As I’ve just finished watching Sofia Coppola’s “On the Rocks,” I must say I’m surprised it has an 89 on Rotten Tomatoes. Did I watch the same movie? And yet, on further investigation, I guess I did see the film viewed by a few, discreet reviewers.

Sofia Coppola is one of my favorite directors, I’ve really enjoyed her films. That’s why I’m more than disappointed by “On the Rocks.” It’s billed as a comedy, which it isn’t unless I’ve forgotten what that’s supposed to mean. “On the Rocks” might have a chuckle here or there, but it’s more of a Lifetime movie built on the ashes of a Woody Allen left over. It’s very melancholy.

The actors are terrific, and you know, really, Rashida Jones and Bill Murray as daughter and father Laura and Felix. Who’s more charming than those two? But she thinks her husband, Dean (Marlon Wayans, who really used to be funny) is having an affair. So her wealthy dad (NY art dealer, car and driver, etc) has Dean followed around to New York hot spots. Then Felix convinces him daughter they should lie to everyone, leave her kids, and follow Dean to Mexico where he’s going to attend a conference and bring with him his leggy assistant with whom they think he’s sleeping.

Yes, that’s the story. Well, there’s more story but no one tells it. And the whole thing is set in New York’s very 1 percent stratosphere of giant loft apartments in Tribeca, and moneymoneymoney and no traffic anywhere so you can drive, and park. and no one gets in your way. There’s one nice sequence of Bill and Rashida racing a little red sports car around and being stopped by a cop whose Dad, of course, Bill knows. And who can beat Bill Murray sweetly singing “Mexicali” to tourists a Mexican resort?

But what is going on here? Father and daughter bonding? It’s all very vague. And creepy, since Murray and Jones act more like a couple than she does with Wayans. Yes the parents broke up when Laura was little, but who cares? Rashida’s character is a famous writer now living a great life. Yet she acts like a naif from Omaha in the 1950s. None of it quite makes any sense, particularly when they get into the mechanics of Bill and Rashida following Marlon, the husband, to Mexico. There are very wide plot holes here. Suspension of disbelief is fully required.

And the Woody Allen thing is pretty blatant. By the time Bill and Rashida stop for a drink for no one reason in Bemelman’s Bar at the Carlyle, just to be there for no reason, that’s the capper. References to Soho House, the 21 Club, and other snazzy locations might have had more zing for me before the pandemic, but they seem a little odd right now.

So it’s a pass on “On the Rocks,” which looks good but doesn’t get to anything. I’ve seen Sofia Coppola work wonders. She will again.

You’re too young to remember “Cleopatra,” the 1963 movie that cost so much and lost so much that it literally almost destroyed 20th Century Fox. Of course, last year Fox was sold to Disney and doesn’t exist anymore. But “Cleopatra,” you could say, is where it all began.

The film starred the hottest movie stars of the day, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, who became a couple and the top tabloid subjects of all time when they left their spouses for each other. Meantime, Fox — which almost went bankrupt– sold most of their property, thus creating Century City in West Los Angeles. That’s how bad things were. (I miss the old Century City mall.)

So why not make it again? Paramount, ironically run by Jim Giannopolous, a former head of 20th (more recently, not in 1963) has won an auction to take a new crack at Cleo with the “Wonder Woman” team. Patty Jenkins will direct her Wonder Woman, Gal Gadot, as Queen of the Nile. Who will play Mark Antony? Chris Pine? I don’t think so, but you never know these days.

In the original, Julius Caesar was inhabited by Rex Harrison, who was then only 55. Is it time for Daniel Day Lewis to come out of retirement? Stephen Dillane sound good? Can Mark Rylance play every part in the movie? Time will tell.

It should be meaningful that the auction went to Paramount, and not to Warner Bros. where Jenkins and Gadot have had their successes. Also, Disney, which owns Fox, won’t be revisiting their good old days.

Now this is something to look forward to!

Michelle Pfeiffer cocks her head back imperiously as Frances Price, a once wealthy, still gorgeous widow, in “French Exit,” and pulls into second place behind Frances McDormand in the coming race for Best Actress at the Oscars. Someone wrote that it’s a light year for contenders in that category, but with Jennifer Hudson, Kate Winslet, and maybe Halle Berry possibly on the list, this is a high compliment.

That’s because Pfeiffer’s performance is so unexpected in a comedy termed “surreal” and edgy that begins in question and blossoms into something unique and memorable. First of all, to think that Michelle Pfeiffer is 62 years old makes no sense because she looks maybe 42. Did she ever age? Or was is just that after her big run from 1988 to 1992 (three Oscar nominations) she turned down her celebrity volume and got very zen?

“French Exit” was a 2018 novel by Canadian author Patrick deWitt, who wrote the screenplay for the movie. He also wrote the novel, “The Sisters Brothers” that was turned into a big flop of a movie, so I was a little nervous as “French Exit” proceeded that we’d be in trouble. And really for the first half of this film, directed by Azazel Jacobs, I wasn’t quite sure we were going to make it. Pfeiffer’s co-stars are Lucas Hedges, looking like Wes Anderson, as her laconic son, Malcolm, Imogen Poots as Malcolm’s older and impatient girlfriend, a Canadian actress named Susan Coyne, as Joan (who is maybe Frances’s wealthy, wise, and plain sister); and a black cat — yes– a black cat, who is more than he appears to be.

And there’s one more actor in this gang: Valerie Mahaffey, who has been chipping away year by year at mostly a television career, with an Emmy win and a Daytime Emmy nomination. She plays Madame Reynaud, an American ex pat with money who nearly steals the film and gets herself a Best Supporting Actress slot almost effortlessly. Mahaffey is an overnight sensation at age 67 (and also looking much younger).

If you don’t know deWitt’s novel (I didn’t) you don’t know what you’re waiting for. So when Frances is advised she’s broke and must sell everything, Joan — these people are RICH — tells her to go stay in her spare apartment in Paris. As you do. Frances seems barely attached to reality. Instead of getting on a cheap flight to Charles DeGaulle, she and Malcolm set sail in separate state rooms on an expensive cruise liner. They bring their black cat, who is clearly more than just a house pet, and we find out later is named for Frances’s late husband and Malcolm’s father, Frank (played stiffly by Tracy Letts).

On the cruise, they meet a medium named Madeleine with special talents played Danielle McDonald, who is also great this season as rock critic Lillian Roxon in “I Am Woman.” How Madeleine is on the cruise, how Little Frank the cat, passes customs, all of this is a mystery that kicks the second half of the film into something you now realize is quite different than the set up, and 100 times more enjoyable.

Among the things that happen is that Frances becomes a little like Aurora Greenaway from “Terms of Endearment.” A group of eccentric people are now attracted to her situation like metal shavings to a magnet. It’s no longer just her and Malcolm as the camera draws back to reveal a group that gathers for no apparent reason except possibly a missing cat. And that seems to be enough for director Jacobs to pull off a satisfying, surprise success. You realize that with this film, with “Nomadland,” and “The Father,” that 2020 isn’t a lost movie year* at all. It was just a slow starter.

(*PS I left out “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” “The King of Staten Island,” “Da 5 Bloods,” “Greyhound,” “The Outpost,” and “Rainy Day in New York.”)