My structured, slightly OCD personality loves to make lists, keep things organized, and look for patterns. So my pattern today is classic English language films from directors whose names start with “A.” Is that detailed enough?

First up is King of Jazz from 1930, directed by John Murray Anderson. This movie is an early example of a lot of film practices. It is an early “talkie”, an early use of technicolor (though the outdated form of it only shows varying shades of teal and red/pink, no blue or yellow or true green), and since it is pre-code, is very risque for its time. The film is a revue, with an early “variety show” kind of feel. The backdrop is the music of Paul Whiteman’s orchestra. There are musical numbers, short comedy sketches, and even cartoons, all accompanied by the dance and pop music of its day. A royal flop when it was released (at a high price tag of $2,000,000 in 1930), it is fascinating to watch today and get a glimpse of entertainment from an era before most of us were born.

From director Lewis Allen, next up from 1944 is The Uninvited, heralded as one of the best “ghost stories” ever made. Brother and sister Rick and Pam Fitzgerald stumble upon a beautiful, old beach house that sits abandoned. They track the ownership to a Mr Beech, who seems all too eager to sell it for a rock bottom price, against the wishes of his granddaughter Stella. Her mother died in the house and her fond memories make it hard to let go. The Fitzgeralds realize pretty quickly that the house seems to be haunted by the dead woman’s ghost, a notion that scares Pam but makes Rick skeptical. At times creepy and at others downright frightening, this film shows how to build a scary movie properly. These days when scary movies are all about “jump scares” intended to startle you, this movie creeps up behind you and blows on the back of your neck.

Two good films and then a dud. Released in 1955, Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly is a mystery film noir with a twist. Mike Hammer is a P.I. who picks up a stranded woman on the highway one night. This woman, Christina, has just escaped from a mental asylum and is on the run from people who want her dead. They are captured not long after, and Christina is killed, but Mike survives, and once healed up, he goes on a hunt to find the killer and motive. I was good with the movie though all of this, including Mike’s investigation, but the movie takes a weird supernatural turn near the end, which for me, doesn’t fit in well with the rest of the film. The build-up in the movie is full of suspense and quite engaging, the ending just got too strange. I guess if I had lived in the 50’s and was more knowledgeable of that era, and especially the paranoia of the cold war, I might have a different opinion.

If…. on the other hand is fantastic. Directed by Lindsay Anderson and starring newcomer Malcolm McDowell (before his big break in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange), it was released in 1968 and is a gut punch when watched in today’s climate of school shootings. It takes place in a boarding school where the powerful suppress the weak, from the headmaster to the teachers to the seniors to the freshman. Junior Mick Travis is tired of it, tired of getting called out for his shaggy 60’s hair cut, and tired of being bullied by the seniors who think he doesn’t take his opportunities in the private school seriously. His resistance starts small, doing little things privately that are against the rules, but later he goes in open rebellion. When he is continued to be picked on by the group of seniors who rule the school, Mick and his fellows find ammunition and shoot up the school grounds. This really got me thinking. The whole film gets you on Mick’s side, and you hate the people and the society who tells him he cannot be as he is, but obviously his acts in the end are repulsive, even if they are only a day dream (it is implied the shooting is not real but only in their heads, there are elements of day dreams in this film). Released in the 60’s, I’m sure it had an impact, but I think that impact is made stronger now with all school shootings we have these days.

Harold and Maude came out in 1971, directed the acclaimed Hal Ashby. This is a slow burning dark comedy, which will only reward the viewer that sticks it out through the creeping pace of most of the film. Harold is a young 20-something from a wealthy family. His single mother wants to see him married, but Harold seems uninterested. He torments his mother (and the women she sets him up with) with fake suicides, and goes to all the local funerals. At one such funeral, he meets Maude, a 79 year old free spirit. Whereas Harold is obsessed with death, Maude is obsessed with life. She doesn’t live by any rules, doing whatever she wants whenever she wants, and doesn’t worry about the consequences. By the end of the film, this has opened Harold’s eyes to what life can offer, and he falls in love with Maude. Much of the film is their budding relationship, first as friends and then as a couple, and while the pace is slow, there are intermittent laughs to keep you going. When Harold finally realizes he really loves Maude despite their age difference, the viewer has lived through the journey and is invested.

