A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

“A Hard Day’s Night” has ultra-young Beatles Lennon, McCartney, Starr, and Harrison lampooning their own skyrocketing stardom in a “documentary” film that pops as if it were made yesterday. Not 40 years ago. It’s f’n brilliant, with whole chunks that must have bypassed ignorant censors of the day. “No, we’re just really good friends,” Starr insisting to multiple reporters, is a highlight. The question is never heard. It’s a celebration and satire of Beatlemania, never critical of the screaming fans, with Richard Lester’s camera following the guys as they trot around London doing all sorts of light mayhem. These guys loved each other and their fans, and the camera loves them. They are also truly funny, enjoying a joke or sight gag, at their own expense the better. When Lester films through camera viewfinders and monitors, capturing the Beatles in screen on screen, it seems the birth of all meta-humor and (relevant) MTV. Forty and it pops like new. Who else could do this but the Beatles? Lennon’s hallway banter. Harrison’s job interview. Ringo’s arrest. Paul’s grandpop. Unparalleled fun. A 

The Great Dictator (1940) and Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

The brilliance of satirical pitch and timing of  “The Great Dictator” – from Charlie Chaplin -- and “Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” – from Stanley Kubrick, and starring Peter Sellers – cannot be summed up here. These are worthy of books. I saw these war comedies near back-to-back and sat awed, not just at the performances of their lead actors, but the sheer balls that both projects demanded from their creators. “Dictator” takes on Hitler as a buffoon just as the Third Reich roared into terrifying power, while “Strangelove” lampoons a world where nuclear war was considered a sensible tool to save lives. We have nothing in our present day to compare these films and real fears, so there’s no use fishing for analogies. Chaplin’s movie follows a barber rattled by war and a ruthlessly idiotic dictator, while Kubrick’s tale follows a crazed general (Sterling Hayden) who sets off World War III, rattling the U.S. President and entertaining a mad ex-Nazi rocket scientist turned U.S. war scientist. Chaplin and Sellers are so amazing, it boggles the mind. Watching these classics now, it shows the dearth of comedies we have now in cinemas, “Grown-Ups 2”? No. A+

Goldfinger (1964)

“Goldfinger” is arguably the high-point of Sean Connery’s run as James Bond, when the series stormed pop culture and the world. It’s also damn awkwardly dated as far as the women go as it plays with forced entanglement as foreplay. Take a breath, it is of its time period. The plot –- unlike later, unnecessarily busy Bond films -– is simple: Bond must track down gold smuggler Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) who has a perverse idea about knocking out Fort Knox so that he can take control of the world’s gold market. Or some such. Who cares? The bad guy’s pilot/dame is named Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman). And Bond’s first bed quest ends up smothered in gold paint. There’s also a mad granny with a machine gun, and that Aston Martin, plus Oddjob and the killer bowler hat. It’s camp entertainment delivered dead pan, and that’s missing in the newer run, for better and worse. Connery is effortless. Bond is Connery, and Connery is Bond, is there any argument? And as Goldfinger, Frobe is a plain-spoken man of evil, but a man. No disfigurement. No foamy outbursts. Just a snake. The crazy good music? That’s never been better. A-