No Way Out (1987)

It's no coincidence that I gave priority this month to a political thriller set largely at a federal government building, namely the Pentagon. You may question my taste in doing so, but I assure you it bears vanishingly little resemblance to recent events.

Tom Farrell (Kevin Costner), a lieutenant commander in the Navy, falls for Susan Atwell (Sean Young) at an inaugural ball and starts an intimate relationship, unaware that she's also sleeping with another new acquaintance of his, Secretary of Defense David Brice (Gene Hackman). Seeing Tom leave her home, albeit without enough light to recognize him, Brice infers Susan's infidelity and beats her -- accidentally to death. He decides to pin it on "Yuri," a rumored double agent from the KGB, because that would let national security handle the case instead of the police. Tom gets a pretty big role in the subsequent hunt for Yuri. All too aware that he's most likely to take the fall after the evidence comes in, he does what he can to delay that until he has enough of a case against Brice.

The Two of Us (1967)

I finally got another disc delivery for the first time since last year. It's rather hard to coordinate the timing with streaming, so this meant yet another foreign-language flick about a Jewish guy. Oh well, still not all that similar.

In occupied Paris, the Langmann family is laying low, tho not quite to an Anne Frank extent. Eight-year-old Claude (Alain Cohen) keeps calling unwelcome attention to himself, so his parents send him to live in the countryside with the parents of a friend of theirs, who will gladly take care of a pseudo-grandchild for however many months. (The French title translates to "The Old Man and the Boy.) That arrangement is safer overall, but Claude has to maintain a charade of being Catholic like them. They -- perhaps especially the outspoken old man (Michel Simon), who asks Claude to call him Pépé -- believe the propaganda about Jews.

Menashe (2017)

I can safely say that this is the first movie I've ever seen where the main language is Yiddish, possibly with a little English mixed in, unless there are more clear cognates than I thought. It's also rare for having English subtitles nearly all the time but being made and set in the U.S., so I wouldn't feel right adding a "foreign" tag.

The title character (real name Menashe Lustig) is an underachieving middle-aged kosher grocery clerk in Brooklyn. His wife died a year ago, and his Hasidic rabbi (Meyer Schwartz) has ruled that preteen son Rieven (Rubin Niborski) must live with Menashe's brother Eizik (Yoel Weisshaus) until Menashe remarries. Menashe likes hanging with Rieven as much as possible but drags his heels about exploring the possibility of remarriage, not because it feels too soon but because his arranged first marriage went poorly.

The Other Side of the Wind (2018)

Don't read too much into the year of release: Most of the work -- the recording, at least -- was done in the '70s, which is part of why I chose it out of my recent-skewing Netflix list. You might call it Orson Welles' most troubled movie of all, and that's saying something.

The title is also of a fictitious unfinished art film within the film. Its director, Jake Hannaford (John Huston), is "celebrating" his 70th birthday by showing snippets of footage to potential funders; answering obnoxious reporter questions or, more often, having protégé Brooks Otterlake (Peter Bogdanovich) answer for him; philandering; passing out party gifts; and expressing contempt for the leading man (aptly named Bob Random), who walked away before they could finish. Little does anyone know, as the up-front narration indicates, that Hannaford will die that night.

Over the Moon (2020)

This Netflix feature hasn't received great reviews, but the aesthetic in the stills drew me in. Besides, while I expect the next Academy Awards ceremony to be a nothingburger, I wanted to know what might be competition for Onward in the animation category, and A Whisker Away didn't seem mainstream enough. (Update: I was right on all counts.)

In modern China, preteen or possibly early teen Fei Fei (Cathy Ang) is an A student, which leads many to wonder why she still believes a tale of Chang'e, the woman who became the moon goddess. Her reason is personal: She learned it from her late mother (Ruthie Ann Miles). When her more science-minded father (John Cho) starts getting serious with widow Mrs. Zhong (Sandra Oh), Fei Fei feels that he must have lost faith in Mom. Mrs. Zhong's hyperactive eight-year-old son, Chin (Robert G. Chiu), doesn't make the prospect of remarriage any more palatable to Fei Fei. She gets the idea that Dad will call it off if she can just prove Mom right...by building a rocket to the moon and bringing back a photo of Chang'e.

