Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)

As I've said, movies about real-life British royalty have a good track record with me. This one is by the same director (Charles Jarrott) as Anne of the Thousand Days, so it was apt to feel even more like a sequel thereto than The Private Life of Henry VIII.

The tale begins in 1560, when teenage Mary (34-year-old Vanessa Redgrave) is about to lose her first husband, King Francis of France (Richard Denning). Having no claim to his throne, she decides to return to Scotland, but Queen Elizabeth (Glenda Jackson) will not grant her safe passage through England to get there. Even when Mary arrives home by ship, she finds her reception rather lacking, thanks to the rise of Protestantism and attendant hostility to Catholics such as herself. Indeed, her next 27 years will be riddled with people seeking to undermine her, whether by making her a figurehead in practice, persuading her to renounce all authority, imprisoning her, or assassinating her.

Spies (1928)

This was it: the last 1920s movie on my Netflix queue or list and thus probably the last silent. If it would become my last silent viewing ever, I was wise to choose one from a proven director, Fritz Lang.

Bank director Haghi (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) also leads a vast spy ring that meddles in international government affairs, seemingly just for the sake of wielding power. Knowing that one Agent 326 (Willy Fritsch, whose character name is never revealed) seeks to bring him down, he sends an agent of his own, Sonja (Gerda Maurus), to seduce and betray 326. The plan backfires when she falls for him for real. Of course, catching a mastermind still isn't easy....

Swiss Family Robinson (1960)

Another family feature already, because I hadn't arranged my queue with care in that regard. Anyway, I chose this more for title recognition than any other reason, knowing only that it was a live-action Disney movie tied to a book in the Robinson Crusoe subgenre. Subsequent research told me that it takes even more license than usual for Disney, including dropping "The" from the title for some reason. Oh well. It may not help kids cheat on an English test, but at least it's pretty popular in its own right.

During the Napoleonic Wars, between the threat of pirates and a raging storm, a crew abandons a ship bound for colonial New Guinea without warning its five passengers below deck, who find out only when they become castaways. Mercifully, the nearest island, while uncharted, is quite lush, and the wrecked ship still has plenty of useful elements. Over the course of maybe months, the family contends with the forces of nature and, ultimately, the same pirates. They also face some internal conflicts, such as one on the Lord of the Flies-type question of how much effort to put into signaling for a rescue.

Paddington 2 (2018)

Until a few months ago, I had never read a Paddington Bear book in my life, so I brought no nostalgia to this viewing. Ordinarily, I'm leery of live-action adaptations of kiddie books with CG animal stars (Christopher Robin being an exception because Disney already had practice with the franchise), but this one didn't get a Stuart Little 2 reception. Indeed, it was astoundingly successful. Would I be about the only reviewer not to love it?

The possibly adolescent cub (Ben Whishaw) has been living with his adoptive human family, the Browns (Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Madeleine Harris, Samuel Joslin, and Julie Walters as the housekeeper), in London for some time now, but he hasn't forgotten his Aunt Lucy (Imelda Staunton) back in Peru. He hopes to earn enough for a unique antique book for her birthday present. Alas, he spills its whereabouts to neighbor Phoenix Buchanan (Hugh Grant), who secretly knows its value as a treasure map and has the skills to steal it and get away via disguise and stage magic. What's worse, Paddington, in his attempt to stop the unidentified thief, ends up taking the fall and going to prison. The Browns do what they can to find the real thief, while Paddington makes do with a different sector of humanity for company.

Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

I didn't expect to get much out of this. You may have noticed that there are only so many comedies I really like, and SatB has mixed reviews. But it was quite a hit back in the day, and I continue to see allusions to it now and then, so I figured I owed myself the education.

Bo "Bandit" Darville (Burt Reynolds) does not appear to have any legitimate employment, just a daredevil reputation. "Big" Enos Burdette (Pat McCormick), an aristocrat with a hankering for gambling, promises him $80,000 if he can be the first to drive from Atlanta to Texarkana and return with 400 cases of Coors in just 28 hours. In this version of reality, not only does that require a high average pace, but it runs the risk of a bootlegging charge. The Netflix jacket fails to mention that Bandit doesn't drive the rig himself; he aims to distract the fuzz in a Burdette-funded new Trans Am for his buddy Cledus "Snowman" Snow (Jerry Reed, who also wrote the movie's signature songs).