Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)

As I've said, movies about real-life British royalty have a good track record with me. This one is by the same director (Charles Jarrott) as Anne of the Thousand Days, so it was apt to feel even more like a sequel thereto than The Private Life of Henry VIII.

The tale begins in 1560, when teenage Mary (34-year-old Vanessa Redgrave) is about to lose her first husband, King Francis of France (Richard Denning). Having no claim to his throne, she decides to return to Scotland, but Queen Elizabeth (Glenda Jackson) will not grant her safe passage through England to get there. Even when Mary arrives home by ship, she finds her reception rather lacking, thanks to the rise of Protestantism and attendant hostility to Catholics such as herself. Indeed, her next 27 years will be riddled with people seeking to undermine her, whether by making her a figurehead in practice, persuading her to renounce all authority, imprisoning her, or assassinating her.

Spies (1928)

This was it: the last 1920s movie on my Netflix queue or list and thus probably the last silent. If it would become my last silent viewing ever, I was wise to choose one from a proven director, Fritz Lang.

Bank director Haghi (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) also leads a vast spy ring that meddles in international government affairs, seemingly just for the sake of wielding power. Knowing that one Agent 326 (Willy Fritsch, whose character name is never revealed) seeks to bring him down, he sends an agent of his own, Sonja (Gerda Maurus), to seduce and betray 326. The plan backfires when she falls for him for real. Of course, catching a mastermind still isn't easy....

Swiss Family Robinson (1960)

Another family feature already, because I hadn't arranged my queue with care in that regard. Anyway, I chose this more for title recognition than any other reason, knowing only that it was a live-action Disney movie tied to a book in the Robinson Crusoe subgenre. Subsequent research told me that it takes even more license than usual for Disney, including dropping "The" from the title for some reason. Oh well. It may not help kids cheat on an English test, but at least it's pretty popular in its own right.

During the Napoleonic Wars, between the threat of pirates and a raging storm, a crew abandons a ship bound for colonial New Guinea without warning its five passengers below deck, who find out only when they become castaways. Mercifully, the nearest island, while uncharted, is quite lush, and the wrecked ship still has plenty of useful elements. Over the course of maybe months, the family contends with the forces of nature and, ultimately, the same pirates. They also face some internal conflicts, such as one on the Lord of the Flies-type question of how much effort to put into signaling for a rescue.

Paddington 2 (2018)

Until a few months ago, I had never read a Paddington Bear book in my life, so I brought no nostalgia to this viewing. Ordinarily, I'm leery of live-action adaptations of kiddie books with CG animal stars (Christopher Robin being an exception because Disney already had practice with the franchise), but this one didn't get a Stuart Little 2 reception. Indeed, it was astoundingly successful. Would I be about the only reviewer not to love it?

The possibly adolescent cub (Ben Whishaw) has been living with his adoptive human family, the Browns (Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Madeleine Harris, Samuel Joslin, and Julie Walters as the housekeeper), in London for some time now, but he hasn't forgotten his Aunt Lucy (Imelda Staunton) back in Peru. He hopes to earn enough for a unique antique book for her birthday present. Alas, he spills its whereabouts to neighbor Phoenix Buchanan (Hugh Grant), who secretly knows its value as a treasure map and has the skills to steal it and get away via disguise and stage magic. What's worse, Paddington, in his attempt to stop the unidentified thief, ends up taking the fall and going to prison. The Browns do what they can to find the real thief, while Paddington makes do with a different sector of humanity for company.

Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

I didn't expect to get much out of this. You may have noticed that there are only so many comedies I really like, and SatB has mixed reviews. But it was quite a hit back in the day, and I continue to see allusions to it now and then, so I figured I owed myself the education.

Bo "Bandit" Darville (Burt Reynolds) does not appear to have any legitimate employment, just a daredevil reputation. "Big" Enos Burdette (Pat McCormick), an aristocrat with a hankering for gambling, promises him $80,000 if he can be the first to drive from Atlanta to Texarkana and return with 400 cases of Coors in just 28 hours. In this version of reality, not only does that require a high average pace, but it runs the risk of a bootlegging charge. The Netflix jacket fails to mention that Bandit doesn't drive the rig himself; he aims to distract the fuzz in a Burdette-funded new Trans Am for his buddy Cledus "Snowman" Snow (Jerry Reed, who also wrote the movie's signature songs).

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.