World War Z (2013)

I chose this partly for being relatively popular and partly because Netflix will drop it at the end of the month. Aside from that, all I knew going in was what the Z stood for. The first question in my mind was how the story would differ from that of the quintessential Dawn of the Dead.

Well, for starters, there is an unambiguous protagonist, Gerry (Brad Pitt), whose background as a UN investigator makes him especially important to combatting the viral zombie outbreak. Only about half an hour in, he gets his wife (Mireille Enos) and daughters (Sterling Jerins and Abigail Hargrove) from overrun Philly to a reasonably safe outpost. But even favor from the UN deputy secretary-general (Fana Mokoena) won't let them all live there indefinitely; Gerry has to pull his weight by going back into danger for clues on how to vaccinate against zombification. And yes, the characters do say "zombie" eventually.

Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning Part 1 (2023)

What a trickily punctuated title. Someone must regret that the original had a colon. Anyway, since the past three sequels had been going strong and Christopher McQuarrie was still directing, I figured it was a worthy way to fill an evening. Kinda surprised there weren't more people in my theater on its U.S. debut.

What can possibly challenge Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) anymore, when even age doesn't seem to slow him down? An online AI gone self-aware and rogue, now known only as "the Entity," has been infiltrating all kinds of sensitive information systems. Ethan's mission is to collect the two halves of a key that promises access to the Entity somewhere, but once he understands that the government wants to control rather than destroy the Entity, he himself goes rogue. Not only does he once again have Impossible Missions Force support only from Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), with the rest of the IMF after them, but they can't rely much on their state-of-the-art equipment with the Entity compromising things. To make matters worse, sadistic terrorist Gabriel (Esai Morales), a personal foe from before Ethan joined the IMF, is serving the Entity's interest.

Flee (2021)

I was not aware that a nearly fully animated feature with voice actors not all playing themselves could be called a documentary, tho some have come close. Waltz with Bashir may have been the first I saw that truly qualified. Anyway, I watched Flee partly to complete another year's worth of Academy Best Animated Feature nominees and partly because, on a flight where I had trouble hearing the dialog through earbuds, subtitles came in handy.

Amin (not his real name) lives in Denmark for quite some time without telling anyone, even his fiancé (not fiancée), what his life was like before. As the trauma interferes with his conviction to marry, he finally opens up to director Jonas Poher Rasmussen about how his family of six had to get away from the rigors of wartime Afghanistan and then Soviet Russia when he was a teen. For most of the story, they were not all together.

Lone Survivor (2013)

I don't know what possessed me to deliberately put this at the top of my queue right after The Lost Patrol, another war movie with, well, only one survivor. At least this time, we get fair warning on that score.

In 2005, four Navy SEALs (Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, and Ben Foster) are assigned to capture warlord Ahmad Shah (Yousuf Azami) in a mountainous region of Afghanistan, where radio signals are unreliable. When civilians happen upon them, they abort their stealth mission and try to get back to safety before the Taliban shows up in force. You already know they fail that too, and things don't go well for the first rescuers.

The Lost Patrol (1934)

When a pre-Code movie is a remake, that can mean only one thing: The original was silent. Quite an understandable move when there's plenty of inaudible gunfire. This particular remake is more popular than the original and reportedly inspired many knockoffs, but it's had a pretty mixed reception over the decades.

If there's a moral to the story, it's "Share important information with your team before heading into danger." In the first scene, a British WWI lieutenant gets gunned down in the desert by an unseen Arabian sniper. Since he had refused to tell anyone else in his patrol where they were going or why, the remaining 11 wander. When they find an oasis with a curiously abandoned fortress, they can only hope another British patrol will reach them before the snipers get them all.

Hamoun (1990)

Allegedly, Iranian critics in 1997 selected this as Iran's best picture ever, tho I can't find a solid citation for this repeated claim. At any rate, it doesn't appear to rate that high on any international list of more recent vintage, but it still enjoys high esteem.

Hamid Hamoun (Khosro Shakibai) is already under a bit of stress -- amid work at an import-export firm, study for a Ph.D., and effort to establish himself as a writer -- when his wife of seven years, Mahshid (Bita Farahi), blindsides him by suing for divorce. Against lawyer advice, he doesn't acquiesce, hoping to rekindle her love or at least understand, partly via flashbacks, why that won't happen. People start accusing him of mental instability, and as he fails to find comfort or satisfying answers, that assessment becomes increasingly true.

