June 2026

DISCLOSURE DAY (2026)

       If there is anyone who can make me believe in extra-terrestrial beings, the man who made “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T.” tops the list. Even when Steven Spielberg wears his heart (and hopes) on his sleeve, folding a film-long chase into a plea for a more caring world, as he does in his new picture, his masterful craft and understanding of human nature results in cinema both highly entertaining and grounded in the real world.

        This may be splitting hairs, but to me Spielberg doesn’t really make sci-fi movies; certainly not in the mode of “Star Wars,” “Star Trek,” and the “Superman” and “Avengers” franchises. He makes films in which things happen on Earth that we’ve never seen, but aren’t so futuristic or imaginary that they require a complete suspension of disbelief. Even in “Disclosure Day,” in which characters have the ability to see what other humans can’t, there’s an explanation of sorts.

         Basically, “Disclosure Day” is the journey of two individuals who, separately, have found their destiny and find themselves on the run from a secret government agency that wants to silence them.

       Emily Blunt plays Margaret, a Kansas City TV weather person who has some kind of mental breakdown on air, then hospitalized after seeming to speak in tongues. Escaping from the hospital, Margaret realizes she has to go somewhere but doesn’t know where. (Shades of Richard Dreyfuss’ character in “Close Encounters”).

      Meanwhile, Dr. Kellner (Josh O’Connor) thinks he knows where he’s going. As an employee of Wardex, a secret government-backed company that holds the evidence of alien visitation, he’s made off with what he keeps referring to as “the archives” and looks to rendezvous with the like-minded Hugo (Colman Domingo), who seems to be directing the building of a movie set in a large soundstage.

      Spielberg and co-writer David Koepp (“Jurassic Park,” “Mission: Impossible”) keep audiences in the dark for nearly the first hour of the film, a bold move in the age of streaming, but fleshes out Margaret and Kellner enough that I was willing to wade through the foggy plot to see where they were headed. It’s worth the wait.

     If it really matters, “Disclosure Day” isn’t a great or cutting-edge film, but a somewhat loopy, yet fascinating speculation on alien life visiting Earth and the impact that reveal has on humanity. 

    Blunt proves to be the perfect Spielberg heroine: a believable every-woman who turns into a single-focused warrior, tossing aside all hurdles. While O’Connor, memorable last year in “The Mastermind” and “Wake Up Dead Man,” is well cast as a very sincere whistleblower who finds himself in deep end of the pool.

    Giving what may be the best performance of the picture is Colin Firth (2010 Oscar winner for “The King’s Speech”) as the director of Wardex, determined to rein in the truth Margaret, Kellner and Hugo want the world to know. Somewhat ironic, the three principles of this American story are played by Brits (Blunt, O’Connor and Firth).

      Spielberg, who will turn 80 in December, keeps delivering first-rate pictures. One thinks of him as a 1980s-90s director, but in the past 10 years he’s made “The Post,” “West Side Story,” “The Fabelmans” and now “Disclosure Day,” a record that ranks with the best in the business.

  

PRESSURE (2026)

       No event in human history has been chronicled on the big screen more frequently than World War II, but I don’t think a film has ever focused on the importance of weather reports.

     Based on a stage play written by veteran British character actor David Haig (he also starred in the play), the movie details the tense days leading up to D-Day, when the operation’s commander, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser), recruits a highly respected Scottish meteorologist to the weather team. James Stagg’s job is to advise Ike on weather conditions expected for the Allied assault on Utah Beach in Normandy.

       Turns out Stagg (Andrew Scott of “All of Us Strangers” and “Blue Moon”) isn’t much of a team player, disagreeing with group’s trust in historical weather conditions and fighting the staff’s plans to launch on June 5. A snarling, Gen. Montgomery (Damian Lewis), who previously relied on meteorologist Irving Krick (Chris Messina), isn’t interested in dissenting opinions, but Eisenhower eventually puts his trust in the newfangled ideas of Stagg. 

       This very focused story struggles to fill out a 100-minute movie and its arguments between Stagg and Ike grow repetitive, but the exceptional acting and the importance of the decisions being made, sustain the picture.

