Girl with a Pearl Earring (DVD)

Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) starring Scarlett Johansson, Colin Firth, Tom Wilkinson, Judy Parfitt, Cillian Murphy. In 1665 in Delft, Holland, a girl named Griet (Johansson) is hired as a maid in the household of master painter Johannes Vermeer (Firth). She's a good maid, but she catches Vermeer's eye and he wants more from her. He wants her to help him mix his paints; and to pose for a painting -- a painting which will become the classic "Girl with a Pearl Earring," now considered a masterpiece. But her seemingly improved status comes at a cost. Vermeer's wife is insanely jealous of Griet, and one of his daughters takes a special disliking to her. Meanwhile, Vermeer's patron (Wilkinson) has taken a leering fancy to Griet, and makes trouble of a different kind for her. One feels at all times that her virtue is in peril; as a mere maid, there is little she can do to protect herself and still keep her job. Johansson is perfect as Griet, conveying a wide range of emotions with few words. The filmmakers have done an excellent job of creating a world -- Holland in the 17th century, as we can easily imagine it to have been. All the details are spot on. The movie's subtitles are useful and unobtrusive. Grade: A-

Easy Rider (DVD)

Easy Rider (1969) starring Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson. After a drug deal in L.A. nets them a large amount of money, two buddies (Fonda and Hopper) set off on a cross-country motorcycle ride, headed for New Orleans and Mardi Gras. Along the way, they pick up a lawyer named George Hanson (Nicholson) and he goes along for the ride. Tragedy ensues. From that point on, the film just gets trippy and weird. In the end, the rednecks win. This movie does have excellent subtitles, however. Even the songs are captioned. Grade: B-

Peyton Place (DVD)

Peyton Place (1957) starring Lana Turner, Hope Lange, Arthur Kennedy, Lloyd Nolan, Russ Tamblyn. In 1941, on the eve of World War II, the inhabitants of a small New England town struggle with family problems, personal relationships, rape, unwanted pregnancy, gossip, scandal.... Why, it's a regular soap opera. Then comes the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and all the young men of the town are called away. You'd think the soap opera would get swallowed up in the Second World War, but no, it goes on. It is a high-class soap opera, however, and I found myself quite involved in the story, right up to the end. The subtitles are very good. Grade: B+

Vincere (DVD)

Vincere (2009) starring Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Fillipo Timi. Vincere means "win" or "to win" in Italian. This movie tells the story of Ida Dalser (Mezzogiorno), an attractive woman who falls in love with the young Benito Mussolini (Timi). In 1914, they meet and get married, but World War I separates them, and Mussolini (gasp!) marries another woman. Ida begs him to acknowledge her as his wife, and her son as his son, but Mussolini and the Fascists have other ideas. When she insists that she is Mussolini's wife, mother to his first-born son, they shut her away in a mental hospital. What's worse, they take her son away from her. Even though there was a language barrier (this movie is in Italian, with English subtitles), I felt that this was a powerful film which told a tragic story. It must have had strong resonance in Italy, since it dealt with a shameful chapter of Italian history, and was made there. The subtitles are adequate. Grade: A-

The Petrified Forest (DVD)

The Petrified Forest (1936) starring Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart. Wanderer named Alan Squier (Howard) stops at a gas station in the remote desert southwest, where he meets Gabrielle (Davis), the daughter of the owner. They soon find themselves held hostage by a notorious gangster (Bogart) in the restaurant connected to the gas station. It's a stagey, as opposed to cinematic, production -- which is no surprise, since it was adapted from the stage for the screen. It's interesting to see the actors in their youth, especially Davis and Bogart. It was Bogart's first great success in movies. The movie itself is pretty run-of-the-mill. Grade: B

Peter Pan (DVD)

Peter Pan (1953) -- animated. I can't remember when I first saw this movie. My first memory of Peter Pan is of a picture book I had when I was four years old -- which would have been in 1953, the year this movie was released. I guess I got the book instead of going to see the film (my family was very poor in '53), but I treasured that book, and read it over and over. The movie is a delightful reminder of a childhood experience that stands out like a remembered dream. The film tells the story of Wendy, Michael and John, the Darling children, and how one day they fly away with Peter Pan to Neverland, where children never have to grow up. Pan's ongoing battle with Captain Hook is one of the comic subplots, as is Tinker Bell's jealousy of Wendy. Of course, everything works out in the end, and the animation is top-notch. The subtitles are very good. Grade: A

