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A column of random thoughts:

Whatever you think about the year’s movies, you have to admit the titles were confusing. For example, we had “Pieces of a Woman,” “Promising Young Woman,” “I’m Your Woman,” “I Am Woman” and “Wonder Woman 1984.”

That last title could also confuse future film historians. In the old days, when studios included the year in a title, it was straightforward, like “Golddiggers of 1933” (which came out in 1933). That was also true of other films such as “Broadway Melody of 1936,” “Big Broadcast of 1936” and “Hit Parade of 1941.”

However, in the 21st century we’ve had “Blade Runner 2049” (2017), Wong Kar Wai’s “2046” (2004) and Sam Mendes’ “1917” (2019). With so many new titles each year and so many platforms, you’d think the studios would want to clarify things for us, not the reverse.

Speaking of future historians, it will be interesting to see...

'Ben-Hur' 1959 with Stephen Boyd and Charlton Heston: TCM's '31 Days of Oscar.' '31 Days of Oscar': 'Lawrence of Arabia' and 'Ben-Hur' are in, Paramount stars are out Today, Feb. 1, '16, Turner Classic Movies is kicking off the 21st edition of its “31 Days of Oscar.” While the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is being vociferously reviled for its “lack of diversity” – more on that appallingly myopic, self-serving, and double-standard-embracing furore in an upcoming post – TCM is celebrating nearly nine decades of the Academy Awards. That's the good news. The disappointing news is that if you're expecting to find rare Paramount, Universal, or Fox/20th Century Fox entries in the mix, you're out of luck. So, missing from the TCM schedule are, among others: Best Actress nominees Ruth Chatterton in Sarah and Son, Nancy Carroll in The Devil's Holiday, Claudette Colbert in Private Worlds. Unofficial Best Actor...

With such a definitive and spoiler-happy title as “He Married His Wife” (even with pronouns lending a level of mystery), plot quickly becomes unimportant. Even the contemporary micro-genre this 1940 film fills, the comedy of remarriage, immediately announces T.H. Randall’s (Joel McCrea) eventual reunion with estranged wife Valerie (Nancy Kelly). In order for the couple to come together, both actors must switch between clown and straight-man acts at screwball pace using the supporting cast as colorful props.This outline worked well for Howard Hawks’s Bringing Up Baby (1938) two years earlier, but that had the remarkable advantage of both Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, both known for versatility in anything their studio would throw at them. Conversely, 20th Century Fox put director Roy Del Ruth to the task of He Married His Wife as a workman director capable of identifying the strengths of a trending narrative style for economic opportunity.

courtesy of flickeringmyth.com

50. Dancer in the Dark (2000)

Directed by Lars von Trier

Signature Song: “I’ve Seen It All” (http://youtu.be/d9zFt6M_GLo)

Who says people in a musical have to be able to sing? The list starts with a film directed by the director of Melancholia, Antichrist, and the recent Nymphomaniac films. Starring Björk, Dancer in the Dark takes place in the fantasy world of Selma, an immigrant from the Czeck Republic living in a blue-collar town in the United States. She lives on the property of a local police officer named Bill (David Morse) and his wife. She finds herself the object of a shy co-worker’s affection (Peter Stormare), but doesn’t entirely reciprocate, partly because she knows that she is slowly going blind. Terrified that her disease is hereditary and her son most certainly will get it, she works long hours at the factory,...

My good Sun-Times pal from the 1970s at the Chicago Sun-Times, Cynthia Dagnal, wrote me today:

"A friend in London sent me this, obituary from the London indpendent and I was stunned to see that Jeni Le Gon attended the same Southside dancing school in Chicago that I did. It was probably the most reputable one on that side of the "color line," and not very far from my house. So I studied with the younger "protégés" of Mary Bruce, and all those cute pics of me in little but Expensive tutus and whatnot that I sometimes use on my blogs are reminders of those days! I took tap, jazz and ballet as a wee one, and loved to walk around en pointe all day long in those danged--and also expensive--toe shoes!"

Le Gon (born in Georgia Aug. 24,1916; died December 7, 2012) was the first African-American women to sign with a major studio,...