Case for a Rookie Hangman (Pavel Jurácek, 1970)

Lubomír Kostelka in Case for a Rookie Hangman

Cast: Lubomír Kostelka, Klára Jerneková, Milena Zahrynowska, Radovan Lukavsky, Jirí Janda, Ludek Kopriva, Milos Vávra, Miroslav Machácek. Screenplay: Pavel Jurácek. Cinematography: Jan Kalis. Production design: Milan Nejedly. Film editing: Miroslav Hájek. Music: Lubos Fiser. 

The protagonist of Pavel Jurácek's Case for a Rookie Hangman is called Lemuel Gulliver, but the film owes as much to Lewis Carroll, Franz Kafka, and Luis Buñuel as it does to Jonathan Swift. It might almost have been titled Gulliver's Travels Through the Looking Glass to the Castle of the Exterminating Angel. Jurácek's Gulliver (Lubomír Kostelka) is on a trip through the countryside when he gets lost and his car crashes off the road. Extricating himself from the wreck, he comes across the body of a large white rabbit wearing a waistcoat and carrying a pocket watch, which Gulliver takes from the rabbit. He soon finds that he is in the land of Balnibarbi, the locale of the third voyage of Swift's story, above which is the floating city of Laputa. At this point narrative logic gives way to a series of extraordinary incidents, which Jurácek presents without being limited by time and space. The film has its admirers, but I found its dreamlike transitions and off-kilter events less startling than soporific. The Czech government wasn't lulled to sleep, however, and as usual when it didn't understand something, it suspected it was being made fun of (as of course it was), so it banned it, putting an end to Jurácek's career as a filmmaker. 

Tricheurs (Barbet Schroeder, 1984)

Bulle Ogier in Tricheurs

Cast: Jacques Dutronc, Bulle Ogier, Kurt Raab, Virgilio Teixeira, Robby Müller, Claus-Dieter Reents, Carlos Wallenstein. Screenplay: Pascal Bonitzer, Steve Baës, Barbet Schroeder, based on a book by Baës. Cinematography: Robby Müller. Production design: Zé Branco. Music: Peer Raben. 

Tricheurs are people who cheat at gambling, no easy feat in casinos where there are surveillance cameras and eagle-eyed croupiers. In Barbet Schroeder's film, they are a special breed, gamblers who add the thrill of possible capture to the compulsion to bet large sums of money. Elric (Jacques Dutronc) begins with the latter compulsion, and when we first see him he has lost big. And then he spots a woman in a red dress with a large number 7 on the back. Elric takes it as a sign and follows her to the casino, where she turns out to be his lucky charm, and soon he and Suzie (Bulle Ogier) have merged their compulsions. But then Elric meets Jorg (Kurt Raab), who claims to have a foolproof system for cheating at roulette, so Elric and Suzie go their separate ways and he begins touring the casinos of the world with Jorg, raking it in. Eventually Elric and Suzie meet again, and when Jorg gets careless and gets caught, Suzie tells him that she has met a croupier who knows a new way to cheat: a loaded roulette ball that can be triggered by remote control. The croupier, Toni (Virgilio Teixeira), wants to retire, and is willing to go in with Elric and Suzie on the scam, slipping the loaded ball onto the wheel. With a little practice, they can win big by triggering the ball at the right moment. Tricheurs is a clever morality fable and a shrewd portrait of compulsive behavior, but the techniques used by the cheaters -- distracting the croupiers, hitting the button on the remote at the right time -- seem clumsy, so that the film winds up feeling thin and contrived.  

Chop Shop (Ramin Bahrani, 2007)

Alejandro Polanco in Chop Shop

Cast: Alejandro Polanco, Isamar Gonzales, Rob Sowulski, Carlos Zapata, Ahmad Razvi, Anthony Felton, Evelisse "Lilah" Ortiz, Michael "Gringo" Nieto, Carlos Ayala, Laura Patalano, Nick Jasprizza. Screenplay: Bahareh Azimi, Ramin Bahrani. Cinematography: Michael Simmonds. Production design: Richard A. Wright. Film editing: Ramin Bahrani. Music: M. Lo. 

