THE FADED SPOTLIGHT

An overstuffed bauble of mystery. The Honey Pot plays like a Victorian whodunit, except it was sent on a Venetian vacation and told to luxuriate.

Rex Harrison stars as Cecil Fox—an old money eccentric with an army of servants, too much time on his hands, and one very strange idea. He will fake his death just to watch his three ex-lovers squirm over inheritance. The setup is cribbed from the 17th Century Ben Jonson play Volpone. Except here, with the genders flipped, the satire thinned, and tension replaced by a kind of mannered mischief with a high thread count.

The guests arrive to his abode like characters who have barged in from competing movies. Dominique (Capucine) is a broke princess with an icy restraint. Merle (Edie Adams) is a fading screen star who is still chasing the spotlight. And then Lone Star Crockett (Susan Hayward), a Texan tycoon with a load of paperwork and tongue sharp enough to draw blood.

Lone Star claims to be Fox’s common-law wife and she can prove it. But before she gets much further staking her claim, she ends up dead. Enter Maggie Smith as her nurse. She’s prim and observant and also slowly realizing that she’s the only one in the room who possesses either a conscience or a clue.

The pleasure here resides mainly in the details. The rustle of expensive fabrics, the glint of chandeliers. Rex Harrison literally pirouettes through the margins of the story as though he’s auditioning for operetta. But in spite of the solid setup and a solid cast, the core mystery ends up folding in on itself. Such that when the resolution finally arrives, it feels like it’s all beside the point. Not so much a mystery solved as a thread that gets obligatorily tied up and then set aside in favor of something more opaque and metaphysical.

A movie that mistakes convolution for cleverness and mood for meaning. Still, a worthwhile watch for anyone interested in immersing themselves with the crisp performances of the actors. In particular that of Maggie Smith who, despite only really entering the film halfway through, ends up walking away with the whole movie tucked neatly in her handbag.

Willie Nelson plays a fictionalized version of himself—road-weary, ponytailed, magnetic. Except a little bit scummy, which I hope is exaggerated for dramatic effect here. He plays Buck Bonham, a small-time country-western singer who’s spent most of his life in motion, touring small towns with a band that doubles as his second family. He has a promiscuous past, but promises his wife (Dyan Cannon)—this time anyway—that he’s happy and settled down, and there won’t be any more on-the-road flings for him. Guess how long that doesn’t hold.

Enter Amy Irving as a new, fresh-faced bass player who also happens to be the daughter of his longtime guitarist (Slim Pickens). What follows is a familiar arc. The wanderer is tempted, home life is shattered, but the stage lights continue to call.

This is a film that gets by on texture. Especially in the loose rhythm to the concert scenes, which feel more like captured live performances than staged interludes for a feature film. Nelson is, unsurprisingly, most convincing when he’s behind a mic. And his songs are everywhere, including “On the Road Again,” which was written for this film and would become one of Nelson’s signature tunes.

The story is passable, but as a glimpse into a specific lifestyle—endless highways, green rooms, and the slow erosion of domestic promises—it proves to be quite immersive. While this isn’t as probing of a character study as it might have wanted to be, it proves to be a glossy, agreeable vehicle for Nelson. He looks completely in his element here, wrapped in Texas dust and twangy guitars, flanked by capable actors.

Willie fans will find plenty to enjoy. Non-fans might wonder what the fuss is. Or they might wish the whole thing came with a bit more bite. But then again, this isn’t a movie trying to convert anyone.

A mockumentary with its crosshairs placed squarely on the gold-plated pulpit. Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. takes aim at the bloated excess of megachurch culture and their carefully curated brand of performative piety. A target that is certainly ripe—long overdue, even—for a harsh skewering. But this film seems content to fire soft pellets where it should have gone for something sharper. In other words, it should have been funnier, riskier, and weirder.

What we get instead is a slow simmer of satire, with the occasional bubble of real bite. It’s buoyed by a couple of committed and sometimes wonderfully off-kilter performances by Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown. They play Trinitie and Lee-Curtis Childs, a televangelist power couple knocked down from their pedestal when allegations—of the headline-ripping variety—are levied against him. And thus falls their empire. What was once a carnival of wealth and sermonized swagger is now reduced to a derelict stage set. But they are certain they’ll find redemption with a flashy relaunch timed to Easter Sunday.

