Richard III (Laurence Olivier, 1955)

Laurence Olivier in Richard III

Cast: Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud, Cedric Hardwicke, Claire Bloom, Alec Clunes, Mary Kerridge, Andrew Cruikshank, Clive Morton, Norman Wooland, Helen Haye, George Woodbridge, Pamela Brown, Stanley Baker. Screenplay: Laurence Olivier, based on a play by William Shakespeare. Cinematography: Otto Heller. Production design: Roger K. Furse. Film editing: Helga Cranston. Music: William Walton. 

Laurence Olivier clearly relished Shakespeare's cunning Machiavel Richard III, and with good reason: It's a role that put him front and center at all times. Of the roles he filmed, even Hamlet has to share the stage with others as colorful as Polonius, Claudius, and Ophelia, and Othello stands on equal footing with Iago in getting attention. But Richard is buzzed around by characters he can swat off like flies, which lets Olivier cast his two rivals for greatest English actor of the 20th century, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, alongside him. For good measure, he even adds that hammy knight Cedric Hardwicke, who chews the scenery in his big moment. I happen to think that Gielgud gives the best performance in the film, but Clarence leaves the play early. Richardson for some reason underplays the role of Buckingham, and Olivier said that he wished he had been able to cast Orson Welles instead. Outfitted with a prosthetic nose and a page-boy wig of stygian blackness, Olivier lurks and limps around the stage, scowling and plotting. In adapting the play, he cuts and rearranges: The scene in which Richard woos the Lady Anne (Claire Bloom) is cut into two pieces, but it helps increase the credibility of a widow succumbing to the man who killed her husband. The ranting of Queen Margaret is one of the play's more entertaining moments, but it interrupts the flow, so Olivier cuts the role entirely. He brings Mistress Shore onto the stage and casts her generously with Pamela Brown, even though she has only one interpolated line. He borrows bits from 18th century adaptations of the play by David Garrick and Colley Cibber. The result is a reasonably swift and tight account of the play, less confusing to audiences that have trouble with the tangled genealogy of the Yorks and Lancasters. Unfortunately, Roger Furse's design is a little drab, and in some scenes Olivier's blocking and camera direction are cluttered. Still, on the whole, Richard III deserves its current reputation as Olivier's best adaptation of Shakespeare to the screen.

Sing Sing (Greg Kwedar, 2023)

Cast: Colman Domingo, Clarence Maclin, Sean San Jose, Paul Raci, David Giraudy, Mosi Eagle, James "Big E" Williams, Sean Dino Johnson. Screenplay: Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin, John Divine G Whitfield. Cinematography: Pat Scola. Production design: Ruta Kiskyte. Film editing: Parker Laramie. Music: Bryce Dessner. 

Greg Kwedar's docudrama Sing Sing is an object lesson on how solid characterization combined with skillful acting can carry a film beyond the limitations of genre and plot. Not much really happens in the movie: A group of convicts put on a play. There is one death, but it happens non-violently off-screen and the film is concerned with how it affects the characters and their relationships to one another. There is an explosion of temper but it's resolved peacefully. There are revelations of backstory, but the chief concern is immediacy. There is a bit of advocacy for more humane treatment of prisoners, but it's not preached at us. There is some tension about whether the play will actually take place and whether some of the prisoners will receive clemency or parole, but it's more in service of character than of plot. In short, it's a movie that lets you do the thinking and feeling without undue manipulation, which is rare these days. 

Past Lives (Celine Song, 2023)

Teo Yoo, Greta Lee, and John Magaro in Past Lives

Cast: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro, Moon Seung-ah, Leem Seung-min, Jun Ji-hye, Choi Won-young, Ahn Min-yeung, Seo Yeon-Woo. Screenplay: Celine Song. Cinematography: Shabier Kirchner. Production design: Grace Yun. Film editing: Keith Fraase. Music: Christopher Bear, Daniel Rossen. 