    Bringing a softer edge to the somewhat claustrophobic atmosphere is Kerry Condon (“The Banshees of Inisherin,” “F1: The Movie”) as Kay Summersby, Eisenhower’s trusted assistant and, by most accounts, his mistress (an issue avoided in this film).

      Fraser is a bit over-the-top as Ike and more looming than the 5’10” future president was even when his anger flared. But this is Stagg’s story—he has quite a temper himself—and Scott is once again pitch perfect. Few actors are better at displaying inner turmoil while putting on a stoic front. There’s a wonderful scene near the end when his predictions come true (Ike moved D-Day to June 6) and his insistence to delay the invasion is validated.

     Director Anthony Maras previously directed “Hotel Mumbai” (2018), about a terrorist attack in India.

     I first learned about the importance of the weather to this landmark event, along with all the other issues Eisenhower dealt with, in the superbly researched history “The Light of Battle” by Michel Paradis.

  

THERE’S ALWAYS A WOMAN (1938)

     Time has dulled many a film once considered a sparkling gem. I recently re-watched Howard Hawks’ acclaimed 1934 comedy “Twentieth Century,” starring John Barrymore and Carole Lombard as egotistical show biz clichés who spend 90 minutes insulting one another.

       The mile-a-minute line readings, dripping with sarcasm, and a female character who goes toe-to-toe with the leading man, usually out-smarting him, elevated the picture to landmark status, creating a template for what became known as screwball comedies. While I acknowledge the pioneering status of “Twentieth Century,” it’s more irritating than funny. (Don’t get me started on “Bringing Up Baby.”)

      The next day on TCM, I laughed out-loud during almost every scene of this rarely screened Joan Blondell-Melvyn Douglas comedy, a film never considered a landmark of any type, all but forgotten after its initial run 88 years ago.

     As I’ve written before, Blondell may be the most underrated actress of the 1930s: not only did she star in a half dozen films each year, but her knock-about physicality, upbeat personality and wide-eyed expression made her more of a “screwball” than accomplished actresses such as Lombard, Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn or Claudette Colbert ever managed. Blondell wasn’t half the actress those other women were, but she knew exactly how the unkempt blonde sitting at the end of the bar talked and acted.

    In “There’s Always a Woman,” a wonderfully clever title, she takes up the private eye business her husband (the rather miscast Douglas) has abandoned for a more respectable post with the district attorney. Unlike Myrna Loy’s Nora in “The Thin Man” series, she’s stays one step ahead of her husband and never stops letting him know how far behind he remains.

     Mary Astor, in a role that hints at her performance as Brigid three years later in “The Maltese Falcon,” hires Sally (Blondell) to investigate her husband and, then, no surprise, he’s killed and Douglas’ Bill is on the cast for the DA’s office, competing for clues with his wife, a clever amateur. At one point, while interviewing Astor, Sally picks up a very large magnify glass, looking through it to prove her detective skills. Like a cartoon character, she’s bounding about in almost every scene: jumping on couches, being rolled out of bed, fake punching her husband in the back, flirting with police, banging pointlessly on a typewriter.

      Written by three veteran studio scripters, Gladys Lehman, Wilson Collison and Philip Rapp, and directed by Alexander Hall, “There’s Always a Woman” represents everything that make 1930s pictures endure as entertainment.

     Hall mostly directed B films in the 1930s and 40s, but scored an Oscar nomination for one of the great comedies of the 1940s, “Here Comes Mr. Jordan”—which on last viewing was still very funny.

  

TUNER (2026)

     While the set-up proves more appealing than the follow-through, this low-key, jazz-tinged character study is elevated by a cast delivering finely shaded performances.

     Little-known Leo Woodall (he was Rami Malek’s aide-de-camp in “Nuremberg”) plays Niki, a piano tuner working for a company run by former jazz pianist Harry Horowitz, a nostalgic, talkative man losing his fight against old age, portrayed with relish by Dustin Hoffman. Niki, a one-time protégé, suffers from a hearing disability that makes loud noises excruciating but also has perfect pitch.

     Two things happen in the film: Niki falls in love with a concert pianist (Havana Rose Liu) and, at the same time, joins up with some unsavory characters to raise money when Harry is hospitalized. Inevitably, these two intersect, disastrously.