Ramin Bahrani's docufictional Chop Shop takes us into a subterranean segment of American life, viewing it through a 12-year-old boy named Alejandro, played by 12-year-old Alejandro Polanco. Ale, as he's called, is a school dropout whose only known family is his older sister, Isamar (Isamar Gonzales), who comes to live with him in a garage adjacent to an auto-repair shop in the Willets Point area of Queens, near Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets. It's a run-down area where no one but a handful of off-the-grid types like Ale and his sister live, but it comes to life during the day when the auto parts, repair shops, and junkyards are busy. "Urban blight" at its unloveliest. But there's nothing blighted about Ale, who has dreams and hustles to make them real. Even though the plot of the film demands that Ale's dreams don't come true, Bahrani and his remarkable cast of non-professionals give this story of human survivors heart and soul without compromise or sentimentality.

Obsession (Curry Barker, 2025)

Inde Navarrette in Obsession

Cast: Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, Andy Richter, Haley Fitzgerald, Darin Toonder, Anthony Pavone, Justice, Anthony Casablanca, Chloe Breen. Screenplay: Curry Barker. Cinematography: Taylor Clemons. Production design: Vivian Gray. Film editing: Curry Barker. Music: Rock Burwell. 

Curry Barker's low-budget shocker Obsession hinges on one of those "be careful what you wish for" plots. Baron, aka "Bear" (Michael Johnston), works in a music store and is attracted to the pretty Nikki (Inde Navarrette), but he's too shy to make a play for her affections. So when he finds a magic gizmo in a New Agey store he makes a fatal wish that she will fall in love with him. Everything that could go wrong does. The film succeeds because of the commitment of its performers, particularly Navarrette, who switches deftly from modestly charming to murderously terrifying as the unwitting victim. Obsession was a big surprise hit, perhaps because there seems to be a lot of post-feminist angst going around. It's the age of the "manosphere," in which the secretary of war wants to pump up the troops with testosterone, so why shouldn't an incel like Bear turn to magic for help? Fortunately, Barker's horror-comic sensibility keeps that particular subtext in check.  

 

I Knew Her Well (Antonio Pietrangeli, 1965)

Stefania Sandrelli in I Knew Her Well 

Cast: Stefania Sandrelli, Mario Adorf, Jean-Claude Brialy, Joachim Fuchsberger, Nino Manfredi, Enrico Maria Salerno, Ugo Tognazzi, Karin Dor, Franco Fabrizi, Franco Nero, Robert Hoffmann. Screenplay: Antonio Pietrangeli, Ruggiero Maccari, Ettore Scola. Cinematography: Armando Nannuzzi. Production design: Maurizio Chiari. Film editing: Franco Fraticelli. Music: Piero Piccioni, Benedetto Ghilia.

Antonioni Pietrangeli's I Knew Her Well is a "lost girl" movie most often compared to Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) because its setting is Rome in the hedonistic 1960s. But the film it most reminds me of is John Schlesinger's Darling, made the same year as Pietrangeli's. Both movies center on a pretty young model who comes to grief because she doesn't have much more than beauty going for her. Darling won an Oscar for Julie Christie, but Stefania Sandrelli is just as impressive in her performance as Adriana, who breezes through a series of men and incidents until she realizes that she's going nowhere fast. If I prefer Pietrangeli's film, it's because its satire is less heavy-handed. The cruelty and exploitation of the entertainment industry is skewered in both, but Pietrangeli at least demonstrates that the people it hurts and exploits feel something, especially in the scene in which the has-been actor Baggini (Ugo Tognazzi) is humiliated at a glamorous party. I Knew Her Well doesn't quite avoid the problem that movies about aimless and empty lives can be aimless and empty, but the performances give it an appearance of substance. 

