Near Orouët (Jacques Rozier, 1971)

Cast: Caroline Cartier, Danièle Croisy, Françoise Guégan, Patrick Verde, Bernard Menez. Screenplay: Jacques Rozier. Cinematography: Colin Mounier. Film editing: Odile Faillot, Jacques Rozier. Music: Daevid Allen, Gong, Gilli Smyth.

Jacques Rozier's Near Orouët is about the summer vacation of three young women from Paris on the Atlantic near the village of Orouët, the very name of which (pronounced with a final T) seems to set them into fits of giggles. But then almost everything does. This is a giddy account of nothing more than their summer of sunning, eating, drinking, sailing, horseback riding, flirting with one young man, and tormenting another. The tormented one is Gilbert (Bernard Menez) who during the rest of the year is the boss of one of the women, Joëlle (Danièle). He shows up uninvited after learning where she is vacationing, but his attempt to ingratiate himself with her and her friends is thwarted by the arrival of a more handsome and self-possessed young man, Patrick (Patrick Verde), who has a sailboat. The film is a trifle, but it's also two and a half hours long, so by the time it ends you may have become better acquainted with the three young women than you wanted to be. 

Miami Blues (George Armitage, 1990)

Alec Baldwin in Miami Blues

Cast: Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Fred Ward, Charles Napier, Nora Dunn, José Pérez, Obba Babatundé, Shirley Stoler. Screenplay: George Armitage, based on a novel by Charles Willeford. Cinematography: Tak Fujimoto. Production design: Maher Ahmad. Film editing: Craig McKay. Music: Gary Chang. 

Miami Blues is one of those movies that just miss. Alec Baldwin's ex-con comes to Miami because it seems like a good place to start over, which he does with some deft larceny (and some incidental manslaughter) at the airport. He checks into a hotel and asks the bellhop to procure him a woman, who turns out to be Jennifer Jason Leigh's sunny, naïve hooker. Meanwhile, he captures the attention of Fred Ward's scruffy cop, and the three of them begin a playful but sometimes brutal interaction. The movie has all the elements: a cast working at top form, a story with some amusing reversals of expectation, a gallery of quirky supporting characters, and a colorful milieu. The three leads are all cheerful caricatures drawn from crime fiction, but reality overlaps the caricature and the tone of the movie goes sour, turning it  darker and heavier than it really wants to be.

Bully (Larry Clark, 2001)

Nick Stahl and Brad Renfro in Bully

Cast: Brad Renfro, Bijou Phillips, Rachel Miner, Nick Stahl, Michael Pitt, Leo Fitzpatrick, Kelli Garner, Daniel Franzese, Natalie Paulding, Jessica Sutta, Ed Amatrudo, Steve Raulerson, Judy Clayton, Alan Lilly, Irene B. Colletti. Screenplay: David McKenna, Roger Pullis, based on a book by Jim Schutze. Cinematography: Steve Gainer. Production design: Linda Burton. Film editing: Andrew Hafitz. 

Is Larry Clark's Bully sleazy exploitation, or is it a dark tragicomedy? That it might be both suggests a failure of the filmmakers to maintain a consistent tone. The first part of the film clearly seems designed to shock and titillate, as we get to know the coterie of teenagers that has formed around Bobby (Nick Stahl) and his so-called best friend, Marty (Brad Renfro), who are locked in a sadomasochistic relationship. Blasting hard-core rap on their radios, they cruise their Florida neighborhoods in search of sex and drugs. They find a lot of both, and the sex is generously depicted on screen. But then the film turns in another direction as Marty's girlfriend, Lisa (Rachel Miner), begins to see Bobby as a threat to her relationship with Marty. She takes the process of eliminating that threat to its extreme: murder. The film then tilts into black comedy, as the inept, drug-addled gang develops a plot to off Bobby. But then it veers back into something like reality when their plot almost accidentally succeeds and the members of the gang sober up enough to be aware of what they've done. I think Bully would have been received more generously if Clark had treated the sex scenes more discreetly, giving some in the audience an excuse to dismiss it as semi-pornographic. But the film, which is based on an actual case, still has the power to disturb. 

China Moon (John Bailey, 1994)

Ed Harris and Madeleine Stowe in China Moon

Cast: Ed Harris, Madeleine Stowe, Benicio Del Toro, Charles Dance, Patricia Healey, Tim Powell, Pruitt Taylor Vince. Screenplay: Roy Carlson. Cinematography: Willy Kurant. Production design: Conrad E. Angone. Film editing: Carol Littleton, Jill Savitt. Music: George Fenton.