Personal Velocity (DVD)

Personal Velocity (2002) starring Kyra Sedgwick, Parker Posey, Fairuza Balk, David Warshofsky, Brian Tarantina, Tim Guinee. Delia (Sedgwick) leaves her abusive husband, taking her three kids with her. She gets a job as a waitress, and has to fend off the leering advances of the cook's son. Greta (Posey) has a kind, considerate husband and works for a publisher. Her unexpected success places temptation in her path, and she has a problem with fidelity. Paula (Balk) is pregnant, and headed upstate when she picks up a young hitchhiker. He's been injured, and she tries to help him -- at some cost to herself. The three stories in this movie are only tangentially linked, but each one is interesting in its way. The subtitles are good. Grade: B

The Runaways (DVD)

The Runaways (2010) starring Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning, Michael Shannon, Scout Taylor-Compton, Alia Shawkat, Stella Maeve, Riley Keough. Set in the 1970s, this movie portrays the genesis and rise to fame of The Runaways, a real girl band of the era. Stewart plays guitarist Joan Jett, and Fanning is lead singer Cherie Currie. The girls have to fight the rock fans' bias against women, plus their own battles with substance abuse. It turns out to be pretty standard rock-band-makes-it-good-then-breaks-up fare, but with a feminine twist. Unfortunately, the subtitles are lousy. In a film saturated with music, the songs are not captioned. I know it can be done, because I've seen it done in other movies. If you're not already familiar with the music of the '70s, you'll be lost half the time. I was. Grade: B-

Peter's Friends (DVD)

Peter's Friends (1992) starring Stephen Fry, Kenneth Branagh, Rita Rudner, Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, Imelda Staunton. Directed by Kenneth Branagh. Sometimes referred to as the British "Big Chill"; ten years after graduation, Peter Morton (Fry) inherits the family mansion and invites a group of friends from college to stay with him for a weekend. The friends all bring their own baggage, both literally and figuratively. One of them brings her boyfriend of two weeks. Others bring spouses, not part of the original group. The interplay of all the various characters, changing partners, etc., is cleverly told. Which is a way of saying that the script is very good. Rudner and Thompson deliver standout performances. The subtitles are excellent. Grade: B+

Green Zone (DVD)

Green Zone (2009) starring Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson, Khalid Abdalla, Amy Ryan, Igal Naor, Jason Isaacs. Early in the Iraq War, Army Chief Roy Miller (Damon) questions why the intel is bad on the location of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Kinnear plays a government weasel who won't listen to the soldiers on the ground. Gleeson is a CIA agent who encourages Miller but won't tell all he knows. Ryan plays a journalist who wrote articles on WMD based on faulty sources. The movie shows Iraq after the invasion as a chaotic place, with various U.S. factions playing off against each other in a giant clusterfuck, which it undoubtedly was. Dear old George W. Bush even makes an appearance. The subtitles are pretty good, but the film's kinetic action is hard to follow even with captions. Grade: B+

Persuasion (DVD)

Persuasion (1995) starring Amanda Root, Ciaran Hinds. Set in 1814, in the wake of war with France, Anne Elliot (Root) lives a quiet life with her father and sisters -- until poverty overtakes them, and the family (except Anne) is forced to relocate to Bath. Anne goes to stay with her "sick" sister Mary, and it is a fateful turn of events. Home from the war is Captain Frederick Wentworth (Hinds), who proposed to Anne eight years before and was refused. Anne loved him, but was talked out of making the match because his prospects were deemed poor by her family. Now Wentworth has returned, having profited from his part in the war and become quite rich. Based on the Jane Austen novel of the same title, the movie reflects the mores and conventions of a long-past time in England -- 200 years ago now. The story is told at a leisurely pace, but rewards the patient viewer. The subtitles are good. Grade: A-

A Perfect Murder (DVD)

