Arrival (2016)

My poor dad wasn't feeling well enough to come watch this with me. I suppose I could've waited another week for him, but I've been getting antsy to see the most talked-about Academy Award nominees and hadn't given much thought to Lion yet. In retrospect, La La Land, which he's already seen, would've been a better choice, but I keep feeling reluctant: Ryan Gosling hasn't been in many movies I like, and Damien Chazelle is best known for something that disturbs me. Had I noticed that Arrival was directed by the ever-disturbing Denis Villeneuve, the latter reason wouldn't have worked for me.

Giant alien ships land at twelve seemingly random points far apart on Earth. U.S. Army Col. Weber (Forest Whitaker) invites renowned language professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams) to translate messages from the two known aliens at the U.S. landing site. Unable to work remotely, she comes to meet them face to...face?...and slowly learn their reason for visiting -- hopefully before someone in power jumps to the wrong conclusion. Her biggest help in the endeavor is Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), who's more partial to science than language, but that doesn't stop the obvious signs of a budding romance.

There Was a Crooked Man... (1970)

The '70s were a strange time for westerns. After late '60s classics like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Wild Bunch, and the works of Sergio Leone, there must have been some pressure to try things a little differently. We got the kooky, offbeat Little Big Man and the contrary, brothel-focused McCabe & Mrs. Miller, both rather popular but neither up my alley. And sometimes quirks came together with R ratings, as in this, Joseph L. Mankiewicz's only effort at the genre.

Paris Pitman, Jr. (Kirk Douglas -- don't worry; I'll take a long break from him after this review) goes to a prison from which, according to an elderly cellmate known as the Missouri Kid (Burgess Meredith), no one has ever escaped with his life. But Paris has a lot of loot well hidden and would hate to let it go to waste. The first warden (Martin Gabel) offers to free Paris for 50% of it, but a more conscientious replacement (Henry Fonda) isn't on board. Paris uses the promise of riches to enlist the help of all his cellmates to escape, including a pathetic youth on death row (Michael Blodgett); a lazy swindler (John Randolph) and his effete, resentful, but loyal and talented assistant (Hume Cronyn); a strong, silent, seeming simpleton (C.K. Yang); and a violent drunkard (Warren Oates).

Young Man with a Horn (1950)

It's a little late for me to be continuing my celebration of Kirk Douglas, but why not do it anyway? Other people must be doing it too, because several of the films I wanted to see have a wait on Netflix. I made a point not to get a western this time, because my last viewing of him came awfully close. It's also from relatively early in his career, when he was not quite my current age.

Adapted from a novel based loosely on the life of Bix Beiderbecke, it centers on Douglas as Rick Martin (no, nobody calls him Ricky), who starts trumpet lessons as a tween orphan thanks to jazz band leader Art Hazzard (Juano Hernandez). In adulthood, he makes the professional and friendly acquaintance of narrating pianist "Smoke" (Hoagy Carmichael) and singer Jo Jordan (Doris Day). At first his main problem is a tendency to deviate from the sheet music, which doesn't sit well with most employers of the era. A bigger problem arrives in the form of Jo's friend Amy (Lauren Bacall), who draws his attention away from his music....

Moonlight (2016)

It's unlike me to go to a screening on a whim, but I had walked past the theater in the afternoon and made a note to see something in the evening. I still have a lot of films to catch up on before the Academy Awards. This one had a more convenient timing than Arrival, as well as more esteem in the AFI's book.

The movie is set and authentically filmed mostly in the Miami area. None of my sources say which decades it takes place in, but from the opening song, I suspect the '70s to the late '80s or early '90s. At any rate, it focuses on Chiron (pronounced shy-ROAN) at three stages: around nine, when most people call him "Little" or "Little Man"; in high school, when he's transitioning between nicknames; and as a twenty-something, when he's adopted the alias "Black" from a...sort of friend, Kevin. In the first two stages, he faces verbal and physical bullies, partly for his scrawniness and partly for his mother's earned disrepute. (Naomie Harris had had a policy against playing such a woman, but she caved upon learning that director Barry Jenkins based her on his own mother.) His best support comes from a relatively noble drug dealer and his girlfriend (Mahershala Ali and Janelle Monáe, again), the former of whom has the only line about moonlight. Then Chiron and Kevin come to occupy special places in each other's hearts....

Hidden Figures (2016)

We shouldn't hear many #OscarsSoWhite complaints next month. While I have yet to check out Moonlight, Fences, or Loving, they get enough positive press outside the Black community to suggest a few nominations at least. But only HF presents a focus on Black women in particular, facing sexism as well as racism.

Specifically, they're three NASA employees in the early '60s, more united than the other Black women in their position if only because they ride to work in the same lemon. The one with the most screen time is Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), whose mad math skills get a room full of White men to rely on her to check vital calculations. Despite exhaustion, she is receptive to the hints from everyone, including her young daughters, that she should hook up with one Col. Jim Johnson (Mahershala Ali). Meanwhile, Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer) has been pulling her weight as an unofficial supervisor in the "colored" female mathematician division without the benefits; when NASA finally installs a room-sized computer, she takes the initiative in learning how it works, not just to help NASA but to avoid layoffs. Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) doesn't appear to make any great contributions to the space race in the course of the film, but she does pursue an engineering education and career -- in a Virginia that does not respect Brown v. Board of Education.

Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016)

Having enjoyed the first two in the series, I was rather dismayed to sense a lukewarm reception for this. Sure, it blew away Norm of the North in its first duel, but even weeks before Zootopia stole its thunder, few people seemed interested in it. Even the dumb-looking Sing is ahead by a majority of estimates. Well, as one of the minority of viewers who preferred the second movie to the first, I thought I might beg to differ again. Besides, I saw nothing to lose by streaming.

You've likely seen ads indicating that fanboy-turned-champion Po (Jack Black) finally reunites with other pandas, whom he had presumed wiped out. As hinted at the end of KFP2, the first one to find him is his original father, Li (Bryan Cranston), provoking the jealousy of adoptive father Mr. Ping (James Hong). This is not as incidental to the main conflict as you'd think, for the latest national menace, the oddly solid spirit of a bull named Kai (J.K. Simmons), can be defeated only by a "master of qi" -- pandas' historical area of expertise. Po accepts Li's invitation to the hidden panda village, where, if he doesn't master qi in time, at least he'll learn more about his identity, the question of which is plaguing him once more.

The King of Comedy (1982)

When a movie title itself speaks of humor, it's usually serious. The only exception I can think of is A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Netflix calls this Martin Scorsese piece a black comedy, but I think it works best if you go in expecting a drama with some thriller elements.

Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) badly wants to do guest stand-up on the late-night show of Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis in his 50s, basically as himself). His aggressive tactics get Jerry to mildly encourage further communication, but as we'd all suspect, it's just a polite way to send him off. About halfway in, Rupert and his...well, not friend and certainly not girlfriend...comrade-in-obsession Masha (Sandra Bernhardt) abduct Jerry in order to demand a ten-minute opening act. Rupert knows he'll go to prison for it, but to his mind, even fleeting stardom is worth it.

The Man from Snowy River (1983)

With the 100th birthday of Kirk Douglas last month, I thought I should check out another of his films soon. Of the ones I hadn't seen yet and wanted to, only this one was available streaming.

Not knowing the Banjo Petersen poem that inspired the movie, at first I thought it was a western, but the main accents give away an Australian setting in the same period as the Old West. Late teen Jim Craig has plenty of experience with horses, not all of it good: Brumbies (Aussie for wild horses) cause a fatal accident for his widowed father and make off with his mare, forcing Jim to look for a paying job. With the help of his dad's mining partner, Spur (Douglas), he finds ranch work under American transplant Harrison (also Douglas), who turns out to be Spur's estranged brother. Being a mountain boy makes Jim both valuable and an outsider. He soon finds that the best part of working there is proximity to Harrison's daughter, Jessica, who wants to pursue the same line of work as the men. But stubborn Harrison has other ideas for both of them.

Moana (2016)

I wanted my last theatrical viewing of 2016 to be a good one, and I wanted to catch this one before it left the theater (still glad my folks and I waited until the crowds had petered out). That said, I had my reservations going in, because Maui looked like an uncomplimentary caricature of Pacific Islanders. Sure, I loved Aladdin (which had two of the same directors) as a kid despite its depiction of Arabs, but Maui's a traditional demigod -- and not from the long-disbelieved Greek or Nordic myths, either. Well, Disney did recruit plenty of at least partly Polynesian actors, so maybe it's not half as politically incorrect as it could be.

Sometime before the first European arrival on the fictitious isle of Motunui, a famine begins. Local legend has it that vanished/vanquished former hero Maui (Dwayne Johnson) inadvertently brought on a spreading curse when he swiped and then lost a stone called the Heart of Te Fiti. At age 16, Moana (Auli'i Cravalho) finally fulfills her desire to sail beyond the reef against the orders of her overprotective father, Chief Tui (Temuera Morrison). The apparently sapient ocean gives her the Heart, choosing her to find Maui and accompany him on a journey to restore it. She finds him soon enough, but talking him into a rematch against demon Te Ka takes longer.

This Gun for Hire (1942)

Somehow, I thought it had been longer since my last film noir. Well, this one is more purely within the genre. It also stands out for "introducing" Alan Ladd, 11 years before Shane. He got fourth billing despite probably the biggest role, but it did popularize him.

In southern California, hitman Philip Raven (Ladd) kills the blackmailer of chemical mogul Willard Gates (Laird Cregar), only to be paid in bills marked for tracing. Raven seeks revenge, but he also wants to track down Gates' employer and find out what the operation is all about. Meanwhile, Gates hires singing magician Ellen Graham (Veronica Lake) at his nightclub. Graham, girlfriend of visiting detective Michael Crane (Robert Preston), is asked to spy on Gates for signs of wartime treason. Raven and Graham happen to sit together on a train, and Raven coerces her into helping him elude the police....