Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

It's hard to get all five local members of my family to agree on a movie, as we do for Christmas. This was a bit of a compromise, with my mom expecting to be bored some of the time despite a female protagonist. (Hey, modern action scenes do go on rather long by older viewers' standards.) Afterward, she said at least she stayed awake and enjoyed some humor. So how does it stand up for a moderate SW fan?

Well, first, let me assure you that it's not the fanfic-esque retread that many viewers perceived Episode VII to be, for better or worse. Ending possibly mere minutes before the start of Episode IV (you know, the first SW film ever made), it tells the story of how the Empire began its Death Star and how the Rebel Alliance learned its key weakness. The title refers to an eventual call sign for a ship containing a handful of rebels on a secret mission. Chief among them is Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), who has a bone to pick with Imperial Commander Krennic (Ben Mendelssohn) for killing her mother and coercing her father, Galen (Mads Mikkelsen), to design the space battle station, starting when she was little.

The Prince and the Pauper (1937)

After a few unhappy movies, I decided that my best bet was to pick a story I already knew to have a happy ending. At the same time, it had to be a story I didn't know too terribly well -- no more A Christmas Carol versions for me. Not having read the Mark Twain book, I relied on vague memories of capsulized kiddie adaptations and parodies. The gist was that the strangely identical young title characters who happened to meet were tired of their lots in life, traded places on purpose, and learned the hard way that they preferred their previous stations (a questionable lesson indeed if it equates the travails of monarchy with those of poverty), right?

Well, not exactly. In this telling, the boys don't even realize how alike they look until they've swapped outfits for fun, and they have no intention of fooling anyone; but the prince (Bobby Mauch) injudiciously exits the room alone, and you can guess what happens next. Both boys insist on their true identities, even as their insistence mostly makes matters worse for them. Sure, pauper Tom Canty (Billy Mauch) enjoys some luxuries and a lack of beatings by guards or his irredeemable father (Barton MacLane), but he can't help worrying, not least as the Earl of Hertford (Claude Rains), the prime courtier who knows Tom's not mad, plots to manipulate him -- and end the threat of the real prince returning -- when the old king (Montagu Love) dies. The moral has more to do with recognizing how little separates the highest from the lowest, with a hint that this could duly increase the elite's sympathy for common folk.

Jackie (2016)

As a Xennial, I knew only so much about Jacqueline Kennedy. I had no mental picture of her and probably never watched any footage of her. Thus, Jackie could never mean the same thing for me that it does for my parents or many of the Meetup members who watched with us. But I'll remember her for sure now.

The movie begins with an oddly unnamed journalist (Billy Crudup, reportedly playing Theodore H. White) meeting the ex-First Lady (Natalie Portman) at her new house about a week after her husband's assassination. Having been a journalist herself, she takes a rather bitter approach to the interview, often accusing him of lurid motives and saying her most interesting things off the record. We may view their scenes as glue for the rest, as the flashbacks that make up about 90% of the runtime -- ranging from happy memories of the last year or so to the funeral -- do not follow chronologically.

Never Let Me Go (2010)

I need to get in the habit of doing more preliminary research before picking a film, seeing as I had written off Kazuo Ishiguro. Furthermore, the Netflix blurb made it sound like just a romantic drama, not an alternate-history sci-fi. Granted, the sci-fi elements are pretty mild -- we don't get any special effects; it's mostly social -- but they are crucial to the plot. I don't think I'm spoiling anything by elaborating.

Thanks to a fictitious breakthrough in the '50s, life expectancy has vastly increased for most humans; but like in Metropolis, the luxury comes at a price to others. The story focuses on a love triangle among those others, starting in their tweens in an English coed boarding school that emphasizes staying healthy. A conflicted teacher breaks the rules and spills the beans: All the students exist solely to donate their organs in adulthood, eventually dying from it. Only in act 2, after graduation, do they learn why they're treated so differently: They're clones. Nevertheless, they try to fulfill their short lives with love, especially in light of a rumor that if two clones can prove their true love, they get a three-year deferral on donations. First-person narrator Kathy (Carey Mulligan) and Tommy (Andrew Garfield) like each other first, but Kathy's frenemy, Ruth (Keira Knightley), schemes to interpose herself for reasons beyond love.

Handsome Devil (2016)

Wow, only 31 IMDb votes before mine and no comments. Leave it to AFI to dig up obscure foreign titles. Still, an 8.7 is nothing to sneeze at, so my parents and I went for it.

Narrator Ned, at 16, wishes he'd be allowed to drop out. Anyone at his boarding school who doesn't love rugby, such as himself, is an outcast subject to anti-gay slurs, and administrators do nothing to make outcasts' lives easier. He prefers to keep to himself, cheating on assignments to retain plenty of time to do basically nothing. When he gets a roommate, Conor, who has been a rugby star elsewhere and promises to be one here, Ned thinks his luck just got even worse. But Conor isn't all he pretends to be, and they do bond over music. Furthermore, Dan Sherry, a new teacher who combines strict discipline with relative coolness, encourages his students to be their best. If only the rugby coach saw things his way...

