Our Man in Havana (1959)

My prior experience of director Carol Reed, while pretty good, did not whet my appetite for more. But when I saw that he got back together with author Graham Greene, I thought that this might be the closest I'd get to another The Third Man.

Shot shortly after the Cuban Revolution but set slightly before it, the film focuses on a transplanted English vacuum cleaner salesman, Jim Wormold (Alec Guinness). A member of the British Secret Service invites him to become a spy, because such a man doesn't arouse much suspicion. Netflix says he "unwittingly" agrees, but that's misleading: He knows what his employer is and what it expects of him; he just bites off more than he can chew, failing to recruit a team. Too desperate for money to admit defeat -- thanks largely to extravagant young adult daughter Milly, despite her dating the generous local despot (Ernie Kovacs) -- Wormold lies about both recruits and discoveries in espionage. By the time he receives some actual teammates, most notably his secretary (Maureen O'Hara), he starts to worry he'll be found out. But that shouldn't be his biggest worry, seeing as an unnamed enemy agency takes him as seriously as his own does. Burl Ives has a supporting role as a German friend who meets the enemy.

Man Hunt (1941)

My streaming list appears to be dominated by dramas, recent releases, and foreign films, none of which I particularly wanted in the immediate aftermath of Incendies. So I chose an American studio's WWII thriller, made shortly before the U.S. entered the war. One factor to intrigue me was Fritz Lang, a director I generally like but whose work I hadn't seen since before I started this blog.

English sport hunter Alan Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon) just so happens upon the woodland estate of the Fuhrer, who remains oddly unnamed throughout. He lines up a shot on the Fuhrer but gets captured in time. His captors, led by Major Quive-Smith (George Sanders), try to torture him into signing a confession that the UK government assigned him an assassination mission; when their patience runs out, they try to give him an accidental-looking death, but their method is too unreliable. He escapes to London, but it turns out that German agents, among them a "Mr. Jones" (John Carradine), are very good at posing as Englishmen in various positions, so the adventure has just begun.

Incendies (2010)

Ever watch a movie simply because it's on IMDb' top 250? I have many times, with mixed results. In all likelihood, I would not have watched this Denis Villeneuve piece otherwise, except maybe if a group invited me. I've grown wary (and weary) of dramas set in the modern Middle East.

The film, like the Wajdi Mouawad play on which it's based, actually never clarifies where in the Middle East it is. Shooting took place in Jordan, but the warring between Muslims and Christians, combined with the timeline, suggests Mouawad's homeland of Lebanon. At any rate, the first scene is clearly in Canada, where Christian immigrant Nawal has just died and her adult twin children, whose names have been assimilated to Jeanne and Simon, are surprised at her last wishes: They must deliver letters to their biological father, whom they'd heard had died before they were born; and their half-brother, whom they never heard of. Simon is inclined to dismiss his mother as crazy -- she did go catatonic for a while -- but Jeanne drags him into a fairly dangerous search in the old country, with help from the notary.

My Darling Clementine (1946)

Has it really been nearly eight months since my last western? (I'm talking full-fledged westerns, so The Force Awakens doesn't count.) And just like in that one, Walter Brennan gets cast as the main villain. I ought to get used to that.

I've seen two other films about Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, but they didn't include a Clementine. No, she doesn't follow the story told in the song. Her function here is as a love interest whom Doc keeps at bay, apparently due to his tuberculosis -- not for fear of her catching it, but for shame at appearing so weak. He still carries on with another woman, nicknamed Chihuahua, who actually gets more screen time. Clementine appeals to Wyatt to talk sense into Doc. Of course, this isn't really the main conflict....

Juliet of the Spirits (1965)

More than a week since my last review? Clearly, I was in no hurry to talk about another art film. The main reason I moved it to the top of my queue was the promise of a focus on a woman. In that regard, it delivers.

There doesn't seem to be much in the way of plot progression. Juliet (Giulietta Masina, director Federico Fellini's wife and frequent star) has been leading an ordinary quiet, possibly upper-middle-class life. Before long from our perspective, two events start to make it more interesting for her: a seance followed by evidence that her husband is cheating on her. Juliet then spends much of her time exploring a more, shall we say, liberated lifestyle with the help of a friend (Sandra Milo) and hearing from exhorting spirits, real or imagined, whether she wants to or not. And somewhat like in A Christmas Carol, sometimes she sees her own past.