       In his small but crucial role, the 88-year-old Hoffman, provides much of the film’s humor; it’s a wonderful snippet of what made this two-time Oscar winner one of the premier actors of the 20^th Century.

       Veteran TV, Broadway and film supporting player Tovah Feldshuh makes the most of her role as Harry’s wife as does Jean Reno as a famous composer.

      Woodall, star of such recent streaming series “Vladimir” and “Prime Target,” shows a screen presence even as a soft-spoken introvert made cautious by his hearing problems.

      The film is enhanced by numerous jazz classics on the soundtrack, including Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man” and “Cantaloupe Island” (he also makes an appearance as himself) and Dave Brubecks “Unsquare Dance.” In addition, a piece by another master pianist during the closing credits offers a touching connection to an earlier moment in the film.      

      Director Daniel Roher, who won a 2022 Oscar for the powerful documentary “Navalny,” about a Russian dissident, and directed the doc “Once Were Brothers” about The Band, and writing partner Robert Ramsey, give Woodall, Hoffman and the other actors plenty of room to breathe life into their characters. That’s what the best filmmakers do.

  

THE INVITE (2026)

     If you can endure the first hour of this lightweight modernization of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” it does get better. The script, based on a Spanish stage play and film, plays as if it was written in the throes of marriage counseling, during which the disappointments and quirks of two couples take center stage at a wine and cheese get-together.

       Joe (Seth Rogen) is an unhappy music professor (and failed musician) who comes home to his San Francisco apartment to discover that his wife, Angela (Olivia Wilde, who also directs), has spent the day preparing for a visit from the upstairs neighbors. Their over-wrought bickering grows old within minutes but it goes on and on, as does the overbearing cello solo on the soundtrack. All I could think about was why Hollywood so often portrays adults as pitiful, dysfunctional failures. 

      Just as ridiculous is the way Angela acts when the neighbors, Piňa (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton), arrive. They stand in the apartment uncomfortably while Angela flaps around nervously, apologizing for everything and making little sense. It’s as if she was channeling Jerry Lewis.

At the same time, the older couple can’t hide their pretentiously hipness and condescending attitude. No one seems happy to be there.

     Hanging over the proceedings is Joe’s desire to complain about Piňa and Hawk’s noisy lovemaking but before he can deliver his gripe, they reveal that they have group sex with other couples. Quickly, the tenor of the evening changes.  

    Director Wilde does a good job of maintain the energy even though the film is set almost entirely in the couple’s apartment, relying heavily on the dialogue. Partly by design of the script, but also because of the screen presence of veteran actors Cruz and Norton, the upstairs neighbors, whether serious or playing games, keep the picture from sounding like a bad stage play.

    Scripters Will McCormack and Rashida Jones (Quincy’s daughter) adapted Cesc Gay’s play for Wilde, whose best film as a director is “Booksmart” (2019), a smart, amusing movie about the unfairness of high school. She’s been acting in films and TV since 2004.

  .   While I winced at some of the dialogue and found little in any of the characters to sympathize with, you have to give props to any film in 2026 that takes on marriage and sex with a sense of humor.

  

THE BRIDE! (2026)

     If you didn’t get enough of the “Frankenstein” story from Guillermo del Toro’s big-budget version last year, actress-turned-director Maggie Gyllenhaal has concocted a story that turns the monster and his female companion into an undead version of Bonnie and Clyde.

    Starring two of Hollywood’s best actors—last year’s Oscar winner Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale—the film seemed destined to be a sure-fire hit. Instead, it was sunk by a script pieced together from other Frankenstein pictures, Terrence Malick’s “Badlands” and Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers” and a performance by Buckley that wavers between over-the-top silliness and incoherent insanity. As Frankenstein’s monster, Bale disappears in the shadow of his bride’s uninhibited violence and pointless rants.

     The misguided plot, which I lost interest in after about 20 minutes, starts with the monster showing up at the lab of a scientist known for experimenting with re-animating the dead, Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening) and demanding a mate. Not sure why the story has been moved to Depression-era Chicago (I guess the monster tired of roaming around the Arctic) but once a murdered mobster’s mistress has been brought to life, Frankie and Ida cause mayhem as they roam the country.