People's Hero (Derek Tung-Sing Yee, 1987)

Ronald Wong, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, and Ti Lung in People's Hero

Cast: Ti Lung, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Elaine Jin, Paul Chun, Bowie Lam, Ronald Wong, Sabrina Ho, Benz Kong, Jessie Lee, Wing-Cho Yip, Mansook Ahmed. Screenplay: Derek Tung-Sing Yee, Keith Lee, Kwan Yiu-Wing. Cinematography: Wilson Chan. Art direction: Yank Wong. Film editing: John Ma. Music: Lowell Lo. 

The bank heist hostage movie is a thriller subgenre that reached its glory in Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975), and Derek Tung-Sing Yee's People's Hero begins almost like a remake of that classic. Two inept would-be robbers, Sai (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Boney (Ronald Wong), take the customers and staff of a bank hostage, immediately attracting the attention of the police. Like Lumet, Yee is as interested in the hostages and the cops as he is in the robbers. The hostages are a fractious, quarrelsome lot; the cops are hamstrung by bureaucracy. But People's Hero takes a twist almost as soon as the standoff of cops and robbers occurs: One of the hostages turns out to be a gangster, Sunny Koo (Ti Lung), who immediately takes charge, turning Sai and Boney into both hostages and accomplices. Koo is so well known to the police that he has the clout to summon an old adversary on the force, Capt. Chan (Tony Leung Ka-fai), to negotiate with. The result is an entertaining suspense thriller, more focused on characters than your usual Hong Kong action movie. The performances are stellar, particularly Lung as the masterly, cunning gangster and Elaine Jin as his girlfriend, Lotus, called on by Koo to help him make his getaway, only to show she has a mind of her own. People's Hero ends with a little more graphic bloodshed than necessary, but it's a movie with a perhaps unexpected wit and irony. 

Variety Lights (Alberto Lattuada, Federico Fellini, 1950)

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Giulietta Masina and Peppino De Filippo in Variety Lights 

Cast: Peppino De Filippo, Carla Del Poggio, Giulietta Masina, John Kitzmiller, Dante Maggio, Checco Durante, Gina Mascetti, Giulio Calì, Silvio Bagolini, Giacomo Furia, Mario De Angelis. Screenplay: Federico Fellini, Alberto Lattuada, Tullio Pinelli. Cinematography: Otello Martelli. Art direction: Aldo Buzzi. Film editing: Mario Bonotti. Music: Felice Lattuada. 

For Federico Fellini, there was no business like show business. More than almost any other major filmmaker, his movies centered on the lives of performers or directors or just would-be stars and starfuckers, people in search of a way to be larger than life. He launched his career as director with a pure example of this preoccupation, Variety Lights, co-directed with Albert Lattuada but distinctively Felliniesque. It's the story of Checco Dal Monte (Peppino De Filippo), the hapless manager of a rag-tag company of vaudevillians, who thinks he's found the way to the big time when an ambitious would-be star, Liliana (Cara Del Poggio), latches on to him after seeing the troupe perform. Initially skeptical, Checco comes round when the young woman, whose beauty exceeds her talents, wins over a raucous audience and attracts the attention of a wealthy man whose obvious aim is to seduce her. Checco's mistress, Melina (Giulietta Masina), is furious when he falls for Liliana and begins trying to promote her career. The film goes a long way on the energy of its performers, including the members of the marginally talented company, but it lacks enough story to give it coherence.  

Diamonds of the Night (Jan Nemec, 1964)

Ladislav Jánsky and Antonin Kumbera in Diamonds of the Night

Cast: Antonin Kumbera, Ladislav Jánsky, Ilse Bischofská. Screenplay: Arnost Lustig, Jan Nemec, based on a novel by Lustig. Cinematography: Jaroslav Kuchera, Miroslav Ondrícek. Production design: Oldrich Bosák. Film editing: Miroslav Hájek. Music: Vlastimil Hala, Jan Rychlik. 

