings shortly after it had been published?  All three volumes were out by the end of 1955, so why not have a movie made around 1960?

Remember, this was the age of the great spectacle movies.  Ben-Hur (1959), The Ten Commandments (1956), Spartacus (1960), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) -- you could tell a grand story on a grand scale with a big budget and a three- or four-hour running time.  Of course, this is also before multi-part storytelling was a thing in movies, so I'm afraid the whole epic story is getting squashed into 4 hours, and a lot of trimming is necessary.  But, in the end, it's still an amazing story.

Ready?

Yeah, me either, but let's do this anyway.

(PLEASE NOTE:  There WILL be SPOILERS in this!  I mean, I'm condensing the story a lot to make it work with the idea of a 4-hours-or-less running time, but I'm adhering mostly to the book's plot.  I'm not marking the spoilers.  If you don't know the LOTR story, you've been warned.)

It all begins when young Frodo (James MacArthur) inherits a magic Ring from his Uncle Bilbo (Thomas Mitchell), who promptly goes off on an adventure alone, leaving his nephew to wonder what this is all about.

The wizard Gandalf (Christopher Lee, who was basically the greatest LOTR fan ever, right from the first publication, and always wanted to play Gandalf) arrives and informs Frodo that this is a magical Ring, the most powerful on earth, and that the dark lord, Sauron, is actively seeking it.  He enlists Frodo's gardener Sam (Richard Long) to help Frodo take the Ring to Rivendell and seek the wisdom of the elves to decide what to do with this powerful Ring.

Frodo and Sam set off at once.  Along the way, they pick up two of Frodo's friends, Merry (Bobby Darin) and Pippin (Tim Conway).

On the way to Rivendell, the four young Hobbits meet up with a mysterious man called Strider (Charlton Heston), who protects them from the creepy Ringwraiths that are following them.  He and an elf named Glorfindel (Kirk Douglas) help them evade capture and reach Rivendell safely.

There they meet the  wise elvish leader, Lord Elrond (Gregory Peck) and his beautiful daughter, Arwen (Audrey Hepburn).

The Hobbits learn that Strider is actually Aragorn, heir to the throne of all Middle Earth.  And he's also in love with Arwen.  Elrond calls a meeting of elves and dwarves, and it's there that we meet a handsome elf named Legolas (Paul Newman) and a stalwart dwarf named Gimli (Red Buttons).

They also meet that grey-eyed man of Gondor, Boromir (Burt Lancaster), of whom I am so endlessly fond.

They decide that the Ring must be destroyed in Mount Doom, and Frodo volunteers to do the deed.  Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Boromir, Sam, Merry, and Pippin come along to help him, and we have our Fellowship of the Ring:

The nine set out for Mount Doom.  Various adventures befall them.  They lose Gandalf.  They arrive at Lothlorien, where they meet more elves, especially the lady Galadriel (Barbara Stanwyck) and her husband Celeborn (Laurence Olivier), who give them encouragement, advice, and helpful gifts.

Off the eight remaining members of the fellowship go, only to get splintered up when a bunch of Uruk-hai attack them, kill Boromir, and kidnap Merry and Pippin.  Frodo and Sam head for Mount Doom while Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli set out to rescue Merry and Pippin.  The three of them soon meet up with a knightly sort of fellow named Eomer (Hardy Kruger) and a resurrected Gandalf, and the next thing you know, they're hanging out with Eomer and his sister Eowyn (Julie Andrews).

Together, they help free Eomer and Eowyn's uncle, King Theoden (Alan Ladd), from the power of the evil wizard Saruman (Vincent Price).

Meanwhile, Merry and Pippin get away from their captors and meet a tree-person-thing called an Ent named Treebeard (Richard Kiel, who, being more than 7 feet tall, wouldn't need much help looking like a tree).

(Richard Kiel with Dick van Dyke.  I'm not putting
Dick van Dyke in the movie, I just like this photo.)

Treebeard and his fellow Ents go attack Saruman and defeat him because he's been ordering Hobbits kidnapped and cutting down trees and being generally naughty.  There, they are reunited with Aragorn and Gandalf and everyone else.  Meanwhile, Frodo and Sam are wandering around in Mordor, trying to find Mount Doom.  While there, they meet up with one of the Ring's former owners, a creature called Gollum (Peter Lorre).  Gollum agrees to help them find Mount Doom, but he secretly plans to take the Ring away from Frodo along the way.

Aragorn and Gandalf agree that if the dark lord, Sauron, figures out that Frodo and Sam are taking the Ring to Mount Doom to destroy it, he's going to kill them, claim the Ring, and conquer the world.  So they decide to distract him by attacking his realm, Mordor, with all the forces they can muster.  To do this, they all head over to the city of Minas Tirith, which stands right at the border.  There, they meet Boromir's brother Faramir (Tony Curtis) and father Denethor (Christopher Plummer).

Faramir is a kind, noble youth who pledges to do anything in his power to help.  Denethor, though, wants to take the Ring himself, destroy Sauron, and rule the world.  There's a big battle.  Sauron and his forces of hideous monsters called Orcs are well and thoroughly distracted.  Frodo and Sam successfully reach Mount Doom, where Frodo succumbs to temptation and decides to keep the Ring.  Gollum tries to seize it, they struggle, and Gollum and the Ring fall into lava and are consumed forever.

Gandalf and some eagles rescue Frodo and Sam from the collapse of everything within Mordor.  He takes them back to Minas Tirith, where various and sundry characters are recovering from wounds sustained during the great battle.  During this convalescence, Faramir and Eowyn fall in love.

Aragorn gets crowned king and takes Arwen for his bride.

Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin return home, where they free their fellow Hobbits from the tyranny of Saruman, who is a pesky person and hard to eradicate.  But he dies at last, and that means everything everywhere is as it should be.  Sam marries his sweetheart, Rosie (Emily Banks), and everyone should be happy.

But Frodo has been changed by his journey and the burden of the Ring, so he leaves to seek the Undying Lands with a bunch of their elf friends.  Sam, Rosie, Merry, and Pippin vow never to forget him.

Like This? Try These! #4

Both Eva and Miss Meg requested I recommend movies similar to The Bourne Identity (2002), which is one of my favorite movies (and franchises), so here we go!

If you like The Bourne Identity, with its exciting chases, helpful and brave love interest, and confused hero who's not sure who's chasing him, or why, then you might like any of these:

+ Dark Passage (1947) -- A convict (Humphrey Bogart) imprisoned for killing his wife escapes from prison to prove his innocence.  Everyone knows what he looks like, so he gets plastic surgery to change his face so he can seek vengeance without being recognized all the time.  He recuperates in the home of an artist (Lauren Bacall) who becomes convinced of his innocence and tries to help him.  (This one has violence.  It's film noir, so some dark themes and stuff that might frighten kids.  Also, Bogie looks kinda creepy in his facial bandages.)

+ North by Northwest (1959) -- Classic Hitchcock :-9  Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is just an advertising executive.  But a bunch of spies are convinced he's also a spy, and they try really hard to kill him.  Over and over.  And they frame him for murder, so the police are after him too.  Then he meets Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) on a train, they fall in love, and she tries to help him survive all this chaos.  (Lots of double entendres in this one, most of which will entirely fly over the heads of kids.  There's some violence, and intense/scary moments of danger and peril and suspense.  I think also some more traditional cussing.)

+ Charade (1963) -- This time it's a woman who is being pursued and doesn't know why.  Regina Lampert (Audrey Hepburn) learns, at her husband's funeral, that there are a whole bunch of people who want something that her husband had, but never told her about.  They chase her all over the place, trying to scare her into giving them what they want.  A CIA agent (Cary Grant) pops up to help her sort out the mess, and sparkage ensues.  This one has topnotch villains, especially James Coburn and George Kennedy.  (Mostly family-friendly.  There's a little bit of suggestiveness here and there, double entendres and this silly game where people have to try to pass oranges to each other without using their hands, and a little kissing.  Plus, Cary Grant in the shower.  Possibly a couple mild curse words, and lots of '60s-style violence where it's not gory but still, people die and get hurt.)

And today I have a BONUS for you!  Did you know there's another adaptation of The Bourne Identity?  Yup, it was made into a TV movie in 1988, starring Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn Smith as Jason Bourne and Marie St. Jacques.  It sticks very closely to the plot and characterization in the original book by Robert Ludlum (which I reviewed here), and is overall very enjoyable.  If you're like me and enjoy seeing different adaptations of stories, I recommend trying it.  (There's some violence, no bad language I can recall but I might be wrong, and one love scene where Marie's in lingerie and Jason is shirtless and there's some rolling around on a bed or something-- I completely recommend that everyone skip that scene at all times, because although there's no nudity, it's embarassingly '80s-ish.)

What do you think?  Are there other movies that remind you of The Bourne Identity?  I've got a bunch of ideas for these posts, but as always, if you've got a request for something you'd like me to make recommendations based on, I love suggestions!

Like This? Try These! #1

I'm starting a new series today, 100% inspired by Jessica Prescott.  She's decided she's willing to try watching "old movies," but she doesn't know what she might like.  And that made me think that, hey, she might not be the only blogging friend I have who's interested in broadening their movie-watching horizons.  Plus, I love comparing things.

And so, I proudly present the first edition of "Like This?  Try These!"  For each post (and I make no claims of planning to post them on any kind of dependable schedule), I'll pair one modern or famous movie with several classic or lesser-known movies that remind me of it in some way.  And I'll elaborate on them a bit.  Sound fun?  I hope so!

If you like Tangled (2010), with its spunky heroine forming an unlikely alliance with someone of dubious intent, and the two of them having various adventures, then you might like any of these:

+ Roman Holiday (1953) -- Princess Ann (Audrey Hepburn) makes a royal visit to Rome.  She's tired of boring royal receptions and visits with dignitaries.  She longs to find out what life is like for regular folks that aren't princesses!  And she finds out, with the help of a newspaperman named Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck).  He at first plans to secretly write an expose of what sorts of mischief the princess got into while running around Rome incognito, but then... well, let's say Flynn Ryder doesn't have the monopoly on changes of heart.  (This one is family friendly! Unless your family doesn't approve of characters drinking wine and champagne, getting into mild and humorous fistfights, and I think we see a freshly bathed woman wearing nothing but a towel at one point.  Still, I consider it clean.)

+ Cat Ballou (1965) -- A young woman (Jane Fonda) whose father has been murdered by wild west baddies seeks to revenge his death, so she enlists the help of ne'er-do-well gunfighter Kid Shelleen (Lee Marvin).  Quite a bit of western silliness ensues, but also a pretty heartwarming story of two outcasts helping each other out.  (This one has some mild profanity, western-style violence, drunkenness, and a bit of low-level innuendo.)

+ Romancing the Stone (1984) -- Famous romance novelist Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) sets out to rescue her kidnapped sister from the clutches of Colombian criminals who want to exchange said sister for a treasure map.  Joan teams up with snarky adventurer Jack Colton (Michael Douglas), who agrees to help her if he can share in the treasure, that sort of thing.  (This one has quite a bit of profanity, an implied sexual encounter, some violence, and innuendo here and there.)


So... have you seen any of these?  Do you have other recommendations of similar movies about adventurous heroines and their unlikely helpers?  What do you think of this idea?  And do you have any movies you'd like to see me try to match up for another edition of this series?