    At one point, Frankie dances to “Puttin’ on the Ritz” in a homage (I guess) to “Young Frankenstein.” There are dozens of scenes that fall under the category of “this seems cool, right?” Gyllenhaal clearly had no interest in making a coherent movie. If the time shifting isn’t odd enough, we also get Mary Shelley (also Buckley, in ghostly closeup) speaking from the grave for absolutely no reason.

     The movie’s characters, like those in almost every current TV streaming series, use the f-word more frequently and as casually as a ship full of Marines. I have no doubt that the word is spoken more times in this film than it was heard in Chicago the entire year of 1936. I know it will come as a shock to contemporary screenwriters, but harsh profanity was rarely heard in the first half of the 20^th Century.

     In the first decade of the century, Gyllenhaal was among the finest American actresses, creating memorable characters in “Donnie Darko” (2001), “Secretary” (2002), “Happy Endings’ (2005), “Sherrybaby” (2006) and earning an Oscar nomination for “Crazy Heart” (2009). She hasn’t had a lead role in a film since “The Kindergarten Teacher” (2018), but earned a screenplay nomination for her feature directorial debut “The Lost Daughter” (2021), a moving film about real women as opposed to the stitched together version in her second effort.       

  

PHOTOS

 Josh O’Connor and Emily Blunt on the run in “Disclosure Day.” (Universal Pictures)

 Joan Blondell and Melvyn Douglas in “There’s Always a Woman.” (Columbia Pictures)

 Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton in “The Invite.” (A24)

 

May 2026

THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE (1976) and

BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS… (1976)

       Nineteen seventy-six, one of the most memorable years in Hollywood history, saw the release of all-time classics “Taxi Driver,” “Network,” “All the President’s Men” along with the popular best picture winner, “Rocky.”

      The five-year period starting the year before (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Nashville,” “Shampoo,” “Jaws”) and ending in 1979 (“Apocalypse Now,” “Manhattan,” “All That Jazz,” “Being There,” “Alien”), with “Annie Hall,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Star Wars,” and “The Deer Hunter,” among others, in 1977 and ‘78, represents the most substantial run of great films the American film industry ever produced. In this small pocket of time, writers and directors were given free range and audiences were rewarded.

       For me, the year marks the beginning of my interest in movies as more than just entertaining diversions, as I recognized the cinema as a complex artform, the best films offering a strong point of view expressed by a screenwriter and a director. The journey had begun the previous year when I finally saw “The Godfather Part II” and “Last Tango in Paris,” seminal works of the era.  

      I could wax excessively about “All the President’s Men,” having first watched it just as I segued from an English major to journalism, but too much has been written about that influential docu-drama.

     Two underappreciated pictures from 1976 that deserve revisiting are John Cassavetes’ street-wise tale of a seedy businessman, “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” and Robert Altman’s free-wheeling, historical satire, “Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson.”

      Altman, in the midst of his most productive period—"McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” “The Long Goodbye,” “Nashville,” 3 Women”—drops viewers into the world of Buffalo Bill Cody’s vaudevillian show of the Wild West, a theatrical circus that thrived from the 1880s until the early 20^th Century, creating a mythology about the white settlers’ “conquest” of the American West and casting the Native Americans as villains.

     Paul Newman, giving one of his most underrated performances, plays Cody as an egotistical moron who can barely ride a horse, but strides about like the hero he never was. In a coup, the federal government allows the still regal Sitting Bull, the most famous tribal chief, off the reservation to join the troupe. As ridiculous as the entire set-up seems, it actually happened.

     The supporting cast, like in every Altman picture, is essential: Kevin McCarthy (“Invasion of the Body Snatchers”) is hilarious as one of Cody’s assistants; Joel Grey, after providing MC duties for “Cabaret” (1972), does the same for Buffalo Bill; Geraldine Chaplin plays the emotional sharp-shooter Annie Oakley; Harvey Keitel is cast against type as Bill’s sycophant nephew; and fresh from his memorable performance as Chief Bromden in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Will Sampson confounds Cody as the stone-faced spokesperson for Sitting Bull.