John Bailey's China Moon is a  neo-noir with perhaps a few too many plot twists for its own good. It asks us to believe that a police detective (Ed Harris) who is shown to be keenly observant in the opening scenes of the movie should be so easily hoodwinked into a dangerous situation by a femme fatale (Madeleine Stowe). It also asks us to put up with an awful Southern accent assumed by Charles Dance in the role of the femme fatale's nasty husband. But if you can suspend disbelief for those things, it's a tolerable if forgettable movie.  

Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1978)

Kaycee Moore and Henry G. Sanders in Killer of Sheep

Cast: Henry G. Sanders, Kaycee Moore, Charles Bracy, Angela Burnett, Eugene Cherry, Jack Drummond, Delores Farley. Screenplay: Charles Burnett. Cinematography: Charles Burnett. Film editing: Charles Burnett. 

"Poetic" is not a word I like to use about movies, but it's the one that comes most to mind in thinking about Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep. Great poetry often comes from juxtaposition and irony, and Burnett's film is full of such things. For example, the scene in which Stan (Henry G. Sanders) and his friend return wearily from an ill-fated task, lugging a motor down some stairs and into a truck, only to have it tumble from the truck bed and crash into ruin. As they trudge home, children are leaping in perilous freedom from rooftop to rooftop over their heads. The image needs no exposition; it lingers in the mind for what it is, a scene pregnant with symbolic truth. Throughout the film, songs are played, sometimes diagetically, as in the dance of Stan and his wife (Kaycee Moore) to a phonograph record of "This Bitter Earth" by Dinah Washington pictured above, but also nondiagetically, throughout the film, with the words of the songs resonating both directly and ironically with the images. This is an almost documentary portrait of life in the Los Angeles ghetto of Watts, inspired by the Italian neorealists, with a mostly nonprofessional cast drawn from its residents. Its poetry comes from a personal vision, and producer-writer-director-editor Burnett's vision is a powerful and haunting one. 

The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, 2024)

 

Cast: Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce, Sandrine Holt, Elizabeth Saunders, Jennifer Dale, Eric Weinthal, Jeff Yung, Ingvar Sigurdsson. Vyslav Krystyan, Matt Willis, Steve Switzman. Screenplay: David Cronenberg. Cinematography: Douglas Koch. Production design: Carol Spier. Film editing: Christopher Donaldson. Music: Howard Shore.

David Cronenberg's The Shrouds is a film for those who think we've made a Faustian bargain with technology, or that no good invention goes unpunished. Not that the invention by Cronenberg's protagonist, Karsh Relikh (Vincent Cassel), is necessarily a good one. I, for one, can't imagine enough people wanting to see their loved one rotting in the grave to warrant investment in a technology that allows them to do that. But take that premise for what it is: a way of commenting on the downside of any new so-called technological advancement, from the internal combustion engine to the atomic bomb to artificial intelligence. The point of Cronenberg's story, told through horror movie tropes, is that the human factor, lust and greed, pervades any attempt to transcend human limitations. As a movie, it's not especially satisfying, given that Cronenberg hasn't created any characters that elicit our sympathies. But as a fable, it has a dark power and truth.  

The Big Night (Joseph Losey, 1951)

Philip Bourneuf, Dorothy Comingore, and John Drew Barrymore in The Big Night

Cast: John Drew Barrymore, Preston Foster, Joan Lorring, Howard St. John, Dorothy Comingore, Philip Bourneuf, Howland Chamberlain, Myron Healey, Emile Meyer, Mauri Leighton. Screenplay: Joseph Losey, Stanley Ellin, based on a novel by Ellin. Cinematography: Hal Mohr. Art direction: Nicolai Remisoff. Film editing: Edward Mann. Music: Lyn Murray. 

An odd little noir, Joseph Losey's The Big Night begins with an exposition full of enigmas. We learn that it's George La Main's (John Drew Barrymore) 17th birthday, and that his father, Andy (Preston Foster), who owns a small bar, has bought them tickets to a prize fight. We see George reading a newspaper column by Al Judge (Howard St. John). But when he asks his father if Frances (or perhaps Francis -- the spelling in the closed caption reinforces the ambiguity) is going with them, the answer is evasive. And then, just as his father brings out a birthday cake and George blows out all of the candles but one, none other than Al Judge enters the bar and orders George's father to take off his shirt. "Show me some skin!" he commands, insisting that Andy remove his undershirt as well. Then he beats the submissive, prostrate Andy with his cane. Movies of the era didn't get much more homoerotically sadomasochistic than this, and there's more rather kinky stuff to come. The rest of this strange film takes its short time (75 minutes) to inform George (and us) what's really going on. In its day, reviewers mostly dismissed The Big Night as a routine melodrama. Now we know that Losey was about to go onto the blacklist and into exile (along with a couple of the movie's uncredited screenwriters, Hugo Butler and Ring Lardner Jr.), so it's tempting to interpret it as a fable about American postwar paranoia, homophobia, and even, in one remarkable scene, racism. Time does curious things to art. 

