Frozen II (2019)

I had planned to see this in a theater but put it off too long. Maybe I was too afraid it would be...not bad, but far below its predecessor, which I loved. It did get pretty mixed reviews. Still, I doubted that Missing Link deserved a Best Animated Feature nomination more. Maybe one piece set in 19th-century snowy Scandinavia was the Academy's limit.

A few years after the last events of Frozen, things have cooled down, as it were, in the pseudo-Norwegian kingdom of Arendelle. Not much has been happening for our heroes, except that Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) has had trouble proposing to Princess Anna (Kristen Bell), while her older sister, Queen Elsa (Idina Menzel), despite getting to be sociable again, retains a life dissatisfaction apparently connected to her growing ice powers -- which helps explain why, when only she can hear a mysterious distant singing voice, she warms up to the idea of following it. Her pursuit leads to something out of an account she heard from her dad (Alfred Molina) in childhood, involving agitated spirits of the classical elements who threaten both Arendelle and the pseudo-Norwegian Northuldra tribe. At the advice of a troll elder (Ciarán Hinds), she sets out for an enchanted forest for a solution, accompanied by Anna, Kristoff, and Olaf the living snowman (Josh Gad).

Legends of the Fall (1994)

No, it has nothing to do with The Fall. Reportedly, the title refers to the biblical Fall, but I'd hardly know from the movie itself: The characters aren't particularly religious and never say anything about the events of Genesis. Maybe the relevance is clearer in the Jim Harrison novella from which this is adapted.

The Netflix description makes it sound primarily like a war movie, but that's only for the first act. In 1914, Montana rancher William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins), despite having served as a colonel, is disillusioned with the government and doesn't want his three sons to fight in World War I, but Samuel (Henry Thomas) and Alfred (Aidan Quinn) insist. Tristan (Brad Pitt) feels obliged to come along to protect Samuel, not least for the sake of Samuel's intended, Susannah (Julia Ormond). Since Netflix hinted as much, I might as well tell you he fails. The rest of the story is shaped by this failure.

The In-Laws (1979)

For a picture I'd barely heard of, this was apparently pretty influential. It got a remake, it inspired Marlon Brando to work with writer Andrew Bergman, it appeared among Premiere's 50 favorite comedies, and someone on a forum I attend linked to a clip of the "serpentine" scene. That scene alone didn't make me want to watch, but there was enough popularity to give it a try.

Oddly enough, the main characters, who are not in-laws until the end, become a type you can't easily designate with one hyphenated term: fathers of the spouses. The bride's dad, Sheldon (Alan Arkin), is a New York dentist. The groom's dad, Vince (Peter Falk), does secretive work that requires frequent travel. They've barely met before Vince desperately requests Sheldon's naive help in picking up a hidden package. Soon the truth emerges: Vince works for the CIA, but what he's doing right now isn't exactly government sanctioned. Or safe even for an unwitting aid.

The Stranger (1946)

Finally, another true oldie! Not to mention my first Orson Welles movie in more than two years. He wasn't completely persona non grata in Hollywood yet, so he's not the only star of note here. More importantly from a historical perspective, this was his one immediate box office hit, tho Welles himself liked it least.

Franz Kindler (Welles) may have been the Nazi Party's best-kept secret, a Holocaust architect who always avoided the limelight, so the UN War Crimes Commission has little idea what to look for. Commission member Wilson (Edward G. Robinson) makes the irregular move of setting loose condemned "smaller fish" Konrad Meinike (Konstantin Shayne) and tailing him. Meinike flees to a small Connecticut town, discovers Wilson, and knocks him out before meeting Kindler, who now masquerades as seemingly American teacher Charles Rankin and will soon wed a Mary Longstreet (Loretta Young). To stop the trail cold, Kindler kills Meinike in the woods and buries him, however shallowly. When Wilson comes to, he finds his mission a little harder than he'd hoped.

Pain and Glory (2019)

Ah, my first Pedro Almodóvar viewing in five years. It's also easily his most recent film that I've seen, with 2006's Volver a distant second. Given that P&G draws inspiration from the writer-director's own life, according to an interview on the DVD, I can guess why he hasn't directed much of note in between.

