The Robe (1953)

Having declined in religiosity, I don't watch film adaptations of Christian legends/books as much as I used to. But a good swords-and-sandals epic doesn't require devout Christianity for entertainment. Heck, Quo Vadis? (1951) had a Jewish director. Perhaps the panned re-remake of Ben-Hur helped inspire me to try another one (along with the streaming deadline).

The protagonist is Marcellus Gallio (Richard Burton), the tribune who oversees the crucifixion of Jesus, despite pleas from slave Demetrius (Victor Mature). As soon as Marcellus puts on Jesus' robe in the rain, he is beset with mental and physical symptoms. The illness remains in some measure long after Demetrius runs off with the robe. Marcellus hopes to find and destroy the robe for a cure, but his journey exposes him to more and more Christian love and piety, including that of Peter (Michael "Klaatu" Rennie). It's no spoiler to say that he converts -- leaving plenty of time for conflict with other Romans, including mutual crush Diana (Jean Simmons) and Emperor Caligula (Jay Robinson).

Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

Oh look, LAIKA again. For once, I felt like seeing their work in a theater, and so did my dad. Maybe that's because the stop-motion animation studio is trying something different this time: a setting in feudal Japan. You can't really tell from my past reviews, but I'm kind of a sucker for entertainment set thereabout.

A woman, Sariatu (uh, Charlize somebody), and her eye patch-wearing baby barely survive a stormy sea voyage and then make a home in a cave. There is a village nearby, but they have no money for better lodging. About a decade later, Sariatu spends most of the day catatonic, but son Kubo (Art Parkinson) has grown precocious, making a name for himself by telling stories of his samurai dad Hanzo fighting the Moon King's forces -- while illustrating them with moving origami controlled by his magic string instrument, which nobody identifies by name, but I determined it to be a shamisen.

Little does he know how much truth there is to his stories, until the day he neglects his mom's rule to come home by nightfall. The Moon King (Ralph Fiennes, once again playing a main villain in a family feature) is Sariatu's father and can now detect Kubo. The king and his identical other two daughters (both Rooney Mara) will stop at nothing to bring Kubo into their celestial kingdom, which pretty much requires that they blind him and make him learn to enjoy killing Earth mortals.

Romeo and Juliet (1968)

Consider this a last hurrah for my Shakespeare viewings in the year of his 400th deathday. It didn't seem right to go without a more straightforward screen adaptation, as opposed to a cultural translation or a story about putting on a play. I would have seen R&J much sooner, but it took a while to finish the Netflix wait, and then I forgot it until this week.

You know the plot, right? Teens from feuding families fall in puppy love, which raises tensions even further. After a couple fatalities, they make, shall we say, desperate escapes, with the bittersweet effect of ending the feud. This all takes place in the original setting, late Renaissance Italy, as opposed to the New York of West Side Story or the bizarre California of the Baz Luhrman update.

Frida (2002)

Frida Kahlo was one of those names I'd heard on many occasions without giving much thought. Aside from her being a Hispanic artist, I couldn't have told you anything about her. So I figured if I got nothing else out of this movie, it would give me a rough idea of who she really was.

It begins in 1922 Mexico, when the first major event of her life happened. A reckless bus driver puts 15-year-old Frida (Salma Hayek, then in her mid-30s) in critical condition. She never fully recovers, possibly due in part to similarly incompetent surgeons. Her first love (Antonio Banderas) does not stay by her side. Fortunately, between little else to do and a newfound interest in Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina), she hones her own painting skill -- to the point that he has no constructive criticism. They go on to marry, despite her knowing that Diego cheated on his first wife a lot. She later calls that a far worse accident than the bus crash.

Deadpool (2016)

While I dig comic book movies, especially Marvel's lately, I've hardly read any action comics in my life. My exposure to Deadpool started with his appearance as both an enemy and a player character in X-Men Legends II; since then, I'd mostly heard about him from gushing fans. The mutant who started as a ripoff of DC Comics villain Deathstroke became a parody and then a better-known antihero, appreciated for his humor as much as his fighting prowess. The one thing that gave me pause about seeing this movie was the edginess, bound to outdo that T-rated game's version.

Like many real-life funny people, "Merc with a Mouth" Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds, who ironically keeps his mouth covered in costume) turns out not to be especially happy. Oh, he enjoyed being a rather amoral wiseacre long before he assumed the costume and alias. Having retired from Special Forces operations, he now made money by harming or intimidating petty miscreants and spent that money in seedy dives. Then terminal cancer drove him to accept a shady proposal to grant him Wolverine-like rapid healing. It worked, but the torturous process, the resulting disfigured skin (why doesn't that heal?), and the revelation that they were making super slaves (how counterintuitive) made him question the wisdom of his decision. He escaped, but so did sadistic project overseer Francis, who much prefers to go by Ajax. Now, no longer willing to show his face to fiancee Vanessa (Morena Baccarin, once again playing a prostitute), he dons a new identity and goes on a long-term hunt for Ajax, hoping for a cure as well as justice.

Kid Galahad (1937)

As you see from the year, it's not the Elvis Presley vehicle of the same title. (I doubt I'll ever watch a movie starring Elvis from start to finish.) This is one of the two earliest directorial efforts of Michael Curtiz that I've seen, as well as one of the two earliest acting efforts of Humphrey Bogart that I've seen. A precursor to Casablanca? Not really.

The headliners are Edward G. Robinson as boxing promoter/gangster (of course) Nick Donati and Bette Davis as his moll, "Fluff." Nick needs a new champion and discovers surprise potential in a clean-cut bellhop with a mocked name, Ward Guisenberry (Wayne Morris, possibly best known for Lt. Roget in Paths of Glory). Due to issues of jealousy, Nick sometimes plots against Ward's ring success, tho trainer Silver Jackson (Harry Carey) doesn't have the heart to let it work for long. But everyone's biggest concern is how "Turkey" Morgan (Bogart) and his hoods will react to Ward not fighting on his side.