      The best performance in the film is delivered by the venerable Burt Lancaster as Ned Buntline, the dime novelist who turned Cody from a minor figure into a Western legend. “[It was] the thrill of my life to have invented you,” he tells Buffalo Bill as he departs. Every line Lancaster speaks is a gem (Altman penned the film with fellow director Alan Rudolph), dripping with sarcasm.

      The picture offers the ultimate critique of movie Westerns and their depiction of American history: the ungilded truth fades, replaced by a more comfortable narrative and make-believe heroes. While the filmmakers are clearly condemning the casual racism expressed by the white characters, I can’t imagine the film being made today.

      Ben Gazzara, one of Cassavetes’ best friends, an intense actor who gave as many bad performances as good ones, is perfectly cast as Cosmo Vittelli, the high-stepping proprietor of a low-rent strip joint on Hollywood Boulevard. Like many of the writer-director’s movies, “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” feels unrehearsed, documentary style with long takes of Cosmo strutting through the club or on the mean streets of Los Angeles, always well dressed and full of confidence, but never very far ahead of his creditors.

      There’s not much of a plot—Cosmo is the plot—but the title comes from a favor he’s asked to do to clear a gambling debt. Among the mobsters keeping Cosmo in line are played by Seymour Cassel and the scariest of all actors, Timothy Carey. 

      “Chinese Bookie” fits into one of the most interesting movie trends of the 1970s: aimless, but insightful examinations of individuals who don’t fit neatly into society.   

      Gene Hackman and Al Pacino in “Scarecrow” (1973), Hackman again in “The Conversation” (1974), Dustin Hoffman in “Straight Time” (1978), Jill Clayburgh in “An Unmarried Woman” (1978), Warren Oates in “Two-Lane Blacktop” (1972), every ‘70s role of Jack Nicholson and Gena Rowlands in her husband’s “A Woman Under the Influence” (1974) are just a few of examples of this long-lost sub-genre.    

  

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2 (2026)

      Considering Hollywood’s love affair with sequels, it’s surprising that it took 20 years to revive the world of fashion journalism that made “The Devil Wears Prada” a major hit in 2006.

     Bringing back Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt, the new production straddles the line between offensive extravagance and consideration of the importance of ethics and loyalty, but let’s not take the film too seriously—this is well-acted, overly plotted eye candy. It tones down the pretentiousness of the original with Streep’s Miranda (a not very subtle comic portrait of former Vogue editor Anna Wintour) coming off as an actual human with a touch of humility and vulnerability.

       Hathaway’s Andy is now an award-winning journalist who, after the paper she writes for folds, returns to Runway, where Miranda and Nigel (Tucci) still run the fashion magazine. After helping them dodge a PR nightmare over third-world labor issues, Andy works behind the scenes to unravel an ownership change for the publication.

     Blunt’s arrogant Emily, once, like Andy, a lowly assistant under Miranda, is now a major player in the fashion world, running Dior.

    Director David Frankel, who has mostly toiled on television since the first film, returns to smoothly guide the sequel and the fluctuating relationship between Miranda and Andy. Both actresses are sharp; for Hathaway the performance is something of a comeback, her most prominent role since her Oscar win for “Les Misérables” in 2012.

      By the last third of the picture, the scheming reaches such pointless levels that even someone as fashion-ignorant as I was more interested in the haute couture than the story.

  

CONFESSION (1937)

    The biggest winners at the dawn of the sound era were actresses. In no decade since the 1930s (and continuing in the early ‘40s) have stories about women played such a large part of the industry’s output. The number of actresses who were the stars (not just co-stars) of pictures is overwhelming when one considers the course of movie history since then.

       While even causal movie fans remember Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn and Greta Garbo, one of the biggest box office attractions of the era, Kay Francis, has been virtually forgotten.

      In the past few weeks, courtesy of TCM and YouTube, I’ve seen more than a half dozen of Francis’ films she starred in for Warner Bros. after her initial success at Paramount. “The Keyhole” (1933), “British Agent” (1934), “The House on 56^th Street” (1935), “I Found Stella Parish” (1935), “Stranded” (1935) and “Secrets of an Actress” (1938) are all stories of romantic heartbreak and sacrifice, classic “women’s pictures.” All told, she made 50 films during the 1930s, most as the top billed performer, yet Francis never scored an Oscar nomination.

