It’s an obvious story line, and you can sorta guess how Albert Nobbs (2011, rated R, 113 minutes) will end.

Glenn Close rather convincingly plays a woman who passes for a man (“Albert Nobbs”) in a posh hotel in late 19th century Ireland where appearances matter. She makes a life.

She meets Janet McTeer who, as “Hubert Page,” treads a similar path and who, like “Albert,” tries to fool herself about her prospects for happiness.

There are caricature secondary characters, an almost incipiently blowsy hotel owner, and an ill-fated two- dimensional love affair.

There is a brief rapturous scene at the seashore where “Albert” and “Hubert” let their woman selves run in the breezes.

The best moments make Albert Nobbs watchable.

Disconnect (I’m avoiding a spoiler alert): the ending is not about “Albert Nobbs.” It’s sweet. It’s Nobbsian. It’s other.

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You have to watch hard to get to truth in The Good Liar (2019, rated R, 109 minutes). There are several layers of lies, and Betty McLeish (Helen Mirren) and Roy Courtnay (Ian McKellen) don’t waste a lot of time helping you to dig.

There is no beauty in The Good Liar. There is a dreadful wartime reality. There is revenge, regret, rebuke, reckoning, refusal, and retaliation. Most of the smiles are insincere.

Roy learns that, at last, he cannot escape retribution for his sins of youth.

Betty learns that, at last, her lifetime quest for revenge is a good thing.

Be prepared to chug through a couple distracting subplots.

The Good Liar is a story of good and evil, and all the ways of living that they create.

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You might think The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989, rated R, 114 minutes) is a yawner—two brothers play cocktail lounge pianos, two boys meet girl, she sings real good, one boy falls sort of in love with girl, the gag bits aren’t too funny.

Here’s the thing: Jeff and Beau Bridges are pretty good together as Jack and Frank, the eponymous Baker Boys, and they actually are playing the pianos when you can see their hands (but most of the music was dubbed). Michelle Pfeiffer as Susie Diamond is just great as their big find when they’re looking for a singer, and she really does all her own singing, and she’s just great. I said it again for emphasis.

The story line is pretty easy to figure out. The ending is pretty easy to guess. The music and the singing are pretty easy on your ears. Give Jack and Frank and Susie 114 minutes of your time.

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“Terms of Endurance” seems like a better title for this movie. It takes willpower to stick with it to the end. Terms of Endearment (1983, rated PG, 132 minutes) has a decent premise and, of course, decent acting talent, but it mostly wanders around searching for the meaning of love, and real plot and character development, and it never gets there.

Jack Nicholson (Oscar for Best Actor in Supporting Role) performs a caricature of his character, Garrett Breedlove, in his on-again-off-again pursuit of Shirley MacLaine (Oscar for Best Actress in Leading Role) who, as Aurora Greenway, seems to try burning a candle at both ends and giving lackluster advice about the whole love thing. Debra Winger (Oscar nominee for Best Actress in a Leading Role) offers a forgettable performance as Emma Horton, who doesn’t assume leadership of much of anything.

Somebody who turned off the lights on the set each night must have imagined that they all had better things to do with their time.

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It’s titled News of the World (2020, rated PG-13, 118 minutes), but that’s really not what this see- it-again movie is all about.

This out-of-the-ordinary Tom Hanks film is about awakening, and affection cradled in a dirty crystal goblet, and a little girl with a deadpan face and a deadened life who learns to smile.

The story line: a grizzled Civil War veteran, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks), takes time out from his traveling newspaper reading gig to escort a hapless 12-year-old German girl, Johanna (Helena Zengel), to her mostly uninterested distant relatives after she escapes from Kiowa captivity.

There’s no love affair, of course, but the old man/young girl affection starts to pile on, and they handle some adversity, and Johanna teaches Kidd some Kiowa words so they can talk, and Texas cowboy culture passes them by as they roll their raggedy wagon into the future.

Johanna learns a beaming smile as she learns to work with Kidd in his reading rambles, and they make a life. It’s a feel-good ending.

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Dances With Wolves (1990, rated PG-13, 181 minutes) is the movie you know all about.  It won the 1991 Oscar for Best Picture, but it’s not perfect.

There is the completely unimaginable plot line that a solitary Army officer could survive in Lakota Sioux territory in the wild West.  There is the all-too-obvious love-affair-in-the-making between Dances with Wolves (Kevin Costner) and Stands With A Fist (Mary McDonnell).  There is the distraction of the Civil War combat scene at the beginning.  There is the comic book brutality of the Army soldiers and officers who tried to return Lt. Dunbar (Costner) to “civilization.”

On the other hand, there is the breathless triumph of Dances With Wolves returning to the arms of Stands With A Fist.

Think “redemption.” Think “really good movie.”

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If you know a little bit about baseball, you’ll learn more by watching Bull Durham (1988, rated R, 108 minutes).  Of course, that’s not the main reason to watch Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) scrambling the otherwise predictable lives of the minor league bigshot, Crash Davis (Kevin Costner), and the pitcher-on-the-loose, Nuke LaLoosh (Tim Robbins).

Baseball is the soup this film is cooked in, and Annie redefines the recipe for recruiting.  This is an utterly predictable love story, with Crash finally hanging the bell around Annie’s neck, and Annie using the slo-mo method to get her arms around his neck.  You know it’s coming, and
you’ll love it.

Nuke provides comic relief—some of his minutes could have disappeared in the final cut.  Annie seems a bit two-dimensional until Crash starts to warm up to her, and finally they sing their own version of that old sweet song.

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You can enjoy a few good story lines in A Few Good Men. For sure, defense lawyer Lt. Kaffee (Tom Cruise) gets his man by heroically provoking the bad guy, Col. Jessup (Jack Nicholson), into fiercely yelling that he most certainly did order the illegal “Code Red” assault.  Lt. Cdr. Galloway (Demi Moore) patrols the calm, rational course of doing the right thing and sort of developing a sort-of love kind of thing with Kaffee.

An unadvertised story line is the manly and downright chivalric character development of Lance Cpl. Dawson (Wolfgang Bodison), who tells all you need to know about living life according to a vaunted code.

A Few Good Men (1992, rated R, 138 minutes) is all about doing the right thing and doing the wrong thing.

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Maybe there is a movie with two more urbane characters than Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) and Vicki Anderson (Faye Dunaway), but I have doubts galore.

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968, rated R, 102 minutes) is aptly named—it explores the various meanings of “affair,” and you’ll be glad you’re along for the ride.

McQueen plays a rich finance brainiac guy who quite cleverly amuses himself by robbing big bags of money from banks. Dunaway is a high-class, really good looking insurance investigator who likes to get right inside the head of the criminal who’s draining the insurance company’s assets.

The two are made for each other. The two permit themselves to stir up what looks like a wacky, wonderful personal relationship, but it’s all too fantastically superficial and grotesquely short-lived.

In The Thomas Crown Affair, it’s really hard to figure out who to root for.

P.S. The 1999 remake with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo doesn’t match up.

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The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969, rated PG, 116 minutes) is all Maggie Smith, all the time. 

There is a story line: deeply committed and outspoken teacher pushes young girls to maturity while she dabbles in love and grasps everywhere for approval.

Miss Jean Brodie (Smith) creates a mostly adoring set of “Brodie girls” as she flourishes and flaunts and flounders in her “dedication” to teaching at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls in 1930s Edinburgh.

She leaves a trail of broken hearts and endures the ultimate humiliation of losing her job after she is “betrayed” by a student who almost grows up in the process.

Good acting, good story, good entertainment.

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