A Perfect Murder (1998) starring Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow, Viggo Mortensen. When financial tycoon Steven Taylor (Douglas) discovers that his wife Emily (Paltrow) is having an affair with David, an artist (Mortensen), he digs up dirt on David and tries to hire him to kill his wife. There is no such thing as a perfect murder, of course, and complications ensue. For those who aren't familiar with it, this is a '90s update of Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder." Unfortunately, it's not a very good one. In fact, this is a terrible movie. It's filled with glaring errors, logical flaws in the script that are obvious while you're watching it. Furthermore, the subtitles are poor -- hard to read and incomplete. Grade: D

Amelie (DVD)

Amelie (2001) starring Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz. Sheltered young woman (Tautou) encounters real life at the age of 23, decides to try and manipulate the lives of those around her to make them happier. When she finally finds a young man she is interested in, she pursues him in a rather elliptical fashion, always working on a new stratagem. The movie is shot with a saturated color palate that I find very pleasing. It is cleverly written, and Tautou is brilliant in her starring role. I found this to be a charming, original film in all its facets. In French, with English subtitles. Grade: A

Pepe le Moko (DVD)

Pepe le Moko (1937) starring Jean Gabin, Mireille Balin. French film about gangster (Gabin) who is hiding out in the Casbah section of Algiers and eludes capture until he is lured out by an attractive woman (Balin). The evocation of the Casbah seems very convincing, although Gabin doesn't seem quite menacing enough to be a gangster. Although this film is quite old, it's still entertaining to watch. The subtitles are, unfortunately, not easy to read. Grade: B

People Will Talk (DVD)

People Will Talk (1951) starring Cary Grant, Jeanne Crain, Hume Cronyn. Dr. Noah Praetorius (Grant) falls in love with Deborah Higgins (Crain), a pregnant patient, and marries her. Meanwhile, Praetorius' enemy (Cronyn) manages to gin up a trial of the doctor based on his association with an old friend. The last 15 minutes of the film are dynamite, but they hardly make up for all the nonsense that went before. The subtitles are good. Grade: B-

Pelle the Conqueror (DVD)

Pelle the Conqueror (1988) starring Max von Sydow, Pelle Hvenegaard. It's the 19th century, and widower Lasse Karlsson (von Sydow) and his son Pelle (Hvenegaard) emigrate from Sweden to Denmark looking for high-paying jobs. What they find is wretched poverty working on a rich man's farm. There is plenty of drama to witness on the farm, however, as Lasse and Pelle are not the only workers there who are miserable and only wish to escape. But things seem to be looking up for Lasse and Pelle when they meet the "widow" Olsen, who has a home and a cow. From the context and the dialogue, it becomes clear that the help on the farm are no more than indentured servants. Most of them are Swedish immigrants, and have virtually no rights. The movie itself, however, is a rich and varied tapestry depicting life in another time, a distant place. The two-and-a-half hour playing time, usually too long for my taste, seemed like barely enough. The film is in Danish and Swedish, with English subtitles. Grade: A

What About Bob? (DVD)

What About Bob? (1991) starring Bill Murray, Richard Dreyfuss, Julie Hagerty. Murray plays Bob, a phobic, half-crazed patient who pursues his psychiatrist Leo (Dreyfuss) on vacation in New Hampshire. Much to Leo's distress, his family seems to like Bob better than him. Slowly, one baby step at a time, Bob drives Leo insane while co-opting his family. The movie has some genuinely funny moments, and may be just the thing if you're looking for some light entertainment. The subtitles are quite good. Grade: B+

Payday (DVD)

Payday (1973) starring Rip Torn, Ahna Capri, Elayne Heilveil, Cliff Emmich, Michael C. Gwynne. Torn stars as Maury Dann, a second-rate country music star who's on the road with his band, raising hell, wooing women and partaking freely of drugs and alcohol. Dann indulges his every whim, even to the point of killing a man, and expects his manager to fix whatever situation he gets himself into. It's a pretty wild ride, and Torn is pretty great in the role. One complaint: The songs aren't subtitled. Grade: B+

The Pawnbroker (DVD)

