Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER 
    D: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo               (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Robert Redford,
    Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan,
    Cobie Smulders, Jenny Agutter, Toby Jones, Stan Lee
In this movie, Robert Redford gets to do what Gregory Peck did in "The Boys From Brazil" and Henry Fonda did in "Once Upon a Time In the West": throw off several decades of often flawed heroes to play a truly despicable villain. He looks like he's having a good time doing it, and that's not a bad reason to watch the movie. I'm normally not a big fan of live-action comic-book recreations, but this one kind of works. Chris Evans, looking digitized to the point of total blandness, plays the hero behind the mask, a World War Two vet who would now be about 95 years old, but, thanks to cryonics and technical wizardry, appears young and buff and can jump out of planes and off tall buildings without a parachute and still not be hurt when he lands on the pavement. The story has the Captain battling an evil organization called Hydra, whose evil commander-in-chief (Redford) wants to control the world by providing its inhabitants with security at the cost of freedom. The action scenes are exciting, and for all the suspension of disbelief required, you actually care about the outcome. There's a decent amount of tension in the storytelling, and the moral arguments that come up are worth having. Plus, there's Scarlett Johansson as a husky-voiced Russian agent, Jenny Agutter in a cameo that's much too brief, Samuel L. Jackson being Samuel L. Jackson, and Redford laying on the charm as he plots the strategic slaughter of 20 million people. The ending leaves most of the characters in play, and even introduces a few new ones. The battle's been won, but not the war, and the sequel's due out in 2016.

A Summer's Tale (1996)

A SUMMER'S TALE  (1996)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Eric Rohmer
    Melvil Poupaud, Amanda Langlet,
    Gwenaëlle Simon, Aurelia Nolin
Ah, to be young and beautiful and in love (or not) in the summer on the seacoast in France. Melvil Poupaud plays the moody protagonist, a math major and would-be songwriter named Gaspard, just out of the university, with a few weeks to kill before he starts his first job. He's got a place to stay - a friend's conveniently vacant apartment - and he's waiting for a girl named Lena to show up. Lena's his girlfriend, or maybe not, he's not sure, but he's hopeful, and she's off in Spain with some friends and she's taking her time getting up to Brittany, and in the meantime, Gaspard strikes up a friendship with a waitress named Margot, and he and Margot take long walks together and flirt a little and exchange confidences and kind of hit it off. Then he meets Solene, who's lively and outgoing and can sing, and Gaspard takes the song he was writing for Lena and gives it to her. Then Lena turns up and wants to know how that song's coming along, and now he's got three girls on his hands, which is two girls too many, but what's an introspective, indecisive, cynical, moonstruck guy to do? In fact, all three women are playing him, but probably no more than he's playing them, or trying to. In the end, the best he can do is call it a summer and make his escape. Sometimes you can have too much of a good thing, and at the same time not enough. I know that sounds crazy, but it's true. It's a cautionary tale.

Sin City: A Dame To Kill For (2014)

SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR  (2014)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez
    Mickey Rourke, Josh Brolin, Eva Green, 
    Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jessica Alba, Powers Booth,
    Rosario Dawson, Dennis Haysbert, Ray Liotta,
    Christopher Lloyd, Juno Temple, Bruce Willis
Miller and Rodriguez return to the scene of the crime - a lot of crime - with a sequel to their hard-boiled hit from 2005. Mickey Rourke reprises his role as Marv, a bullet-headed brute whose heart's in the right place, or it would be, if he had one. Josh Brolin plays the tough-guy protagonist who can never say no to a dame, especially when the dame is Eva Green. Jessica Alba plays a stripper in a sleazy club where the strippers don't really strip, but the boozed-up men down below get jacked watching them anyway. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a gambler who gets in over his head, and both he and Alba have a score to settle with a nasty piece of work called the Senator (Powers Booth, who practically breathes graphic-novel villainy). Bruce Willis turns up as Alba's ghostly guardian angel. Some of the characters are new, but it all kind of feels recycled. The narrative setup is noir by the numbers, and the equation's a mess. The visuals still look good, and as before, mayhem abounds, with a particular emphasis on severed heads and gouged-out eyes. This time around, the directors seem to have blown most of their color budget on Eva Green's lips and eyes. If that's the case, it was money well spent, a testament to Green's status as the screen's reigning viper, an actress who can make marginal pulp worth watching, and a femme fatale who's undeniably both femme and fatale.

Witness For the Prosecution (1957)

WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION  (1957)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Billy Wilder
    Charles Laughton, Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich,
    Elsa Lanchester, Henry Daniell, Una O'Connor
Billy Wilder's adaptation of an Agatha Christie play about a cranky old barrister who agrees to argue for the defense in a particularly difficult murder case. A whodunit delivered with plenty of wit and a satisfying twist or two at the end. Laughton as the barrister and Lanchester as his badgering nurse play off each other with the combative affection of an old married couple, which, in fact, they were.

The Wipers Times (2013)

THE WIPERS TIMES  (2013)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Andy De Emmony
    Ben Chaplin, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Steve Oram,
    Michael Palin, Ben Daniels, Josh O'Connor,
    Jarrod Cooke, Colm Ash, Hugh Skinner
British troops dodging bullets in Belgium and France during the Great War uncover a printing press and use it to publish their own satirical trench newspaper. A case study in narrative compression, a 90-minute movie in which nothing seems wasted and puns and jokes punctuate the script the way artillery fire punctuates the background soundtrack. That's no accident, and in fact, it's a big part of what the movie's about: the way humor in any form helps keep men in battle from going insane. Michael Palin's well cast as a sympathetic general who (unlike some of his junior officers) both reads the paper and gets the joke. Produced for British television. 

The Hurricane (1937)

THE HURRICANE  (1937)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: John Ford
    Dorothy Lamour, Jon Hall, Raymond Massey,
    Mary Astor, C. Aubrey Smith, Thomas Mitchell,
    Al Kikume, John Carradine, Movita Castenada
If this isn't the original special-effects disaster movie, it's at least a prototype, about what happens to a tropical island and its inhabitants when a devastating storm blows in. Raymond Massey plays the inflexible colonial governor. Mary Astor's his sympathetic wife. Dorothy Lamour (of course) plays a native girl married to dashing island hunk Jon Hall. Thomas Mitchell's a rum-soaked doctor and John Carradine's the sadistic warden of the prison where Hall ends up incarcerated. Which is more than you really need to know, because what it all leads up to is that killer storm, which pretty much wrecks everything that stands in its path. The storm is awesome, and this was long before you could fake it with digital imaging. It's real wind (created using airplane propellers) and real water (a lot of it). It's one of the movies my dad remembers seeing as a kid. It's not the kind of movie a kid back then would forget. 

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014)

THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY - PART 1 
    D: Francis Lawrence                              (2014)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth,
    Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman,
    Woody Harrelson, Julianne Moore, Elizabeth Banks,
    Willow Shields, Jeffrey Wright, Stanley Tucci
In the first half of episode three in the Katniss Everdeen saga, the games are over, District 12 lies in ruins, the other districts are rebelling, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) clings to power through intimidation and mass murder, and Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) becomes the face of the revolution. Like the previous "Hunger Games" films, it's an action romance for young adults, but now the stakes are higher. The outcome this time will affect everybody. The outcome will have to wait, of course, for "Mockingjay - Part 2", when everything presumably will be resolved. Will Katniss triumph? Will Snow be deposed? Will Katniss finally hook up with the tormented Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), or the hunky Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth)? Will Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks) be reunited with her trash-queen wardrobe? Will Prohibition be lifted, so that Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson) can get a real drink? I told you the stakes were high. Stay tuned.