House of Games (1987, rated R, 102 minutes) offers some familiar good guy/bad guy stuff about gambling, con men, and a conventional dedicated psychiatrist who slowly learns that she wants more out of life.

Dr. Margaret Ford (Lindsay Crouse), flush with triumph about her bestselling book, decides to go the extra mile to help a patient with a gambling compulsion, and she unknowingly steps through the looking glass.

Waiting to greet her on the other side is Mike (Joe Mantegna), a highly skilled hustler who keeps luckless gamblers on the tab. Mike has sized up Dr. Ford as a very profitable “mark” with no experience and deep pockets, a lady who wouldn’t think of placing a bet but can be conned into writing big checks.

The story line proceeds as you can imagine. I bet that you can’t imagine the ending.

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The Guns of Navarone (1961, not rated, 158 minutes) was made more than 60 years ago and it got 7 Academy Award nominations. It’s obvious that Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony Quinn had a good time. The actors and actresses act, they tell a credible story, you feel your heart beating more than once, there’s not too much blood—that’s how they made good war movies in 1961.

The thing that becomes obvious after several viewings is that there is a unique intensity in each character, many axes to grind, many personal burdens to bear. Each character is fighting his or her own war. The story is rich. And you know how it ends.

You won’t be surprised to learn that there’s one German officer who’s more or less a good guy. Thanks, Hollywood.

It’s a gritty war movie without too much gore (nearly everybody dies after getting shot once). The Guns of Navarone satisfies, it piques, it gets personal, it has abundant highs and lows, and the good guys win.

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The fugitive is Dr. Richard Kimble (vigorously played by Harrison Ford), unjustly accused of murdering his wife and on the run from the police while he searches for the one-armed man who actually did the deed. The Fugitive (1993, rated PG-13, 130 minutes) is a rip-roaring story with what I dare to claim is the most thrilling, scary, truly realistic train wreck sequence ever brought to the silver screen.

The Fugitive is a two-man show: an all-American guy aiming to prove his innocence and a passionless cop who’s trying to track him down. During the film, U.S. Deputy Marshall Sam Gerard (played by Tommy Lee Jones, he won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor) transforms himself from a relentlessly heartless good-guy to a good good-guy.

Perhaps you remember the top-rated mostly B&W television series “The Fugitive” (1963-1967) starring David Janssen. The 1993 movie is great proof that you can tell a really good story in less than 120 episodes.

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“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” (Revelation 6:8)

Pale Rider (1985, rated R, 115 minutes) goes a bit deeper than your usual Clint Eastwood action thriller.

As “the preacher,” Eastwood creates a mostly low-key character who mostly waxes philosophic about life and its vicissitudes, but also persistently urges the good guys to do some good, and (you’re not surprised) straps on his big pistol when he needs it. The beleaguered “tin pan” miners, emboldened by the “preacher,” battle the vicious takeover attempts by the big bad rich guy, and you can guess who savors victory.

There’s an almost completely platonic love interest with the mother, Sarah (Carrie Snodgress is divinely demure), and 15-year-old Megan (Sydney Penny) learns a lot about unrequited love. Pale Rider invites you to look into the hearts of realistic people.

The obvious allusion to Revelation 6:8 (“…behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death…”) is puzzling. The preacher is not apocalyptic, there is no hint of theology in his role, and he mysteriously and provocatively rides away into the mountains at the last minute, leaving everyone else to resume their lives.

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Frances McDormand can do comedy, in case you were wondering. She plays the title character in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008, rated PG, 92 minutes). Guinevere Pettigrew is a middle-aged, lonely, unlucky governess looking for work—any job will do—in London in 1939.

She gets mixed up with a flibbertigibbet American celebrity whose lifestyle is different, way different. She steps onto the fast track for a while. There’s a fair share of wide-eyed gaping on the part of Miss Pettigrew.

Miss Pettigrew obviously has her own set of moral standards, and her own expectations about what life should have to offer, and her own approach to living the good life.

She steps through the looking glass for a time, does her best to make things better for everyone, and finds a gentleman who’s willing to share her tomorrows.