Celine Song's Past Lives is full of silences, some of them lasting for 12 years, some merely the moments in which communication between the characters is suspended out of embarrassment or awkwardness or uncertainty. But the silences are productive: They allow both the characters and the viewer to reflect on the meaning of the moment. When we first meet Nora (aka Na Young) and Hae Sung, they are 12-year-old schoolmates and close friends in Korea. We sense something blossoming between them, but it's nipped in the bud by the immigration of Nora and her family to Canada. Then the first silence begins: They lose contact as Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) finishes school, does his military service, and begins his studies to become an engineer, and Nora (Greta Lee) moves from Toronto to New York where she begins a career as a playwright. Then, after 12 years, Hae Sung searches out Nora on the internet, and they begin to catch up with each other in cyberspace. But Nora abruptly breaks off the connection, for reasons that she never fully articulates. She meets a fellow writer, Arthur (John Magaro), and they get married. Hae Sung finds a girlfriend but it's not a solid relationship. Finally, after another 12-year-silence, Hae Sung lets Nora know that he's coming to New York on a vacation. And thus begins a fable about the limits of human connection, the burdens of ethnic difference, and the barriers to desire. Hae Sung is plainly in love with Nora, and Arthur senses it with some trepidation about how she will respond. This dance to the music of the past would be nothing without actors as skilled at manifesting the interior as Lee, Yoo, and Magaro are, or without a director like Song, who keeps the pace as stately as a pavane.   

Gypsy 83 (Todd Stephens, 2001)

Birkett Turton and Sara Rue in Gypsy 83

Cast: Sara Rue, Birkett Turton, Karen Black, John Doe, Anson Scoville, Paulo Costanzo, Carolyn Baeumler, Stephanie McVay, Amanda Talbot, Vera Beren, Eileen Letchworth. Screenplay: Todd Stephens, Tim Kaltenecker. Cinematography: Gina Degirolamo, Mai Iskander. Production design: Nancy Arons. Film editing: Annette Davey. Music: Marty Beller.

Misfits searching for a way to escape, Gypsy (Sara Rue) and Clive (Birkett Turton) hit the road from Sandusky, Ohio, to New York City, where misfits always think they can find a way to fit. Todd Stephens's Gypsy 83 is filled with more misfits than those two, a 25-year-old woman and a gay teenager. They also include a hitchhiking young Amish man (Anson Scoville), a disaffected fraternity boy (Paulo Costanzo), and a middle-aged has-been singer (Karen Black). Stephens follows these characters through an entertainingly scruffy road movie that ends, as many road movies do, where it probably should just be beginning.   

Rebel Ridge (Jeremy Saulnier, 2024)

Don Johnson and Aaron Pierre in Rebel Ridge

Cast: Aaron Pierre, Don Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, David Denman, Emory Cohen, Steve Zissis, Zsané Jhé, Dana Lee, James Cromwell, CJ LeBlanc. Screenplay: Jeremy Saulnier. Cinematography: David Gallego. Production design: John P. Goldsmith, Ryan Warren Smith. Film editing: Jeremy Saulnier. Music: Brooke Blair, Will Blair. 

Rebel Ridge begins painfully, with the too-familiar image of a Black man being forced to the ground and handcuffed by two white cops. But it recovers from that to become one of the better action thrillers of recent years, thanks to writer-director-editor Jeremy Saulnier's ability to surprise, a charismatic performance by Aaron Pierre as Terry Richmond, the protagonist, and a reliably watchable one by Don Johnson as Terry's antagonist, Chief Sandy Burnne. Granted, the plot of Rebel Ridge is familiar: stranger comes to a small town and tangles with corrupt law enforcement, a trope we've seen in Reacher and the Lee Child novels it's based on, for example. But Saulnier gives his characters depth and he avoids the expected conclusion in which the bad guys get blown away in a spectacularly messy fashion. There are witty moments, too. Terry gets help from several people, including Summer (AnnaSophia Robb), a court house clerk, and Liu (Dana Lee), the elderly owner of a Chinese restaurant. When Terry introduces them to each other, he tells Summer that Liu is a veteran of the Korean War. Summer chirps the familiar "Thank you for your service," whereupon Terry explains that Liu was on the other side. Rebel Ridge is no ground-breaker, but it deservedly won the Critics Choice Award for best TV movie, and we should be seeing a lot more of Aaron Pierre. 

Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh, 2025)

Michael Fassbender, Tom Burke, and Pierce Brosnan in Black Bag

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett, Marisa Abela, Tom Burke, Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, Kae Alexander, Ambika Mod, Gustaf Skarsgard, Pierce Brosnan. Screenplay: David Koepp. Cinematography: Steven Soderbergh. Production design: Philip Messina. Film editing: Steven Soderbergh. Music: David Holmes. 

Steven Soderbergh's Black Bag is a solid, satisfying spy thriller that breaks no new ground for the genre, which may be why it was not a success at the box office: There are no spectacular moments, no stunts, no especially gory deaths -- in short, nothing to spark a word of mouth publicity campaign. Its characters are all handsome and sexy but also not very likable. In fact, they delight in getting on each other's nerves. In fact, it feels more like a pilot for a series on a streaming channel like Netflix or Hulu than a stand-alone movie. 

Wolfwalkers (Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart, 2020)

Cast (voices): Honor Kneafsey, Eva Whittaker, Sean Bean, Simon McBurney, Tommy Tiernan, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Jon Kenny, John Morton, Nora Twomey, Oliver McGrath. Screenplay: Will Collins, Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart. Production design: Tomm Moore, Maria Pareja, Ross Stewart. Film editing: Darragh Byrne, Richie Cody, Darren T. Holmes. Music: Bruno Coulais. 

The images and animation of Wolfwalkers are so dazzling, so beautiful, so witty that it feels almost churlish to wish that they were in service to a less conventional story. It's the familiar tale of the spunky, underestimated kid who overcomes obstacles to save the day. The time is the 17th century and the place is the village of Kilkenny in Ireland, governed by a lord protector who is determined to exterminate a pack of wolves in a nearby forest. He hires Bill Goodfellowe, an English hunter, to do the job. His small daughter, Robyn, wants to help him, and ventures into the forest on her own. There she encounters a girl, Mebh, who turns out to be a wolfwalker, a human who can take the form of a wolf and who has mysterious healing powers. When Robyn is accidentally bitten by Mebh, she too becomes a wolfwalker, and gets involved in a plan to free Mebh's mother, Moll, who has been captured by the lord protector, and to save the wolf pack led by Moll from his campaign against them. The mythology gets a bit confusing and the denouement has the usual crises before a somewhat ambivalent resolution. But why complain about story when the visuals are so ravishing? The design contrasts the rigid, sharp-angled human world with the fluid, sinuous natural world, and even the characters are delineated by angles or curves -- the more angular, the more villainous, and the lord protector is virtually boxlike. Wolfwalkers is the third in a trilogy of films by Tomm Moore about Irish legends, after The Secret of Kells (2009) and Song of the Sea (2014). It was deservedly nominated for a best animated feature Oscar, but lost to Pete Docter's Pixar film Soul. 

I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun, 2024)

Justice Smith and Jack Haven in I Saw the TV Glow

Cast: Justice Smith, Jack Haven, Ian Foreman, Helena Howard, Lindsey Jordan, Danielle Deadwyler, Fred Durst, Conner O'Malley, Emma Portner, Madeline Riley, Amber Benson. Screenplay: Jane Schoenbrun. Cinematography: Eric Yue. Production design: Brandon Tonner-Connelly. Film editing: Sofi Marshall. Music: Alex G. 

Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow uses the horror movie genre as a springboard into a fascinating and enigmatic fable of identity, gender and otherwise. Teenagers Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Jack Haven) form a bond over a TV series called The Pink Opaque, finding in it an alternative reality to that of their suburban home town. In time, Maddy comes to take that alternative as the true reality and tries to escape into it, while Owen remains grounded but troubled as he grows older. Hallucinatory visuals provided by Eric Yue's cinematography and Brandon Tonner-Connelly's set designs immerse the audience in what could be just a story of the effects of pop culture on impressionable minds, but in a larger interpretation is a parable about the problems of feeling different in a conformist culture. 

