Such actors as Lou de Laage and Melvil Poupaud are so strong and convincing they deserve a more successful artwork to be in than Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance (Stroke of Luck, 2023). The criticisms of Armond White about the film are spot-on: “Allen still excuses infidelity as no big deal,” the infidelity being that of de Laage’s Fanny. And he knows how woefully bad Allen’s plot is.

I, furthermore, wish to add that the film is philosophically fatuous (and boring). After all these years, Allen should be a somewhat better writer than he is. Blue Jasmine should have inspired him into deeper study and effort. But no. The French-made Coup de Chance is the one of the weakest French-made movies I have seen.

(In French with English subtitles)

In The Prowler (1951), a nonexistent prowler is the fulcrum of the arrest and trial of Webb, a police officer (not a good man), and his peculiar marriage to Susan. Director Joseph Losey had a riveting crime drama in this item, wherein Van Heflin enacts Webb knowingly and authoritatively. As his new wife, Evelyn Keyes is a largely sympathy-winning jewel, overplaying and underplaying nothing. Intense and filler-free, this is one of the few Losey movies I’ve been able to see. As with The Go-Between, he had good material to film.

Strongly in favor of religious liberty and even a morally right distribution of government funds, God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust (2024) follows the Rev. David Hill (David A.R. White), recruited by a former political consultant named Lottie (Samaire Armstrong), as he runs for a Congressional seat. His opponent is Peter Kane (Ray Wise), a vain liberal secularist. With a big advantage or two going to Kane, the race is very bumpy, often vexing for the pastor and Lottie and, yes, even Kane. The director is Vance Hull, who does palatable work; it’s too bad he’s directing a screenplay (by Tommy Blaze) that turns feeble.

A man as averse to religion as Kane would not win massive approval. Those scores of Christians to whom the movie refers, who fail to vote, would be motivated to vote against him. Numerous Christian Democrats would dislike him. What’s more, the false information about Kane that Lottie wishes to use against him would not have emanated from Dean Cain‘s Marc Shelley, the man who is financing Hill’s campaign. He would have considered it too risky.

Speaking of Cain, I wish we could see more of him in the film. He is smoothly compelling. At least Armstrong and Wise, who are lively and perceptive, have a lot of screen time. But my preference is for God’s Not Dead 2. And exactly what is wrong with the pastor’s tie, Lottie?

Z is a 1969 Costa-Gavras film based on the actual event of the 1963 murder of a Greek pacifist, Gregoris Lambrakis. It is a robust piece about political fervor and obsession and official depravity. Played by Yves Montand, the victim (one of them, actually) is an honest, brave but unprotected liberal, the anti-Tim Walz. He lives in the Greece of the virile, anti-communist colonels, who want for their country a kind of spiritual unity: beyond Left and Right, they say. But they are profoundly corrupt. Why, up to a point they anticipate today’s Democratic party in America with its election fraud, lawfare, Antifa, and Bennie Thompson.

(In French with English subtitles)

The British picture Fright (1971) is only for horror buffs, if even for them. Peter Collinson (The Italian Job) directed respectably except for the early footage when he tries too hard to be suspenseful. The story itself, by Tudor Gates, is not very good. It takes an eternity, for instance, for the police and others to make the urgent moves to defeat a hair-raising psychopath, mesmerizingly acted by Ian Bannen.

Honor Blackman is in the movie, solid as a worried wife, but even better is the screaming Susan George. Miss George’s Amanda can be an endearingly quiet talker, a persevering soul standing up for herself, a terrified target, etc. She is never false and is sexily lovely to boot. Online critic Peter Hanson observes that “the atmosphere [of Fright] is laden with sex,” and this is chiefly because of George. She and the other actors have nothing to do with the film’s being rather weak.