Happyend (Neo Sora, 2024)

Yukito Hadaka and Hayata Kurihara in Happyend

Cast: Hayata Kurihara, Yukito Hadaka, Yuta Hayashi, Shina Peng, Arazi, Kilala Inori, Pushim, Ayumu Nakajima, Makiko Watanabe, Shiro Sano. Screenplay: Neo Sora. Cinematography: Bill Kirstein. Production design: Norifumi Ataka. Film editing: Albert Tholen. Music: Lia Ouyang Rusli. 

Disaffected students at a Tokyo school pull a prank on their principal that gets labeled (as things often do these days) "terrorism" in Neo Sora's debut feature, Happyend. The consequence is that the principal (Shiro Sano) installs a radical new surveillance system that causes still more turmoil at the school. Sora's look into the near future resonates with our anxious present, touching on such issues as authoritarianism, racism, and invasive technology. The touch is light, however, thanks to an engaging young cast and a plot that never turns as grim as it might. 

The Wild Blue Yonder (Werner Herzog, 2005)

Cast: Brad Dourif, Donald Williams, Ellen Baker, Franklin Chang-Diaz, Shannon Lucid, Michael McCulley, Roger Diehl, Ted Sweetser, Martin Lo. Screenplay: Werner Herzog. Cinematography: Henry Kaiser, Tanja Koop, Klaus Scheurich. Film editing: Joe Bini. Music: Ernst Reijseger. 

Werner Herzog's The Wild Blue Yonder is a great director's jeu d'esprit, a deconstruction of science fiction tropes about intergalactic travel, using space shuttle footage provided by NASA and Henry Kaiser's film from below the ice in Antarctica's McMurdo Sound. It's held together by a narrative supplied by Brad Dourif playing an alien from the Andromeda galaxy, and given an eerie underpinning by cellist-composer Ernst Reijseger. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes maddening, sometimes boring, but always provocative.  

Louder Than Bombs (Joachim Trier, 2015)

Isabelle Huppert and Gabriel Byrne in Louder Than Bombs

Cast: Gabriel Byrne, Isabelle Huppert, Jesse Eisenberg, Devin Druid, Amy Ryan, David Strathairn, Ruby Jenkins, Megan Ketch, Rachel Brosnahan. Screenplay: Joachim Trier, Eskil Vogt. Cinematography: Jakob Ihre. Production design: Molly Hughes. Film editing: Olivier Bugge Coutté. Music: Ola Fløttum. 

Joachim Trier's Louder Than Bombs is a portrait of a dysfunctional family, but Trier lays on the dysfunction a little too thickly and the film descends into soap opera territory. Isabelle Reed (Isabelle Huppert), a celebrated photojournalist, has died in an automobile crash, and her family is contacted by a gallery for a memorial exhibition of her photography. A reporter (David Strathairn) who had worked with her is also preparing an article for the New York Times celebrating her life and work. Gene (Gabriel Byrne), her husband, asks their older son, Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg), who has just become a father, to come help him sort through the materials remaining in Isabelle's workshop. The younger son, Conrad (Devin Druid), is still in his teens, and Gene has refrained from telling him that his mother's death was probably not an accident but instead a self-destructive consequence of depression. Trier tells their story in fragments and flashbacks, and relies on some rather heavy-handed ironies. Isabelle, for example, had been concerned that her photographs of the victims of war were exploitative and voyeuristic, but Gene becomes a voyeur himself, spying on the sullen, secretive, and taciturn Conrad. He is also having an affair with one of Conrad's teachers (Amy Ryan) to further his spying on his son. In a gratuitous episode that adds nothing to the plot or the theme of the film, Jonah, although initially portrayed as a loving husband and father, has an affair with an old girlfriend (Rachel Brosnahan) he meets in the hospital where his wife has just given birth. The acting is uniformly good, with Druid particularly effective at portraying the torments of adolescence. But the secrets and lies in the film tend to sink it into melodrama.  

Pretty Red Dress (Dionne Edwards, 2022)

Alexandra Burke and Natey Jones in Pretty Red Dress

Cast: Natey Jones, Alexandra Burke, Temilola Olatunbosun, Rolan Bell, Ben Caplan, Nicholas Bishop, Maria Almeida, Edwin De La Renta, Angie Le Mar, Mark Monero, Dexter Flanders. Screenplay: Dionne Edwards. Cinematography: Adam Scarth. Production design: Phoebe Platman. Film editing: Adonis Trattos. Music: Hugo Brijs. 

