Jack Bauer is back—because the Fox program, 24, is back—still hard to take but meaning well.

The first of twelve 2014 episodes is set in London, where Chloe is virtually hanging out with the Clockwork Orange bunch and, withal, must be rescued from torture by Jack.  The authorities, you see, have it in for both Jack and Chloe (again Bauer is in hiding), but no matter:  Jack has a POTUS to save on British soil.  And then some.

Keifer Sutherland doesn’t seem to have his heart in this episode, but maybe that will change.  In any event, the same old suspense and implacable drama (not always involving action) are there.  The characters hold us too.  A real go-getter of a female agent (Yvonne Strahovski) is nearly frantic to arrest “culprit” Jack.  Let’s hope the acceptable fun continues.

Jack Bauer (Photo credit: Victor Bracco)

In the 1946 Hitchcock picture, Notorious, Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) is a woman of scandalous character whose German father gets his comeuppance for treason.  Then she is recruited by the U.S. government agent (Cary Grant) who will fall in love with her for the mission of discovering what her father’s Nazi associates are up to in Rio de Janeiro.

The free-floating romance between Alicia and Devlin, the agent, no longer holds up (if it ever did) in Ben Hecht’s highly unlikely plot.  Devlin behaves like a fool over Alicia’s fake relationship with once-smitten Nazi, Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains), one of her father’s associates.  One would think he’d be grateful to her.  All the same, Bergman and Grant do have chemistry, and as usual with Hitchcock, Notorious is deftly, splendidly shot.  Plus it’s nearly as engaging as, say, Shadow of a Doubt.

Cover of Notorious

For all his talent, Anthony Hopkins’s—and Oliver Stone’s—Richard Nixon in 1996’s Nixon is simply weird, naught but a man with his demons.  The film itself has its stylistic demons to boot, what with all its flashiness and now-color, now-monochrome silliness.  Yes, there are a few strong scenes and some bright dialogue, but . . . well, to have Nixon discuss policy and procedures while his cabinet men frequently look as though they’re baffled and suspicious is deeply stupid.  I didn’t buy it for a second.

Of course this is not the Nixon of history, but who is he, really?  Only another unscrupulous but unfortunate, semi-tragic figure.  And he is used for a movie with basically inconsequential meaning.

Nixon (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the William Wyler film version of Wuthering Heights (1939), starring Laurence Olivier, gone is the slow working out of Heathcliff’s ugly revenge and his final casting-off of it.  Gone is the focus on death following error and disillusionment.  Gone are the countervailing values of Catherine’s daughter, Cathy Linton, and Hareton; there are no Cathy Linton and Hareton in this film.  Gone is most of the novel’s morality.  This is not what Emily Bronte intended.  One could never get any idea of the brilliance she demonstrated in Wuthering Heights from watching this inadequate film.

Cover of Wuthering Heights