True Romance (1993)

I rather liked this movie in young adulthood but totally forgot what happens in it, besides a happy ending. Since Quentin Tarantino wrote it, you know it's not just a romantic comedy/drama; it's an R-rated crime flick with antiheroes. At least having Tony Scott direct instead means there's no fixation on a woman's bare feet.

Detroit comic store clerk Clarence Worley (Christian Slater) hits it off with Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette) before knowing she's a call girl hired by his employer as a birthday present. Nonetheless, she does fall for him, and they elope. Hearing how rotten her pimp Drexl Spivey (Gary Oldman) is, Clarence confronts him, ends up killing him, and orders another call girl to pack Alabama's things. Only after Clarence takes the suitcase home does he see that it's full of stolen cocaine bags. He hopes to sell it fast in L.A., but he'll have to worry about getting tracked down by previous owners as well as police.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

A quarter century ago, I saw the second half of this thanks to my roommate. I felt like I'd seen enough, but more recently, I've wanted the complete picture. It was one of the most popular Netflix horror offerings I hadn't seen in full and one of the last influential and arguably great works of Francis Ford Coppola, with only The Rainmaker for competition since.

Toward the end of the 19th century, the Romanian count (Gary Oldman) gets help from suspicious English lawyer Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) to move to England. Dracula sees a picture of Harker's fiancée, Wilhelmina Murray (Winona Ryder), and is strongly reminded of his own bygone wife. He sees fit to let his harem restrain Harker by exsanguination while he goes off to court Mina, in addition to satisfying his infamous other appetite. When Mina's friend Lucy Westenra (Sadie Frost) exhibits strange physical and mental symptoms, fiancé Arthur Holmwood (Cary Elwes) reluctantly turns to the expertise of Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins), who quickly determines the cause....

The Book of Eli (2010)

As I worried about not having enough creepy movies for the month, I happened to find this DVD on a giveaway shelf. Sure, the movie's not a horror or thriller, and even "sci-fi" would be a stretch despite the future setting, but it certainly depicts a world we would not prefer to the present.

Nobody says directly, but evidence suggests that the ruins across America are due to nuclear war. It must have been religious in nature, because people subsequently destroyed every Abrahamic tract they could find. After 31 years, some regret that decision, even if literacy has become as scarce as soap or fresh water. Loner Eli (Denzel Washington) has found the only copy of the KJV to his knowledge, and he believes that a voice has told him to take it westward, where it will be duly appreciated. Gang leader/de facto mayor Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman) will stop at nothing to get his hands on it, up to and including threatening his mistress's daughter, Solara (Mila Kunis), who wants to run away with Eli.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

I had found Rise of the Planet of the Apes "very Hollywood," by which I mean entertaining but geared toward the lowest common denominator. Of course, you have to expect a lot of simplicity in a story about apes with slightly enhanced brains who want to escape captivity. The sequel promised a rather different plot but had the same IMDb rating, so I decided to give it a try.

A detail I had missed at the end of Rise was the start of "simian flu." The opening herein might remind you uncomfortably of the COVID-19 pandemic, but this one is much worse, reducing the world's human population to the 0.2% who can resist it. The maybe hundreds of survivors in the San Francisco area hope to reach and restore a hydroelectric dam, which requires a handful of them to pass through the uplifted apes' claimed forest. Head chimp Caesar (Andy Serkis) is pretty patient, having been raised by kind humans and sensing a similar type in Malcolm (Jason Clarke), but paranoid tensions mount on both sides....

Mank (2020)

I was wrong: This 2020 Academy Best Picture nominee took even longer to come to fruition. Too bad the writer, Jack Fincher, father of director David, didn't live to see it. Anyway, once again, I gave it priority among the nominees only because of its availability.

We tend to think of Citizen Kane as exclusively an Orson Welles (Tom Burke) work, but Herman J. "Mank" Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) gets credit as a co-writer. Exactly how much credit he deserves is disputed, but in this telling, he writes the entire first draft. This is not easy for him to do in a timely fashion, because he has a drinking problem, a broken leg from a car crash, a half-estranged wife (Tuppence Middleton), the hostility of William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) over this imminent unflattering depiction, and general unpopularity for not opposing the California gubernatorial run of Upton Sinclair (Bill Nye).

Darkest Hour (2017)

I'm not sure why I didn't watch this sooner. It looked like one of the more promising Academy Best Picture nominees of the year. Maybe on some level, I thought I already had too good an idea of what it offered, so I gave it a lower priority.

This window on the life of Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman) covers about a month in 1940, starting with the resignation of Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup) and ending with Churchill's best-known speech, incidentally in connection with the retreat from Dunkirk. The main focus is on him contending with officials who would rather appease Hitler than keep fighting him, including Chamberlain and Lord Halifax (Stephen Dillane) -- who might be able to get Churchill deposed if they can prove that he won't consider peaceful options.