Red-Headed Woman (1932)

I hadn't selected this on its own merits; it was simply on the same disc as Waterloo Bridge for being both from the same year and similarly risque. I considered skipping it altogether, but I could afford to kill another 79 minutes that night, and its ratings didn't look too bad. Besides, it featured a bigger name in the lead role.

If the title makes you think of negative stereotypes, that's probably the idea. Lil (Jean Harlow) is a social climber, but she climbs in a horizontal position, if you get my drift. I suppose it's more accurate to say "financial" rather than "social," because the aristocrats who know her game want nothing to do with her. She seduces quite a few men in the course of the story; the one with the most screentime is Bill (Chester Morris), a wealthy heir who wants to call it off before his wife (Leila Hyams) calls something else off, but Lil is too tenacious for his willpower.

Waterloo Bridge (1931)

This does not come up in searches as readily as its 1940 remake, which enjoys slightly higher ratings on average. Either I selected it by mistake, or I was more curious about the older version for being scandalous enough to call for a tamer telling under the Hays Code. That and I'd never seen a non-horror directed by James Whale.

While this is a war film in part, the titular bridge in London is not being guarded or taken by a focal platoon as I had assumed. Instead, it's where Roy (Douglass Montgomery), a young American soldier oddly in the Canadian Army, meets out-of-work chorus girl Myra (Mae Clarke) as they both help a stubborn old lady (Rita Carlyle) get to safety during a WWI air raid. The two spend time at Myra's run-down apartment until the all-clear signal. Roy falls in love with Myra and, concerned about his military assignment, proposes before long. She's rather fond of him, too, but tries to dissuade him from pursuing her because of her, well, more reliable source of income that she'd rather not divulge....

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)

It is somewhat fitting that this should be the first of the year's Academy Best Picture nominees that I see, because it was almost certainly the longest in development: Aaron Sorkin wrote it in 2007. We can only imagine how it would have differed if the original plan for Steven Spielberg to direct had panned out. I did detect a bit of Spielberg flavor before I knew that, but no, it's Sorkin's second turn as a screen director.

After a rather brisk intro, most of the film runs from the start of the trial to the end. For those like me who've been a little hazy, the Chicago 7 are Vietnam War protesters charged with deliberately inciting a riot at the '68 Democratic National Convention. In truth, eight men are on trial most of the time, but Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) doesn't belong there and eventually gets a mistrial declared. The others are Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen), Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins), and John Froines (Daniel Flaherty). Defense counsel William Kunstler (Mark Rylance -- have a few Brits as Americans) sees an uphill battle as unrelated Judge Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella) is plainly unfair and probably senile. Several of the defendants figure it's political theater and would rather make their message heard than try to get acquitted.

Ashes and Diamonds (1958)

It looks like my queue is currently short on war movies, especially ones depicting American soldiers. Had I realized in time, I might have pushed this World War II drama, the third in a trilogy by director Andrzej Wajda, back to Memorial Day weekend. Or if I did have an appropriate viewing lined up for then, I'd have pushed this several weeks out for the sake of spacing. Oh well.

In 1945, Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski), Andrzej (Adam Pawlikowski), and Drewnowski (Bogumił Kobiela) have served in the recently disbanded Home Army of Poland and are now anti-communist agents. Their first attempt on the life of Polish Workers Party secretary Konrad Szczuka (Wacław Zastrzeżyński) results in the death of two misidentified men. For most of the rest of the film, they seem to be dragging their heels about a second attempt. They hardly believe in their cause anymore, and Maciek at least may have something more to live for after meeting barmaid Krystyna (Ewa Krzyżewska).

Gone Girl (2014)

Previously, I indicated a reluctance to see this movie, primarily because I tend to have trouble liking David Fincher thrillers. But placement on IMDb's top 250 and a Best Actress Oscar nod are nothing I'd sneeze at. This being 149 minutes, I split it across two nights.

Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) is semi-famous for the same reason as Christopher Robin Milne: She inspired a classic children's lit character by the same name. For this reason, many people take notice when she becomes a missing person. We viewers can assume up front that her husband, Nick (Ben Affleck), had no part in her disappearance, judging from his surprise at the overturned furniture when he comes home, but others have no such assurance. A lot of circumstantial evidence points to him, and his known behavior isn't utterly winning. The lead detective (Kim Dickens) is pretty lenient toward him, but he and his nearby-living twin, Margo (Carrie Coon, actually nine years Affleck's junior), feel a need to do something before the police decide they have enough cause for a murder charge. And their state of residence, Missouri, practices the death penalty.

A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

As intriguing as the title sounded to me, this is actually a reduction from the John Klempner story A Letter to Five Wives. I don't blame director Joseph L. Mankiewicz for trimming the number; 103 minutes was long enough. It certainly didn't hurt the prestige, netting Academy Awards for both Best Director and Best Screenplay, tho All the King's Men won Best Picture that year. (I might have nominated it for Best Sound, based on a brief Auto-Tune-like effect I didn't think they could make at the time.)

Deborah (Jeanne Crain), Rita (Ann Sothern), and Lora Mae (Linda Darnell) are heading off on a cruise when they receive the titular letter from their shared "friend," Addie (voiced by Celeste Holm but never clearly shown), boasting that she has run off with one of their husbands without saying who. They want to believe it's a sick joke, but each woman reflects on how easily it could her own. Most of the runtime consists of flashbacks to trouble brewing in their relationships, with Addie in the periphery like an ominous apparition. Only after the cruise can they hope to learn the truth.

Okko's Inn (2018)

With disc deliveries slowed again, I opted to stream a movie, and not wishing to spend a long time on selection, I went straight for the first anime on my list. Hey, it had been more than seven months. All I really knew going in was what the one-sentence Netflix summary said, plus the inviting art style.

Elementary schooler Okko (Seiran Kobayashi) is curiously uninjured from a car crash that kills her parents. She moves into the small-town inn run by her grandmother, Mineko (Yôko Asegami), where she soon discovers a rare effect of a near-death experience: She can see and hear spirits. The first one she meets is the ghost of a young boy, Uri-bô (Satsumi Matsuda), who hangs around the inn because he was Mineko's close friend in life. At Uri-bô's urging, Okko offers to become the assistant innkeeper, set to allow Mineko to retire eventually.

National Lampoon's Vacation (1983)

Once again, I chose a comedy that didn't look like my type. I had enjoyed another National Lampoon hit, Animal House, but I'm not 18 anymore, and Chevy Chase hasn't struck me as on par with John Belushi. Still, the name of Chase's character, Clark Griswold, pops up now and then, and it wouldn't do for me merely to assume a generic bumbling dad in a hackneyed farce.

The vacation in question is to Roy Walley World, a knockoff of Disneyland, despite the kids, Rusty (Anthony Michael Hall) and Audrey (Dana Barron), being too old to feel very excited about it. Clark insists on a drive all the way from Chicago, partly to see sights along the way and partly to avoid the isolation that commonly occurs on flights. They also visit relatives on the side of his wife, Ellen (Beverly D'Angelo), tho that isn't in Clark's plus column. The journey takes up most of the runtime, and as you can imagine, it's one mishap after another.