The Lodger

While Jack the Ripper carries out his bloodthirsty slayings in Whitechapel, a Scotland Yard inspector (George Sanders) begins to suspect a peculiar tenant (Laird Cregar) at a neighborhood boarding house as being the infamous perpetrator. Meanwhile the would be serial killer casts his sights on a beautiful fellow tenant and concert singer (Merle Oberon). A remake of Alfred Hitchcock's breakthrough 1927 silent film, The Lodger is stodgy but atmospheric and chilling with several effective, memorable scenes and fine work from Oberon and Cregar.

*** out of ****

Edge of the City

An Army deserter (John Cassavetes) gains employment as a stevedore through use of a false name and forms a tight bond with a black coworker (Sidney Poitier) while another prejudiced longshoreman (Jack Warden) blackmails, bullies, and pushes him to the end of his rope. Martin Ritt's melodramatic Edge of the City suffers from a lack of realism it clearly strives to achieve but is assuredly directed in sharp black and white and boasts strong supporting performances from Warden and Ruby Dee as Poitier's wife.

*** out ****

Suspicion

An unassuming woman (Joan Fontaine) seeming destined for spinsterhood, and heir to a modest fortune, is swept off her feet by a charming layabout (Cary Grant) who soon arouses her paranoia that she is his target for murder. Light, even unplotted and silly, Hitchcock's Suspicion is made worthwhile by great direction, its stars, and Nigel Bruce in an amusing supporting role.

*** out of ****

A Quiet Place

In the near future hyper aural and predatory extraterrestrials have wiped out most of humanity as a man (John Krasinski), his pregnant wife (Emily Blunt), and their two children (one of whom is hearing challenged) struggle to survive on their deserted rural farm. Krasinski's A Quiet Place is a well-made wholesome horror thriller with an interesting premise that turns silly and is littered with plot holes. The creatures are nothing more that uninspired Alien replicas.

*** out of ****

The Life of Oharu

A woman in waiting (Kinuyo Tanaka) of modest respectability falls to woeful and pitiable levels after partaking in a relationship with a commoner (Toshiro Mifune). Cast out from her village, she soon finds herself bearing a son to powerful lord she is forbidden to see, widowed on another occasion, and sold into a life of prostitution by her father. Kenji Mizoguchi's The Life of Oharu is bleak and sorrowful, somewhat labored, shot in beautiful black and white, and made with precise craft. Tanaka is heartbreaking as the doomed and innocent Oharu.

*** out of ****

Charade

Three war buddies (James Coburn, George Kennedy, and Ned Glass) stalk and terrorize the widow (Audrey Hepburn) of their recently murdered comrade believing she knows the location of the pilfered loot taken during their tour of duty. After involving the local Paris prefect (Walter Matthau), she now becomes unsure whether or not to trust the dashing and suspicious acquaintance (Cary Grant) just made at a Swiss ski resort. Stanley Donen's Charade is a light and breezy romantic/comedy suspenser with a fun and silly plot, second rate dialogue, and great chemistry between its stars.

*** out of ****

Roman J. Israel, Esq.

A  L.A. defense attorney (Denzel Washington) on the spectrum finds himself in dire straights when his prominent partner dies and begrudgingly accepts a job offer with a top firm and soon finds himself taking drastic, uncharacteristic measures to ensure his security. Dan Gilroy's Nightcrawler follow up is a sometimes engaging but underwritten and ultimately lackluster film that is redeemed somewhat by a strong, surprisingly quirky Denzel performance.

** 1/2 out of ****

Assault on Precinct 13

At a dilapidated Detroit police station scheduled to close at midnight, a burned out sergeant (Ethan Hawke) keeps watch with a few other functionaries. When a busload of prisoners is diverted during a snowstorm and forced to unload the inmates at the precinct, they find themselves under siege by crooked cops seeking to eliminate one of their new prominent guests (Laurence Fishburne). Assualt on Precinct 13 is a satisfying if overly violent and dopey B-thriller, successfully paying tribute to John Carpenter's original while providing worthy updates. Hawk is engaging but the overall cast's acting and dialogue often feels forced.

*** out of ****

Born Yesterday

A loutish junk tycoon (Broderick Crawford) travels to Washington D.C. to buy a Senator and hires a journalist (William Holden) to cultivate his ditsy, equally unrefined girlfriend (Judy Holliday). As the pair inevitably hit it off, she is also informed of the nature of her boyfriend’s business and his bullying personality. From Garson Kanin’s hit stage play which also starred Holliday, Born Yesterday contains often dumb, cornball humor and is occasionally amusing while much of it is an uninspired civics lesson. Holliday is the quintessential ditsy blonde (in an Oscar winning role), Holden is stiff as a foil to Crawford, the latter being entertaining as the brute.

*** out of ****

The Three Faces of Eve

A downtrodden southern housewife (Joanne Woodward) begins to exhibit strange behavior at home before a second, reckless personality manifests itself followed by a third, more normalized one. With the help of a psychiatrist (Lee J. Cobb), she seeks treatment and gradually begins to eradicate the more flawed. The Three Faces of Eve, straightforward and plainly directed, seems like a phony, shallow representation of the rare psychological condition despite the ‘true story’ touting of the opening monologue and the screenplay participation of two of the real life shrinks involved in the case. That being said, Woodward is the whole show here, impressively versatile as the three distinct personalities. Cobb is strong but hardly credible as the sensitive psych doctor.

