Guilty Bystander (Joseph Lerner, 1950)

Zachary Scott and Mary Boland in Guilty Bystander

Cast: Zachary Scott, Faye Emerson, Mary Boland, Sam Levene, J. Edward Bromberg, Kay Medford, Jed Prouty, Harry Landers, Elliott Sullivan, Ray Julian, Dennis Patrick. Screenplay: Don Ettinger, based on a novel by Whit Masterson and H. William Miller. Cinematography: Gerald Hirschfeld, Russell Harlan. Production design: Leo Kerz. Film editing: Geraldine Lerner. Music: Dimitri Tiomkin. 

Mary Boland made her name as a character actress playing dotty matrons like the Countess De Lave in The Women (George Cukor, 1939) and Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (Robert Z. Leonard, 1940), so it's fun to see her play against type as Smitty, the tough old bird who is the proprietor of a run-down residence hotel in Joseph Lerner's Guilty Bystander. She's entertaining to watch but it's more a collection of mannerisms and speech patterns borrowed from Marie Dressler, Mae West, and Jean Harlow than a credible character. But then the movie, a whodunit with an alcoholic ex-cop for protagonist, feels borrowed from a lot of sources, including the snarled plots and seedy milieus of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Zachary Scott is Max Thursday, Smitty's booze-sodden house detective. His ex-wife, Georgia (Faye Emerson), comes to him for help when their small son goes missing, along with her brother, Fred (Dennis Patrick). Rousing himself from his stupor, Thursday goes on a hunt that takes him into several hives of sleaze, gets him shot in the arm, and even leads him on a chase through the subway tunnels of New York City. The kidnapping turns out to have something to do with diamond smuggling, but atmosphere is more important to the film than plot. Good location shooting lifts Guilty Bystander above the routine, but not by much.  

Blackout (Terence Fisher, 1954)

Belinda Lee and Dane Clark in Blackout

Cast: Dane Clark, Belinda Lee, Betty Ann Davies, Eleanor Summerfield, Andrew Osborn, Harold Lang, Jill Melford, Alvis Maben, Michael Golden, Nora Gordon, Alfie Bass. Screenplay: Richard H. Landau, based on a novel by Helen Nielsen. Cinematography: Walter J. Harvey. Art direction: J. Elder Wills. Film editing: Maurice Rootes. Music: Ivor Slaney. 

Any movie that starts with Cleo Laine singing "St. Louis Blues" even before the credits run has my attention. Unfortunately, Terence Fisher's Blackout (aka Murder by Proxy) doesn't repay it. It's a welter of plot twists and red herrings and withheld information that begins with a drunken American (Dane Clark) being propositioned in an unusual way by a beautiful woman (Belinda Lee). Naturally he wakes up the next morning in a place he's never been before, with a furious hangover and a blood-spotted topcoat. From then on, he keeps sticking his nose in places he shouldn't and getting mixed up with people he should avoid. It's standard whodunit stuff, but without much punch in either performances or direction. The chief reward of the film for me is that it added to my collection of Mondegreens and closed-caption goofs: When Laine sings the line in "St. Louis Blues" about the St. Louie woman's "store-bought hair," the captioner turns it into "stubbled hair." 
 

Pieces of April (Peter Hedges, 2003)

Katie Holmes in Pieces of April

Cast: Katie Holmes, Derek Luke, Patricia Clarkson, Oliver Platt, Alison Pill, John Gallagher Jr., Alice Drummond, Sean Hayes, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Lillias White, Leila Danette, Sisqó, Adrian Martinez, Armando Riesco. Screenplay: Peter Hedges. Cinematography: Tami Reiker. Production design: Rick Butler. Film editing: Mark Livolsi. Music: Stephin Merritt. 

April (Katie Holmes) is the black sheep of the Burns family, so when she decides to make amends with them, she invites them for Thanksgiving dinner in the grungy apartment that she shares with her boyfriend, Bobby (Derek Luke), in a dicey New York neighborhood. It's a formulaic setup for all sorts of formulaic mishaps, starting with April's discovery that her oven doesn't work, yet somehow Peter Hedges manages to transcend formulas and a collection of characters just shy of caricature to create a warm-hearted feel-good movie. Much of the burden of transcendence falls on the shoulders of the actors, particularly Patricia Clarkson as April's mother, Joy, who is dying of breast cancer. Clarkson earned an Oscar nomination for the role. It's part road movie, as the Burnses journey from the suburbs to the inner city, and part sitcom farce, but it has considerable charm. I couldn't help comparing Pieces of April, however, to a better suburbanites-in-the-city comedy, The Daytrippers (Greg Mottola, 1996).  

Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone, 1994)

Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis in Natural Born Killers

Cast: Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Robert Downey Jr., Tom Sizemore, Tommy Lee Jones, Rodney Dangerfield, Edie McClurg, Russell Means, Balthazar Getty, Stephen Wright, Sean Stone, Jeremiah Bitsui, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Joe Grifasi, Everett Quinton. Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino, David Veloiz, Richard Rutowski, Oliver Stone. Cinematography: Robert Richardson. Production design: Victor Kempster. Film editing: Brian Berdan, Hank Corwin. Music: Brent Lewis. 

Oliver Stone's sledgehammer satire Natural Born Killers began with a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino in which the central character was the filmmaker Wayne Gale, played in Stone's version by Robert Downey Jr. In the rewrite, Stone and co-writers David Veloz and Richard Rutowski shifted the focus to the killers, Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis). Tarantino has since regretted the loss of control over his story, and it's easy to see why. A Tarantino version might be at least as violent and bloody, but it would have had some wit to it. Mickey and Mallory might have been more like Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, the couple played by Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer in Pulp Fiction (1994) -- lethal but oddly lovable. Stone makes all of his characters loathsome -- if we have sympathy for Mickey and Mallory, it's because everyone around them is worse, from Mallory's parents, played by Rodney Dangerfield and Edie McClurg, to the gas station attendant played by Balthazar Getty, to the detective played by Tom Sizemore and the warden played by Tommy Lee Jones. Jones in particular is directed to play against his usual type, a slow-burning character like the marshal in The Fugitive (Andrew Davis, 1993), and go wildly over the top. Stone is less interested in characters or even in making a point about media exploitation than in showing off film technique, from Dutch angles to the mixing of various film stocks and switches from color to black and white. In short, Natural Born Killers is a headache-inducing mess.  

Shadow Kill (Adoor Gopalakrishnan, 2002)

Director Adoor Gopalakrishnan

Cast: Oduvil Unnikrishnan, Sukumari, Mallika, Thara Kalyan, Murali, Sivakumar, Narain, Nedumudi Venu, Vijayaragavan, Jagathy Sreekumar, Indrans, Kukku Parameshruwaram. Screenplay: Adoor Gopalakrishnan. Cinematography: Sunny Joseph, Mankada Ravi Varma. Production design: Raheesh Babu, Adoor Gopalakrishan. Film editing: B. Ajithkumar. Music: Ilaiyaraaja. 

Shadow Kill, which is also known as Nizhalkkuthu, is my introduction to the films of Adoor Gopalakrishnan and a reminder of how much I am at sea in films from other cultures. I don't know, for example, how much of the story is based on actual criminal justice practices in pre-independence India and how much is fictional. Taken in itself, the film is a fable about guilt and justice, centered in the practice of capital punishment. It takes place in the kingdom of Travancore, where Kaliyappan (Oduvil Unnikrishnan) is the official executioner. He's a man wracked with guilt for what he has done in his professional capacity, particularly the fear that he has put innocent people to death. As the hangman, he is presented the rope used after each execution, which he burns and consecrates to the goddess Kali to be used as holy ash in the treatment of the sick. His guilt has driven him to drink, but he's not the only one who feels cursed by the administration of capital punishment: The authorities, fearing divine retribution, have made it a practice to pardon all those condemned to death, but for the pardon to arrive only after the execution has taken place. Much of the film consists of a story told by the jailer as a drunken Kaliyappan struggles to stay awake before an execution: It deal with the rape and murder of a girl that has been wrongly pinned on her lover. When the jailer reveals that it's the man he's about to execute, Kaliyappan collapses, but his son, a follower of Gandhi in the struggle for India's freedom, dutifully takes his place as executioner. Gopalakrishnan provides no explanation for the son's act, leaving viewers to explicate the story's more on their own. It's beautifully filmed and Unnikrishnan's performance is excellent, but I wonder how much of my puzzled reaction to the movie comes from my own ignorance of Indian culture and history. 