Went the Day Well? (1942)

Yes, another oldie that concerns World War II already, but that's about where the similarity ends. This one's serious, British, produced during said war, and devoid of any names familiar to me except writer Graham Greene.

In the fictional backwater English village of Bramley End (which Netflix misnames Bramley Green), German paratroopers show up disguised as British soldiers. Locals are just beginning to suspect them when they drop the act and capture almost the entire population in the church on Whitsunday. They demand complete obedience to give the outside world no clues, lest they kill more than the resisting parties. For about 48 hours (incidentally the title of another adaptation of the Greene story), the villagers do what they can to stop the invasion from progressing.

White Christmas (1954)

Why did I wait this long to see an old holiday classic? Mainly because I assumed that it was a remake of Holiday Inn, which I had already seen and found, well, far from timeless. It did have the same lead actor and stand-out song, after all. But it'd be unusual for a non-international remake to come out only 12 years later, especially when censorship standards hadn't changed much. Further research assured me it was no sequel either.

Former Army comrades Bob (Bing Crosby) and Phil (Danny Kaye) are major stage musical producers but not content; Bob keeps working them harder than Phil deems comfortable. Phil's solution is to introduce Bob to prospective wives, even if Phil can't see himself with a wife of his own. When they attend a duo act, Phil is quickly smitten with Judy (Vera-Ellen) and thinks that Bob is into her protective elder sister, Betty (Rosemary Clooney), but the latter two face complications, thanks largely to Bob having developed a cynical attitude in show business. Regardless, between antics and Phil's manipulation, all four head to a Vermont town, hoping for, y'know, the title thing. The town is surprisingly warm and emptied out when they arrive, but genre savvy should tell you something.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020)

You may think I prioritized this new Netflix release because it's popular right now and/or because it has the final role of the late Chadwick Boseman. In truth, I hadn't known about the casting. No, the main reason is that I was familiar with the title among plays and have been rather missing live theater this year. It hardly matters that I saw another August Wilson adaptation produced by Denzel Washington half a year ago.

In summer 1927, real-life singer Gertrude "Ma" Rainey (Viola Davis) and four instrumentalists gradually assemble at a Chicago recording studio to make a blues album. This is not as uneventful as it sounds. Ma is in full diva mode, upstart trumpeter Levee (Boseman) is possibly even more annoying in his cockiness, the ceiling fan doesn't work, and they are all keenly aware that social conditions aren't great for Black people even up north. Studio owner Mel (Jonny Coyne) and manager Irvin (Jeremy Shamos) show no overt racism or rudeness, unlike the glaring bystanders outside, but you can bet they'd pay White performers better and put them in a more comfortable room.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)

I don't recall when I heard about this movie or when I put it on my queue (probably the same time). All I knew when I moved it to the top was that it was a neo-noir and therefore unlike anything I'd watched in quite some time. Top billing to Robert Mitchum and Peter Boyle didn't hurt either, tho Boyle's role isn't the second most prominent.

In the Boston area, Eddie (Mitchum) and Jackie Brown (Steven Keats, whose character name supplied the title of a Quentin Tarantino flick) are newly acquainted gun traffickers. Eddie enlists Jackie's help to outfit bank robbers. What Jackie doesn't know is that Eddie, having been caught hijacking, sees little choice but to serve as an informant to FBI Agent Dave Foley (Richard Jordan). What Eddie doesn't know is that Foley has an informant on him as well: mobster Dillon (Boyle), who had arranged the hijacking.

Dangal (2016)

I had a lot of time to kill last night, so I decided to watch a longer movie than usual. India's are quite reliable in that regard. This one runs 161 minutes, but the main reason I chose it over other options on my queue is its current placement on IMDb's top 100.

Retired wrestler Mahavir Singh Phogat (Aamir Khan, who's also the producer) regrets his failure at an international championship and hopes to have a son finish what he started. After begetting four girls in a row, he becomes discouraged -- until the two oldest, Geeta (Zaira Wasim and later Fatima Sana Shaikh) and Babita (Suhani Bhatnagar and later Sanya Malhotra), beat up some offending boys. He then becomes their drill sergeant-like coach and forces them to pursue his dream, despite obstacles of poverty and any other dreams they had.