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I can't pretend to understand the politics or historical context of 2015's The Assassin, and that's an important impediment to understanding its plot. There are others. It's also got a very minimal soundtrack, only in the rarest occasions letting a bit of score seep in and even then, it might be diegetic. It's often like we're in another room, looking in, and therefore only overhearing scenes. And to say it's slow-flowing is an understatement, with many very still shots making you check if your player somehow froze the image. If it's anti-filmic in those ways, others might consider it to be PURE film and I wouldn't necessarily disagree. It's largely down to cinematography, which is absolutely gorgeous - everything I've seen from Hou Hsiao-hsien was basically painted with light - but that's just not enough for me here. I wish it were, because the concept of a reluctant assassin with a connection to her target is a strong one. But her interior life gets lost in opaque historical drama and direction that is obstinate in its contention that the audience should decode images without any help.

Cathernie Breillat's L'été dernier (Last Summer) concerns a taboo relationship between a woman (a fearless Léa Drucker) and her rebellious teenage stepson. From her side, it's not entirely predatory - the 17-year-old is definitely the aggressor - but given what she's ready to do to cover herself in the back half of the film, you may well question whether this was a calculated - if irresponsible, and of course, criminal - seduction. Drucker is absolutely amazing in her ambiguity, by turns ruthless and powerless, and informed in no small measure by her job as a lawyer specializing in family law, child protection and sexual assault. She knows all the tricks, but also all the pitfalls, so why does she do it? So many lines with double meanings here, and I absolutely love the one-pixel finish (you'll see what I mean) before the credits roll. Excellent soundtrack choices too.

Silent comedies often string disparate set pieces together to make their feature length, whether they have much to do with the story or not. Harold Lloyd's Speedy is in that category, though even the long Coney Island sequence still pushes the characters in a certain direction (and scores them a useful dog), so as usual, Lloyd's film are better at story-telling than, say, Buster Keaton's. He plays the eponymous Speedy here, so named because he thinks quickly on his feet, never stays in one job for long, and drives like a maniac. Nominally, the plot concerns his having to save an old man's horse-car business before the railways take him over (truly, a 1920s problem) before Pop's granddaughter will agree to marry him. And as with Lloyd's other feature films, it's a lot of fun and he stands out as the underrated member of the great silent comedy trifecta. Speedy's unhealthy obsession with baseball is a fun bit, though it's almost just an excuse to get Babe Ruth into the film, except that the sport shows up thematically as a motif throughout, which I like, The third act is all kinds of great - chases, fights, suspense, comedy, romance community coming together to preserve tradition, a cute dog, it's got it all.

I'm sure Mermaids means more to people of a certain generation (coming of age through the 60s), but it still works as a story about the loss of innocence. The mother lost it long ago, her eldest daughter both fears losing it and desires to, and the youngest daughter is a total innocent. Modern America is also about to suffer its first trauma and lose a kind of innocence there. All this is wrapped in the portrait of a single-parent family, where the mom (the always powerful Cher) acts like a teenager and is contentiously parented by her daughter (Winona Ryder) and vice-versa, with Bob Hoskins quite charming as the man who would like to make the family "whole". Ryder's sister is Christina Ricci, which makes me think it's too bad Jenna Ortega wasn't even a baby in 1990 so she could be in this family. Quite obviously adapted from a novel, the narration is good, but I'm not in love with Ryder AS a narrator, which kept the film at a distance from me at first. But it did eventually charm me.

Divine is saddled with the absolute worst family and that's enough to drive even the saintliest woman to drink in Polyester, John Waters' parody of family melodramas. Yes, it's the one "shot" in Odorama, and I do wish I had the scratch and sniff card, but also, I'm sure there would be instant regret by Smell #2. It's an amusing gimmick, but it's more than that. This is a world that "stinks", and certainly, Divine's life does. She's gifted with a powerful sense of smell that presages the flashing numbers on the screen, almost like she can sniff out evil. And while some of the broad acting (by the kids, mostly) can be hard to take, and the joke starts to wear thin in the final act, this still has to be one of Waters' downright funniest movies. There's all the stuff taken to extremes, of course, but I find a lot of the small details (the Pepsi bottle at the breakfast table, for example) extremely amusing. Waters has always been a good satirist, but Divine is a sympathetic figure that allows us to tap in when things get TOO satirical. And what a role for Edith Massey - her acting is worse than her dental work, but I love her for it.

Controversial? Boris Karloff's best movie is How the Grinch Stole Christmas! He's got such a great voice, it'd be a shame to put Frankenstein in this slot. Or maybe I just relate too well to the Grinch. I, too, hate all the noise and garishness of Christmas, but my heart swells up to three sizes pretty easily too. Whatever the case may be, it's actually fascinating to watch this golden oldie which is recognizably Dr. Seuss' drawings come to life, BUT JUST AS RECOGNIZABLY Chuck Jones' Looney Tunes work. The Grinch-Max relationship is like one of those great, slapstick-happy, cartoon pairings. It's all in the expressions and the MOTION' which is of course what Dr. Seuss couldn't entirely put in the book. Let's end on a question to ponder this Holiday Season: What kind of meat is "roast beast"? Sounds like beef, outwardly looks like turkey, slices like ham... all Who!???? I mean, what do you think Who Hash is made out of?

Bobby Suarez's Filipino exploitation flick, The One-Armed Executioner, is late to the game in terms of the one-armed martial arts subgenre (One-Armed Swordsman came in '67), but is kind of on the cusp of the heroic bloodshed genre with its inclusion of some gun fu elements in the lead character's re-training. It's perhaps closer to the western than anything John Woo would make, but either way, it makes for an entertaining revenge picture. Franco Guerrero is an engaging action star despite not always hiding his left arm in his shirt very well (a common problem, everybody's got an odd torso), and the script has fun with its ancillary characters. And then there's the location. You're well used to seeing this kind of movie coming out of Hong Kong or Japan, but not so much the Philippines. The third act in the jungle makes great use of muddy marshlands and involves multiple opponents, weapons, and vehicles. I'm not convinced with the big bad's death though... were they sequel-baiting?