Yes, there are only 4 films written here despite the title, but you can see my writeup of the fifth, Walkabout, here. When I watched that movie last October, and especially as time went on, I found myself thinking more and more about it, and wanted to check out more of director Nicolas Roeg’s work. Immediately, I found the way of storytelling, the sometimes quirky camerawork, and the visual sharpness of Walkabout is prevalent throughout Roeg’s work. So here are four more films, in order of release.

Pacific Rim Uprising is a sequel to the 2013 film, albeit with a new starring cast (with some returning supporting roles). Replacing Charlie Hunnam is Star Wars’ John Boyega as Jake, son of Idris Elba’s character from the previous film. The film takes place a number of years after the last, in which the gigantic alien kaiju have been defeated and peace has been reigning on Earth. On the eve of a new program to replace human controllers of the giant robot defenders of the planet with drones, the drones go nuts and start destroying cities. Boyega is a good actor, but he isn’t asked to do much here. Its not a deep film, no serious acting chops are needed, just point the giant robot at the bad guys and watch the destruction ensue. The plot is even a bit thinner than the first film, but it is still an enjoyable diversion, especially if you like disaster films. The movie didn’t do great in theaters, but will probably do well in home video and downloads, so we may see another sequel down the line.

I adored I Kill Giants, and am not ashamed to admit I was a sobbing fool at the end of it. It’s about a teenage girl, Barbara, who has tasked herself with protecting her little town from ancient evil giants who want to maim and destroy. She is an outcast at school, and her only friend is a new girl who doesn’t know anyone else. At home, Barbara’s older sister is raising her and her brothers, and the viewer does not know what happened to the parents. Barbara has invented a magical world of creatures, potions, wards, and omens, and seems to live in the land of make believe more than real life. When a new school counselor tries to break through to what is causing Barbara to invent these things, the whole picture of Barbara’s life starts to open up to us. There are cliches here for sure, but it is impossible not to root for Barbara to find her way.

The 15:17 to Paris is quite possibly the worst movie I’ve seen in quite some time, and it can’t entirely be blamed on the fact that the real-life heroes of the story are portraying themselves, rather than being replaced with professional actors. The story of the Americans who stopped a gunman on a train in Paris in 2015, director Clint Eastwood decided to let the trio be the stars of the film. Yes, the acting is bad, but I found the atrocious dialogue to be distracting to the point of embarrassing, and you can’t blame that on the actors. The banter between all characters on screen is stilted, inauthentic, and downright unnatural compared to how real people talk to each other. It seems forced, and is too bad to ignore. The story itself is only ok, with the majority of the film being the backstory of these three men (the event itself obviously happens over the course of just a couple minutes of film time). Poorly written and boring, the real life heroes of that day literally cannot save this movie.

Annihilation blew my mind. Part science fiction, part psychological thriller, and all parts trippy as hell, it is a wild ride with some truly unique ideas, and like a lot of good movies, it leaves you thinking about it long after the credits roll. There is a strange phenomenon known as “the shimmer” which has been spreading across the coast. The military has been sending troops in to explore and see what it is, but once inside, they lose communication, and no one has come back. One day a man does come back, Kane (Oscar Isaac), though he confesses he has no memory of the year he was gone. His wife Lena (Natalie Portman) is a scientist and former military herself, so she volunteers to go in and find answers. With a new team, they go in, and immediately start seeing all kinds of strange mutations to the plants and animals within. To say more would ruin lots of the fun. This movie has a wild story and is downright scary at times. Highly recommended, as long as you like a movie that doesn’t tie up the ends in a pretty bow for you.

The newest Tomb Raider seems like Indiana Jones with a female lead, but unfortunately also with a paper thin plot. Headed by the talented Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft, it tells of how she came to be the title hero from the old video game series. Lara goes in search of her father, missing now for years, and stumbles upon a plot to unearth an ancient and powerful evil. Lara stumbling into something is a common theme here, as much of what she accomplishes seems to be by accident, until she comes in to her own in the latter part of the movie. Oscar-winning Vikander is great and the movie made enough money, that perhaps a sequel will surface somewhere down the line. There is potential there, but they need better writers the next time around.