Materialists (Celine Song, 2025)

Dakota Johnson and Pedro Pascal in Materialists 

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Zoe Winters, Marin Ireland, Dasha Nekrasova, Emmy Wheeler, Louisa Jacobson, Eddie Cahill, Sawyer Spielberg, Joseph Lee, John Magaro. Screenplay: Celine Song. Cinematography: Shabier Kirchner. Production design: Anthony Gasparro. Film editing: Keith Fraase. Music: Daniel Pemberton. 

Celine Song's Materialists is a rom-com with a satiric edge, though not a terribly sharp one. Dakota Johnson plays Lucy, who works for a high-end matchmaking service that celebrates its workers when their clients end up getting married. Lucy is very good at her job, with nine weddings to her credit, but she hasn't been very successful in finding her own soulmate. She split with her old boyfriend, John (Chris Evans), largely because they're too poor -- he's a struggling actor -- to think about an upwardly mobile life together. Then, in the course of her job, she meets Harry (Pedro Pascal), handsome and rich. They hit it off, but something's not right just yet. When one of her clients is raped by a man Lucy matched with her, she begins to question what she does for a living, and to realize that the potential for love can't be measured by algorithms, the "checked-off boxes" she uses to match her clients. The premise of Materialists -- a bright young woman overcoming her own delusions -- is pure Jane Austen, but the movie feels weighed down by its stars. Johnson doesn't have enough chemistry with either Evans or Pascal to give her choice between the two any real urgency or credibility, and the hits at yuppie materialism are more didactic than funny. 

Household Saints (Nancy Savoca, 1993)

Lili Taylor in Household Saints

Cast: Tracey Ullman, Vincent D'Onofrio, Lili Taylor, Judith Malina, Michael Rispoli, Victor Argo, Michael Imperioli, Rachel Bella, Ileana Douglas, Joe Grifasi. Screenplay: Richard Guay, Nancy Savoca, based on a novel by Savoca. Cinematography: Bobby Bukowski. Production design: Kalina Ivanova. Film editing: Elizabeth King. Music: Stephen Endelman. 

As a portrayal of a certain kind of religious obsession peculiar to immigrant families, Nancy Savoca's adaptation of Francine Prose's novel Household Saints has warmth and charm balanced with a touch of skepticism. Judith Malina and Tracey Ullman overcome the caricature inherent in their roles as Old World mama and New World daughter-in-law, and Lili Taylor is wonderful as Teresa, who inherits her grandmother's piety with a new intensity. Vincent D'Onofrio is a touch too contemporary in style for the role of the butcher Joseph Santangelo, who tries unsuccessfully to impose his will on the women in his life. The film runs about half an hour too long. It could have jettisoned the subplot dealing with the obsession of Nicky Falconetti (Michael Rispoli) with Asian women, which has something to do with Madame Butterfly, and the framing scenes that set up the veneration of Teresa aren't really necessary. Household Saints sometimes overstates the comedy, but that's a risk inherent in the story, and Savoca manages to avoid the temptation to milk the material for tears.

Hold Me Tight (Mathieu Amalric, 2021)

Vicky Krieps in Hold Me Tight

Cast: Vicky Krieps, Arieh Worthalter, Anne-Sophie Bowen-Chatet, Sacha Ardilly, Juliette Benveniste, Aurèle Grzesik, Aurélia Petit, Erwan Ribard, Cuca Bañeras Flos, Samuel Mathieu, Jean-Philippe Petit. Screenplay: Mathieu Amalric, based on a play by Claudine Galea. Cinematography: Christophe Beaucarne. Production design: Laurent Baude. Film editing: François Gédigier. 