Two young men escape from a Nazi transport at the start of Jan Nemec's Diamonds of the Night, and the camera follows them in a breathless run through the fields toward an uncertain destination. And in a sense that destination remains uncertain, even though they manage to cadge a hunk of bread from a woman in a farmhouse and are eventually captured by a group of old men with hunting rifles. Nemec gives us two visions of the young men's fate at the hands of their captors. His first feature film, a little over an hour, is laced with memories and ambiguous images and touches of the surreal. At its best, it's almost hyperreal. In the scene in which the old men celebrate their capture, for example, the soundtrack is filled with the slightly disgusting noises of eating as the victors scarf down their lunch. It's possible to interpret Diamonds of the Night as allegory, as a fable about escaping from Nazi terror only to end up under Soviet repression, but it stands on its own as an example of the innovative use of cinematic technique that marked the brief period of liberation experienced by Czech filmmakers in the 1960s.  

A Tale of Springtime (Éric Rohmer, 1990)

Anne Teyssèdre, Florence Darel, Hugues Quester, and Eloïse Bennett in A Tale of Springtime

Cast: Anne Teyssèdre, Florence Darel, Hugues Quester, Eloïse Bennett, Sophie Robin, Marc Lelou, François Lamore. Screenplay: Éric Rohner. Cinematography: Luc Pagès. Film editing: María Luisa García. 

Jeanne (Anne Teyssèdre) and Natacha (Florence Darel) meet at a party neither of them wants to be at, sparking a friendship that will be tested when their separate worlds collide. That's the essential dynamic of Éric Rohmer's A Tale of Springtime, the first in his quartet of Tales of the Four Seasons. Jeanne, who teaches philosophy, is several years older than Natacha, an aspiring pianist just emerging from her teens, so their relationship is something like older and younger sister. Soon, Jeanne will meet Natacha's divorced father, Igor (Hugues Quester), who is dating Ève (Eloïse Bennett), a woman Jeanne's age, who is also well-educated in philosophy. Jeanne soon realizes that she's being set up by Natacha as a rival for Ève, whom Natacha dislikes, in her father's affections. It's the kind of situation that Jane Austen would have enjoyed playing with, and Rohmer's delight in it is apparent. He has a talented cast, a lovely springtime setting, and well-chosen music -- ranging from the melancholy of Schumann's Études Symphoniques to the freshness of Beethoven's "Spring" Sonata  -- to work with, and he makes the most of it.   

Fruit of Paradise (Vera Chytilová, 1970)

Jitka Novátková and Karel Novák in Fruit of Paradise

Cast: Jitka Novátková, Karel Novák, Jan Schmid. Screenplay: Vera Chytilová, Ester Krumbachová. Cinematography: Jaroslav Kucera. Art direction: Vladimir Labsky. Film editing: Miroslav Hájek. Music: Zdenek Liska. 

Vera Chytilová's Fruit of Paradise opens with an acid-trip account of the story of Adam and Eve and the serpent, set against an oratorio-like chorus singing the biblical text set to music by Zdenek Liska. We have scarcely recovered from this prologue when we are thrust into a different kind of paradise that seems to be a health retreat, with another Eve (Jitka Novátková) offering her husband, Josef (Karel Novák), fruit plucked for the tree they're sitting under. He refuses it, but when he says he's hungry, so goes off to forage some herbs for his snack. While she's cutting them, she's almost pissed on by Robert (Jan Schmid), another guest at the spa. And so begins a loopy series of encounters in which, among other things, Eve discovers that Robert may be a serial killer. Make of it what you will, but Fruit of Paradise was Chytilová's farewell to the kind of avant-garde filmmaking that led to her being unemployed in the Czech film industry after the Soviet crackdown on art that it didn't understand but sort of felt was subversive. From our point of view, the only thing it subverts is traditional narrative and cinematic technique. No, it's not as deliciously accessible as Daisies, Chytilová's 1966 breakthrough film. It's a ragged, itchy film that tests the audience's patience while also demonstrating the potential of the motion picture as art.