I’ve got some all-time great classics up today, starting with a 1948 western, Red River. The film stars John Wayne as Thomas Dunson, a man who builds a large cattle ranch near the Mexico border in Texas. At first he is aided only by a sidekick, Groot (Walter Brennan) and a young survivor of an Indian attack on a wagon train, Matt (Montgomery Clift), but over 14 years he turns it into a large ranch. Unfortunately there is no where in Texas to sell his beef, so they make the perilous trek to Missouri, where they can find a railroad and sell their stock for good money. Along the way, stampedes, illness, and infighting break up the spirit of the group. Matt, now a man, wants to take the shorter trip to Abilene, because rumors of a new train out of there would save the group from finishing the longer, more dangerous journey, but Thomas is stubborn, and bullies and threatens his way to keep Missouri as their goal. One of the great westerns of all time, Red River shows the wide open skies and rough and tumble life of the frontier, with some serious acting chops too. John Wayne gets to play the despicable villain, something you rarely (ever?) see.

I don’t cover many documentaries but Grey Gardens is one of the all-time greats. From 1975, it is about the lives of “Big Edie” Edith Beale and her daughter, “Little Edie” Edith, aunt and first cousin, respectively, to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. After tabloid and newspaper stories brought the Beale story to national attention, filmmakers Albert and David Maysles came in to cover them. The Beales were living in a large Hampton mansion which had been allowed to deteriorate to squalor. They were hoarders long before the term became common. Unlike a lot of documentaries, the Maysles don’t ask a lot of questions, they let the Beales do all the talking, and we learn about them from their dialogue and interactions to each other and to the cameraperson. There was obviously a lot of codependency here. There are several powerful scenes where we can get a glimpse of what brought them to this point. Formerly very wealthy but now almost broke, we see a mother who demanded perfection from her socialite and beautiful daughter (once called the most beautiful and graceful of all the grandchildren, including Jackie). However, Big Edie never let her daughter stray far from the roost. Little Edie had dreams (or maybe delusions) of achieving great fame as a singer or dancer, and displays these talents during the film. While obviously mentally abused by her mother, she seems to dote over her, going so far as to want to be the only person with access to Big Edie. They end up keeping each other locked up alone in the house, with almost no outside interaction. A startling look at mental disease, the rabbit hole down which one may go if no help is given (or accepted). I was fascinated by the film and spent a long time reading up more about the family afterwards.

Anatomy of a Murder from 1959 is one of the best crime dramas ever made. It stars James Stewart as a small town lawyer, Paul Biegler. He takes on the defense of a man, Manny, who has been accused of a killing a man, Barney Quill, after Quill raped Manny’s wife Laura. Manny admits to the murder, but with Biegler, the two decide to argue for a temporary insanity case. The movie is a true mystery. You know the basic details from the beginning, but all the things that make up the case play out over the course of a couple hours. It is extremely detailed and realistic, and the movie allowed James Stewart to play a different kind of role than the public was used to seeing up to that point. Still an “aw shucks” kind of guy, as a lawyer he was conniving, manipulative, and creative to lean the jury to his side. As Biegler and his team research and investigate the true facts of the case, he of course only presents evidence that will help Manny get off. And while the viewer doesn’t like Manny much (he is cocky, and jealous and abusive to Laura), we still like Biegler and cheer for him every time the judge sustains his objections in court. A truly fantastic film, and genre defining.

A Man Escaped is widely considered one of French director Robert Bresson’s greatest films, and that is saying a lot from his reputation. From 1956, it is based on the true story of a French resistance fighter incarcerated by the occupying Nazi German forces. From the minute he is put in a jail cell, Fontaine begins looking for a way out. Like many Bresson films, the musical soundtrack is sparse, so the suspense (and there is plenty of it!) is built entirely from the filming, direction, and acting ability of the people on camera, even though Bresson again, like he often did, used amateurs in the movie instead of professional actors. Fontaine patiently devises his plan, using tools he can find or steal around the jail, and is always wary of troops finding him out, other prisoners willing to sell him out, or the jailor coming to execute him before he can make his attempt. The tension slowly but surely builds throughout, until I found myself on the edge of the seat at the end, waiting for the catastrophe that seems to be lurking just around every turn.

