My friend Ross bought me the DVD of THE BAND’S VISIT (2007) for Christmas and it proved a good pick (it was on my Amazon wish list). It’s a low-key story in which an Egyptian brass band arrives in Israel to play at a small village’s cultural event. When they arrive it turns out they’ve taken the bus to the wrong village and they’re stuck their until morning.
During the course of the evening, various members of the band hookup, flirt, roller-skate, give advice, offer a sympathetic ear or struggle with personal issues, all in interaction with their Israeli hosts. The writer/director said he didn’t want to do the thing where the two cultures meet and form a bridge between worlds, and he didn’t, because the connections are all about personal stuff. Quite winning. “A man should not hide behind a hat.” 
Like Howard Hawks, A Girl in Every Port, the Hawks-directed TIGER SHARK (1932) has two close buddies falling apart over the woman one of them married, but the characters are different enough it’s not just a remake (though it would be remade itself several times, such as 1941’s Manpower). Mike (Edward G. Robinson) is the Portuguese-American captain of a tuna fishing boat; when Mike has to tell Quita (Zita Johann) her father died on the last fishing trip, he falls hard for her. Although she tells him she’s not in love with her she needs someone to support her and so she says yes … but then falls for Pipes (Richard Arlen), Mike’s first mate and best friend. The result is an enjoyable, well-acted melodrama; I like that unlike many films of this sort, Quita’s likable rather than being written as a self-serving witch. There’s too much tuna-fishing footage but also familiar Hawks elements — these are tough men working a tough job. “If I stopped to say goodbye, I never would have gone.”
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