Harry and Tonto (1974)

I had seen Art Carney a few times but had trouble remembering who he was. What better than his Academy Award-winning role to rectify that? That said, the bare-bones Netflix jacket description (which neglected to say Carney's first name) didn't inspire confidence in the plot. I'll give you a bit more.

Senior citizen Harry stays in his condemned New York apartment until removed by legal physical force. He spends a little while with extended family but feels a need for a place of his own, preferably in an L.A. neighborhood with less crime than his old one. The same stubbornness that kept him in that apartment now prevents him from taking a plane or bus the whole way, because he insists on the best for his cat, Tonto. Apparently, car vendors back in the day didn't have to check for expired licenses....

One Hour with You (1932)

So much for my prediction that if I ever saw another Maurice Chevalier movie, it would be from late in his career. I seem to have a poor memory for such resolutions. Regardless, I had wanted a '30s picture on the unserious side, and that's just what I got.

In Paris, Andre (Chevalier) and Colette (Jeanette MacDonald) are such passionate spouses that everyone assumes they're unwed or at most newlywed. Enter Colette's friend Mitzi (Genevieve Tobin), whose husband Adolph (Charles Ruggles) rightly suspects her of infidelity. She falls for Andre right away and doesn't even care that he's married to her alleged best friend. As Andre's resolve weakens in the face of Mitzi's aggressive advances, Adolph turns his attention to Colette.

The Summit of the Gods (2021)

The only reason I knew this title is that it was included on someone's list of best animated features from 2021. The exclusion of Luca was, well, fishy, but I didn't dismiss the whole list on that basis. I chose to watch TSotG when I did partly because it's only 90 minutes and partly because it looked different from anything I'd seen lately. Which it was.

In the '90s, a shady stranger in Tibet offers to sell photojournalist Makoto Fukomachi a camera allegedly belonging to George Mallory, who might have been the first to scale Mt. Everest in 1924 but didn't make it back. Fukomachi refuses, but then he sees the vendor get shaken down for the camera -- by none other than Habu Joji, another famous climber who has been missing for years. Could Joji have come across Mallory's remains? He makes himself scarce before Fukomachi can catch up to him. Anxious for a good story, Fukomachi does detective work on Joji's background. By the time they meet again, it's not just about solving the mystery of Mallory; it's about accompanying Joji to record his next attempt to climb Everest -- in the winter, with no third member of the team.

They Live by Night (1948)/Side Street (1950)

It makes sense that these two would be put on one DVD, being the only times Cathy O'Donnell and Farley Granger were paired in leading roles. Not to mention they're both semi-romantic noirs about criminals on the run. I was planning to watch only the more popular (but unprofitable) TLbN. Fortunately, they're pretty short at 95 and 83 minutes, respectively, so I made time across two nights.

In TLbN, three men escape from prison and team up for bank robberies. Circumstances split Bowie from the others, and despite his less criminal disposition, he develops a bigger reputation. He wants to give up on crime and settle down with his new girlfriend-cum-bride, Keechie, but an old comrade insists he owes them forever. In SS, mail carrier Joe tries to swipe $200 to help his pregnant wife, Ellen, but it turns out to be $30K -- in dirty money, so he's bound to get unwelcome attention from worse than the police.

WarGames (1983)

This is one of those movies with only one moment people are likely to reference, and it's at the end (albeit not a twist like in Soylent Green). At first, I assumed there was nothing else of value in WG. Then it occurred to me that viewers wouldn't know that much if the rest were boring, so I opted in.

David (Matthew Broderick in his first leading role) is too rebellious for school but has a way with machines. In an attempt to remotely hack into a computer game company database and sample an upcoming release, he inadvertently reaches a NORAD supercomputer nicknamed Joshua (voiced by John Wood) and starts a war-planning simulation. Wouldn't you know that the systems engineering chief (Dabney Coleman) had just arranged for Joshua to have full control because the human element was too unpredictable. Joshua's screen displays fool NORAD into thinking that the USSR is making highly threatening moves, and the American response raises Russian alarms. David gets in trouble, authorities believing he's either a prankster or an agent. Oddly enough, for a long time, he's the only one to take the Joshua threat seriously. The computer is more autonomous than widely assumed, makes no distinction between games and reality, and fully expects to launch missiles within a few dozen hours of strategizing. It's up to David, his girlfriend (Ally Sheedy), and Joshua's reclusive creator (also John Wood) to prevent WWIII and the presumed end of the world.

Encanto (2021)

I decided that my last feature of the year should be something that promised to be uplifting. And preferably short, since I got a late start. This one's 109 minutes, about 19 of which are end credits, with no mid- or post-credit sequence.

