The 2026 Hamlet, on film, is smashing. Technically accomplished, cleverly directed by Aneil Karia, it presents a British Indian Hamlet in modern London and is a rich chronicle of agony. Riz Ahmed is interesting and distinguished—not at all standard-issue—in the title role. He exudes intelligence, no less so than the gripping Joe Alwyn as Laertes. Art Malik and Sheeba Chaddha are a perfect Claudius and Gertrude, and Morfydd Clark a true and touching Ophelia. Timothy Spall is a human curio as Polonius.

Karia’s film may be Shakespearean cinema at its most exciting. Music and dancing—don’t worry; it’s limited in quantity—add to the fascination.

No sympathy is extended (no, sir) to the criminal convincingly played by Mickey Rooney in Don Siegel‘s Baby Face Nelson, a 1957 flick set in the Thirties. Nelson is a serial murderer who betrays his buddies and respects only his fictional lover, Sue (Carolyn Jones). The film is tenuous about Nelson’s personality—why is he so brutish?—but not about violent action. Siegel directs supplely from beginning to end, and Leon Barsha knows how to edit. A well-cast thriller, it’s a minor success. I saw it on YouTube.

Liane, the protag of the 2024 French picture Wild Diamond, by Agathe Riedinger, aspires to be beautiful in what is Cheap France of the 21st century. She strives to be a cast member of a TV reality show called Miracle Island. But she lacks patience and perforce gets disconsolate. Reckless too: Liane is a “wild diamond.”

WD reminds me of French films of the Eighties. It’s sober and candid, and has no #MeToo timidity (often okay) about female nudity. Malou Khebizi knows how to enact Liane. She moves well and is rather unconventionally pretty, with sublime uncovered breasts, but are they real? In the movie, they aren’t. Yes, the film has its faults, but I must also commend the sturdy acting of Andrea Bescond as Liane’s mother.

Some notable stuff here. (In French with English subtitles. Available right now on Tubi.)

In the comic, satirical webzine The Babylon Bee, the hits outweigh the misses. It’s worth reading. To me, the misses, though, are quite frequent in the Bee’s short videos I watch on YouTube; but the hits are certifiably there too. This is political satire—right-leaning hilarity. One of the best videos is “What If We Abolished Prisons and Defunded the Police?,” a pet democratic socialist cause. Here, a judge’s “harshest sentence” for murder is . . . to pleadingly ask the defendant not to do it again. The defendant must be an illegal immigrant.

Clever, too, is a skit in which a pair of adults cannot define the word “woman” for a boy in a spelling bee who requests the definition. I also like the very brief “Upsides to Socialism.” These are funny items coming from the same folks who recently purveyed on their website the header, “Lindsey Clancy Honored With Planned Parenthood Lifetime Achievement Award.”

Wyatt Earp (Joel McCrea) is the main character in Jacques Tourneur‘s Wichita (1955). Wichita is not yet a boom town in 1874, and local bigwigs are afraid Earp, the new marshal,* is a threat to the town’s prosperity and existence. Earp tries to disarm the visiting, cattle-driving cowboys—Wichita providers—because their rowdiness routinely turns to violence. Scripted by Daniel Ullman, the pic would be a perfect Fifties TV movie. As it is, it’s a non-great but involving Western in color and with a palatable Western hero in McCrea. The cast is familiar and enjoyable, except that Edgar Buchanan is just Edgar Buchanan and Vera Miles is underwhelming.

*Ahistorical