Movies for March, batch one of three.

43. (790.) Twilight of Honor (1963)
This courtroom drama owes a debt to Anatomy of a Murder, although it flips the guilty parties. It takes its own sweet time getting to the payoff, but that may be my impatience and over-familiarity with the genre as opposed to any fault with what is otherwise a pretty potboiler.

44. (791.) The Dictator (2012)
Here's a moment you didn't see in this film's trailer: trying to break into a United Nations function, the title character gets stuck on a rope outside of the building. In order to lose some weight to get off the rope, he evacuates his bowels onto the sidewalk below. If that sounds like your kind of humor, you can have it.

45. (792.) A Man for All Seasons (1966)
No scat humor in this deadly serious exploration of the ironclad morality of one doomed man. A great film.

46. (793.) Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
I'd never seen any production of this play. What a mistake I've made. I was humming "Tradition" for a week.

47. (794.) Trial (1955)
Murder, racism, illegal immigrants, Red Scare politics... if you can name it, this film probably has it. If you like courtroom dramas, you'll like this.

48. (795.) Jennifer's Body (2009)
I seem to remember critics savaging this film, but it's not really all that bad. Yes, it could certainly use a little help — most notably a tighter edit that cleaned up some weirdly disjointed context issues — but so far as teen slasher horrors go, it's enjoyable enough. I'd watch it again for Amanda Seyfried alone.

49. (796.) Klute (1971)
I'm no fan of Jane Fonda, and I'm afraid that's a prerequisite to enjoying this very boring and predictable whodunit. She won an Oscar for this portrayal of a damaged New York call girl. (Is there any other kind?) I'm sorry, but I'm just not impressed.

50. (797.) The Window (1949)
Five years before Alfred Hitchcock's great Rear Window, the same concept was covered here. Structurally, the biggest difference between the two movies is that the young protagonist here doesn't have the support of a Grace Kelly, but he's no Jimmy Stewart, either. In summary, I say see Rear Window instead. (It turns 50 this year!)

More to come.

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