Under the Shadow (2016)

Hmm, a purportedly feminist mid-2010s horror-drama in Farsi, with a director who's part Iranian and part British, faring moderately on IMDb and extremely well on Rotten Tomatoes. I saw one of those about five years ago. But this one has a plot less like that and more like The Babadook.

Life is scary enough for anyone in Tehran during the War of the Cities in the mid-'80s. Shideh (Narges Rashidi) may have it harder than most: She can't finish her medical education thanks to her prior political involvement, her husband (Bobby Naderi) is assigned to a doctoral post in a dangerous zone, and she's left alone to take care of their maybe five-year-old daughter, Dorsa (Avin Manshadi). But the real scares come only after the dust settles from an Iraqi missile hitting their apartment building. As things make less and less sense, Shideh finds it hard to continue denying the rumor, held by Dorsa and certain neighbors, that the missile brought one or more jinni.

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

Just because I can't go to a theater doesn't mean I'm going to spend the whole summer without a typical summer movie! This one may have been the most popular superhero flick I hadn't seen yet, which, at this point, isn't saying much.

Most of the action takes place in 1983, a decade after most of the action in X-Men: Days of Future Past, which came out only two years earlier. The world at large has only recently discovered superpowered mutants, but it turns out that they predate civilization; they just became more common in the last century. One (Oscar Isaac) who would eventually go by "Apocalypse" had reigned as a god-king many times over, destroying nations when he saw fit, but an uprising in ancient Egypt resulted in him being buried and comatose for more than 5,000 years. It's not entirely clear what wakes him -- maybe a cosmic phenomenon or the mysticism of an inexplicable present cult -- but soon after, he decides the whole world is long overdue for a cleansing. No, he doesn't have halfway-noble reasons; he believes that the strong should rule. It doesn't take long for telepathic Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) to notice something's off, but while his school's students and staff are powerful, they haven't been training in combat for some time. They can barely be called X-Men. And the ensuing struggle is nothing to phone in.

For Sama (2019)

It's not often that I watch inherently tragic documentaries, no matter how honored they are. In this case, I accepted a Meetup invitation to see it in a theater. That meant more immersion, but at least I wouldn't feel alone in bearing it.

Made with a home movie camera and a few clips apparently from surveillance cameras, FS begins its story in 2011, when the then-18-year-old videographer, going by Waad Al-Kateab (her real name is not public information), attended the University of Aleppo. If that city name rings a bell, you should have a good idea what the focal conflict is. Waad's narration partly addresses her toddler daughter, Sama, to whom she wants to explain why their family didn't escape sooner and why they had a baby at all in a setting like that.

The Prophet (2014)

I read the Kahlil Gibran book long enough ago that I don't remember much of it, but I know I liked it. It presents some pretty unusual takes on philosophy, and even in the few places where I disagreed with title character Al Mustafa, I could enjoy the poetic presentation. Of course, there isn't much of a plot to the book, so any screen adaptation would have to add to it.

Indeed, Mustafa (Liam Neeson) isn't even the primary focal character in this movie. That honor goes to Almitra (Quvenzhané Wallis), a prepubescent girl who has said nothing in the two years since her father's death. Feeling unwelcome at school, she stubbornly follows her mother, Kamila (Salma Hayek, also a producer), whose job is to care for Mustafa during his house arrest. It's fortunate that Almitra didn't wait any longer to make his friendly acquaintance, because a surly sergeant (Alfred Molina, again with Hayek) shows up to usher him to a ship to his homeland, essentially changing the sentence to exile from his present environs. Many villagers slow their travel to the harbor, expressing gratitude to Mustafa and listening to any wisdom he has to offer. But Almitra overhears that the sergeant has a nastier plan for him....

The Color of Paradise (1999)

Director Majid Majidi was not a complete unknown to me. I liked Children of Heaven pretty well. IMDb confirms that I saw Baran, but I don't remember what happens in it. TCoP was his one movie made in between those two.

Eight-year-old Mohammad is blind, as is his actor. His sisters and grandmother love him no less for that, but widowed father Hashem's love is less certain. Not knowing how to raise such a family in poverty, especially when hoping to win a new bride, Hashem keeps trying to make Mohammad someone else's problem, as by leaving him at a boarding school or apprenticing him to a carpenter. (Iran, or at least that area of it, must not have had great child support services at the time.) Only a crisis near the end affirms Hashem's positive feelings.

