Vanessa Redgrave is nigh plain-looking in Charles Jarrott‘s Mary, Queen of Scots (1971), as she is not in Blow-Up, but she is a superb Mary Stuart. Though not without some historical inaccuracies, the film chronicles Mary’s adult life, especially in Scotland, and is too episodic, too crammed with striking incidents. It is riveting, even so, particularly when the commanding Glenda Jackson (Elizabeth I) is on screen and the duel between the two queens proceeds apace.

Timothy Dalton (Mary’s heinous husband, Lord Darnley) and especially Ian Holm are impressive as arrant losers. The film’s costumes and sets contribute much. Is Mary about anything in particular? Well, it’s about ambition in a domain of death. And it’s about fine acting.

For sure, the social world is, at least for now, Julie’s world. She must speak to numerous people, she must contact and depend on strangers (and her ex-husband), she is forced to anger acquaintances. She is a single mother trying to better the lives of her two children by getting a new job, but she must make it to her interview and there’s a transit strike going on. She hitchhikes. Indeed, it’s a complicated and aching urban France Julie lives in, and she is struggling full time.

Full Time (A plein temps, 2021) is the name of the film, an intense, quickly-moving concoction. Eric Gravel penned the clear-eyed original script and directed it sapidly. Editing these days is usually spot-on, and so it is with Mathilde Van de Moortel’s work. A brunette with a sparkling smile, Laure Calamy is natural, offering brilliant facial play, as Julie. Gravel’s movie is almost a small masterpiece.

(In French with English subtitles)

The 1971 Dillinger was written and directed by John Milius, a right-winger and gun fan. Crisp and exciting, the movie focuses on gun violence and gun justice (no trials). With aplomb Warren Oates plays bank robber John Dillinger, and Ben Johnson—relentlessly out to get his man—is FBI agent Melvin Purvis. Here, Milius is Sam Peckinpah without the intermittent visual poetry. He gets the job done, though, and not without personal vision.

Roger Ebert called the John Huston film, The Man Who Would Be King (1975), “unabashed and thrilling and fun.” To me, there is too much brutality displayed for the picture actually to be fun, but a frank and enjoyable adaptation of Kipling it is. Peachy (Michael Caine) and Daniel (Sean Connery) are blackguards. A British colonial in India says he has no cause for arresting them but, as it happens, primitives in a faraway land have cause for executing them.

In point of fact, the men abide by certain values the Empire smiles on, but they also fail the Empire’s institutions, from the military to the church. Both are ex-soldiers, demonstrating as much gusto in their warfare as in their corruption. Good material is here for a film, which film is not much flawed and devotedly made. In terms of merit The Man Who Would Be King is the movie The Wind and the Lion should have been.

In May December (2023), by Todd Haynes, a committed actress played by Natalie Portman, temporarily stays with and studies a Mary Kay Letourneau-like character (Julianne Moore) whom Portman’s Elizabeth will portray in a movie. Gracie (Moore) has long been married to Joe (Charles Melton), the man she fell for when he was only thirteen.

Samy Burch‘s perceptive script serves up the themes of exploitation and objectification (both coming from Elizabeth), confusion and pressure in an abnormal household, and when an abnormal person like Gracie creates an abnormal marriage. Passably does Moore play a naive and neurotic woman. In a sad moment, she comments that Elizabeth is “getting on her last nerve”—this puzzles Joe—without quite knowing what she is saying. Persuasively and unshowily Melton and Portman play their roles.

A Netflixer, May December is not woke or semi-literate or trite. It is a brittle triumph which, as critic Alison Willmore indicates, approaches the place of horror without reaching it. This is proper, as are the nice comic touches along the way.