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Good vs. evil is the undercurrent of Eye of the Needle (1981, rated R, 112 minutes) but the drama is in the living and the dying of the fully believable characters: Donald Sutherland as the WWII German spy—“die Nadel”—and Kate Nelligan as Lucy, who becomes his nemesis.

A worldly viewer can easily guess the ending of this movie, so it’s not really a spoiler to say that Sutherland, the brutal German spy, has the Allies’ Normandy invasion plans and is trying to get them to Germany when he is shipwrecked on a remote island off Scotland. Lucy, a patriotic English woman who is the wife of a sheep farmer on the island, falls in love with die Nadel before she figures out what he is and kills him.

Die Nadel is desperate, but human. Lucy is lonely, but ultimately she rages to do the right thing. The brief seduction scene is a lover’s delight (brief nudity). The awkward interaction of the two reluctant lovers is credible. The violence is matter-of-fact and vicious.

Eye of the Needle works as a war story, a spy story, and a love story. It won’t put you to sleep.

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Gary Oldman was 59 years old when he won an Oscar (Best Actor) for giving us a completely believable Winston Churchill who decided in June 1940 to fight Hitler instead of settling for a completely risky peace agreement.

Darkest Hour (2019, rated PG-13, 125 minutes) is a gem.

Oldman is Churchill: overweight, jowly, devotee of long cigars and whiskey, imperious, meekly in love with Clementine (he called her “Clemmie,” she called him “Pig”), a flamboyant patriot and wartime leader. Churchill was a career politician, of course, and Oldman deftly portrays his Machiavellian strengths and weaknesses.

Churchill was an aristocratic patriot in the core of his being. Less than a month after he became prime minister, Churchill energized parliament: “We shall defend our island…we shall fight on the beaches…on the landing grounds…in the fields…in the streets…in the hills…we shall never surrender.”

Darkest Hour is Churchill’s (Oldman’s) bright triumph.

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Arrival is a reflective experience of first contact with aliens who are not like us. These are aliens who, ultimately, want to do good, but the humans have to learn how to deal with this reality.

Amy Adams plays the linguist Louise Banks, and Jeremy Renner plays the physicist Ian Donnelly. They combine their robust talents to learn how to communicate with the aliens, and to try to convince their human superiors to do the right thing. Banks and Donnelly fall in love. She saves the world. The aliens depart in peace. Her life is changed.

Arrival (2016, rated PG-13, 116 minutes) is a movie you can enjoy, no matter how many times you watch it.

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A Little Chaos (2014, rated R, 117 minutes) didn’t win any prizes but it’s a modest prize of a movie.

It’s a fictional story about the very real gardens at Versailles, the almost unimaginable residence for French kings that first existed in 1623 as a hunting lodge.

Kate Winslet, as Madame Sabine de Barra, rather stoically portrays a talented woman (garden designer) who cannot be ignored in an undeniable man’s world. Alan Rickman adds some comic touches to his character as King Louis XIV, and he learns from Madame de Barra and encourages her to design the spectacular Ballroom Grove (a tourist destination today).

There is a an almost incidental love interest that frames the final, almost frivolous moments of the movie. The drama is in the intrigues and the blunderings and the jealousies of the men who surround Madame de Barra and make her life difficult.

(Rated R for two seconds of inoffensive nudity)

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Three Days of the Condor (1975, rated R, 117 minutes) is transparently a 1970s spy flick, and Robert Redford, as the bookish CIA spy code-named “Condor,” is the center of attention—sort of a two-hour cameo performance.

Condor is credibly shocked by the vicious murders of his coworkers, and then he begins a determined quest to identify the dark forces responsible for their deaths. Kathy (an ingénue, solidly portrayed by Faye Dunaway) helps him but they don’t quite fall in love. Condor embraces the David role against the goliath CIA. He learns the truth, and does his best to make it public.

It’s not Mission: Impossible stuff, but there’s enough believable tension to make it worthwhile. The final scene in Three Days of the Condor is a dramatic reminder of the enduring capabilities of good people and bad people.

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