Istanbul and Constantinople, and probably Byzantium to boot

Kedi

Crit

If you've never gotten the appeal of cats, this documentary about the millennia-long relationship between strays and the populace of the Turkish metropolis won't change your mind, but İstanbullular seem united in their belief that, even apart from their service in controlling the rodent population, cats bring good fortune and emotional healing.

Moreover--and here's where even dog people and members of Congress can take something from the film--the cat admirers and caretakers interviewed recognize that a sure way to do good to yourself is to do good to those weaker and more vulnerable than yourself.

Erectile dysfunction

Logan

Crit

Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, who has now played the character [fake news alert!] more times than Basil Rathbone played Holmes or Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan) is having trouble getting his claws up and firm, if you catch my drift. He has aged badly, been rode hard and put up wet, and Patrick Stewart's Charles Eksavier (which is how I spell it, because everyone knows that's not how you pronounce Xavier) is even older and feebler. The wraith in the black cloak with the scythe haunts this film. Plus, there are said to have been no mutants born in a couple of decades.

Except.

Not the best movie ever about aging and death, but probably the best such in which we hear the word "adamantium" spoken, and it gives us the juvenile character (the stunning 4-foot-tall Dafne Keen's Laura) who spills blood most effortlessly and convincingly of any since Eli in Let the Right One In. I hope the kid gets a lighthearted comedy for her next role. Also therapy.

It wasn't the choppers . . .

Kong: Skull Island

Crit

Call it Ape-ocalypse Now. Set in 1973, at the moment Nixon declared peace in Southeast Asia, the film includes some Vietnamese locations, but it might have been shot in Carlsbad Caverns, so insistently does it echo the war's greatest film. It must have been a challenge, in fact, to assemble a soundtrack that did not overlap with that one. (Though in doing so, they gave a late musical shout out to the best antiwar comedy.)

Perhaps the most notable aspect of this film is its endorsement of the proposition that the female lead's jaws can be squarer and broader than the male's.

Trailer

• Sleight--Dude's got powers!

Once on this island

La tortue rouge (The red turtle)

Crit

I'm pretty sure this must be an allegory, but I'm darned if I know of what. It's a little bit Crusoe, a little bit Ancient Mariner, then some mermaid/selkie fable, on to Eden, toss in some apocalypse, and close with a quotidian sequence on the inevitable consequences of aging as parents. Throughout it's lovely, and except for about a half-dozen times when someone says "hey!" blessedly free of dialogue.

What but design of darkness to appall?

Get Out

Crit

Golly, what a fine film--comedy, horror, and well-founded racial paranoia: who could ask for anything more? Jordan Peele, in his directorial debut, has set a high bar for himself. Apart from the chills and the laughs, he has given viewers of Girls something we've been waiting 5 seasons to see.

And like any great horror film, it has one critical element that just doesn't make sense. Double-click this paragraph only after you've seen the film. With his hands bound, how does Chris get the stuffing in his ears? He's much younger and fitter than I, but is it humanly possible to bend your upper body down that far and manipulate your bound hands enough to accomplish that task?

Trailers

• The Belko Experiment--A terror film for the Trump era.
• Girls Trip--Water sports!
• Snatched--Amy & Goldie, but I need persuasion.
• All Eyez on Me--Tupac biopac.
• Before I Fall--Groundhog Day for depressed teens.

Dark continence

A United Kingdom

Crit

It's refreshing to see black racism give white racism a run for its money, but let's face it, that's never a fair fight. This is moral medicine, vapid writing and routine direction made sometimes palatable by the actors: David Oyelowo is Seretse Khama, a man who gave up a throne (of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, forerunner of Botswana) for the woman he loved (Rosamund Pike). Unfortunately, both leads are unremittingly saintly, thus barely human, and almost all the forces of Britain are unremittingly evil, thus ditto.

Trailers

• Table 19--I promise you this was pitched as The Breakfast Club at a wedding reception.

Four hundred years

I Am Not Your Negro

Crit

"The story of the Negro in America," wrote James Baldwin, "is the story of America. It's not a pretty story." In a scant 93 minutes, from the point of view of one man, director Raoul Peck essays to tell that story, and succeeds as no one should be able to. It helps, of course, to have Baldwin's presence--on the Dick Cavett Show, for example, and addressing Cambridge students--and it helps to have Baldwin's words for so much of the rest of the film that Peck rightly credits him as the screenwriter.

The core of the film is an abandoned project of Baldwin's to write about three iconic murdered friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. The voice delivering Baldwin's words when the author isn't speaking them for himself is a counterintuitive choice, Samuel L. Jackson, but this Sam Jackson is not Quentin Tarantino's Negro: he forgoes the pulpy bombast and dials it down to a soft tone that lets the bitterness of the message penetrate with gentle stealth and explode deep in the gut.

This is the second excellent race documentary nominated for the upcoming Oscars that I've seen (Ava DuNernay's 13th is the other), and I've been told that O.J.: Made in America may be the best of the lot. If that's so, I guess I need to find 8 hours to watch that ESPN product.