Three Films Make A Post: If you can't smoke it, drink it, spend it or love it… forget it.

Payday (1973): Sleazy country star Maury Dann (Rip Torn) is on the road, lying, bullying and sliming his way across the USA while growing increasingly deranged.

I’m a big fan of 70s grimdark, but this nearly plotless portrait of a horrible man doing horrible things, horribly, by Daryl Duke actually beats me. It’s not that I can’t appreciate its skewering of the 70s country star, Duke’s version of hyperrealist style, or the great, though somewhat one-note performances, it’s just that I miss some moments of genuine humanity to measure Maury’s horridness against. Or, come to think of it, Maury showing one or two not redeeming but not horrible character traits to put some shading into the black and black of the movie at hand. Hell, the guy can’t even sing.

Tiger Zinda Hai (2017): This Bollywood piece of action-heavy super spy cinema sequel certainly charms with its series of overblown, wonderfully unrealistic action sequences, its treatment of BIG EMOTIONS that makes its predecessor look downright restrained, and its larger than life (in the best way) star performances by Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif.

Director Ali Abbas Zafar (who also co-wrote) also puts a lot of effort into fulfilling the increasingly mandatory quota of Indian jingoism while at the same time doing subtle and not so subtle things that complicate and humanize this jingoism, in ways I’m not at all sure I’m interpreting in the way they are meant to be understood. It’s a fun big damn action blockbuster in any case.

Girl in the Case (1944): A lawyer (Edmund Lowe) who is also an expert on safecracking and lockpicking (it’s a hobby) and his wife (Janis Carter) are sucked into an increasingly complicated case, concerning Nazi spies, a locked trunk, and a particularly stupid police force.

Tonally, William Berke’s B-movie marries mystery and screwball comedy, probably in an attempt to reach the same tone as the later of the Thin Man films. Lowe and Carter are no Powell and Loy – and really should acquire a dog – and Berke no W.S. Van Dyke, but there’s a breezy quality to the film, and a likeability to its basic silliness that makes it pretty difficult to dislike it. If one is at all interested in this era’s mystery comedies, obviously. I’m always happy about movies concerning mismatched couples solving crimes while cracking jokes.