Baba Yaga: (1973. dir: Corrado Farina) Italian soft-softcore BDSM culled from a popular comic book series called Valentina. This is a movie about high heels and manacles, but only just. Is it shocking? Titillating? In retrospect, it seems quaint and absurd, and Carroll Baker is stiff and out of her element as an aging femme fatale.
Watch it for: a snapshot of hipster Milan in the '60s.
The Girl Next Door: (2004. dir: Luke Greenfield) Teenage boy sex fantasy with better than average acting about a gorgeous, nice, innocent porn star who throws over her sinful life of fanciness and evil to love a dork in high school. Sheesh.
Watch it for: Timothy Olyphant as a low-life porn producer. He makes perfect choices, bringing humor and intelligence to a character who really probably deserved none. Every intention, every shift of tactic, is subtly but perfectly communicated. I emphasize: this movie did not deserve him.
the Interpreter: (2005. dir: Sydney Pollack) Not anywhere near good, this political thriller involves Nicole Kidman (as an interpreter for the U.N.) overhearing an assassination plot, and Sean Penn (lifeless and sans chemistry with La Kidman) as a U.S. Secret Service guy trying to stymie the plans.
Watch it for: about halfway in, there's a wonderful suspense sequence involving a bomb on public transport. It's so good that nothing after it, although we still have half the film left, ever comes close to rousing similar emotion again.
The other thing is Kidman's wonderful voice. She's employing a South African accent and her lower register, lower than "throaty", a full-on chest-voice, and she sounds amazing.
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