The Beguiled (2017)

When I accepted the Meetup invitation to see this, I didn't know that it was a remake -- or rather, as the director insisted, a second cinematic adaptation of a book. Some of the older group members had seen the Clint Eastwood version and found it haunting, so there was a bit to live up to. For my part, I wanted to see a promising Sofia Coppola film for the first time since Lost in Translation.

Cpl. John McBurnie (Colin Farrell), a Union deserter with a fresh leg wound, finds reluctant hospitality at a Confederate girl school with headmistress Martha Farnsworth (Nicole Kidman), teacher Edwina Murrow (Kirsten Dunst), and five students (of whom Elle Fanning plays the probable eldest). Despite his official enemy status, he garners the affectionate interest of eventually all seven ladies. Martha figures on sending him away upon recovery, but when he gets well enough to tend the neglected garden, it becomes more tempting to let him stay. Alas, his intentions are not all innocent, let alone harmless in effect to others or himself.

The Boxtrolls (2014)

This must be the first time I've taken Netflix's up-front suggestion for movie streaming. Now I've finally seen all the most recent Best Animated Feature nominees, ending with the one least widely welcome on the list. Personally, I can't blame the Academy for passing over the commercialism of The Lego Movie, but I'll have to check out The Book of Life for another possible replacement.

The Boxtrolls wastes no time (which there's never much of in stop-action) establishing a conflict: In a British town circa 1900, few humans have any love for the trolls who live underground, wear old cardboard boxes, and steal various objects off the street at night -- mostly inexpensive or even trashed. When loutish Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley gone Cockney) reports that the Boxtrolls have abducted a baby, supposedly for food, he persuades the mayor to authorize him and his three assistants to annihilate the menace by any means necessary. Ten years later, the former baby, dubbed "Eggs" due to his box, makes contact with a curfew-defying girl around the same age -- the mayor's daughter. Together they strive to dispel the false rumors about Boxtrolls, but Snatcher has his lordly ambitions as well as his influence....