The Ninth Configuration (DVD)

The Ninth Configuration (1980) starring Stacy Keach, Scott Wilson, Jason Miller, Ed Flanders, Neville Brand. Promising movie about Vietnam-era psychiatric hospital is marred by the fact that it has no subtitles for the hearing-impaired, not even closed captions. Grade: F

Ninotchka (DVD)

Ninotchka (1939) starring Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Ina Claire. Soviet apparatchik Ninotchka (Garbo) arrives in Paris to negotiate the sale of confiscated royal jewels. By coincidence, she meets the lawyer for the other side (Douglas), and they fall in love. But then she learns who he is and tries to distance herself from him. Although much of the banter seems dated, Garbo and Douglas together make a charming couple. One scene, where they get drunk together, is particularly memorable. Garbo was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance, and the movie was nominated for Best Picture. The subtitles are OK. Grade: B

The September Issue (DVD)

The September Issue (2008). Directed by R.J. Cutler. Documentary follows Vogue editor Anna Wintour and creative director Grace Coddington as they work on the annual September issue -- a really big deal in the fashion world. As I have no interest in fashion as such, I had to wonder what I had gotten myself into. Could a movie like this engage my interest? The answer is -- just barely. Every once in a while there is something to grab your interest -- a photo shoot, perhaps, or a visit to Paris. But overall my feeling was, Who cares? It's a fashion magazine being made. Whoop-de-do. I give the movie credit for having good subtitles, however. Grade: C

Nights of Cabiria (DVD)

Nights of Cabiria (1957) starring Giulietta Masina, Francois Perier. Directed by Federico Fellini. Waif-like prostitute Cabiria (Masina) dreams of fortune and love, but finds only heartbreak and misery. Alternately comic and tragic, the movie won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Masina won Best Actress at Cannes Film Festival. The subtitles are white on a black-and-white background -- merely adequate. Grade: A-

A Night at the Opera (DVD)

A Night at the Opera (1935) starring Groucho, Chico, Harpo Marx, Kitty Carlisle, Allan Jones. The Marx Brothers take on the world of opera, and opera will never be the same. Filled with classic scenes, this movie is considered by many to be the Marx Bros. best. The script is razor-sharp, with scarcely a dull moment. Even the music works; even the romantic subplot, between Carlisle and Jones, works. The subtitles are fine. Grade: A

Surrogates (DVD)

Surrogates (2009) starring Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, Ving Rhames, Boris Kodjoe, Michael Cudlitz, James Cromwell, James Francis Ginty. It's sometime in the future, and something like 98 percent of the population are living their lives vicariously, through robotic surrogates. The "surries" or "synths," as they are known, allow one to look any way one wants, to take risks one normally wouldn't take, without risk to the human body. Willis plays Tom Greer, an FBI agent who gets involved in a case where someone has invented a weapon that kills, not just the surrie, but the human operator. Through a series of events, he also loses his synth, so he must face the world in his original human body (or "meatbag"). It's all kind of creepy, and maybe it was meant to be. But I also found it chaotic, compressing too much action into too little time -- the rare instance of a movie being too short -- and it was hard to keep the characters straight and to make sense of it all. The subtitles are rather good. Grade: C+

The Invention of Lying (DVD)

The Invention of Lying (2009) starring Ricky Gervais, Jennifer Garner. Right off the bat, this disc puts you in a bad mood by forcing you to sit through 15 minutes of previews and advertisements. You have no choice -- pressing the Menu button on the remote control produces no results. ... The movie itself, however, improves on this state of affairs. Mark Bellison (Gervais) lives in a world in which no one fibs. As an unsuccessful screenwriter, he finds himself unable to impress the girl of his dreams (Garner) and fired from his job. Then the idea occurs to him -- if you say something that is not true, people will believe you. At first he uses his gift to make small amounts of money. Then he ends up inventing a new history of the 1300s; and then he invents religion, God, heaven and hell. Will all this help him win Anna, the girl of his dreams? Well, maybe. This is a sweet little movie, with loads of stars in small roles. I enjoyed it. Grade: B+

The Remains of the Day (DVD)

The Remains of the Day (1993) starring Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, James Fox, Christopher Reeve, Hugh Grant. Directed by James Ivory. Novelistic story, set in the 1930s, about servants at a great English manor house. The home in which they labor is fabulous -- practically a character in the film itself. The dutiful butler, Stevens (Hopkins), and the efficient head housekeeper, Miss Kenton (Thompson) clash early on. But they soon grow comfortable with each other. Lord Darlington (Fox), the head of the household, has unfortunate Nazi sympathies. Later, the action shifts to the postwar period, at which time Stevens and Miss Kenton try to reconnect. The film was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture. It has exemplary subtitles. Grade: A-

The Last Picture Show (DVD)

The Last Picture Show (1971) starring Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn. Beautifully realized, absorbing portrait of life in the early '50s in a small Texas town -- and how the lives of its inhabitants intertwine. Based on the novel by Larry McMurtry. Johnson and Leachman won well-deserved Oscars for their supporting roles. The subtitles are very good, although certain songs aren't captioned. Grade: A-

Julia (DVD)

Julia (1977) starring Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, Jason Robards, Hal Holbrook, Maximilian Schell. On the heels of her first play's success, playwright Lillian Hellman (Fonda) journeys to Europe, where her friend Julia (Redgrave) enlists her help in antifascist activities. Julia wants Lillian to travel through Berlin on her way from Paris to Moscow -- a considerable risk, since Lillian is Jewish, and Hitler has risen to power. Travel in those days (the '30s) was mainly by rail, and the train ride from Paris to Berlin and beyond is harrowing. The film was nominated for several Oscars, and won three. Meryl Streep has a brief appearance -- her first movie role. The subtitles are unobtrusive. Grade: A

