Agatha (1979)

AGATHA  (1979)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Michael Apted
    Vanessa Redgrave, Dustin Hoffman, Timothy Dalton,
    Helen Morse, Celia Gregory, Paul Brooke, Alan Badel
A speculation on what Agatha Christie might've been up to those eleven days in 1926, when she famously disappeared. It has the elegance and polish of one of those BBC productions where the settings are posh, the characters are affluent, and the trains are impossibly clean. Vanessa Redgrave plays Agatha. Dustin Hoffman plays an American journalist who tracks her down. Their star power carries the piece, and their height differential is emphasized rather than mitigated. The ending's a switch. Literally. 

Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA  (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Olivier Assayas
    Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloë Grace Moretz,
    Lars Eidinger, Angela Winkler, Johnny Flynn
Parallel characters in parallel relationships get all tangled up in an ambitious, ambiguous psychological study starring Juliette Binoche as a middle-aged actress and Kristen Stewart as her assistant. Maria Enders (Binoche) once played the younger role in a play about two women. Now, in a revival, she's playing the older one. The director tells her the key to the piece is that the two characters are the same woman. So you've got the relationship between the two women in the play. And the parallel relationship between Maria and Stewart's character, an efficient, brutally insightful 20-something named Valentine. The relationship between Maria and Chloë Grace Moretz  as the headline-grabbing younger actress in the revival. A case of off-stage suicide that haunts both productions. And the fact that Maria now identifies with both characters in the play. A lot of this was shot in the Swiss Alps, and a lot of it involves Valentine helping Maria run her lines, the lines in the play and the words they exchange outside of it running together to become indistinguishable. There's a little bit of Bergman in this, a puzzle to wrap your head around, and a supportive and sometimes testy workout for Stewart and Binoche. 

Coquette (1929)

COQUETTE  (1929)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Sam Taylor
    Mary Pickford, John Mack Brown, Matt Moore,
    John St. Polis, George Irving, Louise Beavers
Silent superstar Mary Pickford won an Oscar for this early talkie, playing a Southern belle who falls hard for a handsome young man from the wrong side of town. It's a movie with one foot in the silent era and the other in sound, and Pickford's performance reflects that. With her hair cut fashionably short, Mary's undeniably cute, but the dialogue's stiff and the sound quality's terrible. Pickford made only three more movies after this, and effectively retired in 1933.

Wonder Woman (2017)

WONDER WOMAN  (2017)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Patty Jenkins
    Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Connie Nielsen, Robin Wright,
    Danny Huston, David Thewlis, Said Taghmaoui,
    Ewen Bremner, Eugene Brave Rock, Elena Anaya
The origin story of Wonder Woman is a revisionist fantasy in which the Amazon Princess Diana sails away from Paradise Island with an American aviator named Steve Trevor, who takes her to London and introduces her to life in the early 20th century. (Keeping her Amazon body more or less covered up is one of the things she has to get used to.) Then she's off to the front, to kill a lot of Germans, battle the god Ares, and save the world by winning World War One. What sets this apart from most other superhero movies isn't just that its ass-kicking lead character is female, but that it plays out in such a specific historical context. The action scenes are decently executed, and Gal Gadot flying through the air in slow motion with her sword and shield looks authentically heroic. Chris Pine plays Steve Trevor with the same cocky self-assurance he brought to Captain Kirk, and even gets to zoom around on a motorcycle, just like he did in "Star Trek Beyond". Robin Wright, looking lean and tough, plays Antiope, Wonder Woman's Amazon aunt, who teaches her how to be a warrior back on the island. Too bad we can't come up with a superhero like this every time there's a horrible war to be fought. It'd make things so much easier. 

The Pink Panther (1963)

THE PINK PANTHER  (1963)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Blake Edwards
    David Niven, Peter Sellers, Claudia Cardinale,
    Robert Wagner, Capucine, Fran Jeffries

The Pink Panther is

a) a stylish Blake Edwards comedy about a master jewel thief plotting to steal the world's most valuable diamond. 
b) the name of the diamond.
c) a series of films, starting with this one, starring Peter Sellers as the bumbling police inspector Jacques Clouseau.
d) a cartoon cat making its first appearance in the title sequence of this movie.
e) Henry Mancini's most widely recognized title theme, also making its screen debut.
f) a series of DePatie/Freleng animated shorts featuring the previously mentioned cartoon cat. 
g) all of the above.

Kong: Skull Island (2017)

KONG: SKULL ISLAND  (2017)  ¢ ¢
    D: Jordan Vogt-Roberts
    Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson,
    John Goodman, John C. Reilly, Corey Hawkins,
    John Ortiz, Tian Jing, Toby Kebbel, Shea Whigham
Big monkey. Scary monsters. Whiz-bang effects. Crazy John C. Reilly. Nutso Samuel L. Jackson. Tom Hiddleston with biceps. Brie Larson in a tank top. Lots of stuff lifted straight from "Apocalypse Now". What's not to like? Well, um, the script . . .

The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926)

THE WINNING OF BARBARA WORTH 
    D: Henry King                     (1926)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    Ronald Colman, Vilma Banky, Gary Cooper,
    Charles Lane, Paul McAllister, Clyde Cook
A western from the late silent era in which Ronald Colman and Gary Cooper compete for the hand of Vilma Banky, while engineers and homesteaders try to corral the Colorado River to irrigate the desert. Some major plot points are resolved a little too easily in this, but the scale is epic, the cinematography is eye-catching, and the climactic flood, even done with miniatures, is spectacular. It was Cooper's first starring role, and while he doesn't seem to do much, he always seems to look good doing it.