In her debut feature, Pretty Red Dress, Dionne Edwards grapples with issues of gender but finally loses her grip on them in an effort to resolve the plot. Just out of prison, Travis (Natey Jones) goes home to his partner, Candice (Alexandra Burke), and their teenage daughter, Kenisha (Temilola Olatunbosun), seeking to start his life again. Candice, a singer who works as a cashier in a supermarket, is trying to make her dreams come true: She's auditioning to play Tina Turner in a new musical, and she and Travis spot the perfect dress in a shop window. It's too expensive for her salary, however, so Travis reluctantly goes to work for his bullying older brother, Clive (Rolan Bell), and buys it for her. The bright red beaded dress seems to help her at the audition, but Travis is fascinated by it too. He yields to an old compulsion and furtively tries the dress on before the mirror, even borrowing Candice's lipstick. It's the beginning of a series of complications in their relationship, especially when Kenisha, who has been confronting her own sexual identity, walks in on him in the dress. Edwards avoids preachiness in her drama, but doesn't find a satisfying outcome for the film, avoiding sentimentality but leaving her characters in suspension. It's well-acted by the entire cast, and Burke's musical performances provide a highlight for the film.  

Somewhere (Sofia Coppola, 2010)

Stephen Dorff in Somewhere

Cast: Stephen Dorff, Elle Fannin, Chris Pontius, Michelle Monaghan, Kristina Shannon, Karissa Shannon. Screenplay: Sofia Coppola. Cinematography: Harris Savides. Production design: Anne Ross. Film editing: Sarah Flack. Music: Phoenix. 

Sofia Coppola's Somewhere is about a hollow man, a movie star played by Stephen Dorff who has fame and fortune but not much else in his life other than a lively 11-year-old daughter (Elle Fanning) from a failed marriage. When his ex-wife has a breakdown of some sort, he gets to see his daughter more often, and their relationship blossoms. But it's only a temporary alleviation of his deep ennui, a condition verging on anhedonia: He hires blonde twins to do pole dances in his hotel room but displays only polite enthusiasm for their performance. Once he even falls asleep during sex. Somewhere succeeds as a portrait of a man without a purpose in life, but it makes for challenging viewing -- it's hard to maintain interest in a character who isn't interested in anything. Coppola has clearly drawn on her own experience as the daughter of a celebrity, and that gives her film the grounding it needs. 

Nine Months (Chris Columbus, 1995)

Julianne Moore and Hugh Grant in Nine Months

Cast: Hugh Grant, Julianne Moore, Tom Arnold, Joan Cusack, Jeff Goldblum, Robin Williams, Mia Cottet. Screenplay: Chris Columbus, based on a screenplay by Patrick Braoudé. Cinematography: Donald McAlpine. Production design: Donald McAlpine. Film editing: Raja Gosnell, Stephen E. Rivkin. Music: Hans Zimmer.

Chris Columbus's Nine Months is a sometimes painfully unfunny attempt to blend slapstick with romantic comedy, centered on the notion that women in their 30s should get married and have children. So when Rebecca Taylor (Julianne Moore) discovers that her birth control has failed and she's pregnant, she and Sam Faulkner (Hugh Grant), who are living together, face the big decision. She's for it, and he's -- well, he's played by Grant at his most dithery. The rest of the film wobbles between treating the pregnancy as a real-life couple might and treating it as an excuse for knockabout scenes. In one of the latter, for example, Sam and his new friend Marty (Tom Arnold), get into a fight in a toy store with a man in a dinosaur suit (based on a then-popular kid's show about a purple dinosaur called Barrney). The movie climaxes in a fight in the delivery room that's supposed to be funny but is more than a little disturbing thanks to the presence of  Robin Williams as a Russian obstetrician who has unaccountably been allowed to practice in America and spouts a lot of probably ad-libbed gynecological malapropisms. But even when the film takes Rebecca's pregnancy seriously, it's just tedious. Grant did his career no good by mugging his way through the film, and skilled players like Moore, Jeff Goldblum, and Joan Cusack are wasted. 

Where the Truth Lies (Atom Egoyan, 2005)

Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon in Where the Truth Lies

Cast: Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth, Alison Lohman, David Hayman, Rachel Blanchard, Maury Chaykin, Sonja Bennett, Kristin Adams, Deborah Grover. Screenplay: Atom Egoyan, based on a novel by Rupert Holmes. Cinematography: Paul Sarossy. Production design: Phillip Barker. Film editing: Susan Shipton. Music: Mychael Danna. 

Confusion worse confounded. Atom Egoyan's whodunit Where the Truth Lies is miscast and muddled. First off, who would ever have cast Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon as a 1950s comedy team clearly modeled on Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis? Both actors make a go of it, being the professionals that they are, but they're battling the fact that neither of them is particularly known for their work in comedy. In the scenes where they're supposed to be performing, Bacon makes a few attempts at Lewis's spazz shtick, but Firth is simply a stiff. Worse is the casting of Alison Lohman as Karen, a journalist out to get the story of a young woman who was found dead in the hotel suite of the comedy team. Lohman has no weight or depth, and her voice, unfortunately entrusted with the narration, is thin and grating. Egoyan's decision to use flashbacks to unravel the complicated story is worsened by the fact that Lohman resembles Rachel Blanchard, who plays the victim, so that occasionally I was momentarily unsure which was which. There's a suicide and a sentimental aside involving the victim's mother which drag the film down just when we should in suspense about the solution to the crime, which itself lands unconvincingly. In short, a misfire from a usually reliable director. 

