Needless to say, it was one of the greatest scientific achievements in the history of the world, and the documentary Apollo 11 (2019), by Todd Douglas Miller, features the first manned moon landing through NASA footage never before seen publicly.

The rocket’s descent to the lunar surface is shown strikingly, wondrously; and shots of Armstrong and Aldrin treading the moon are the kind of thing that, in high definition, never gets old. Armstrong calls the moonscape “very pretty.” When controllers for the launch at Cape Canaveral and at Houston are not everywhere on screen, sundry spectators near the cape are everywhere. One of the controllers remarks it will soon be time for NASA to “re-acquire” (through re-entry) the Apollo 11 craft. That such a thing, fired thousands of miles above the earth to land on the moon, can be re-acquired by the country that sent it, is itself jaw-dropping. 1969 was, is, the space age!

Eric Rohmer‘s A Tale of Summer (1996) presents a young man’s confusion over himself and women—three of them. The most important one, Margot (Amanda Langlet), is a waitress who is never more than a friend except in her heart; although Gaspard, the young gent (Melvil Poupaud), does find her appealing. In his conduct Gaspard is not yet a man and he needs to be.

Summer is punctuated with original songs that I have no interest in, and the first half of it I found a bit too arid even for a Rohmer film. Too, in one scene Langlet, a charming actor, wears a red top without a bra. For a man, it’s distracting. Then the film becomes more engaging, and as perceptive and gentle as other Rohmer productions. And it is visually very nice. Though a ’96 piece, I had never seen it until it showed up on Max.

(In French with English subtitles)

In the 1959 Pillow Talk, an unmarried woman in New York City (Doris Day) is exasperated by a playboy (Rock Hudson) with whom she perforce shares a telephone line. Later she dates the playboy without knowing who he is (the gent likes Doris’s looks). He’s a pretender, it so happens, but without pretending to actually respect the smitten woman.

It is not a superb plot, but the film’s content is often funny and, this being a screwball comedy, interesting. Little farce is demanded of the actors, especially Day, who are nevertheless right for the pic. There is nothing wrong at all with timing or voice quality. And of course it is all very innocent; after all, as Day scolds Hudson, “There are some men who don’t end every sentence with a proposition.”

Directed by Michael Gordon.

Lengthy space travel and death usually do not go together. How may men died during the moon landings? But in Ridley Scott‘s Alien (1979), several deaths do occur, because malevolence exists in the cosmos. The devil’s representative shows up on a planetoid. What is particularly awful is that an evil company on the earth hopes to weaponize a barbarous Alien and treats the movie’s spaceship crew as though they were men of the Tuskegee Experiment—or pro-Israel Jews. It dehumanizes the crew. Those who are hostilely alien to us are everywhere.

The film opened in U.S. theatres for its 45th anniversary. On the big screen, Scott’s clean direction is obvious. Derek Vanlint’s cinematography in dark areas never frustrates us, and the design team still pleases with its taste and industriousness. Alien is entertaining sci fi at its least complicated.

In France’s Farewell, Mister Haffmann (2021), “after the Germans occupy France, a talented jeweler, Joseph Haffmann, arranges for his family to flee the city and offers one of his employees the opportunity to take over his store until the conflict subsides” (imdb.com). However, the conflict heats up and the Jewish Haffmann is forced to return to the store to hide in the cellar. The employee, Mercier, and his wife Blanche tend to him, except . . . what follows is a Gentile’s, Mercier’s, startling compromise as it turns into a burden, and then deal-breaking and what looks like sheer antisemitism.

Fred Cavaye directed and co-scripted what was originally a play by Jean-Philippe Daguerre. He is wonderfully expert at it, as such performers as Gilles Lellouche (Mercier) are at acting. The film’s ending is not quite convincing but still plausible. One can say oui to Adieu Monsieur Haffmann.

(In French with English subtitles)