1945’s Mildred Pierce is a classic film noir dominated by its two leading ladies. Joan Crawford won an Oscar as Mildred, the matriarch of the family, who dotes over her oldest daughter Veda, played by Ann Blyth, also nominated. Veda is a spoiled brat, but only because her mother has made her so. The film starts with a man being shot to death, with “Mildred” being his last dying word. We don’t see the killer, but soon after we do see Mildred standing on a bridge contemplating her end. She is saved by a passing officer and brought to the station, where we hear the story that led up the killing. The dead man was her second husband, after her first left her for another woman. We see how Veda was raised and how she manipulated her way to get everything she ever wanted. Mildred even married her second husband purely for his money, so he could supply all of Veda’s desires. The film takes a not-unforeseen-twist near its conclusion, but still it is a gripping and dark murder mystery, culminating in the big reveal at the end.

Adrift is a fairly well done survivor movie, made more gripping for its true-life muse. It is based on a couple who survived over 40 days on a small sailboat, meandering through the Pacific Ocean after a hurricane left the boat crippled. The story’s present and past is told concurrently, where we see the couple striving to survive, but also how they met, fell in love, and started their adventure. The film is good, though maybe not necessarily great, but the saving grace is the Shailene Woodley in the lead female role. The character is vulnerable yet strong, with Woodley getting to show off her acting chops, and you can’t help but root for her to make it out alive, against impossible odds. A good date movie.

Another one with an outstanding female lead is the heralded I, Tonya, the story of Tonya Harding. From the first few minutes, the film makes it clear that this is not just her narrative, and it does a great job of giving everyone their say (except Nancy Kerrigan, whose depiction is strangely absent). Like most people, I had a cursory knowledge of Harding’s involvement on the attack on Kerrigan before the ’94 Olympics, but I didn’t know the whole story, or anything about Harding’s upbringing. This film shows it all, and holds nothing back. It shows Harding and all of her warts, but does ultimately depict her as a tragic figure who tries again and again to overcome the odds stacked against her, such as her abusive mother and husband, an absent father, and her fight against judges who didn’t want to see her succeed because she was a redneck and not polished like the other figure skaters. Again, you really want Tonya to triumph, though as we all know, that was not to be her destiny. Margot Robbie is absolutely brilliant as Tonya (Oscar nominated), as was Allison Janney as her vile mother (Oscar winning).

A Wrinkle in Time is beautiful, visually stunning, and a mess. Even for a children’s movie, the dialogue is laughably bad, the plot paper-thin, and the only thing keeping the film going is the visuals. Based on the classic book (which I’ve never read), it is about a couple kids who go in search for their father who disappeared a few years earlier. The dad was a scientist who was researching traveling through space in an instant, and apparently it worked, sending him light years away. The kids are aided by some good powers and opposed by an evil one, called simply “it”. I just finished reading the book The Wizard of Oz, and this film reminding me a little of that one, where plot points jump around with less flow than you see in modern films, but Wrinkle lacks the magic of that classic film.

A few years ago I watched Liam Neeson’s Non-Stop and wrote that it was basically Taken on a plane, and while it got bad reviews, I enjoyed it. I thought The Commuter would be Taken on a train, but this one is far less fun. He plays a former cop-turned-insurance salesman who commutes to work, every day for 10 years, but has just lost his job. On his way home from being fired, he is approached by a woman offering $100k to identify a single person on the train for her. He must do so before the last stop when the target will be exiting. If he does it, he gets the movie, but if he doesn’t, his family will be killed. Putting aside the wildly implausible plot, this movie never does find traction. Neeson goes up and down the train interviewing passengers he doesn’t know (he knows many of the regulars all ready), gets in fights, and causes a big stir, and yet all the other passengers just go with the flow, even when people start showing up dead. Eye-rollingly bad.

Not quite as bad, but not nearly good, is 12 Strong, a war film based on a team of elite soldiers sent to Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of September 11. The group find themselves relying on Afghan soldiers on the ground to teach them the terrain and guide them to the Taliban, comrades in arms who the Americans aren’t sure they can trust. The film features a great cast of some of my favorites, including Michael Shannon and Michael Pena, with unheralded Chris Hemsworth leading them. Unfortunately the talent can’t save this boring war flick. The story is simple and thinly plotted, the battle scenes are uninspired, the dialogue is bland and tedious, and the attempts at brevity would only find laughs among the 75+ crowd. Even die hard war buff films like myself will find little to enjoy here.