     Probably her finest performance and most interesting role is in “Confession” as washed-up Polish opera singer Vera Kowalska who, minutes after she’s introduced in the film, shoots and kills her one-time mentor (Basil Rathbone) as he leaves a nightclub in “Confession.”

      Much of the movie’s story is shown in flashback as Vera is forced to tell her story in court. Director Joe May, a pioneer of the German film industry who emigrated to the U.S. in the mid-1930s, brings the influences of German Expressionism to “Confessions,” fearing more camera movement and stylish touches than you see even from Fritz Lang or Ernst Lubitsch. According to IMDb, the film is an almost identical copy of the 1935 German picture “Mazurka.”

      The film opens with the Svengali-like Michailow (Rathbone) seducing a young piano protégé Lisa (a wide-eyed Jane Bryan), a romance that ends abruptly when Vera shoots him. In flashback we see how years earlier Michailow did his best to breakup Vera’s marriage to a war hero (Ian Hunter). Rathbone, who was a villain right up to his career-changing Sherlock Holmes series, plays the most despicable character I remember ever seeing in a 1930s picture; it’s pretty clear he rapes Vera after getting her drunk and has similar plans for Lisa.

     Francis’ Vera provides the moral center of the film, a stand-in for women mistreated by men in power, as she goes from a European opera star to a second-rate cabaret singer who has lost everything she loved. She creates a powerful image in the courtroom dock, her hair dyed blonde and her piercing eyes staring hopelessly into space, unconcerned with the charges against her.

     Also memorable is the great character actor Donald Crisp as the murder-trial judge who must weigh the cost of justice in this complicated case.

     By the mid-1940s, good roles weren’t coming her way; she retired at 41 after “Wife Wanted” (1946), ironically about a washed-up movie star. Too bad she didn’t hold off until film noir caught on—like Davis, Stanwyck and Joan Crawford, she could have revived her career.

     Retiring early and having just a single great film—“Trouble in Paradise,” in a supporting role—explains why she’s not remembered but Francis was a subtle, thoughtful actress, often a sharp contrast to her male co-stars who were still learning how to act in talkies.

  

THE STRANGER (2026)

     One of the essential novels of the 20^th Century, Albert Camus’ manifesto on an absurdist approach to life creates a challenge to filmmakers looking to adapt the book. The simplistic plot—a taciturn shipping clerk’s mother dies and then he thoughtlessly shoots a man to death—is just the frame that the French writer used to hang his theory concerning a pointless existence; his rejection of traditional ideas of happiness and morals. 

    The great Italian director Luchino Visconti tackled the novel in 1967 with Marcello Mastroianni as the dour protagonist. I’ve only seen a fuzzy, VHS-transfer of that picture on the internet so I can’t compare it to the new version. But Mastroianni’s natural charisma undercuts the emotionless portrait of Meursault.

      Benjamin Voisin, star of the acclaimed French film “Lost Illusions” (2021), walks through the impressionistic film with world-weary detachment, attending his mother’s funeral, commencing an affair with a former co-worker (Rebecca Marder) and his accidental involvement with Raymond (Pierre Lottin), his shady neighbor. 

     Like the novel, the picture is set in early 1940s Algeria amid the background of the French military incursion into the African colony, adding a racial aspect when, after a scuffle with three Arab men near a friend’s beachside home, Meursault fires five shots into one of them.

     Director François Ozon (“Under the Sand,” “Swimming Pool”), who adapted the novel with Philippe Piazzo, emphasizes the contrast of the intense North African sun with interior shadows, superbly shot by Manuel Dacosse. The retro black and white cinematography adds to the film’s fog of ennui.

  

THE GIRL IN THE NEWS (1940)

       Before he directed three of the finest British films of the century—“Odd Man Out,” “The Fallen Idol” and “The Third Man,” all in a row in the late 1940s—Carol Reed first signaled his filmmaking potential with three 1940 pictures.