Death Is a Caress (Edith Carlmar, 1949)

Claus Wiese and Bjørg Riiser-Larsen in Death Is a Caress

Cast: Claus Wiese, Bjørg Riiser-Larsen, Eva Bergh, Ingolf Rogde, Einar Vaage, Brita Bigum, Sossen Krohg. Screenplay: Otto Carlar, based on a novel by Arne Moen. Cinematography: Kåre Bergstrøm, Ragnar Sørensen. Art direction: H.C. Hansen. Film editing: Olav Engebetsen. Music: Sverre Bergh. 

A cougar on the prowl snares a handsome garage mechanic and takes him back to her lair in the Norwegian noir Death Is a Caress. Edith Carlmar, the first woman to direct a Norwegian film, tells the story of the ill-fated liaison of Sonja Rentoft (Bjørg Riiser-Larsen) and Erik Hauge (Claus Weise) with considerable finesse. The sinners in the movie still get punished -- one with death, the other with imprisonment -- but it's a film that reflects how timid Hollywood's output was under the Production Code, which forbade things like showing a man and a woman in bed together as well as any mention of abortion, both of which Carlmar has no hesitation about including.  

54 (Mark Christopher, 1998)

Ryan Philippe in 54

Cast: Ryan Philippe, Mike Myers, Salma Hayek, Neve Campbell, Breckin Meyer, Sela Ward, Sherry Stringfield, Ellen Albertini Dow, Heather Matarazzo, Skipp Sudduth. Screenplay: Mark Christopher. Cinematography: Alexander Gruszynski. Production design: Kevin Thompson. Film editing: Lee Percy. Music: Marco Beltrami. 

Mark Christopher's 54 tells the old tale of the moth drawn to the flame who gets his wings singed. It's the story of Shane (Ryan Philippe), a Jersey boy drawn to the bright lights of Manhattan and particularly those of Studio 54, the pleasure palace run by Steve Rubell (Mike Myers). Despite all the sex and drugs, however, it's a tepid, tedious film -- or at least the one that went into release and is now being shown on the Criterion Channel is. It uses the expository crutch of a voice-over narration by Shane to tell how he and his friends Anita (Salma Hayek) and Greg (Brecking Meyer) became victims of Rubell's vices and venality, though it ends improbably with a presumably repentant Rubell returning from prison to be welcomed by them in a cleaned-up Studio 54. The film was a critical disaster, which writer-director Christopher blames on the meddling of producer Harvey Weinstein. But a "director's cut" now exists that is reportedly darker, tougher, and incidentally a lot queerer, one in which Shane is not quite the choirboy gone astray.  

Love (Dag Johan Haugerud, 2024)

Andrea Bræin Hovig and Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen in Love

Cast: Andrea Bræin Hovig, Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen, Marte Engebritsen, Lars Jacob Holm, Tomas Gullestad, Marian Saastad Ottesen, Morten Svartveit. Screenplay: Dag Johan Haugerud. Cinematography: Cecilie Semec. Production design: Tuva Hølmebakk. Film editing: Jens Christian Fodstad. Music: Peder Kjellsby. 

What do we talk about when we talk about love? Sex? Commitment? Fidelity? Selflessness? In Dag Johan Haugerud's engaging Love, part of his "Oslo trilogy," the characters talk about all of those things and sometimes act upon them. The film centers on Marianne (Andrea Bræin Hovig), a urologist, and Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen), a nurse, who meet after work on a commuter ferry from Oslo to the Nesodden peninsula. Tor reveals to Marianne that he's on Grindr and often uses it to meet other gay men on the ferry. He's happily unattached and enjoys talking with the men he meets almost as much as he does having sex with them. The conversation sparks something in Marianne: She's middle-aged and unmarried, which doesn't seem to bother her as much as it bothers her friends, who keep trying to set her up. In fact, she's on her way to meet an eligible divorcé her friend Heidi (Marte Engebritsen) thinks is a good match for her. Marianne goes on Tinder, trying out Tor's methods, and has a brief hookup with a passenger she meets that way. It doesn't work out quite as smoothly as Tor suggests it does, but then neither does Tor's encounter with Bjørn (Lars Jacob Holm), a psychologist who becomes a patient in the clinic where Marianne and Tor work. Haugerud's delicate, knowing approach to his characters makes Love work splendidly.