Ben-Hur (1959) D: William Wyler. S: Charlton Heston, Stephen Boyd, Hugh Griffith, Jack Hawkins, Haya Harareet, Martha Scott, Cathy O’Donnell. Most of the three and a half hours is an excellent historical adventure epic about Judean Heston trying to avenge himself upon former best friend Boyd, now a Roman thug. Along the way, there’s shoehorned references to the contemporary Jesus’s adventures. Then the third act is a hilarious deus ex machina, literally washing away all the stakes. Epic bummer.

The Cat Creeps (1946) D: Erle C. Kenton. S: Noah Beery Jr., Lois Collier, Paul Kelly, Frederick Brady, Douglass Dumbrille, Rose Hobart, Iris Lancaster. Fun enough thriller about an assortment of suspects getting knocked off while reporter Brady tries to make nice with his girl, Collier, who’s also a suspect. They’re on an isolated island with an old dark house and everyone’s got the motive. Brady’s performance is at eleven and delightful, and the rest of the cast is solid. Especially mysterious Lancaster.

Fast Workers (1933) D: Tod Browning. S: John Gilbert, Robert Armstrong, Mae Clarke, Muriel Kirkland, Vince Barnett, Virginia Cherrill, Sterling Holloway. High steel worker besties Gilbert and Armstrong have an arrangement when it comes to ladies–lothario Gilbert’s always happy to show sap Armstrong his squeeze is a loose gal. It goes haywire when Armstrong falls for Clarke, a semi-pro who Gilbert’s actually smitten with. Cool skyscraper sequences and dripping misogyny. Clarke and Gilbert do better than Armstrong.

Isle of Fury (1936) D: Frank McDonald. S: Humphrey Bogart, Margaret Lindsay, Donald Woods, E. E. Clive, Paul Graetz, Gordon Hart, George Regas. Soggy South Seas melodrama about mysterious Woods shipwrecking on Bogart’s island. Woods immediately falls for Lindsay (who starts the movie marrying Bogart), and they have a Code-friendly pseudo-daliance. But the actual story is something else, which we find out at the last minute. The lengthy “scheming natives” subplot is gross. No good performances (Clive’s the closest). Based on W. Somerset Maugham’s THE NARROW CORNER.

Possession (1981) D: Andrzej Żuławski. S: Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, Margit Carstensen, Heinz Bennent, Johanna Hofer, Carl Duering, Shaun Lawton. Affected (and icky) in the extremis horror movie about maybe spy Neill’s marriage falling apart. Wife Adjani is done with him all of a sudden; it turns out there’s a lot more going on. Adjani’s got her moments, while Neill’s doing a schtick the whole time. Intentionally but so what. The end’s laughably obvious and the random misogyny’s gross.

Rogue of the Rio Grande (1930) D: Spencer Gordon Bennet. S: Myrna Loy, Walter Miller, Carmelita Geraghty, Gene Morgan, Raymond Hatton, William P. Burt, José Bohr. Cheap, bad border Western about Robin Hood-esque bandit Bohr (a German guy in brown face doing an accent) romancing singer Loy (not in brown face physically, just spiritually–she’s got the Speedy Gonzales accent), while contending with the silly gringos not being able to catch him. It’s atrocious stuff.

She-Wolf of London (1946) D: Jean Yarbrough. S: Don Porter, June Lockhart, Sara Haden, Jan Wiley, Lloyd Corrigan, Dennis Hoey, Martin Kosleck. Very cheap Gothic horror pretending to be a monster movie about heiress Lockhart thinking she’s a killer werewolf. Corrigan’s the tenacious inspector who also believes in werewolves. Wiley’s good as the supportive cousin, Porter’s fine as the love interest. But Lockhart doesn’t get anything to do. And Haden’s ineffective as the overprotective aunt. It just gets across the finish.

TRON: Ares (2025) D: Joachim Rønning. S: Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Gillian Anderson, Jodie Turner-Smith, Jeff Bridges. Audiovisual feast–except during the surprisingly lackluster fisticuffs–has charisma-free Leto playing a likable Disney-fied Terminator who starts questioning tech billionaire boss Peters’s orders. Turner-Smith is good as Leto’s true believer lieutenant. Peters and Anderson’s villains disappoint. Lee’s only okay as the human lead. The script’s often quite bad; the looks and sounds are the point.