Would the Soviet Union, allied with Cuba, have initiated a third world war in the rural Midwest of the United States? I doubt it, but, boy, do we all know about Russian expansionism. In the 1984 Red Dawn, the Midwest is where the communists invade, and teenaged sons and daughters are the ones who aggressively engage them. Though far from a work of art, the film harbors themes: communist hostility and the global inevitability of invasion.

As an action movie, Red Dawn is reliable. Director-writer John Milius is an avid gun collector and it shows. Firearms here are rather distinctive, an attention grabber. War violence is framed in shots of surrounding mountainous beauty. Up to a point, though, the film is silly. Milius is a conservative who, despite the strengths in Dillinger, made poor choices as a moviemaker. But I say unhesitatingly that American cinema is more fun and interesting with him than without him.

I have never read L’Innocente by Gabriele D’Annunzio, but I regard Luchino Visconti‘s Italian film of it (1976) as worthwhile. It is a lush costume drama about Tullio (Giancarlo Giannini), a free-thinking aristocrat who falls in love with his betrayed wife (Laura Antonelli) a second time, or seems to. The man is ignoble and tortured, though. And Catholic Europe of yesteryear is also “enlightened” Europe of yesteryear.

Giannini is a manly actor of quiet power. Jennifer O’Neill, an American actress dubbed, gets the job done as Tullio’s mistress, but without any real charisma. Antonelli isn’t bad but lacks personality—without lacking a comely face and body, unclothed. Antonelli died in 2015. Anyone with a body as resplendent as hers deserves a serious and lasting marriage, which, alas, she didn’t have. Ironically, when he and his wife are naked in bed, Tullio is aiming for the triumph of marital sex, as it were.

(In Italian with English subtitles)

Jon Stewart is a smart man, but his Irresistible (2020) is not a smart movie. The critical drubbing it received is justified. A political comedy, it revolves around a swinish Democratic consultant, Gary (Steve Carell), who tries to manage a military veteran/farmer, Jack Hastings (Chris Cooper), into a Democratic mayoral victory in a small Wisconsin town. Another (D.C.) consultant, Faith (Rose Byrne), strives for the defeat of Hastings.

Stewart, director and writer here, has made Faith a Republican hypocrite. She speaks obscenities, as does Gary, and has contempt for small town America. She is neither believable nor as interesting as she should be. What is worse is that we already know, emphatically and forever, that political campaigns and low tricks go hand in hand. Why such a message from Stewart? It’s because his film is naive and hollow, which explains his creation of a scene in which Hastings delivers a speech to New York Dem donors (!) and says not a word about what is most important in politics—policy. Yet the donors are impressed.

Nothing wrong with the acting, though. Carell is nigh brilliant and Cooper is pleasantly authentic. Byrne is as poised and flavorous as Lea Massari. But, although non-partisan, the movie they’re in is preposterous. Unfunny too.

Dean Martin and Ann-Margret.

Together they are very winning, albeit Ann-Margret on her own is winning enough. In Murderers’ Row (1966) she does all she can with a cardboard part (which is a lot) and has never looked more drop-dead gorgeous. But of course Martin is handsome, and he gets all the funny one-liners in this seriocomic secret-agent pic which practically drops the “serio” for the comic. Also, unlike in The Wrecking Crew, he does okay as Matt Helm.

An example of the humor: In Cote d’Azur, Helm pleads with French police not to shoot at his moving car because an innocent girl passenger (Ann-Margret) is riding with him. After the police shoot anyway, Helm murmurs, “That’s the French for you. They don’t think any girl is innocent.”

Directed by Henry Levin, the movie is dopey but also pleasurable. Before she appeared in Downhill Racer, beautiful Camilla Sparv was in Row, but has pronouncedly little to do. Karl Malden is an intriguing villain. To sum it up, it’s nice to have Martin at the Helm here as well as all the other beguiling performers.

(All the reviews are by Earl Dean)

The chief person in “Sail Shining in White,” by Mark Helprin, is an old man of the sea—he is 82—who knows “[a]s if by some magic” that a ferocious storm is coming.

Saying yes to one’s own destruction (engineered by nature), as the old man does, is the subject. Aboard a boat, he knows he cannot survive the storm. There is no capriciousness here, however. The old man seeks an epiphany. He wishes “to see in nature some clue to the mystery to come [death] and the mysteries he would be leaving behind.” What can nature—or nature’s God—do for us? Helprin, I should mention, takes God seriously (“On the sea the only law was God’s law”).

“Sail” does not ignore the Wound in the human condition, but it is a defiantly positive short story. And there is nearly a politesse in its intelligent prose.