Ilo Ilo (2013)

I'm quite certain that I'd never seen a Singaporean feature before. I'm less certain how I came to put it on my list. But when my DVD player stopped working and I saw fit to pick something of a modest length to stream, this looked different enough to try.

In 1997, Filipina migrant Terry starts work as a maid for a family of four (if you count the unborn). She must be quite desperate for money, because she has left behind a baby son whom she misses dearly, and she'll take a lousy second job. The recession clearly goes farther than the Philippines; neither parent has much job security or satisfaction, and they take gambles like the lottery seriously. Ten-year-old boy Jiale is troubled less by finances and more by a highly contrary demeanor. Nevertheless, his initial coldness to Terry gives way to an affection that makes his mom jealous.

Contact (1997)

Having quickly lost interest in Cosmos, I'm sure I didn't put this movie on my list for Carl Sagan's writing. Instead, I must have noticed how frequently it came up in discussions -- not to mention IMDb searches. Robert Zemeckis directs, and the cast includes Jodie Foster, Tom Skerritt, Matthew McConaughey (who would go on to the similar Interstellar), David Morse, Angela Bassett, John Hurt, James Woods, and Rob Lowe. We also get a lot of public figures as themselves, including controversially altered footage of Bill Clinton. So I went in, knowing little else of what it would offer.

Ellie (Foster) works for the SETI Institute with unstable funding, because too few people have confidence that we'll connect with aliens. Fortunately, a creepily influential yet reclusive billionaire (Hurt) sponsors her. Finally, she discovers a suspicious space noise. You can imagine many of the various reactions, including legitimate fears of a new Heaven's Gate cult. The next hard part is decoding the message, followed by deciding how much trust to put in it. Just about every step of the way is a struggle for our heroine.

The Little Prince (2015)

I never read the novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, tho a friend of mine loves it. All I had gleaned was the prince's appearance, his habitation of a tiny planetoid, and his sad parting from a talking fox. Further study confirms that it's quite solemn in spite of a whimsical, seemingly kid-friendly setup. But this animation isn't a direct adaptation; rather, it's a story about the story.

As in the novella, nobody has a stated name. The protagonist is an eight-year-old girl (Mackenzie Foy, who already starred in an animation connected to France) whose mother (Rachel McAdams), while affectionate, has way too strict a plan for her life. They move next door to an eccentric old pariah (Jeff Bridges) who turns out to be the novella's narrator and illustrator, eager to share his story with whoever will listen. The girl rebels against Mom's schedule to learn about the spacefaring boy (who doesn't seem to be a literal prince) whom the man claims to have met in a desert. What we get must be a highly capsulized version of the story -- leaving room for much more....

Atlantic City (1980)

Uh-oh, Louis Malle at the helm again. I calculated about a 50% chance of liking his work. On the plus side, it guaranteed Susan Sarandon in her hotter years and Burt Lancaster in his, well, later years. Also, funnily enough, Wallace Shawn as a waiter.

Sally (Sarandon), a waitress training as a casino dealer, seems to have her life sufficiently together until her wayward husband, the serendipitously named Dave Matthews (Robert Joy), unexpectedly shows up. He doesn't tell her that he stole dope from a Philadelphia mob, but he gets some help in selling it from her neighbor and secret admirer, minor thief Lou (Lancaster). When trouble catches up with Dave and then comes to Sally's door, Lou finds himself caught between his usual self-serving outlook and a desire to help her, if only out of lust.

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)

AFI's celebration of Dalton Trumbo prompted me to give this some priority, a few months after my last war film viewing. The casting of Robert Mitchum and the direction of Mervyn LeRoy helped intrigue me.

The reportedly mostly true story follows Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle (Spencer Tracy) and his men on the first U.S. Air Force mission of retaliation for Pearl Harbor. The titular period of bombing comes in the middle of the piece, after much preparation. What follows is an effort to stay alive after crashing in China, in an area pretty well hemmed in by the Japanese.

Infamous (2006)

This movie was, if you will, infamously unfortunate in its timing: It came out months after Capote and had a very similar focus, so many dismissed it. It doesn't enjoy quite as high ratings from IMDb or Rotten Tomatoes. But maybe a decade of distance will help me evaluate it on its own terms.

As in Capote, Truman Capote (Toby Jones herein), already a bestselling author, gets engrossed in researching two men on death row who murdered a family after an unsuccessful burglary. Here, however, we get to see him express deeper feelings about one murderer, Perry Smith (Daniel Craig with an American accent). While partner in crime Dick Hickock (Lee Pace) is a mostly amoral motormouth, Perry is both morally and intellectually complicated -- and slow to trust anyone with his life story, tho Truman threatens to make stuff up for his new quasi-reporting style. In time, they almost develop a romance.

Boy & the World (2013)

Boy, I knew that foreign films often had to wait a year for Academy consideration, but this one ran against 2015 animations. Maybe it can take longer for nations that rarely get Hollywood's attention. I think the only other Brazilian movies I've seen are Black Narcissus, City of God, and Central Station, none animated, so this was a new experience for me.

Some outside sources identify the boy as Cuca, but both the film and IMDb call him only Menino, which means "boy." Actually, that may be the only comprehensible dialog; the rest -- what little there is -- turns out to be Portuguese played backwards, in keeping with the occasional flipped writing. Subtitles exist on the DVD only for the deaf and hard of hearing, not translating or transcribing more than "Menino." In a way, it's fitting that this movie vied with Shaun the Sheep for the Oscar. Even the plot is similar in its simplicity, to a point.