The film keeps a faux-documentary format interlaced with a standard dramatic narrative. The result occasionally wrestles with itself. Scenes meant to be candid are intercut with more traditional dramatic beats, and the tonal shift doesn’t always feel seamless. One minute you’re watching a puffed-up charlatan pose in front of his Bentley in a scene that gives off amusing Spinal Tap vibes. The next, a character drops into a quiet moment of supposed reckoning—or at least what the film wants to pass for one. It isn’t that convincing at it.

While there are some laughs, there are few that cause real damage. It holds back too much. Every once in a while, it flirts with insight, but it settles far too often for gags that feel test-marketed. As though the film wanted to appeal to the church crowd as well as those wanting a good laugh at the church crowd’s expense. It’s not a bad film, just a hesitant one. And when your subject is spiritual fraud and institutional rot, that kind of watered-down safeness is sure to preach to nobody.

A romance, a melodrama, a redemption arc. Hope Floats wants to be all three, but mostly it’s a soft-focus exercise in brooding. People sulk and stare and speak in softly delivered wisdom-nuggets. Everyone is in various stages of healing, but I never get a clear sense of what they’re trying to heal from. Other than, I suppose, the general ache that comes from existing in a screenplay like this.

Sandra Bullock plays Birdee Pruitt, a disgraced prom queen whose life implodes spectacularly on national television when her best friend (an uncredited Rosanna Arquette) reveals on a Jerry Springer–type trash TV show that she’s been sleeping with Birdee’s husband. So, Birdee takes a one-way ticket to small-town Texas, back home for a mandatory life reboot with her mother—played with welcome sharpness by Gena Rowlands.

She tries to regain some measure of identity while also parenting her young daughter Bernice (Mae Whitman), who clings to an idealized version of her absent father. Whitman has one devastating moment at the end where she really cracks it open—about the only time the film manages to crack anything open. There’s a second-chance love interest, because of course there’s. Here in the form of a tanned and unhurried Harry Connick Jr. A man who’s clearly spent a lot of time around porch swings.

A movie built from sorrow and reconciliation with a light dusting of maternal illness. But it’s all handled like fine china—careful, hushed, detached, as if trying to prevent anyone in the audience from getting too upset. It’s gorgeously lit but emotionally inert. Not really a story as much as a scrapbook of pensive stares and soft rock montages.

Hope Floats isn’t a terrible film, just sedate. It wants to be heartfelt, but it settles mainly for polished restraint. This is a story about healing, but apart from one heart wrenching moment at the end, it hardly even makes bruises.

Bruce Willis is best when he’s miserable, and Hostage knows it. He stars as Jeff Talley, an LAPD hostage negotiator who resigned after a botched standoff left a child dead. He’s since retired to a sleepy suburb.

Of course, that doesn’t last long. He’s pulled back into hostage work when three teenagers break into a fortified hillside mansion and take the family inside captive. And that isn’t all. The home belongs to an accountant working for a criminal syndicate, who informs Talley that they have his wife and daughter under surveillance. They mean to ensure that Talley handles the situation “correctly.”

He’s stuck negotiating two interfering hostage cases at once—neither of which he’s officially allowed to touch. While hostage films are a dime a dozen, there’s enough variation in the formula here that it feels more fresh than not.

Ben Foster plays Mars—the most unpredictable of the teen intruders. He’s also handily the most riveting character in the movie. Gaunt, soft-voiced and lit like a horror figure. He paces the house and sings lullabies with a theatrical kind of menace, giving off the sense that we’ve only just seen the tip of the iceberg of whatever his elaborate plans are.

While the film does take on some serious themes about guilt and redemption, it often merely settles for plot. A plot that feels overlong and crowded—what comes from trying to juggle two simultaneous hostage crises. But in the end, all of it holds together with a surprising degree of coherence. Chalk this up as a mid-budget thriller that reminds you why these used to be our weeknight staples.