Lucian Pintilie‘s 1994 comic tragedy, An Unforgettable Summer, begins, or almost begins, with the Romanian commanding officer of Captain Dumitriu (Claudiu Bleont) putting the moves on Dumitriu’s wife, Marie-Therese (Kristin Scott Thomas), before the captain’s very eyes.  Marie-Therese, however, spurns the gent and Dumitriu requests a transfer to a new garrison.  Sullenly the commanding officer dispatches the captain and his brood to the dry, barren and awful Romanian border.  (The time is 1925.)  All in all, the C.O. has coldly bullied Dumitriu.

On the border, by and by, eight Romanian soldiers are murdered by bandits believed to be Bulgarian.  A small group of Bulgarian peasants maintains that the bandits are Macedonians, but the Romanians don’t listen to them.  They know the peasants are not the bandits, but they proceed to beat them in the hope of getting information—even as the odd charade of the peasants’ tending Dumitriu’s vegetable garden (for pay) is initiated.  As it happens, the peasants are intended for execution, which throws Dumitriu into a distressing inner conflict and Marie-Therese into shock and desperation.

So again there is bullying: political and military bullying.  Behind it is lust—for women, for retaliation, for power over others.  A tide of legal aggression can be opposed only with reluctance.

As director and scenarist, Pintilie has adapted a novel titled The Salad.  His direction is terrifically shrewd and ambitious, and, although we don’t need to see the uninteresting body of Kristin Scott Thomas in the nude, Summer is magnificently acted.  It is a film about military violence as dark, I’d say, as our 18-year-old war in arid Afghanistan.

I have seen this film on VHS and, free of charge, on YouTube.

(In Romanian with English subtitles)

Bruce Beresford, once again, directed perceptively when he made Mister Johnson (1990), which stars Maynard Eziashi as a black man in British Colonial Nigeria who aims to live the good life.  But there is no good life when the person himself is not good and when he is thrust into misfitism by an arrogant and insulting colonial power.

Mr. Johnson identifies as an Englishman but, well, he could never become a gentleman.  He is a thief; he embezzles and excessively borrows money.  He values getting rich above all else.  Moral ambiguity is as thick as London fog here.  Johnson suffers more from his illicit choices than from pervasive racial prejudice.  In a powerful, stunningly natural performance, Edward Woodard enacts a complex bigot—one who becomes a black man’s victim.

Based on a Joyce Cary novel, Beresford’s film was adeptly screenwritten by William Boyd, with palatable acting by Eziashi, Pierce Brosnan (as an admirable colonial), and Beatie Edney.  A handsome-looking production, it is just as impressive as the director’s Breaker Morant and Rich in Love.  

Eddie Darrow, played by Tony Curtis, is sent to Macao, which borders China, to bring back to the U.S. a gangster’s ex-wife (Joanne Dru) because of the money she possesses.  There are prodigious difficulties, though, because 1) the ex-wife (Christine by name) is Eddie’s old flame and 2) she is now the fiancee of Justin, a Macao casino owner.  And here we have Rudolph Mate‘s Forbidden, from 1953.

This is a very likable movie, but I wish fewer entertainment films strained credulity, as Forbidden does quite often.  (Aw shucks, Christine overheard Eddie’s cock-and-bull story to an American gangster [a story the gangster was prepared to believe] about how he planned to deceive her.)  But when it doesn’t strain credulity, William Sackheim’s screenplay is gratifying.  The film is robust—if not, I’m afraid, a masterpiece of acting.  Curtis is mediocre.  Dru gives a merely routine performance although, along with being beautiful, she is as classy-looking as a human being can get.  Lyle Bettger, as Justin, knows how to be debonair—and memorable.

Eddie Darrow, played by Tony Curtis, is sent to Macao, which borders China, to bring back to the U.S. a gangster’s ex-wife (Joanne Dru) because of the money she possesses.  There are prodigious difficulties, though, because 1) the ex-wife (Christine by name) is Eddie’s old flame and 2) she is now the fiancee of Justin, a Macao casino owner.  And here we have Rudolph Mate‘s Forbidden, from 1953.

This is a very likable movie, but I wish fewer entertainment films strained credulity, as Forbidden does quite often.  (Aw shucks, Christine overheard Eddie’s cock-and-bull story to an American gangster [a story the gangster was prepared to believe] about how he planned to deceive her.)  But when it doesn’t strain credulity, William Sackheim’s screenplay is gratifying.  The film is robust—if not, I’m afraid, a masterpiece of acting.  Curtis is mediocre.  Dru gives a merely routine performance although, along with being beautiful, she is as classy-looking as a human being can get.  Lyle Bettger, as Justin, knows how to be debonair—and memorable.

The 2018 Mission: Impossible—Fallout is another top-notch action picture in the long-lived saga.  Near the end there are the unkillable bodies of the good people (especially Tom Cruise‘s Ethan Hunt) amid mountains in Kashmir, which is fine.  But the film is probably more satisfying when it is set in France and duly doubles down on The French Connection—the car chase, I mean.  And, to me, it was pleasing to see Ethan, perplexed about how to save a struck-down policewoman’s life, pull out a simple handgun and shoot every single man disposed to commit murder.

The cast isn’t great, it’s perfect.  Perfect for an MI movie.  Henry Cavill does not disappoint as a nefarious double agent, and Vanessa Kirby, very good-looking, is seductively adroit as The White Widow.  Unlike Cavill, she gets to keep her British accent.

Written and directed (without in-your-face obtrusiveness) by Christopher McQuarrie.