Never on Sunday (DVD)

Never on Sunday (1960) starring Melina Mercouri, Jules Dassin. Directed by Jules Dassin. Homer Thrace (Dassin) arrives in Greece from the States, meets free-spirited prostitute Ilya (Mercouri). Ilya is happy with her carefree life, but Homer decides she must be educated, she must be reformed. He briefly succeeds, but then his plan backfires on him. The film received several Oscar nominations, including a win for Best Song. The movie is now 50 years old. Some of the magic, and some of the shock value, has been lost. The subtitles are very good -- even though the film is multilingual, the captions never miss a beat. One quibble: The songs, in Greek, are not subtitled. Grade: B

Terminator: Salvation (DVD)

Terminator: Salvation (2009) starring Christian Bale, Sam Worthington. The year is 2018. John Connor (Bale) leads the Resistance as the humans fight Skynet. When Marcus Wright (Worthington) appears, he poses a puzzle: Is he human or machine? Does he come from the past or the future? Meanwhile, Kyle Reese has been captured by Skynet and transported to headquarters in San Francisco. What the heck is going on? Will anybody watching this movie really care? Much to my surprise, I did care -- a little bit. And there is one dynamite cameo that makes the movie. The subtitles are good. Grade: B

A Serious Man (DVD)

A Serious Man (2009) starring Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick, Aaron Wolff, Jessica McManus, Adam Arkin. Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Larry Gopnik (Stuhlbarg) is suffering a spot of bother. His wife wants a gett (ritual Jewish divorce), a student where he teaches is trying to bribe him, and his children (Wolff and McManus) are constantly bickering; he gets into a car accident, and he has nightmares. He finds himself consulting a series of rabbis and smoking pot with one of his suburban neighbors. He sees a lawyer (Arkin) about the divorce. What does it all mean? I couldn't tell you, because the movie comes to an abrupt and maddening end. What the ending means, or what it is supposed to mean, I couldn't figure out. Grade: B-

Network (DVD)

Network (1976) starring Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Ned Beatty, Beatrice Straight. Written by Paddy Chayefsky. Directed by Sidney Lumet. Prophetic movie about Number Four TV network that will put anything on the air for ratings, including the ravings of a news anchor (Finch) who has gone slightly mad. This movie features one of the most famous quotes in film, as people stick their heads out the window and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore." Chayefsky, Finch, Dunaway and Straight won Oscars. The subtitles are just barely adequate -- but essential. Grade: A

Nashville (DVD)

Nashville (1975) starring Henry Gibson, Karen Black, Ronee Blakley, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Lily Tomlin, Michael Murphy, many more. Directed by Robert Altman. Giant jigsaw puzzle of a movie features a couple of dozen lead characters, all of whose paths cross continuously. Set in Nashville, it blends the music scene with politics, circa 1975, with often hilarious results. Now seems a little dated. Main drawback of film is length, at two hours and forty minutes. The subtitles are excellent. Grade: A-

The Naked Spur (DVD)

The Naked Spur (1953) starring James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Ralph Meeker, Robert Ryan, Millard Mitchell. Bounty hunter (Stewart) is forced to team up with two strangers to capture wanted outlaw (Ryan). Trouble is, they have to take the outlaw back to Kansas, where he is wanted, and he is clever enough to sow dissension among his captors along the way. Leigh provides the love interest, and a lot of the tension. Ryan makes a suitably despicable villain. The movie was beautifully photographed on location in the Rocky Mountains. Subtitled in English for the hearing-impaired. Grade: B

My Left Foot (DVD)

My Left Foot (1989) starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Brenda Fricker, Ray McAnally, Hugh O'Conor, Fiona Shaw. True story of Christy Brown (Day-Lewis), Irish artist and writer who was born with cerebral palsy and could only write and draw with his left foot. Not some happy-ending fairy tale, but a powerful and fascinating portrait of an artist who could only overcome some of his shortcomings. Fricker and McAnally play Christy's mother and father. Day-Lewis and Fricker both won Oscars for their performances. The subtitles are very good -- and absolutely essential, since everyone talks in an Irish accent, except Christy, who can only speak in what frequently sounds like grunts and moans. Grade: A-

Cold Souls (DVD)

Cold Souls (2009) starring Paul Giamatti, Emily Watson, Dina Korzun, David Strathairn, Lauren Ambrose. To begin with, you have to accept the premise that the technology exists to extract a human soul -- and that the subject goes on living after his or her soul has been removed. Giamatti plays an actor named Paul Giamatti who decides that his soul is weighing too heavily on him, and he decides to have it removed and stored by a company called Soul Storage. He soon comes to regret his decision, but his soul has gone missing. He rents the soul of a Russian poet instead. Meanwhile, there is a sub-plot concerning the illegal trafficking in souls by the Russian mob. Turns out, the Russians have stolen Giamatti's soul -- not a pleasant prospect, when you think about it. The movie is intermittently amusing, mostly entertaining, but ultimately pointless. The subtitles are barely adequate -- but kudos to the disc-makers for including subtitles for the hearing-impaired. Grade: C+

My Brilliant Career (DVD)

My Brilliant Career (1979) starring Judy Davis, Sam Neill. Young woman named Sybylla (Davis) lives in 19th-century Australia, bucks social conventions in pursuit of her dream of doing "great things" with her life. She is determined that her career will take precedence over all things, including marriage. Then she meets Harry (Neill), and her feelings are thrown into turmoil. Based on the true story of Australian writer Miles Franklin. The disc does not offer subtitles, but it does have closed captions. Grade: B