Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)

Oh boy, direction by Robert Bresson again. This time I felt an obligation to watch because it's his most popular work. In fact, it was the highest among the British Film Institute's faves that I hadn't already seen. But that's not very promising to me. Well, at worst, it would be only 95 minutes I wasn't getting back.

Three child siblings adopt a donkey and name him Balthazar. When their family runs into trouble years later, they have to sell him. He has several owners after that, none of them kind. Meanwhile, one of the kids he knew, Marie (played in young adulthood by Anne Wiazemsky), against the advice of others, enters an abusive relationship with delinquent Gérard (François Lafarge), one of his owners. The film focuses about half the time on Balthazar and half on Marie, tho they do share a number of scenes.

My Name Is Khan (2010)

If this title sounds bland to you, know that the surname (pronounced with a spirant like "chutzpah," as repeatedly stressed in the movie) is associated with Islam, at least in India. The phrase forms part of the main character's catchphrase, along with "and I am not a terrorist." That should tell you something about the heavy-handed focus, but it didn't drive me away; as the TV Tropes Wiki puts it, some anvils need to be dropped.

Rizvan Khan (played primarily by, heh, Shah Rukh Khan) moves from Mumbai to San Francisco and marries a Hindu single mom, Mandira (Kajol Mukherjee), against the wishes of his brother, Zakir (Jimmy Sheirgill). This works out until after 9/11, when the Khans face so much bigoted oppression that Mandira wishes she'd never taken the name. Rizvan aims to make it up to her by saying his catchphrase to the president of the United States in person. Alas, Rizvan is somewhat further along the autistic spectrum than I am, so he doesn't have a great sense of how not to alarm people....

Loving (2016)

I'm disappointed in Netflix. on February 14, I expected a whole list of suggested romances to stream. The closest I found was the stand-alone highlight, apparently more for Black History Month than for Valentine's Day. Anyway, it was already on my personal list, and I figured it had the best chance of an ending that's happy or at least victorious for the central couple.

After all, the title refers not just to the plain English word but to the first party in Loving v. Virginia. It begins with Mildred Jeter (Oscar nominee Ruth Negga) telling boyfriend Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton) that she's expecting. They soon have an official wedding in the District of Columbia, but living like an interracial married couple in Caroline County in 1958 gets them arrested. The only way to stay out of jail is to not be in the state at the same time. They move to D.C., but Mildred for one hates living there. She writes to Bobby Kennedy, who gets ACLU attorney Bernard S. Cohen (Nick Kroll) to represent them at no charge. Bernie hopes to take the matter all the way to the Supreme Court, but Richard is not nearly as comfortable as Mildred with the attention they're gaining.

My Favorite Year (1982)

From the title, I assumed that the story would take place over the course of a year. Instead, it's only a few weeks, tops. All we really get from the title is a setting in the past and an occasion that is, like most comedies, happy in the end.

In 1954 New York, junior sketch comedy writer Benjy Stone (Mark Linn-Baker) is excited to have Alan Swann (Peter O'Toole), an Errol Flynn knockoff, guest-star on his show. Alas, the now burnt-out Swann is prone to stinking drunkenness, philandering, and tardiness if not absenteeism. Stone pleads with Sid Caesar-like show star Stan Kaiser (Joseph Bologna) to give Swann a chance all the same. Kaiser agrees on the condition that Stone watch Swann like a hawk. No problem, right?

Batman: The Killing Joke (2016)

I'd read the gist of the 1988 Alan Moore graphic novel by this title long ago: The Joker attempts to drive Gotham City Police Commissioner Jim Gordon mad with grief in just one day, hoping to demonstrate how easily a decent man can become like the Joker. More recently, I saw a clip from near the end of this adaptation. It looked so promising that I paid no mind to the viewers' mixed reactions before I decided to watch the whole thing.

The primary reason for those mixed reactions is that while the majority of the 77 minutes is highly faithful, the first third has no basis in that comic or, to my knowledge, any other. In it, the focal character and part-time narrator is Jim's daughter, Barbara, a.k.a. Batgirl (Tara Strong), who gains the quasi-affectionate attention of nonthematic mobster Paris Franz (Maury Sterling). She's in no danger of falling for his charisma, but Batman (Kevin Conroy) doesn't trust her judgment on how to deal with a twistedly playful opponent, since she hasn't dealt with the likes of the Joker (Mark Hamill). In truth, she's more interested in exploring her feelings toward Batman.

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

Hmm, only three months since my last western and five since my last serious one. But this is a bit rarer: a serious western from the late '70s. Well, Clint Eastwood never was one for comedy.

After Union guerrillas under Captain Terrill (Bill McKinney) murder the wife and son of Missouri civilian Josey (Eastwood), he joins a Confederate bushwhacker gang. They become among the last postwar holdouts, until most of them pursue a promise of amnesty that turns out to be a lethal trap, care of Terrill. Josey, of course, is too badass to go down that easy, so a massive manhunt ensues.

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.