The Ghost Goes West (René Clair, 1935)

Robert Donat in The Ghost Goes West

Cast: Robert Donat, Jean Parker, Eugene Pallette, Elsa Lanchester, Ralph Bunker, Patricia Hilliard, Everley Gregg, Morton Selten, Chili Bouchier, Mark Daly, Herbert Lomas, Elliott Mason, Hay Petrie. Screenplay: Robert E. Sherwood, based on a story by Eric Keown. Cinematography: Harold Rosson. Art direction: Leila Rubin. Film editing: Harold Earle. Music: Mischa Spoliansky.

The premise of The Ghost Goes West, René Clair's first English language feature, is sound: An American businessman buys a castle in Scotland and ships it to Florida along with its resident ghost. Robert Donat is the handsome leading man in the double role of the ghost and his present-day descendant. Eugene Pallette, who plays the businessman, is one of the best character actors in a golden age for character actors. And Jean Parker is attractive as his daughter, who is romanced by both the ghost and his descendant. Yet somehow the movie keeps falling flat. It may have something to do with the screenplay by Robert E. Sherwood, a writer not known for the light touch needed for the blend of screwball and romantic comedy that the premise deserves. There were also some tensions between Clair and the producer, Alexander Korda, who originally planned the film as a vehicle for Charles Laughton, which may explain why Laughton's wife, Elsa Lanchester, is billed fourth for a role that has only a few minutes of screen time. When Korda decided he needed more romance in the film, the part was offered to Laurence Olivier, who was unavailable, so Donat stepped in. Tipping the film in the direction of romance also resulted in the loss of some of its satiric edge, aimed at American millionaires like William Randolph Hearst looting Europe and creating their own castles in the United States. Still, The Ghost Goes West has dryly clever moments that make it watchable and often amusing.

Afterglow (Alan Rudolph, 1997)

Nick Nolte and Julie Christie in Afterglow

Cast: Nick Nolte, Julie Christie, Lara Flynn Boyle, Jonny Lee Miller, Jay Underwood, Domini Blythe, Yves Corbeil, Alan Fawcett, Michèle-Barbara Pelletier, France Castel, Genevieve Bissonnette. Screenplay: Alan Rudolph. Cinematography: Toyomichi Kurita. Production design: François Séguin. Film editing: Suzy Elmiger. Music: Mark Isham.

Elliptical to the very end, Alan Rudolph's Afterglow makes the audience do a lot of work sorting out the messy backstories of the two attractive married couples whose lives and problems intersect. Lucky (Nick Nolte) and Phyllis (Julie Christie) are an odd couple to start with: He's a rough-edged handyman, she's a former movie actress. Jeffrey (Jonny Lee Miller) and Marianne (Lara Flynn Boyle) are younger and wealthier: He's an executive in a corporation, she's a lady who lunches. In both cases, the marriages are at a sexual standstill: Phyllis tolerates Lucky's sleeping around with other women, who are often clients for his handyman services, and Jeffrey seems to find all sorts of work-related reasons not to sleep with Marianne, who has decided that she wants to have a baby. We come to find out that Lucky and Phyllis stopped having sex when he discovered that their daughter wasn't fathered by him but by her co-star. In the uproar that followed, their daughter left home, and now they have come to Montreal in search of her. The reason for Jeffrey's lack of interest in Marianne is less explicit, though he may be having doubts about his sexual orientation: His friend Donald (Jay Underwood) seems to be coded as gay, and Jeffrey likes to compliment his secretary, Helene (Domini Blythe), on what she's wearing. The worlds of the two couples collide when Marianne hires Lucky to remodel their apartment. The Montreal setting gives Rudolph an excuse to make a French movie on New World soil, for Afterglow has the kind of sophistication about relationships that we associate with the French but also the sexual mores of this side of the Atlantic. The film's chief virtue is a radiant performance by Julie Christie, which earned her an Oscar nomination, and Nolte is often fun to watch. Unfortunately, Boyle and Miller aren't quite up their standard, so Afterglow often feels unbalanced.