大菩薩峠 (Dai-Bosatsu Pass aka Sword of Doom) (dir. 岡本 喜八,). The fight scenes are more preposterous than average: not only do the red shirts attack the champion one by one rather than rushing him, they seem to be aiming to strike someone two or three paces beyond him.
The Naked Prey (dir. Cornel Wilde). Not available on disc but I saw it once on television. It’s essentially one long chase scene, but a gripping one.
Born Free (dir. James H. Hill, Tom McGowan). Kid stuff, of course. I’m curious about how it was made. Some scenes show Elsa’s personality so distinctly that it’s hard to believe they could be played by a stunt cat; yet they look too good to be “home movies” shot by Adamson.
Alfie (dir. Lewis Gilbert); Georgy Girl (dir. Silvio Narizzano). Similar enough in content and tone that I wonder, what from recent years is most comparable to these?
座頭市の歌が聞える (Zatoichi’s Vengeance, #13, dir. Tanaka Tokuzo). Even more formulaic than most of the series.
The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (dir. Norman Jewison). Likable farce. I saw it as a child and remembered almost nothing. — Jonathan Winters has a supporting role, and as usual I could do without. I can think of two movies in which he wasn’t mugging all the time: in The Loved One he played two roles, one of which had to have some different mannerisms, and in Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feeling So Sad he played a dead body (narrating to us from Beyond).
The Endless Summer (dir. Bruce Brown), a famous documentary on surfing: pretty but monotonous.
座頭市海を渡る (Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage, #14, dir. Ikehiro Kazuo) — For some reason this one is controlled (at least for the US) by a different company from the others in the series, and is not available with English subtitles.
The Fortune Cookie: your standard Billy Wilder comedy, which is no bad thing.
The Professionals (dir. Richard Brooks). A pretty good Western in the vein of The Magnificent Seven.
Ostře sledované vlaky (Closely Watched Trains) (dir. Jiří Menzel). A coming-of-age story in occupied Böhmen und Mahren. A doctor tells young Milos that he suffers from ejaculatio præcox, and Milos repeats the phrase to several people – but in the subtitles the Latin (which I didn’t notice until the last time) was put into English, wrecking the humor and some of the plausibility. I suspect that was not the only thing lost in translation.
A Man for All Seasons (dir. Fred Zinnemann). Excellent.
El Dorado (dir. Howard Hawks). Mediocre.
Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) (dir. Sergio Leone). Seriously flawed, in that much of the plot follows from “good” Blondie’s frivolous betrayal of “ugly” Tuco. The latter half, after the quest gets going in earnest, is pretty good, but I still prefer Leone’s C’era una volta il West (1968).