Jasmine in Woody Allen‘s Blue Jasmine (2013) had money, but no longer. She had a husband but, an appalling swindler, he committed suicide. She had, and has, family relationships, but they do not go well. Though the fragile woman tries to reinvent herself in San Francisco, where her sister Ginger lives, the walls are closing in. Many authentic tragic elements, and sparse rueful humor, are found in the film, which glides along acceptably on sheer emotion.

As everyone knows, Cate Blanchett is wonderful as Jasmine. Notwithstanding the film is is “a quietly respectful tribute” (critic Anthony Quinn) to A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanchett’s Jasmine is not Blanche DuBois. She is an independent character, a smart bourgeois. And she is ill-served by men. Not a great picture is this, but a good one. All the same, I found it hilarious when a Village Voice critic pointed out that the Sweathogs have a San Francisco chapter in Jasmine.

Would the Soviet Union, allied with Cuba, have initiated a third world war in the rural Midwest of the United States? I doubt it, but, boy, do we all know about Russian expansionism. In the 1984 Red Dawn, the Midwest is where the communists invade, and teenaged sons and daughters are the ones who aggressively engage them. Though far from a work of art, the film harbors themes: communist hostility and the global inevitability of invasion.

As an action movie, Red Dawn is reliable. Director-writer John Milius is an avid gun collector and it shows. Firearms here are rather distinctive, an attention grabber. War violence is framed in shots of surrounding mountainous beauty. Up to a point, though, the film is silly. Milius is a conservative who, despite the strengths in Dillinger, made poor choices as a moviemaker. But I say unhesitatingly that American cinema is more fun and interesting with him than without him.

I have never read L’Innocente by Gabriele D’Annunzio, but I regard Luchino Visconti‘s Italian film of it (1976) as worthwhile. It is a lush costume drama about Tullio (Giancarlo Giannini), a free-thinking aristocrat who falls in love with his betrayed wife (Laura Antonelli) a second time, or seems to. The man is ignoble and tortured, though. And Catholic Europe of yesteryear is also “enlightened” Europe of yesteryear.

Giannini is a manly actor of quiet power. Jennifer O’Neill, an American actress dubbed, gets the job done as Tullio’s mistress, but without any real charisma. Antonelli isn’t bad but lacks personality—without lacking a comely face and body, unclothed. Antonelli died in 2015. Anyone with a body as resplendent as hers deserves a serious and lasting marriage, which, alas, she didn’t have. Ironically, when he and his wife are naked in bed, Tullio is aiming for the triumph of marital sex, as it were.

(In Italian with English subtitles)