Scenes jump around among the '60s, the '80s, and what I take to be roughly the present, but always in Spain. As a kid (Asier Flores), Salvador "Salva" Mallo is quite the achiever, but he lives in a backwater village of caves, and his mother (Penélope Cruz) and father (Raúl Arévalo) see the seminary as his only affordable means of education, much to his chagrin. As an adult (Antonio Banderas), he becomes a film director, but I wouldn't say he's any happier. Certainly not by the time he has a ton of illnesses at once, the rarest and most serious of which makes it hard for him to swallow even liquids.

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2019)

After my rave about the 2015 outing, I pretty much had to see this soon. Even if it meant reviewing three British movies in a row, each made in a successive year ending with 9.

A flying saucer descends pretty close to Mossy Bottom Farm, with one frightened human witness to its landing site and the solo pilot's emergence. As luck would have it, the alien, Lu-La, comes to the farm and is discovered by Shaun, who lets the other sheep in on her(?) but hides her from the farmer and his dog, Bitzer. The farmer does notice rumors of a UFO and decides to cash in by directing his animals to construct a crude theme park. The sheep cover for Shaun as he and Lu-La sneak out, trying to get her home before the Ministry of Alien Detection, led by a grimly determined Agent Red and a beleaguered WALL-E-like robot, stops her.

Pirate Radio (2009)

This is one of the few movies I saw because of a poster. It's not an especially well-done image, but it did get me curious. Even when I'd learned little more than the very different original homeland title, The Boat That Rocked, I wanted to give it a try. The facts that I didn't notice anyone talking about it and that it fared poorly at the box office made little difference to me.

In the late '60s, BBC Radio won't meet the demand for rock music, so a broad swath of the public turns to unlicensed stations playing from ships at sea. (So that's how both titles work!) The story follows the people at one station in particular, uncreatively dubbed "Radio Rock." They have their various episodes, but the main conflict concerns ongoing government efforts to shut them down.

The World Is Not Enough (1999)

Once again, nobody had recommended this flick to me, broadly or personally. Nor was I interested back when it came out, if only because I hadn't really "discovered" James Bond yet. But after some pretty depressing viewings in a depressing period, I wanted to return to a franchise that usually avoided such a feeling -- pre-reboot, anyway. Disappointment was still possible, of course.

In the off chance that you're interested in the plot, it begins with James (Pierce Brosnan) stealing back the cash of old millionaire Sire Robert King (David Calder), only to realize too late that the thieves wanted him to take it back in order to trigger a subtle death trap. King was funding an extensive Southwest Asian oil pipeline that rivals would want to sabotage, so M (Dame Judi Dench) assigns James to stay close to King's daughter, Elektra (Sophie Marceau). We all know how close James likes to get to a beautiful woman, but he may get more than he bargained for....

Joker (2019)

I put this off for a bit in part because a fellow cinephile made it sound extra depressing. Then again, he had also said that No Country for Old Men was the most depressing film he'd seen, and I largely shrugged it off. Perhaps it was best to go in expecting the worst. And having seen several episodes of Gotham.

In early '80s Gotham City, when Bruce Wayne still has his parents but already seems sullen, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), a professional clown of no repute, hopes in vain to move on to stand-up. Life has not been good to him or his mother (Frances Conroy) lately. Or ever, reportedly. As he deals with one hostile jerk after another (was Gotham ever not a hellhole?) -- including Bruce's father (Brett Cullen), to whom Arthur has a connection I never dreamed of -- he comes to see lethal violence and an extremely unorthodox sense of humor as coping mechanisms.

Nicholas and Alexandra (1971)

I think I had two main reasons to put this on my queue: The Academy nominated it for Best Picture, and the early '70s were a good time for dramas. Of course, it wasn't so good if you wanted a happy ending. And once I realized who the title characters were, an unhappy ending was a foregone conclusion.

You don't need to be well versed in history to recall that Nicholas II (Michael Jayston) was the last tsar of Russia. This movie begins in 1904 with him and his wife (Janet Suzman) welcoming a son after four daughters. That may be the last time we see them both happy, and it's not for long, as they learn of little Alexei's hemophilia -- terrible news for anyone and all the worse for an heir apparent to the throne, whom the public should not see as fragile. Little do they know how moot that point is, thanks to growing unrest in the empire. For the next nine years, Alexandra entrusts her son's health to the mysticism of Grigori Rasputin (Tom Baker of Doctor Who fame), without her husband's approval.