Eureka (Nicolas Roeg, 1983)

Gene Hackman in Eureka 

Cast: Gene Hackman, Theresa Russell, Rutger Hauer, Jane Lapotaire, Mickey Rourke, Ed Lauter, Joe Pesci, Helena Kallianotes, Cavan Kendall, Corin Redgrave, Joe Spinell. Screenplay: Paul Mayersberg, based on a book by Marshall Houts. Cinematography: Alex Thomson. Production design: Michael Seymour. Film editing: Tony Lawson. Music: Stanley Myers. 

I'm pretty sure what Nicolas Roeg had in mind when he made Eureka were those blockbuster melodramas of the 1940s and '50s based on doorstop bestsellers with a touch of scandal, like Kings Row (Sam Wood, 1942, Duel in the Sun (King Vidor et al., 1946), and Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956). They danced on the edge of what the Production Code would allow, but Roeg wasn't hindered by that. Still, he managed to get an X rating slapped on the movie (for, of all things, violence) that was only one of the reasons Eureka was pulled from distribution and failed at the box office. It didn't receive much approval from critics, either, although today there are some who think it an overlooked classic. Gene Hackman plays a prospector who strikes it rich when he discovers gold, buys an island in the Caribbean, and has a daughter (Theresa Russell) who marries a Frenchman. That's where his troubles have compounded by the time the film gets done with the backstory of his gold strike. Everybody wants a piece of his fortune, including his son-in-law (Rutger Hauer) and the mob, headed by a gangster named Mayakofsky (Joe Pesci). The whole thing culminates in a murder and a big trial scene that includes one of the most improbable cross-examinations I've ever seen in a movie. Oh, and there's also a voodoo orgy for good measure. It's a mess, barely held together by Hackman's professionalism as an actor, but it has the kind of perverse fascination that only a movie mess possesses.

Fruitvale Station (Ryan Coogler, 2013)

Michael B. Jordan in Fruitvale Station

Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Octavia Spencer, Kevin Durand, Chad Michael Murray, Ahna O'Reilly, Ariana Neal, Keenan Coogler, Trestin George, Joey Oglesby, Michael James, Marjorie Crump-Shears. Screenplay: Ryan Coogler. Cinematography: Rachel Morrison. Production design: Hannah Beachler. Film editing: Claudia Costello, Michael P. Shawver. Music: Ludwig Göransson. 

As long as it stays true to its neorealist roots, Ryan Coogler's Fruitvale Station is a very good movie indeed, and one that has proved a harbinger of better movies to come in Coogler's career. It goes soft in casting actors like Octavia Spencer and Kevin Durand in roles that bring attention to their familiarity amid less-familiar faces. (Michael B. Jordan has become a familiar face, but was comparatively unknown at the time.) It also indulges in a little too much sentimentality, as in the stray dog scene, and some unnecessary coincidence, as in the reappearance of Katie (Ahna O'Reilly), the woman Oscar helps in the market, on the BART train that night. Perhaps the biggest mistake, however, is in turning the film into a  biopic of Oscar Grant. By focusing on Grant's backstory the film blunts the points it makes about racism, the training of police, and the dynamic of crowds. Oscar Grant certainly didn't deserve to die that night, but then no one did. Still, it's a meaningful film, with fine performances by Jordan, Spencer, Melonie Diaz, and the very young Ariana Neal as Oscar's daughter. It's also a skillfully made one, especially in its editing and in the mercifully subtle score by Ludwig Göransson. 

Benny's Video (Michael Haneke, 1992)

Arno Frisch in Benny's Video

Cast: Arno Frisch, Angela Winkler, Ulrich Mūhe, Ingrid Stassner, Stephanie Brehme, Stefan Polasek. Screenplay: Michael Haneke. Cinematography: Christian Berger. Production design: Christoph Kanter. Film editing: Maria Homolkova. 

Sometimes I admire the unsparing vision of Michael Haneke's films, and sometimes I think he's just bullying us. I felt that way at the beginning of Benny's Video when he showed the slaughter of a hog twice in succession. Later, when I knew why he did it, I felt more accepting. And yet, by the end of the film, when a sort of justice is done to his characters, who are both disturbed and disturbing, I felt nothing but a kind of resentment at being toyed with for 110 minutes. Haneke is a great manipulator, able to make you believe in his characters and the ghastly situations they put themselves in, but to what end? If that's an objection, it could probably be made of any number of great filmmakers, starting with Alfred Hitchcock, but why do I feel that in films like Benny's Video Haneke represents the decadence of an art form, and not what he seems to be trying to suggest: the decadence of our civilization?