Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983)

I knew going in that this would not be a jolly holiday flick. It's about prisoners of war, after all. Still, I could think of no more appropriate season to watch it.

In 1942, British Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence (Tom Conti) remains a leader among the POWs at a camp in Indonesia, serving as a bilingual liaison relatively amiable to the Japanese officers, especially the otherwise harsh Sergeant Hara (Takeshi Kitano), who says the title. But neither Lawrence nor Hara is as focal as rebellious new POW Major Celliers (David Bowie) or even Captain Yonoi (Ryuchi Sakamoto, doubling as the composer), who, for all his strictness, tends to show Celliers favor, apparently for a reason he'd rather not admit to himself....

Klaus (2019)

Wow, a brand new Christmas movie in the IMDb top 250. Has that ever happened before? And how long can we expect it to stay up there? There seemed no better choice for me to watch on Christmas itself.

The setting appears to be 19th-century Scandinavia, in an alternate timeline where the Santa Claus legend hasn't started yet. Jesper (Jason Schwartzman) is in a postal academy out of sheer nepotism and wants to flunk out and return to a spoiled life without obligation, but his father will not oblige him so easily. Instead, he is assigned to the far-northern, remote island town of Smeerensburg, where he must deliver 6,000 letters in one year or be disowned. The unfriendly citizens are caught up in a clan feud and have no desire to write to anyone. Jesper is about to give up when he accidentally delivers a kiddie drawing to hermit Klaus (J.K. Simmons), who has made many unused toys and decides to press Jesper into delivering one to that kid. Jesper spreads word among the children that letters to Klaus result in nighttime toy deliveries, and the legend begins to take shape.

Sully (2016)

I haven't seen many pieces of entertainment, in any medium, based directly on events that I heard about when they were news. In this case, it's hard for me to believe that the event happened nearly 11 years ago.

I speak of the "Miracle on the Hudson," in which long-time pilot Chesley Sullenberger (Tom Hanks) lands a damaged commercial plane on a river instead of heading for either of two nearby airports. Everyone survives, but that's not the end of Sully's troubles. He develops PTSD symptoms, he and wife Lorraine (Laura Linney) are not crazy about all the public attention, and the National Transportation Safety Board, while impressed at his landing skill, thinks he made a dangerously wrong decision and should not be allowed to fly again. Can he convince the Board that its analyses are incorrect?

The Traitor (2019)

Thanks partly to a late start on my part, I didn't connect with the Meetup group that invited me to this showing, even afterward. Still, I overheard many people discussing it as they left, so I got a good sense of prevailing emotions. It's not the kind of movie you can be quiet about once you've seen it.

Based on a true story and spanning decades, it begins when Tommaso Buscetta is already established as Don Masino, "the Boss of Two Worlds." When he's served a fair amount of time for drug trafficking in Brazil and lost far too many relatives to infighting in the Sicilian Mafia (or Cosa Nostra, as they prefer to call it), he decides to spill all kinds of secrets to the legal authorities. This is almost unprecedented at the time, and you can guess how dangerous it is, especially in areas where Cosa Nostra is actually popular.

A Soldier's Story (1984)

Uh-oh, another little-mentioned '80s drama. Fortunately in my eyes, this one came out the same year as Amadeus, which could easily overshadow something good. And most of the on-screen soldier stories I can think of aren't bad.

In World War II, CPT Richard Davenport (Howard E. Rollins, Jr.) is sent from Washington, DC, to a Louisiana army base to investigate the anonymous fatal shooting of SGT Vernon Waters (Adolph Caesar) a short way from base. Given Waters' race and the setting, the KKK is the first suspect to jump to most minds, but of course, to have the first suspicion be correct would render the movie pretty lame. The local colonel allows only three days to solve the case, and that's not the last obstacle set in Davenport's path by officers who would prefer that he not be there. Those who appear to have nothing against Black people still fear likely reactions to a Black officer investigating and possibly arresting White soldiers....

Autumn Sonata (1978)

This is only the second Ingmar Bergman film I've seen in color, as well as the first with dubbing rather than subtitles, because that's what the DVD offered. The dub dialog is finely chosen, but the accents are so heavy that I didn't immediately realize it was English. Regardless, I could appreciate the advantage of not having to read the whole time, even if I had to remind myself not to get distracted by the slight disconnect between the words and the lip movements.

Famed pianist Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman, with the similarly named but unrelated director for once) visits her eldest daughter, Eva (Liv Ullmann), for the first time in ages. She is unpleasantly surprised to find her other daughter, Helena (Lena Nyman), living there too. Helena has limited mobility and apparently some sort of brain damage, her speech rarely intelligible to anyone but Eva. Eva's husband, Viktor (Halvar Björk), is also present but mostly keeps to himself, especially when Charlotte and Eva are conversing, since these two have considerable issues with each other.