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Dev Patel writes his own ticket and the result is Monkey Man, a gritty, grimy action flick that's part Greengrass' Jason Bourne, part John Wick, and part Golden Harvest. Patel's nameless lead is out for revenge after the corrupt forces that be did something terrible to his village and family - impressionistically alluded to until we're ready to know - but he's kind of savagely hapless in the way he goes about it. The first half of the movie is all close-up details, furious shaky cam, POV moments where the camera is between a fist and a face, which is almost too much. Once he's had his training and found a clearer purpose, the camera takes a step back, stays on him, gives us longer shots. It's all quite purposeful and shouldn't be held against it the way we might other action movies. The action isn't badly conceived and therefore created in post with fast cuts, it's part of the character's psychology, and besides, incredibly immediate and visceral. A simple revenge story made better by its Indian setting, its mindfulness, and a charismatic star who no one else would cast in an action movie so he did it himself. And you know what? He pulls it off.

While the cameo-happy Austin Powers in Goldmember has some laughs. and Beyoncé is pretty cool as a blaxploitation star pulled right out of the mid-70s by Dr. Evil's time machine, its fatal flaw is its villains. Interestingly, they do things here with Dr. Evil that the Bond franchise will do with Blofeld in the Daniel Craig era (which is kind of insane), but generally, his value has been in decline since the second film as he gets dumber and dumber, does rap numbers, etc. He's at least better than Goldmember, an out-of-focus parody of Goldfinger and other 60s Bond villains, with a bit of gross-out humor (speaking of which, thanks for sidelining Fast Bastard in this one, guys) and not many jokes to his name. I just don't think Mike Myers really had a third character in him, here. At least he's not playing his own dad (Michael Caine does a great job as an elder International Man of Mystery). They should have upgraded Scott Evil sooner, probably. And while spoofing more modern films like Mission: Impossible worked for me, overall, the franchise has run out of steam.

Thanks to a cameo by Rebecca Romijn (as herself), Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me is the only film in the trilogy to have a Number One as well as a Number Two. Of course, number twos are one of the problems with this otherwise fairly strong sequel. Yes, I'm talking about Fat Bastard, a totally repugnant character that's only there to indulge in scatological comedy for the lowest common denominator, pushing the franchise further into boring bodily fluids jokes. There are a lot of repeated gags from the first film, but at least, new material as well. Losing Elizabeth Hurley the way we do undermines the first film a bit, but since nothing is to be taken seriously in these things, we can at least enjoy Heather Graham in the similar role. We get straight up time travel, so the 60s put in an even greater appearance than in the first film. Rob Lowe does an amazing Robert Wagner impression as the younger Number Two. Mini-Me is an iconic feature of the series. The moonbase evokes Doctor Who's The Moonbase, which aired in 1967, when the characters were frozen, so it perhaps IS a fair inspiration. But boy, do I hate Fat Bastard (and generally, this whole subgenre of fat suit comedy). Too many variations on the same themes, perhaps, but Austin Powers still has his mojo at this point.

Though there are a couple of dodgy moments, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery still holds up, and of course part of it is that some of that dodginess is part of the retro-60s spoofing (for example, Will Ferrell in Peter Sellers brown face). But for a sex pest, Austin Powers is quite keen on consent, so it works. That film film left an undeniable stamp on pop culture, and I remember many conversations peppered with quotables from it. Vivid characters with memorable shticks. And as a fan of the superspy genre this was spoofing, I enjoy the references. In the mid-60s, the genre was ubiquitous, but by 1997, even Bond was on the wane, so Austin and Dr. Evil really are men out of their time and seem ridiculous beyond just Mike Myers' caricatures. The humor often leans into the Airplane/Naked Gun variety, but it also has the period feel of those 60s camp comedies no one really talks about anymore. Elizabeth Hurley would have been perfect as a Bond girl, but this is perhaps a better role. The music is fun (I'd forgotten about the BBC song). The sets look like they were designed by Ken Adam. It's hard not to get swept up in the ridiculousness.

The Blood on Satan’s Claw is full of interesting, even beautiful, shots, taking the edge off some of the low production values (the wigs especially) and has an intriguing premise to boot - the Devil (or some fiend) is trying to manifest itself in the 17th-Century countryside by harvesting body parts from his coven and other villagers. Wendy Padbury has a pretty big role in this, but it's a 70s horror movie so she meets a fate that's distressing even to non-Doctor Who fans. But generally, the incidents feel a little strung together as if the film was plotted from a collection of folk tales and witchcraft reports, especially the scenes that involve the county witchfinder, whose motivations seem almost sinister until they're not. For horror fans who love the devil worshipper subgenre, there's a lot to like. Never been my favorite horror type, so I'm going to give it a passing grade, but no more.

Otto Preminger's Where the Sidewalk Ends is a hard-bitten Noir in which Dana Andrews plays a police detective just-demoted for brutality charges when he accidentally kills an innocent man. I think he could have gotten out of it, but he panics, makes some bad decisions, and finds himself part of a team investigating his own wrongful killing. A great paranoid thriller ensues, with a reverse femme fatale in Gene Tierney, the girl who may inspire him to do the right thing (or at least makes having done the wrong thing untenable), and one of my favorite patron-restauranteur screen relationships ever, courtesy of Ruth Donnelly. There are shades of Hitchcock in this one, but also Marlowe, with many moving parts, not the least of which is the massive pull of both guilt and fear of getting caught. And who doesn't love a Spirit-like opening title that's part of the filmed action? Where the Sidewalk Ends is where Noirjoyment begins.

Released under the lurid title Try and Get Me!, The Sound of Fury springs out of an infamous real event when a lynch mob attacked a police station in 1930s California. The film seems to take place in 1950, but the characters are definitely working (or not working, as it were) in Depression-era America. Frank Lovejoy is a family man down on his luck, roped almost against his will into pulling off small jobs by brazen crook Lloyd Bridges (who gives a fun, spicy performance here). Hey, I would turn to crime too if I had that nasty little boy at home. And then someone dies and everything goes to hell. First, they make one of the criminals sympathetic - if you were on a jury, you'd recommend leniency for sure - and then they switch gears and take us back to a subplot about a journalist fanning the flames of public outrage over a supposed "crime wave". We know fear sells papers. The movie attacks the media and its responsibility in maintaining democracy - an issue that's very much with us today - though it does get rather preachy when it tries to make bigger blanket statements. At its best, it presents interesting character psychologies, but ultimately, it's all in service of its polemic, which is weaker.

Noir is the New Black! At some point, all prison movies tend to be the same, but 1950 is probably not that point. Caged is a melodramatic appeal for prison reform, with a crusading warden unable to make a difference in the life of doe-eyed Marie Allen (Eleanor Parker), incarcerated on a bum rap and within a year, turned into a hardened recidivist. So you've got your criminal sisterhood, your wise lifers, your corrupt screws, cruel punishments, and just the normal shock of losing rights and freedoms... From our position up-time, we've seen it all before, but Caged remains a potent drama steeped in realism and filled with memorable characters that help make the harsh moments all the more shocking. Hope Emerson makes a great villain, the prison matron on the take who devises old-school punishments for her charges and is especially hard on our heroine. Both of them got Oscar noms for this and I'd say they were worthy of them.