The Vanishing (1988)

Not to be confused with its 1993 U.S. remake. I believe I had been planning to watch this during October, filled up on Halloween-y other films, and neglected to push it further down my queue. But it's just as well that I didn't save it for next October. Despite its designation as a thriller (and a title format typical thereof), it strikes me as more of a tragedy, with very little violence. European cinema does tend to blur the lines of genres as Americans know them.

Dutch lovers Rex and Saskia go on vacation in France. They get separated too long at a service station, and Rex becomes convinced that someone abducted Saskia. For the next three years, he mounts an expensive and generally fruitless campaign to gather information. At this point, he doesn't really hope to find her alive, nor does he claim a desire for vengeance; he just wants to know what happened. That's when the kidnapper, Raymond (no spoiler there; we see him preparing a fake injury Jame Gumb-style), reaches out to him with a worrisome proposal to grant his wish, betting that Rex, like the protagonist of Oldboy, will not punish if it means no answers.

I, Daniel Blake (2016)

Did I really feel up to another Ken Loach drama? Well, yes, when it's more esteemed than the others I've seen. And recent enough that I figured (correctly) that it wouldn't be too hard to understand the accents.

At 59, Daniel has a heart attack that prevents him from being allowed to continue his work in carpentry. He then finds the modern British system for benefits claims horribly tricky, leaving him quite worried about finances, with no family left to call on for help. But he does meet someone similarly desperate: Katie, a single mother of two young children. They come to support each other in non-economic ways, to mutual appreciation when not at their wits' ends.

Like Crazy (2016)

AFI’s European Union Film Showcase kicked off with this movie, so my parents figured it was one of the most promising entries and came with me. The Italian title literally translates to “The Crazy Joy,” which we all liked better.

It begins and ends at a mansion converted into a Catholic women’s mental institution, where Beatrice, an aristocrat who used to live there with dignity, is now an involuntarily committed patient. The story gets underway when she takes interest in newly arrived younger mess Donatella, who becomes her roommate. Donatella doesn’t welcome the attention at first, but Beatrice seems to awaken something in her. For pretty much the second half, the two of them run away and attempt to enjoy themselves as long as they can, whether by spending like millionaires despite low funds or by reconnecting with family members and former lovers on the outside.

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

I've been putting this off a long time, because unlike most viewers, I got very little out of the first two Bourne entries. The Bourne Identity struck me as an odd combination of stark and semi-comically unrealistic; despite my viewing in a theater, even the car chase failed to excite me. The Bourne Supremacy, which introduced more popular director Paul Greengrass to the franchise, was too bleak to provide much fun, and I kept getting déjà vu. Fans of the third have described it as almost too intense, and less generous critics have said it is too intense (and has no actual ultimatum). Nevertheless, between its Academy Awards and its continual placement on the IMDb top 250, the threequel seemed necessary for my cinematic education.

The Netflix jacket would have you believe that the only new elements are a few moderately famous actors and several major cities on three continents, but I can do a little better at summarizing. The titular rogue secret government assassin (Matt Damon) has apparently kept a low profile for weeks following the Moscow events in TBS. Then a Guardian journalist writing about him reveals insider knowledge of one Operation Blackbriar, getting his attention -- and, less welcomely, that of the CIA. With fresh clues and the cooperation of a disenchanted operative (Julia Stiles), Jason Bourne resumes his search to fill the sizable holes in his memory, all the while evading or fighting the agency led by Noah Vosen (David Strathairn) and, more sympathetically, Pamela Landy (Joan Allen).

Call Northside 777 (1948)

It had been a month and a half since my last B&W film, so I decided to watch one of the few such entries on my Netflix streaming list. All I could recall about this one offhand was that it starred James Stewart and had a noirish look to it. The next big thing I learned, after the opening credits, was that it's a true story (albeit with a few identifying details changed for legal reasons) shot in the actual locations whenever possible. Reportedly, it's the first Hollywood movie shot entirely in Chicago.

P.J. McNeal (Stewart) of the Chicago Times is assigned to interview an old woman who advertises a $5,000 reward for any information that could exonerate her son, Frank Wiecek (Richard Conte), convicted of murdering a policeman back in the Prohibition Era. The resulting article makes waves. At first McNeal is rather sour about it, because he still believes Wiecek to be guilty, but his attempt to acquire info that would put an end to the media love affair only casts doubt on the verdict. Soon he's digging up anything he can to get a definite answer, which he hopes is innocence. But since it took 11 years for Mrs. Wiecek to save up the 5K, it's not easy to find what he wants.