In Between (2016)

I've seen a few movies set in Israel, invariably with a religiopolitical focus. But Omar had been the only one I'd seen with a Palestinian main character, until now. Thankfully, IB has nothing to do with conflict between Muslims and Jews.

OK, there's no single main character here: Three young Palestinian women in modern Tel Aviv split the screen time pretty evenly. Layla is a criminal defense lawyer of Islamic descent, clearly too rebellious to be devout. Roommate Salma, a deejay, wears a cross but also is not devout, and her more traditional parents would hate to learn which way she swings. Only the newcomer to the apartment, Nour, expresses piety, as evidenced by her hijab, which doesn't stop her from studying computer science. The others' casual ways put pressure on her to loosen up.

The Breadwinner (2017)

Nice to have finally seen a second Best Animated Feature nominee for the year. It had also been a while since I last saw an entire movie streaming on Netflix. Now I have an idea of what it takes to get me back in the habit.

From the beginning, things look bad for the Afghani family of preteen Parvana: They're trying to sell "the only thing of value" they have left. It gets worse when the Taliban arrests her father, Nurullah. With her older brother Sulayman dead, her younger brother Zaki still a baby, and no other male relatives in town, there is no legal option for anyone left in the household to go out in public. Parvana has her hair cut short, dresses as a boy, and works odd jobs. And despite her mother's admonition to give up hope, she plans to secure Nurullah's release one way or another.

Incendies (2010)

Ever watch a movie simply because it's on IMDb' top 250? I have many times, with mixed results. In all likelihood, I would not have watched this Denis Villeneuve piece otherwise, except maybe if a group invited me. I've grown wary (and weary) of dramas set in the modern Middle East.

The film, like the Wajdi Mouawad play on which it's based, actually never clarifies where in the Middle East it is. Shooting took place in Jordan, but the warring between Muslims and Christians, combined with the timeline, suggests Mouawad's homeland of Lebanon. At any rate, the first scene is clearly in Canada, where Christian immigrant Nawal has just died and her adult twin children, whose names have been assimilated to Jeanne and Simon, are surprised at her last wishes: They must deliver letters to their biological father, whom they'd heard had died before they were born; and their half-brother, whom they never heard of. Simon is inclined to dismiss his mother as crazy -- she did go catatonic for a while -- but Jeanne drags him into a fairly dangerous search in the old country, with help from the notary.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

I imagine that nobody was "ready" for this film when it arrived. For starters, it's set in Iran but made in the USA; that's why the on-screen credits are in English but the dialog isn't. Outside sources tell me the actors speak a pidgin Farsi, so it probably has limited popularity with Iranians. Seemingly the only reason for the setting is a whim of the debuting Iranian-American director, Ana Lily Amirpour. Who, admittedly, would be hard pressed to get it made in the real Iran.

If nobody had told me that AGWHAaN was a horror, I'd have had no idea for the first 24 minutes. For all that time, it's a deliberately monochrome, deliberately paced study of unwholesome characters in a bleak town called Bad City. (It sounds to me like they pronounce it "Bahd," so it must not be intended as the English adjective, except maybe for a pun.) These characters include young drug dealer Arash, his junkie father, a mean pimp, a tired prostitute, and an impish boy. And then there's the titular, severely laconic, unnamed "girl" in the black cloak, who stalks...well, I'm tempted not to tell you, but enough ads and reviewers have given it away already....

Of Gods and Men (2010)

The preview had gotten me interested in this one. It's based on a true story of nine French Trappist monks in Algeria under threat from Islamic extremists during the 1996 civil war. With all that we hear about Middle Eastern violence to this day, a little tale like this can easily be overlooked.

That said, an early massacre elsewhere that sets fears in motion is about the only violence you'll see in this film. Mostly it's the monks talking with each other, authorities, unhelpful soldiers, or aggressors at their door. Despite internal and external pressures to pack up and leave, they continue to treat injuries in the community, no questions asked. Alas, it's not the next Hotel Rwanda: What little we know of the reality dictated an unhappy, if largely unseen, ending (putting aside the question of what happens to Catholic martyrs).