Movies I Watched in December, Part 2

The month of January is almost over, so I guess it's high time I finally wrote about what I watched a month earlier.

I've seen most Hitchcock movies, but for some reason I'd never seen this 1956 fact-based drama about a musician (Henry Fonda) falsely accused of a series of robberies. It's more low-key and realistic than say, "Psycho," but that's one of its major strengths. You can feel the net of coincidences twisting more and more tightly on poor Henry, and at times it reminded me of "Making A Murderer." (Though, this being a 1956 film, the morality was a lot more black-and-white -- you never doubt for a minute that Henry, loving husband and father, is innocent. Still, until the ending (which is a little too neat and tidy), there's some real suspense generated -- and you get a fascinating, matter-of-fact tour of the mid-fifties criminal justice system.

Yes, "Horsefeathers" again. Allie wanted to watch it, and who am I to say no? A, I love the movie (like I've said before, I think it's probably, laugh-for-laugh, the most purely funny Marx Brothers movie), and B, in no time that daughter of mine is going to be obsessed with a load of modern pop culture that I have no connection to (or, I'm predicting, interest in). So as long as she's in, I'm in.

Speaking of modern pop culture, Harry Potter has been Allie's obsession for a while now. She plowed through all the books in record time, and now she's working her way through the movies. I've seen them all, but it's been awhile, and I have to admit, I can't quite remember what happens in which one. This is the one where, SPOILERS, Dumbledore dies, and the series takes an increasingly dark turn. They're pretty good movies, actually, and part of the credit goes to whoever decided to hire virtually every talented British actor to fill out the faculty at Hogwarts. When Alan Rickman died, I said on Twitter that to me he'll always be Hans Gruber (from "Die Hard," of course) but for Allie, he'll always be Professor Snape. The day he passed, Allie re-read a Snape-centric passage in one of the novels, which I felt was a nice little tribute.