As the International Movie Database on the internet describes it, “A news reporter looks into who has been anonymously leaving large cash gifts on random doorsteps in New York.”  These are accurate words about the premise of the new picture, Good Sam (2019), in which the news reporter is enacted, solidly, by good-looking Tiya Sircar (who has numerous lines).

Conventionally directed by Kate Melville, this is middlebrow semi-drama, but what Netflix original film is not middlebrow?  At least it’s appreciably smart in its feel-goodism.  Too, it is very good-natured and free of coarse language as it raises the theme of kindly giving when nothing is expected in return.

Ivan Szabo’s Sunshine is a film I criticized, but not because of its deeply Jewish content.  In today’s America there are foolish people who would object to this content, as we are led to believe after reading such articles as David Marcus‘s “Skyrocketing Attacks on NYC Jews Ignored Because of Race” (from the Federalist website).  The information is all in the title.  Anti-Semitic violence (against Orthodox Jews) has increased primarily in Brooklyn, and many of the culprits are black and Hispanic men.  The ones ignoring it are, of course, members of a left-leaning media.

For the record, reality is darker than most leftists realize.  It’s only a matter of time before Hollywood refuses to make a film like Sunshine.

Ray Enright‘s Albuquerque (1948), a Western, shows us the capitalist building of a town, as well as the selfishness of a business tycoon who does evil.  When his nephew, Cole Armin (Randolph Scott), witnesses this evil, he goes to work for the tycoon’s competitor, who is drawn to the same kind of ore-hauling enterprise the tycoon has founded.  Cole is a good man, which doesn’t matter to Mr. Big, who manages to get Cole arrested on a phony arson charge.  It doesn’t stick, though, after which the tycoon (nicely played, by the way, by George Cleveland) wants blood.  But a business venture must go on.

There was some fine material in this movie to work with, and Enright and his cast were essentially up to it.  Why, it even has its own Charlotte Corday—she who killed the French Revolution’s Marat—in the person of Letty Tyler (Barbara Britten), an associate of the tycoon who, by and by, loves his rival.  Albuquerque is in color (it works) and usually pleasurable in its action.  It’s modest but involving.

I have not read any of Arthur C. Clarke‘s novels, but I am familiar with the reasonable mind behind such short stories as “Into the Comet,” “The Star,” “The Sentinel” and “Death and the Senator.”  It is a probing mind too, an instrument for meaningful science fiction.

“Into the Comet” (1960) proves how entertainingly Clarke could write.  Here, a spaceship is in peril within the very long tail of a comet.  The crew rescues itself by turning to something primitive—or “primitive”—when something technologically intricate, a computer, fails it.  How likely such a failure would be I don’t know, but it’s an agreeable story.

The 1955 “The Star” concerns a Jesuit astrophysicist afflicted with doubt about the existence of God after a world civilization is annihilated by a supernova.  Clarke assumes there is intelligent life on other planets.  There may not be.  A pleasantly cerebral piece, it is nevertheless philosophically unremarkable enough to dissatisfy.  It means little that Clarke found Belief either difficult or impossible.  He did better when probing in other directions, as in his other stories.

The planet Metaluna will perish under the weapon blows of an alien race, but its inhabitants intend to get abundant help from unsuspecting Earth, especially its scientists.  This Island Earth (1955) is, then, a tale of two planets, with all the sinister action emanating from Metaluna.  Spoken here is a deceptive promise of peace between peoples, but, no, there is no peace, albeit a single alien (Jeff Morrow‘s Exeter) is decent enough to want to help the Earthlings.

Directed by Joseph Newman, this is standard apocalyptic sci-fi, and it’s not bad.  No doubt like the story it’s based on, it is considerably unpredictable and it holds one’s attention from start to finish.  I question why the Earth scientists are so naive, though.