The Great Debaters (2007)

Somehow, I hadn't heard about Denzel Washington's second directorial effort when it was new. Perhaps I just wasn't paying attention in the right circles yet, or perhaps the combination of old-time Black struggles and, well, college debates didn't lend itself to mainstream discussion, despite praise from Roger Ebert among others. But those defining attributes did pique my interest.

Inspired by true events -- too loosely for a good history lesson -- the story follows Prof. Melvin B. Tolson (Washington) and his Wiley College debate team in 1930s Texas. The team has such a successful track record that Harvard (rather than the University of Southern California as in real life) eventually accepts their challenge. Alas, Tolson's pro-union activities get him in too much trouble to be there for the team in Cambridge, and Harvard insists that the teammates write their own arguments. Difficult, but you can see the ending a mile away.

Brute Force (1947)

I sat on this disc for a while, taking a break from movies in general. The title suggested that I would have to prepare myself for more grit. On the other hand, the year of release guaranteed that it wouldn't show anything too severe on screen. The golden age of film noir was bleak but hardly ripe for R ratings, especially in Hollywood.

This one belongs to the semi-genre of prison films, which must have felt pretty well-worn after the '30s. But compared to the bulk of those, BF could be seen as more of a precursor to The Shawshank Redemption. While the prisoners are all decidedly criminal -- even collectively murdering snitches -- they get far more of our sympathy than harsh, deceptively soft-spoken chief of security Munsey (Hume Cronyn). Joe Collins (Burt Lancaster) leads a group effort to escape, not only because the prison is intolerable but because his wife refuses vital medical attention unless he's with her.

Enemy at the Gates (2001)

Yep, my final viewing before the New Year deadline was of another war film. Set in Europe during World War II, no less. Fortunately for my sake, that's about where the similarity ends.

For one thing, EatG has a much more individual focus, specifically on real-life Soviet sniper Vasily Zaytsev (Jude Law). Commissar Danilov (Joseph Fiennes) notices his talent and writes about him in the news to increase morale on their side. It works, but the tradeoff for so much publicity -- a sticking point between the two friends -- is that the Germans know too much about Zaytsev and his whereabouts. Their own star sniper, Major Konig (Ed Harris), goes on a mission to take him down.

A Simple Plan (1998)

My previous experience with Sam Raimi was limited to the first two Spider-Man entries, which didn't do much for me. Apart from those, he seems to be known primarily for horror, which, for all my indulgence in October, really isn't one of my preferred genres. But an esteemed Raimi crime drama/thriller, with no sci-fi or fantasy premises? That might be worth my time.

In keeping with the title, it has a simple setup: Three lower-class guys find a crashed private plane, hidden in thick snow in the Minnesota woods, with a dead pilot...and $4.4 million. Hank (Bill Paxton) wants to turn it over to the police, but his brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton in an Academy Award-nominated role) and Jacob's friend Lou (Brent Briscoe), who are neither sober at the moment nor smart at the best of times, outvote him. He persuades them to let him sit on the money until authorities find the plane, probably after the spring thaw, so they can determine whether anyone's looking for the money. But as a much smarter man once said, three may keep a secret if two of them are dead....

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

I'd seen a few movies written by David Mamet before, but not based on a play of his. Oddly enough, the most oft-cited moment does not occur in the play: One-scene wonder Alec Baldwin features as a company-hired motivational speaker with the attitude of a prototypical drill sergeant (Baldwin did look to Patton for inspiration). In truth, he seems to be channeling Al Pacino, for whom he was something of an understudy herein. I had seen this part already, and it didn't exactly make me eager for more, but I value my cinematic education.

That early scene helps establish the plot. At a super-shady real estate agency that cold-calls individuals to sell them overpriced land, business has not been good lately. The agency offers prizes for the two salesmen who accomplish the most in the near future but will fire the other two. It feels unfair to the less successful, because they've done well in the past and have just fallen on bad luck with regard to sales leads, if "luck" is the right word. In desperation, two conspire to steal the good leads and make it look like a plain burglary.