      Reed, the illegitimate son of the British stage legend Herbert Beerbohm Tree, worked in film companies from an early age, rising to director in 1935; 1940 proved to be a turning point. Central to the success of all three, “The Stars Look Down” and “Night Train to Munich” along with “The Girl in the News,” is leading lady Margaret Lockwood.

     Coming off international success playing the amateur sleuth determined to find a missing elderly woman in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes” (1938), Lockwood had risen to the top of the British film industry. In “Stars Look Down,” she’s the unhappy wife of a school teacher (Michael Redgrave), a local who returns from university determined to help the coalminers working in dangerous conditions. Foreshadowing John Ford’s “How Green Was My Valley” (1941), Reed’s film isn’t the visual masterpiece that Ford’s film is, but pushes for reform much more directly. As Jenny, Lockwood plays a complicated, unsympathetic woman, unsure of her loyalties.

In “Night Train to Munich,” Lockwood’s character and her father, a Czech scientist, find themselves caught between the Germans and the British after the Nazis invade their country. Rex Harrison plays a British undercover agent who attempts to extricate father and daughter from the Third Reich, and, of course, falls for Lockwood’s Anna. The film is one of the best war thrillers of the era.

     While those two films are recognized classics of British cinema, I was unfamiliar with “The Girl in the News” before stumbling upon it on YouTube. It might be the most challenging role of Lockwood’s career, portraying a home-health nurse who, as the film begins, has been accused of participating in the death of her patient. In a high-profile trial, she is acquitted, but to find work she  changes her name.

     You don’t need to have seen a thousand crime films to guess what happens to her new employer. While the first death was clearly suicide, Anne’s innocent or guilt is muddier the second time around. One of the strengths of the film is its underlining theme of class distinction and how it weighs on justice. Sidney Gilliat, who contributed to the scripts of “The Lady Vanishes” and “Night Train to Munich,” penned the screenplay, based on a Roy Vickers’ novel.

       The supporting cast is filled with familiar British actors, including Emlyn Williams (also in “The Stars in the Crown”), Roger Livesey, Basil Radford, Leo Genn, Michael Hordern and Felix Aylmer.

    While these 1940 releases only hint at the dramatically flamboyant direction seen in Reed’s later pictures, they are first-rate films willing to address controversial topics.

  

WORTH (2021)

       In contemporary cinema, there’s a thin line between a hit movie and one relegated to being buried among the streaming lineups of bad thrillers. Why some pictures fall between the cracks and fail to receive studio promotion is nearly impossible to explain. This Michael Keaton vehicle, barely released even though the actor had just starred in back-to-back Oscar-winning films (“Birdman” and “Spotlight”) takes on a seemingly unfilmable subject and delivers a compelling movie.

     In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, the airlines faced another fear: being sued into bankruptcy. In response, the federal government created the Victim Compensation Fund and recruited lawyer Ken Feinberg (Keaton) to run it. After developing a formula for payouts, Feinberg and his team find resistance from both ends of the spectrum—survivors of regular folks killed, whose cases are argued by Charles Wolf (a quietly memorable Stanley Tucci) and the advocate for the wealthy who want a bigger cut of the pie.

     Like a police procedural, the picture follows Feinberg, and assistant Camille (the always solid Amy Ryan) as they build a consensus among the relatives of the victims. The movie has the feel of a TV movie as it portrays a few of the families’ stories, but the subject is fascinating enough (the original title was “What Is Life Worth”) to sustain its seriousness. The arc of Feinberg’s character—he’s a numbers guy who slowly understands the humanity of those affected needs to be recognized—is superbly portrayed by Keaton.

        Director Sara Colangelo (“The Kindergarten Teacher”) and screenwriter Max Borenstein (the recent “Godzilla” series) turn a story that seems more typical of a 20-page New Yorker article than a feature film into thoughtful cinema.

 

 PHOTOS:

 Paul Newman is Buffalo Bill in Robert Altman’s film. (United Artists)

 Ben Gazzara in “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” (Criterion Collection)

 Kay Francis with Ben Welden in “Confession.” (Warner Bros.)

 British director Carol Reed.