"I don't like movies that make me think," said a woman on a social media site recently in an argument about Kathryn Bigelow's latest  film, A House of Dynamite. "I have enough to think about already." I wouldn't recommend Mathieu Amalric's Hold Me Tight to her, then. It makes the viewer work to sort out what is going on in actuality or in the mind of the protagonist, Clarisse (Vicky Krieps). When we first see her, she is laying out a bunch of Polaroid photographs on the table, turning them over as if they were tarot cards that might provide a revelation of some sorts. Then we see her sneak out of the house, careful not to wake her husband and children, and set out on what will become a solitary road trip. We then see her family, her husband, Marc (Arieh Worthalter), her daughter, Lucie (Anne-Sophie Bowen-Chatet), and her son, Paul (Sacha Ardilly), as they start the day without her. But gradually we realize that what we have just seen may not have happened at all, at least not in the way it's presented to us, and we have to assemble what is being shown to us into a coherent and ultimately painful reality. The question may arise whether the way Amalric chooses to tell Clarisse's story justifies itself: Does it reveal something about her experience that a straightforward narrative would lack? Or is it just like a jigsaw puzzle in which putting it together is the point, rather than the picture itself? After waffling back and forth between those questions, I find myself coming down mushily in the middle: I think the complications of the narrative verge on self-conscious filmmaking, but that the ultimate effect is to make Hold Me Tight an unusually compelling story of memory and desire, heightened by Krieps's performance and a soundtrack full of evocative music.    

Love Under the Crucifix (Kinuyo Tanaka, 1962)

Ineko Arima in Love Under the Crucifix

Cast: Ineko Arima, Tatsuya Nakadai, Ganjiro Nakamura, Mieko Takamine, Osamu Takizawa, Koji Nanbara, Manami Fuji, Yumeji Tsukioka, Hisaya Ito. Screenplay: Masahige Narusawa, based on a novel  by Toko Kon. Cinematography: Yoshio Miyajima. Art direction: Junpei Oosumi. Film editing: Hisashi Sagara. Music: Hikaru Hayashi.  

As deliberate and slow as the tea ceremony that it features, Kinuyo Tanaka's Love Under the Crucifix is a story of love thwarted by conflicting codes: Christian moral doctrine vs. the laws and traditions of 16th century Japan. Ineko Arima plays Ogin, daughter of Rikyu (Ganjiro Nakamura), a master of the tea ceremony. When a wealthy merchant seeks her hand in marriage, Ogin is forced to accept, even though she has loved Takayama Ukon (Tatsuya Nakadai) since they were children together. Ukon, however, is not only already married, but also a Christian and opposed to divorce. When Christianity is banned in Japan, he is forced into exile. Eventually Ogin and Ukon will meet again under perilous circumstances and their enduring love will be tested. Beautifully designed and filmed, Love Under the Crucifix is weighed down by exposition-heavy dialogue and its somewhat over-familiar story line. Arima is superb as Ogin, but Nakadai is wasted in a role that gives him little to do.  

Compensation (Zeinabu Irene Davis, 1999)

John Earl Jelks and Michelle A. Banks in Compensation

Cast: Michelle A. Banks, John Earl Jelks, Nirvana Cobb, Kevin L. Davis, Christopher Smith, K. Lynn Stephens. Screenplay: Marc Arthur Chéry. Cinematography: Pierre H.L. Davis Jr. Production design: Katharine Watford Cook. Film editing: Dana Briscoe, Zeinabu Irene Davis. Music: Atiba Y. Jali, Reginald R. Robinson. 

Zeinabu Irene Davis's Compensation was partly inspired by a poem with that title by Paul Laurence Dunbar: 

Because I had loved so deeply, 

Because I had loved so long, 

God in His great compassion 

Gave me the gift of song.

Because I have loved so vainly,

And sung with such faltering breath,

The Master in infinite mercy

Offers the boon of Death. 

The film tells parallel love stories, one set in the beginning of the 20th century and the other at its end, with the same two actors playing both pairs of lovers. Michelle A. Banks plays Malindy Brown in the earlier story, and Malaika Brown in the other. Both young women are deaf, as is the actress -- Marc Arthur Chéry rewrote his screenplay to accommodate that fact when Davis discovered Banks in a play and recognized her rightness for the role. The change added another layer to a film about the changes in Black lives over the course of the century. Malindy falls in love with Arthur Jones (John Earl Jelks), who has just arrived in Chicago from Mississippi -- part of the great migration from the South that changed America in the century. Jelks also plays Nico Jones, who falls for Malaika at the end of the century. The intermingled stories focus on communication problems -- Malindy not only has to teach Arthur sign language but also to read -- and the impact of serious illness on the lovers. Davis beautifully integrates archival footage of life in Chicago, and uses silent movie-style intertitles and captions to tell the story, an illuminating approach to depicting both the transformations and the continuities in the Black experience.