What classics did you see last week, August 15 to August 21?

One rewatch  Its been probably 35 years since original viewing. Enjoyed it more this time. A melancholy romantic drama about a locum teacher becoming involved with a student. He falls in with the Town's fast set, and discovers the object of his obsession is the girl of a rich gambler... a girl with "lots of past, not much present, and no future"   When the two finally get to do the nasty it's a pretty hot scene. What I really enjoyed this time was the travelogue value - a rainy, foggy off season Rimini is the setting and very beautiful it looks, especially a shabby beach house seen in the final quarter. Delon is solid and Sonia Petrova impressive enough for me to discover she made another 30 or so movies - this was her second)  Strong supporting cast (Giancarlo Giannini, Renato Salvatore and a one scene, five minute, intense, scary turn from Alida Valli, as Petrovna's tell it like it is mother).

FIRST VIEWINGS

3 I would recommend:

Francois Ozon is an expert at confounding audience expectations and, does it again very successfully. The opening 5 minutes set us up for a dark murder tale, as our narrator confesses to killing his friend, the shrinks weigh in before court, and the flashbacks to the story leading up to the death unfolds..... but nothing is quite what is appears and we ultimately discover Beautifully filmed in Coastal France (Seine -Maritime area) , with a gloriously 1985 soundtrack... both of which belie the dark emotions at the story's core. It also has possibly Ozon's most

  Intense family drama, centring on conservative father with dementia visiting gay son whilst accessing medical treatment. The real treat here is Lance Henriksen getting the role of a lifetime (and he was certainly ready for it) as the foul mouthed intolerant homophobe. Sverrir Goodmason impresses as the younger Henriksen. I would maybe have liked it a bit more if Mortensen (as the son) were not quite so saintly and rose to the bait/needling... and I could have done with a bit more Laura Linney (one scene as the daughter/sister) but it is well worth a watch. Mortensen's first as director... and he's a generous one (ditto co-star - presumably his presence in front of the camera got this made) to helm and appear in something he knows will spotlight someone else. To Jeffersoncody for recommending this one

Rock solid Liam Neeson geriactioner, probably not an original frame in it but it delivers the goods. Liam's a rancher protecting Mexican 10 year old hunted by south of the Border drug cartel.

WATCHABLE/OF SOME INTEREST

Richard Egan Festival report

This one was a real charmer, as robots GOG and MAGOG run amok in a 1954 state of the art "secret Underground laboratory".... I imagine most posters here will find this as difficult to dislike as I did.

  Never having had savings, the vagaries of financial markets and their manipulation by computers sort of flies over my head - but this moves at such a frenzied pace (with much "busy" camera work) and has a good cast so it held me for the short running time even though I had no real idea what was going on.

You can safely forget about the rest, which range from mediocre to bad

STINKER OF THE WEEK award goes to