I shan’t read the Alistair MacLean novel, Breakheart Pass, but I found satisfying his screenplay for the Tom Gries-directed 1975 film. It’s an 1800s action movie which is more of a murder mystery than a Western (rather un-transporting as it is), starring Charles Bronson in an interesting role. Reprobate whites join reprobate Indians in a homicidal scheme for gain. Few here possess a conscience. There is some exemplary moving train action, along with suspenseful scenes of violence. And very attractive outdoor shots. In the Seventies, filmmakers could make good—and non-sensationalistic—entertainments if they put their minds to it.

A goodly number of critics liked Steven Soderbergh‘s Presence (2024), but why did a lot of them pan it? Written by David Koepp, it’s a mainly agreeable spook tale with nifty shooting and editing by Soderbergh and some fine acting. A worried but giving ghost, or spirit, is in the new home of a married couple with two kids. Dad—Chris Sullivan—hires a woman with an extra sense who is not a psychic (mysteries abound here) to discover what’s going on. The failure of death to prevent a spiritual or supernatural existence is a theme in the film, as is familial near-despair. The denouement is weak but Presence as a whole is recommendable.

(Does Lucy Liu get a comeuppance?)

A Mike Leigh film about a black lower middle-class family in London, Hard Truths (2024) shows us not that the world is too much with us but that we ourselves are too much with us. Pansy Deacon (a remarkable Marianne Jean-Baptiste) never ceases to be frustrated and bitter and has no idea why—why she can never enjoy life. She forces her husband Curtley (David Webber) to be too much with himself: a man paralyzed by his wife and in his misery. It is much the same with their shy son Moses.

The picture flows naturalistically without a plot (but you won’t miss it) and unconcerned about race. Armond White has correctly observed that the film “goes so far beyond the ‘people-who-look-like-me’ cliches that the emotional specificity of [Pansy’s] familial and social distress is scarily recognizable—and universal.” Which is another way of saying Leigh is an artist.

Kudos to his cast. Michelle Austin gives a sinewy and moving performance as Pansy’s sister Chantelle. A nice vitality arises when Austin is with the two young women who play Chantelle’s daughters—and Ani Nelson (Kayla) is lovely. In all likelihood, this is one of Leigh’s best films.

The Candidate—not the Michael Ritchie film of 1972, but one from 1964—stars Mamie Van Doren as a glamorous pimp, Christine, employed by the destructive campaign manager, Buddy (Eric Mason), for a bachelor Congressional candidate, Frank Carlton (Ted Knight). As it happens, Christine falls for Buddy—the worst path she could take—while Frank meets and caves to his weakness for a British noncitizen named Angela (June Wilkinson). Buddy is a would-be government official who, we come to realize, doesn’t stand, or deserve, a chance.

The film is quite serious with some sophisticated dialogue (borrowed from a source novel, I take it), but as well it is thin and has scant drama. Indeed, there is not enough here for even an 80 minute movie. Near the end the piece gets silly and phony. It transpires that Angela was willing to appear in an utterly stupid stag reel.

Van Doren and Wilkinson cannot act. Mamie tries but it doesn’t pan out. She’s a blond marvel, though; her looks are extraordinary. As for pretty June, her bosom is extraordinary. Mason’s acting is probably passable but rather mechanical. The Candidate loses.

An ex-coffee salesman, Rosen, strenuously tries to help a young mother whose husband has died. He is not in love with her, or lusting for her, he wants only to help her; but the financially sinking woman keeps refusing.

This is what “Take Pity” chronicles. It’s a Bernard Malamud short story, so the characters are Jewish. And they aren’t happy. The woman is refusing to accept the norms of society and the Jewish community. She is unwise, but another fait accompli in the story is that a particular man ceases to be an angel, so to speak, and turns into a devil. In Malamud, Jews let down other Jews. The woman, I say again, is unwise. Rosen becomes worse.

The ten pages here are tough and crisp and fascinating.