I hate dementia, especially when it’s severe.

If a person were to tell me he or she intends to commit suicide because he suspects he has come down with dementia, I would reply, “That is your business. Do what you want. Dementia is terrible. I do not believe such a suicide is a sin.” Right, I do not, Christian though I am. I’d also say he needs to act pretty quickly lest the dementia, if it’s there, deprive his mind of the intention. If, to be sure, a cure for dementia is invented, undoubtedly I will look at the matter differently. I wish to always look at it compassionately.

It can be safely said that Jack Arnold‘s It Came from Outer Space (1953) is not big on aesthetics due to, early on, some technical inadequacy such as an unstable camera. It starts looking better, though, as time goes on; and it’s in color, which is nice. But it is hardly a visual gem.

Aliens in the flick seem to do a horrible job of flying their spacecraft since John Putnam (Richard Carlson) and others believe the craft to be a meteor rapidly hitting the earth. Meaning no harm to the earthlings, the aliens nevertheless say they are willing to destroy people if they are kept from repairing their ship. Nearby citizens are ignorant of, and rattled by, the aliens’ tools of choice. They grow aggressive.

Based on a Ray Bradbury story, Outer Space is fairly enjoyable. I watched it because Barbara Rush, who is in it, very recently died at age 97. Like Carlson, she is an uninteresting actor here, but the finest thing about the film is Miss Rush’s innocent-looking beauty, brunette magnetism. A B- movie was a little less B with her in it.

Is the modern age—let’s say it starts in 1969 when Withnail and I takes place—the age of hypersensitivity, or is it merely that actors are hypersensitive? The two out-of-work actors in this film seem to exhibit this trait, with, alas, happiness consistently beyond reach. They comfort themselves, however, with booze, pot and cigarettes, not so much with their friendship, though. Almost thirty, Withnail (Richard E. Grant) frustrates Marwood (Paul McGann) and probably vice versa when Marwood convinces Withnail to leave London for a while and spend time in the country. It doesn’t go well.

The film is an autobiographical one, from 1987, written and directed by Bruce Robinson, who co-starred in Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet and Truffaut’s The Story of Adele H. Very adept at dialogue, he’s a literate Brit with a literate—and witty—movie. He is pleasantly inventive and some of his film’s incidents could have gotten gross but never do. ‘Tis a deserving work.

Tough-minded Klute (1971), directed by Alan J. Pakula, is one of those urban film dramas of the Seventies, working better than most of what Scorsese and Lumet did at this time. There is a psychological focus on the prostitute Bree, enacted by Jane Fonda, who is nothing short of great, of course. Her Bree is bright and borderline sassy and professionally nice, and corrupt. She never wants her self-confidence to slip. Thanks to Fonda, we believe she aspires to become an actress. We see how a small-town detective like John Klute could fall in love with her. Klute is played by Donald Sutherland, in too subdued a fashion.

An artistic thriller, Klute loses some plausibility in its last 25 minutes. It is worthwhile, even so, blessed with capital performances by Charles Cioffi and Roy Scheider. And with Michael Small’s chilling music.

A doctor, Massarel, living in a town called Canneville represents, in Guy de Maupassant‘s short story “An Affair of State,” the political radical whom events make gleeful. Post-Napoleonic France will again be a republic! In fact, Massarel is prompted to call a couple of his patients “stupid” when they interfere with his activist activity.

But the doctor is in the midst of “listless villagers.” They couldn’t care less about France becoming a republic. For them, affairs of state are not affairs of the heart—or of the ailing body. The Canneville mayor and, apparently, the curate support the Regime. The radical’s enthusiasms are not the enthusiasms of others. Maupassant shakes his head over the fanatical partisan, blind to opposing positions, in this wonderful, even amusing story.