*** out of ****

The Florida Project

A preschooler (Brooklyn Prince) and her friends are free to play and cause mischief in the low-rent motels just outside of Disneyworld while her derelict mother (Bria Vinaite) runs scams, prostitutes herself, and lays around and all are watched over by the curt but benevolent property manager (Willem Dafoe). Sean Baker's The Florida Project feels like it could have worked better as a short, with too much filler and not quite enough to sustain a two hour feature, and it also treats the issue of neglectful parenting a little too lightly but I liked the way the film gradually reveals itself and the tracking shots and colorful cinematography bring it a sort of dreamlike quality. Dafoe is in excellent, empathetic form and Prince gives an amazingly well-rounded, funny performance.

*** out of ****

Lola

During the German reconstruction period and the miraculous economic boom of the 1950s, officials, planners, and contractors in the city of Coburg are loading their pockets through graft, chief among them a fiendish developer (Mario Adorf) who schemes to curry favor with the new, straight arrow building commisioner (Armin Mueller-Stahl) by plying him through the affections of an ambitious prostitute (Barbara Sukowa). From the same Heinrich Mann novel used to draw Sternberg's The Blue Angel, R.W. Fassbinder's Lola (the last of his BRD trilogy, the second released chronologically) depicts corruption and immorality through a beautiful, ebuillent Technicolor lens with Sukowa mesmerizing as the seductive, calculating social climber.

*** out of ****

It

Evil personified in the form of a sinister clown and thriving on fear vanishes children of Derry, Maine every 27 years, its latest occurrence in 1989 when a group of misfit preadolescents are forced to confront the malevolent being. The latest update of Stephen King's novel works best when fitting in the Stand by Me mould, with the juvenile actors well cast and appealing, but loses its viability in the horror sequences which are dubious and exasperating, especially in the later stages of the film.

*** out of ****

Veronika Voss

A once prominent movie star (Rosel Zech) who earned her start under Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry becomes romantically involved with a reporter (Hilmar Thate) who suspects her neurologist (Annemarie Durringer) of keeping the faded actress under her influence through the use of morphine. Rainer Werner Fassbinder's reimagining of the tragic demise of German actress Sybille Schmitz (his death mirroring her own not long after the release of the film) is shot in brilliant black and white in a melodramatic almost campy mood yet of course with the darker undertones evoking Wilder's Sunset Blvd or even What Ever Happpened to Baby Jane. Zech and Thate are both superb.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Mudbound

As war rages in Europe and the Pacific, a college graduate and inexperienced farmer (Jason Clarke) moves his new bride (Carey Mulligan) to rural Mississippi to apply the trade where, in tough times, they lean on a poor sharecropping family (headed by Rob Morgan and Mary J. Blige). When both families see members return from oversees (Garrett Hedlund and Jason Mitchell), their friendship stokes the ire of prejudice and leads to tragic consequences. Dee Rees' Mudbound is a painterly period piece, leisurely, novelistic, somewhat elliptical and routine, with fine work from a talented cast.

*** out of ****

Molly's Game

A skier (Jessica Chastain) with issues with her psychiatrist father (Kevin Costner), who came up just short of medalling in the Olympics due to a devastating injury, relocates to L.A. and soon finds herself assisting and then running her own high stakes poker games before becoming involved with the Russian mob, catching a RICO charge, and trying to convince a clean cut, high powered attorney (Idris Elba) to represent her in federal court. Aaron Sorkin's approach in his directorial debut never really elevates the screenplay which contains the expected witty Sorkinisms but is overly relentless and bloated, with an unfortuante climactic scene featuring Costner at a skating rink. Chastain's performance is commanding as is Elba in a supporting role, especially during a lenghthy, late arriving speech.

*** out of ****

10 Rillington Place

From a true crime story about an achingly terrifying miscarriage of justice, middle-aged serial killer John Christie (Richard Attenborough) lives an unassuming life with his wife in their quiet London flat when he decides to rent the adjoining property to an illiterate laborer (John Hurt), along with his wife and infant child, who will soon face the hangman’s noose for one of his landlord’s unspeakable crimes. Filmed just doors down from the site of the actual killings, Richard Fleisher’s 10 Rillington Place is bleak, muted, and understated with Attenborough creepily effective and Hurt totally credible in the tragic role.

*** out of ****

French Cancan

An impressario (Jean Gabin) engages in romantic entanglements with his main drawing act (Maria Felix), a new discovery (Francois Arnoul) and two of her lovers while reintroducing the can-can, an outdated dance number, and opening what would come to be known as the Moulin Rouge. One of Jean Renoir's post American exile works, French Cancan is dominated by cheesy French humor and underdrawn characters, though Gabin's performance is winning and the dance numbers, the finale in particular, are spectacular.

*** out of ****

Come and See

In Belarus in the heart of World War II and the German occupation, a teenager fights with the Russian Resistance, sees his family slaughtered, and bears witness to the unspeakable Nazi atrocities all around him. Harrowing,  nightmarish and occasionally consuming, Elem Klimov's Come and See is dense and murky, made with an impressively fluid camerawork though muddled photography, and contains the feel of an even more unrelentingly bleak Tarkovsky film with an ending that, depending how you interpret it, I'm not sure how useful it is.

*** out of ****

Seven Days in May

Disarmament talks between Russia and an unpopular President (Fredric March) leads to rumors of a military coup led by a military demagogue (Burt Lancaster) and uncovered by his top aide (Kirk Douglas). John Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May is a well-made, credible, and talky thriller that lacks suspense with the acting being the real attribute on display. Stars Douglas and Lancaster, though providing stalwart performances, are both relegated somewhat with supporters March and Edmund O’Brien stepping in with terrific turns.

*** out of ****