The Judge (2014)

Perhaps the most notable thing about this flick is that it made Robert Duvall the oldest Oscar nominee yet, at 84. That record has since been broken. Of course, I was just as likely to have been drawn in by the lead actor, Robert Downey, Jr.

Hank (Downey) is an especially scuzzy lawyer, favoring guilty clients for profit, which may explain why he's getting a divorce and hasn't seen any of his birth family in ages. The latter changes when he attends his mother's funeral in her fictitious hometown of Carlinville, Indiana. He's eager to head back to Chicago -- until his father, Joseph (Duvall), a long-time judge, gets arrested for a fatal hit and run on an ex-con (Mark Kiely) Joseph might well have wanted to kill. Sensing how inadequate a local defense attorney (Dax Shepard) is, Hank reluctantly steps up to the plate, but Joseph, who can't remember hitting anyone, may prefer to be found guilty of second-degree murder if the alternative is to publicize his waning mental faculties. And the prosecutor (Billy Bob Thornton) is determined.

Falling Down (1993)

The premise of this movie daunted me by sounding gritty. That said, director Joel Schumacher isn't known for grit. If anything, people wish he were more serious. In spite of his low popularity, I generally like what I've seen of his work, not least for his ability to fill the screen. If this was off the beaten path for him, so much the better for broadening my perception.

Bill (Michael Douglas) starts in a familiar scenario: an L.A. traffic jam. His first act to make him stand out is to leave his car, telling the objector behind him that he's walking "home." Lest you think this a retelling of After Hours, know that it's actually his former home, where ex Beth (Barbara Hershey) doesn't welcome him at all, but he'd hate to miss their young daughter Adele's birthday. As the plot progresses, we see more and more signs of why Beth got a restraining order: Bill becomes a formidable enemy to pretty much everyone he meets along the way.

The Road (2009)

As long-time readers of my blog may recall, I like to set October aside for movies that befit Halloween one way or another. Unfortunately, the first disc I received this month was unplayable, so I searched my streaming list and found it sparse on anything like horror. This looked like my best bet.

You'd guess from the bland title that it was a road trip feature, but it seems to me that no actual road gets much screen time. It's a post-apocalyptic drama, which can't help taking on facets of a thriller at times. Neither the movie nor the Cormac McCarthy book on which it's based specify the cause, but we see plenty of dead trees, few nonhuman animals, and no signs of future tech. The protagonists, an unnamed man (Viggo Mortensen) and his unnamed son (Kodi Smit-McPhee, who later starred in ParaNorman), make a trek southward to survive a winter without fuel. Along the way, they must beware other people, who are likely to rob them or do much, much worse....