The Pawnbroker (1965) starring Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Brock Peters, Jaime Sanchez. Directed by Sidney Lumet. Steiger stars as Sol Nazerman, a Jew who survived the Holocaust during World War II and now, 25 years later, owns a pawn shop in New York City. Nazerman is clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, because he continually has flashbacks to his life in the concentration camp. The unspeakable horrors that he has been subject to are revealed gradually, in flashbacks of increasing intensity, and we watch him crumble before our eyes. This is a powerful film, full of meaning, and not easy to watch. But it is certainly worth seeing. There are no subtitles offered on the disc, but it does have closed captions, which are available on most modern TVs. Grade: A-

Pauline at the Beach (DVD)

Pauline at the Beach (1983) starring Amanda Langlet, Arielle Dombasle, Pascal Greggory, Feodor Atkine. A teenage girl named Pauline (Langlet) spends the summer at the beach with her older, sexy cousin Marion (Dombasle). They both become involved with males that they have newly met. Henri, who hooks up with Marion, turns out to be something of a playboy. A friend, walking by his beach house, sees another woman naked in his room. The "friend" tells Marion. High jinks ensue. This movie is in French, with English subtitles. It's somewhat talky, but still quite entertaining, what with all the skimpy swimsuits and casual nudity. Grade: B+

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (DVD)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009) starring Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Sven-Bertil Taube. Mikael Blomkvist (Nyqvist), apparently disgraced journalist, is hired for a six-month job of solving a 40-year-old murder mystery. Lisbeth Salander (Rapace), computer hacker extraordinaire, becomes interested in Blomkvist's case, believing that he was framed. Soon (and I'm not clear on exactly how it happens) the two are working together on the cold murder case. It is customary when reviewing a movie that has been made from a popular book to compare the two, usually to the detriment of the film. In this case, however, I think the movie is actually better in many ways than the book. I felt the book was guilty of many excesses, and these have been corrected in the film. The script is more economical, shorn as it is of much of the verbiage of the book. The story is set in Sweden, and the dialogue is in Swedish, with English subtitles. The DVD has an English soundtrack available, for those who don't like subtitles, and also features an interview with Rapace. Grade: A

Paths of Glory (DVD)

Paths of Glory (1957) starring Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, Adolphe Menjou, George Macready. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. In World War I, an ambitious French general (Macready) orders his men to take an impregnable German position. When the attack fails, the general orders an example made: Three of the men will be placed on court-martial for cowardice, under penalty of death. Colonel Dax (Douglas) acts as defense counsel -- and conscience of the film -- for the accused men. This movie is now recognized as one of the great anti-war films. Some also see it as anti-military, with some justification. The subtitles are adequate. Grade: A-

The Parallax View (DVD)

The Parallax View (1974) starring Warren Beatty, Paula Prentiss, William Daniels, Walter McGinn, Hume Cronyn. A reporter (Beatty) investigating a three-year-old assassination doesn't believe it's a conspiracy -- until he digs deeper and finds his own life threatened. Then he decides to go undercover with the Parallax Corporation, the company that seems to be recruiting assassins. It turns out to be an unwise move. This movie didn't hold my interest very well -- I thought it was just too far-fetched. Even with the closed captions turned on, I found parts of it hard to follow. The captions were rather poor -- bowdlerized for no particularly good reason. Grade: B-

Crash (DVD)

Crash (2005) starring Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon, Thandie Newton, Brendan Fraser, Jennifer Esposito, many others. Directed by Paul Haggis. Racism, crime, HMOs, politics, corruption and many other of the aggravations of living in modern America get their due in this Best Picture Oscar-winning movie. Set in Los Angeles, it tells of the intersecting lives of a cross-section of Angelinos, of all different races and classes, and it does so with dark humor and pathos. It's an ensemble piece, with some big-name actors getting just a small share of the available screen time, and it left me wanting to know more about many of the little stories that played out during the film. That's hardly a flaw, however. This is an absorbing, powerful movie. The subtitles are good. Grade: A

Melvin and Howard (DVD)

Melvin and Howard (1980) starring Paul LeMat, Jason Robards, Mary Steenburgen. Loser Melvin Dummar (LeMat) gives a ride -- and lends a quarter -- to an old stranger (Robards) who claims to be Howard Hughes. Years later, after Hughes dies, a will turns up which names Melvin as an heir to Hughes' estate. The "climax" is anticlimactic, and this movie is only intermittently interesting. Some critics rave over this film, but I didn't like it that much. The subtitles are pretty good. Grade: B-