Crossing Delancey (Joan Micklin Silver, 1988)

Cast: Amy Irving, Peter Riegert, Jeroen Krabbé, Reizl Bozyk, Sylvia Miles, George Martin, John Bedford Lloyd, Claudia Silver, David Hyde Pierce, Rosemary Harris, Suzzy Roche, Amy Wright, Faye Grant. Screenplay: Susan Sandler, based on her play. Cinematography: Theo van de Sande. Production design: Dan Leigh. Film editing: Rick Shaine. Music: Paul Chihara. 

Crossing Delancey is a likable ethnic-flavored romantic comedy whose plot hinges on whether the protagonist (Amy Irving) will choose between a phony (Jeroen Krabbé) and a mensch (Peter Riegert). What do you think? As usual in films with a foregone conclusion, enjoyment depends on lively performances and amusing situations. There are many of the latter, including the reactions of people attending a bris and the pretensions of people at a literary soirée. Reizl Bozyk is the film's standout performer as the grandmother of the protagonist, Isabelle. This was the only screen role for Bozyk, a mainstay of the Yiddish theater, and she infuses the busybody Bubbe with warmth. Her desire to see her granddaughter married leads her to enlist a flamboyant matchmaker, somewhat overplayed by Sylvia Miles. Thus Isabelle, who works in a bookstore and might seem a better fit with the handsome novelist played by Krabbé, finds herself in the company of Sam, the pickle merchant played by Riegert. But even if he has to cover up the pickle smell by soaking his hands in milk and vanilla extract, Sam has more to recommend him than just being an eligible Jewish suitor. The worlds-colliding situations are a little obvious, and the theatrical origins of the film show, but director Joan Micklin Silver has a sure hand throughout the film. 

Local Hero (Bill Forsyth, 1983)

Peter Riegert in Local Hero

Cast: Peter Riegert, Peter Capaldi, Denis Lawson, Burt Lancaster, Fulton Mackay, Norman Chancer, Rikki Fulton, Alex Norton, Jenny Seagrove, Jennifer Black, Christopher Rozycki, Gyearbuor Asante. Screenplay: Bill Forsyth. Cinematography: Chris Menges. Production design: Roger Murray-Leach. Film editing: Michael Bradsell. Music: Mark Knopfler.

Local Hero is one of those small charmers that pop up occasionally, get rave reviews, and then sort of fade into the background. It's worth rediscovering, principally for Bill Forsyth's affectionately whimsical take on human beings. Another writer-director would have played the subject -- an American oil company's plans to exploit a small Scottish fishing village -- for more blatant satire and social commentary. But Forsyth is more interested in the people than the issues, so he keeps sending the film off into little eddies of contingency and irrelevance. On the way to the village, for example, the representatives of the oil company, Mac (Peter Riegert) and Oldsen (a startlingly young Peter Capaldi, years away from Doctor Who), accidentally hit a rabbit with their car and decide to bring it with them and nurse it back to health. The rabbit is doomed for the dinner table, but its presence in the story speaks more about the characters than it does to any larger theme the film might be concerned with. Forsyth keeps us cheerfully off guard throughout the film, with features the larger-than-life Burt Lancaster in one of his most humanizing roles.

Animal House (John Landis, 1978)

Tom Hulce in Animal House

John "Bluto" Blutarsky: John Belushi
Eric "Otter" Stratton: Tim Matheson
Donald "Boon" Schoenstein: Peter Riegert
Lawrence "Pinto" Kroger: Tom Hulce
Kent "Flounder" Dorfman: Stephen Furst
Daniel Simpson "D-Day" Day: Bruce McGill
Chip Diller: Kevin Bacon
Dean Vernon Wormer: John Vernon
Marion Wormer: Verna Bloom
Prof. Dave Jennings: Donald Sutherland
Katy: Karen Allen
Clorette DePasto: Sarah Holcomb
Mayor Carmine DePasto: Cesare Danova

Director: John Landis
Screenplay: Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney, Chris Miller
Cinematography: Charles Correll
Art direction: John J. Lloyd
Film editing: George Folsey Jr.
Music: Elmer Bernstein

The granddaddy of gross-out comedies, Animal House has a certain innocence to it 40 years later. For one thing, it goes lightly on the gross-outs, the most famous one being Bluto's zit joke. We don't even get to see Flounder throw up on Dean Wormer. For another, without their familiar lined faces and grayed, thinning hair, such veteran actors as Peter Riegert, Tom Hulce, and Kevin Bacon look almost naked. The film has maintained its reputation, even being inducted into the National Film Registry in 2001. There are things in it, however, that wouldn't pass muster today, including the blatant objectification of the young women, especially in the scene in which Bluto spies on them undressing. And would any reputable filmmaker today dare to include the scene in which Pinto debates whether to rape the unconscious Clorette, abetted by a roguish devil and a prissy-voiced angel? There are touches of unchecked homophobia throughout.  John Landis's direction, too, sometimes seems a bit stiff-limbed, as if waiting for the audience to laugh before proceeding with the next line. There are flashes of wit in the screenplay, as when Bluto refers to the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor, and Boon tells Otter, "Forget it, he's rolling." But many of the sight gags, such as the climactic assault on the homecoming parade, weren't worked out enough in advance, the exception being the marching band that gets led into a blind alley and then can't extricate itself. Still there's a fine energy to the performances, and even Dean Wormer gets to make a good point: "Fat, drunk, and stupid" really "is no way to go through life." But mostly the film is a strong reminder of what we lost with the early death of John Belushi -- and, more recently, of Stephen Furst.