It's tricky to gauge the era -- we see donkeys and no cars -- but the place is a Colombian village. Thanks to what is attributed only to a miracle, the Madrigal family lives in a house with a life of its own, and not in a scary way. The Casita, as they affectionately call it, can also endow each Madrigal child with a different superpower in a sort of coming-of-age ceremony, but Mirabel (Stephanie Beatriz) was denied for some reason. Now 15, she tries to maintain a positive outlook despite her relatives tending to feel ashamed of her. Then the miracle shows more compelling signs of fading, between the Casita developing cracks and the family powers gradually becoming unreliable. Will Mirabel save the day, or is she, as her matriarchal grandmother (María Cecilia Botero/Olga Merediz) believes, the cause of the trouble?

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Sometimes I can't believe my luck. When I put this next in my queue, I had no idea it was set around Christmas, with plenty of audiovisual trappings thereof. That said, the time of year is no more important to the plot than it is in Die Hard (both produced by Joel Silver). Doesn't even rate a mention in the KKBB Wikipedia synopsis.

New York burglar Harry (Robert Downey Jr.), on the run from police, accidentally enters a room where acting auditions are being held -- for just the kind of character he is. The casting director (Larry Miller) sends him to L.A., where PI "Gay" Perry (Val Kilmer) is supposed to train him for a screen test playing a PI. He also runs into former friend/crush Harmony (Michelle Monaghan), now a struggling actress, and smittenly tells her he's a real detective. In no time, Harry and Perry (yes, it gets confusing if you don't listen closely) witness the disposal of an actual, rather high-profile murder victim. Not long after, another reported death means something more personal to Harry. Against Perry's advice, he tries to solve the mystery himself with what he learned from a fictitious novel series.

3-Iron (2004)

On one hand, I've grown leery of R-rated Korean features, which aren't all as watchable as Parasite. OTOH, writer-director Kim Ki-duk did a peaceful yet adequately engaging job with Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring. And 2004 was a great year for cinema in my book.

In a modern South Korean city, a possibly homeless young man, Tae-suk (Jae Hee), puts flyers on doors, picks the locks of those that leave the flyers on long enough to suggest that the residents are on vacation, and then bums around before a hasty getaway. The Netflix description makes it sound like a slice-of-life that never goes anywhere, but that would be misleading. The plot starts to progress when he stumbles on a former photography model, Sun-hwa (Lee Seung-yeon), who decides to run away with him from her physically abusive husband, Min-gyu (Kwon Hyuk-ho). She's content to go everywhere with Tae-suk -- until they discover a corpse and become implicated. And Min-gyu has an in with a dirty cop....

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Yeah, that's two consecutive theater viewings of Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. And sadly, I've had only a dozen theater viewings in the nearly 2.5 years since the last Spider-Man movie. But a friend had an extra ticket and invited me mere hours in advance, so how could I put this off?

The action begins right where Far from Home leaves off: Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) has posthumously outed Peter Parker (Tom Holland) as Spider-Man -- and framed him for Mysterio's crimes and death. There is not enough evidence for a trial, but the public is divided on whom to believe. The bad publicity causes trouble for Peter's friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) and tentative girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) by association. Peter asks Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to cast a widespread amnesia spell, but by belatedly requesting exceptions, he distracts Strange to the point that the spell becomes too dangerous and Strange traps the workings in a container -- too late for it to have no effect whatsoever. Not only will everyone remember, but people from alternate universes who know Spider-Man's identity cross over, including five villains from the first two Spider-Man silver-screen series: the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Dr. Octopus (Alfred Molina), the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), the Lizard (Rhys Ifans), and Electro (Jamie Foxx). Guess it would've been tough to fit the rest in.

The Good Earth (1937)

All I really knew going in was that this would be my first viewing from the '30s in nearly four months, that it was based on a Pearl S. Buck novel, and that the Academy nominated it for Best Picture. Of course, Oscar nods from the '30s tend not to look so good anymore, so I tempered my expectations.

The exact period is ambiguous, but sometime after the arrival of trains and before the first World War, northern Chinese farmer Wang Lung (Paul Muni) has an arranged marriage to kitchen slave O-Lan (Luise Rainer, becoming the first winner of consecutive Oscars for leading roles). They have a good life for a while, gaining wealth and kids, until a famine yields tragedy and drives them to seek relief in the south. The chaos of an attempted revolution changes their fortune, but a new high for wealth goes to Lung's head, and his arrogant decisions, not least a second marriage to Lotus (Tilly Losch), threaten to tear the family asunder.