Queen of the Desert
Nicole Kidman plays Gertrude Bell, a real-life British adventurer, as a free spirit chaffing at restriction—an educated woman escaping low expectations. She comes alive in the Middle East during the run-up to World War I where she finds dignity and purpose amid the Bedouin and crosses paths with a man of similar interests, T.E. Lawrence. Director Werner Herzog endows his 2015 Orientalist fable with a cinematic beauty that recalls his 1970s art-house classics.
A Fish Called Wanda
Kevin Kline earned an Oscar as the rage-aholic American assassin-wannabe in this very British comedy. A Fish Called Wanda (1988) was written by John Cleese (Monty Python), directed by veteran Charles Crichton (The Lavender Hill Mob) and concerned an eccentric crime gang led by the manipulative Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis). Cleese plays an unhappy English barrister drawn into a criminal-sexual caper comparable to The Pink Panther. The Yanks are butt of the most of the jokes.
The Old Dark House
Seeking shelter on a stormy night, two carloads of travelers find themselves in a remote mansion tenanted by a dangerous family and their sinister, inarticulate servant (Boris Karloff). Directed by James Whale in between Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, The Old Dark House (1932) injects a touch of camp and a jigger of sexual frankness into the gothic tropes of a creepy manor in a thunderstorm. The A-List cast includes Charles Laughton in his Hollywood debut.
Meat
This New Zealand documentary by David White spends time with the country’s farmers—small producers who help their animals give birth and grant them plenty of legroom in their pens. Society presses them to produce more at the same time that others question the ethics of eating meat. An interesting perspective comes from a hunter who considers shooting game as “an ethical harvest”; he fills his freezer from foraging yet admits to buying bacon.
