Time to discuss a few films I recently caught up with on streaming.

Based on Don DeLilio’s 1984 novel, Noah Baumbach’s White Noise, now streaming on Netflix, is a dark comedy set in 1983 dealing with many situations of the day.

There were no cell phones, widescreen TVs, home computers, or other commonplace objects of today. The most extravagant object in most middleclass homes at the time was a 21-inch TV.

The film is about a professor (Adam Driver) at a small college who specializes in Hitler studies and his family. His best friend (Don Cheadle) is a fellow professor who specializes in Elvis studies. The biggest fear of the day was mass annihilation due to a sudden nuclear event which suddenly seems to be a real thing.

Driver is married to Greta Gerwig. Together they have a blended family consisting of Driver’s son and daughter from a previous marriage (Sam and May Nivola), Gerwig’s daughter from a previous marriage (Raffey Cassidy), and a four-year-old son they had together (played by twins Henry and Dean Moore). The interplay amongst the family is truer to life than in many of today’s films, in no small part because Sam and May Nivola are real-life siblings, the children of Alessandro Nivola and Emily Mortimer, and the grandchildren of John Mortimer.

The film is in three acts, the first detailing the day-to-day lives of the main characters, the second dealing with a cloud that may or may not be radioactive causing wholesale evacuations, and the third dealing with the aftermath of the evacuation. The first two-thirds are pure movie magic, but the third drags on unnecessarily until the hilarious over-the-credits ending.

The film’s low ratings are mostly from young people who have no idea what life was like at the time. Most of them would have preferred something that ended with the ending of the world. This is not that kind of film.

Another film streaming on Netflix that I enjoyed is Scott Cooper’s The Pale Blue Eye based on Louis Bayard’s 2006 novel.

This one is about the grisly murder of a West Point cadet in 1830 for which a recently retired New York City detective now living near the military academy is called in to investigate.

Christian Bale, in one of his better performances, is the detective. Harry Melling is outstanding as Edgar Allan Poe, then a cadet at the Point having already been a published poet, who Bale recruits to help him get to the bottom of the murder.

There are many references to Poe’s works including the title which is from a quote in The Tell-Tale Heart. The film is beautifully filmed in upstate New York in which the snowcapped landscape plays a major role as the investigation deepens and more murders occur.

The acting is first-rate throughout, with Timothy Spall, Simon McBurney, and Toby Jones, all of whom appeared, as did Melling, in Harry Potter franchise films. They play senior officers of the Point. Robert Duvall and Gillian Anderson are all but unrecognizable in other key supporting roles, while Harry Lawter and Fred Hechinger impress as cadets under suspicion.

The ending is worthy of Agatha Christie at her best. No mystery fan should miss this one.

At the other end of the scale for me is Mike Milod’s The Menu, now streaming on HBO Max. Director Milod is a TV director who has directed episodes of Game of Thrones and Shameless among others. It was produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, which should have been a clue, since neither have ever made a film that I liked.

Ralph Fiennes stars as an eccentric chef who invites a group of people to a remote island for a specially prepared dinner. Among them are Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, Janet McTeer, John Leguizamo, Reed Birney, and Judith Light. Hong Chau is the chief server. Nothing wrong with the cast, they are all fine as usual, but what happens to them is not.

Classified as a horror comedy, there are a few amusing lines here and there but what happens is not at all funny. It’s a horror film, pure and simple. If you like to be shocked for no reason other than to be shocked, then this is a film for you. If you have more discerning tastes, they would be better employed viewing something else.

Another film to avoid is Matthew Wachus’ film of Tim Minchin’s Matilda: The Musical based on Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book.

I never read the book or saw the 1996 film made from it, nor have I seen the stage musical in which the monstrous headmistress was played by an actor in drag, but I have listened to the London and Broadway cast albums, neither of which impressed me. The drawing card for me was the casting of Emma Thompson as the headmistress.

Alas, this is not the Emma Thompson of Howards End, The Remains of the Day, Sense and Sensibility, Nanny McPhee, Saving Mr. Banks, or last year’s Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. It’s not that she can’t sing, she can. She was wonderful singing the title song in Angela Lansbury’s role as Mrs. Potts in the 2017 live-action version of Beauty and the Beast. Here she is simply one note in a one note role with no distinctive singing style.

New on Blu-ray from Warner Archive are two nicely restored films, 1928’s Our Dancing Daughters and 1952’s Rancho Notorious.

Harry Beaumont’s Our Dancing Daughters was the film that made Joan Crawford a star dancing the Charleston in her underwear.

Crawford is one of three working class women looking for husbands. The others are Dorothy Sabastian and Anita Page who steals the film as the naughtiest of the naughty girls. Principal male roles are played by Johnny Mack Brown, Nils Asther, and Eddie Nugent.
The restoration is excellent, but the film is basically an artifact of its day.

Fritz Lang’s Rancho Notorious is an excellent western with Marlene Dietrich essentially reprising her role in 1939’s Destry Rides Again opposite Arthur Kennedy and Mel Ferrer, both of whom are at the top of their craft.

Hal Mohr, who photographed Dietrich in Destry, was asked by her to photograph her looking years younger than her actual 50. He didn’t think it possible, but he did such an amazing job that she actually looks younger here than she did in her late 30s in the earlier film. Watch the two films back-to-back and you’ll see what I mean.