Five Star Final (Mervyn LeRoy, 1931)

Edward G. Robinson and Oscar Apfel in Five Star Final

Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Marian Marsh, H.B. Warner, Anthony Bushell, George E. Stone, Frances Starr, Ona Munson, Boris Karloff, Aline MacMahon, Oscar Apfel. Screenplay: Byron Morgan, Robert Loird, based on a play by Louis Weitzenkorn. Cinematography: Sol Polito. Art direction: Jack Okey. Film editing: Frank Ware. 

Part of Mervyn LeRoy's Five Star Final is brisk and lively, and part of it is stiff and stagy. Edward G. Robinson plays Randall, managing editor of a New York tabloid called The Evening Gazette. Randall is being pressured by the paper's editor, circulation manager, and advertising sales director to increase circulation by printing a series about a murder that took place 20 years ago, in which a woman named Nancy Voorhees (Frances Starr) shot her boss when he reneged on a promise to marry her. She was acquitted of the crime because she was pregnant, but the sensation of the trial lingers in memory. Randall marshals his reporters, including a rather sinister one named Isopod (Boris Karloff), to find out whatever happened to Nancy. They discover that she's alive and happily married to Michael Townsend (H.B. Warner) who knows her story and has been willing to raise her daughter, Jenny (Marian Marsh) as his own. Moreover, Jenny is about to get married to Philip Weeks (Anthony Bushell), from a prominent family. Sensationally flogging the story has dire consequences for all concerned. Unfortunately, the melodramatic scenes that take place in the Townsend household are the ones we are supposed to believe in and take to heart, wrecking the tone of the movie. The entertaining ones in the newspaper office, filled with colorful characters and full of snappy repartee of the kind the Production Code would suppress, are the ones that bring Five Star Final to life. Robinson and Karloff are fine, and Aline MacMahon as Randall's secretary gets to pull off some memorable lines. When a Jewish reporter threatens to change his name to advance his career, she shoots back: "Don't do it, kid. New York's too full of Christians as it is." 

Brideshead Revisited (Julian Jarrold, 2008)

Ben Whishaw and Matthew Goode in Brideshead Revisited

Cast: Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw, Hayley Atwell, Emma Thompson, Patrick Malahide, Michael Gambon, Greta Scacchi, Ed Stoppard, Felicity Jones, Jonathan Cake. Screenplay: Andrew Davies, Jeremy Brock, based on a novel by Evelyn Waugh. Cinematography: Jess Hall. Production design: Alice Normington. Film editing: Chris Gill. Music: Adrian Johnston. 

Julian Jarrold's version of Brideshead Revisited pales in comparison to the classic 1981 miniseries. Despite a greater emphasis on the queerness of the relationship of Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) and Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw), Jarrold's film comes across as tepid and talky. Goode and Whishaw are well-cast, and they get impressive support from Emma Thompson as Lady Marchmain, Michael Gambon as her estranged husband, and Patrick Malahide as Charles's remotely vague father. But the film feels rushed as it tries to encompass the events of Evelyn Waugh's novel while trying to illuminate the book's complex manipulations of faith and family that span decades. 

Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino, 2007)

Zoë Bell in Death Proof

Cast: Kurt Russell, Zoë Bell, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Tracie Thoms, Rose McGowan, Jordan Ladd, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Quentin Tarantino, Mary Harriel, Eli Roth. Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino. Cinematography: Quentin Tarantino. Production design: Steve Joyner. Film editing: Sally Menke. 

Quentin Tarantino's parody of quick-and-dirty "grindhouse" movies, Death Proof, is sometimes dirty but not always quick enough. It's almost two hours long, when the originals were rarely more than an hour and a half. Kurt Russell plays a psychotic killer, an aging stuntman who uses his "deathproofed" car as a weapon against young women. Eventually, of course, it's young women who get their revenge against him. But we have to wait a long time for that revenge to take place, as it does after a spectacular car chase. It's a movie for Tarantino fans and people who like to see fast cars destroyed. 

Felicia's Journey (Atom Egoyan, 1999)

Bob Hoskins and Elaine Cassidy in Felicia's Journey

Cast: Bob Hoskins, Elaine Cassidy, Arsenée Khanjian, Sheila Reid, Nizwar Karanj, Peter McDonald, Gerard McSorley, Marie Stafford, Brid Brennan, Susan Parry. Screenplay: Atom Egoyan, based on a novel by William Trevor. Cinematography: Paul Sarossy. Production design: Jim Clay. Film editing: Susan Shipton. Music: Mychael Danna. 

A tightly wound performance by Bob Hoskins and a touchingly vulnerable one by Elaine Cassidy make Atom Egoyan's Felicia's Journey memorable. Cassidy is Felicia, an Irish girl who comes to Birmingham in search of the young man who made her pregnant and receives the sinister aid of Joe Hilditch (Hoskins), who runs a catering business. Egoyan subordinates suspense to character development and mood, which saves Felicia's Journey from being a routine and generic serial killer story. Paul Sarossy's cinematography avoids the clichés of darkness and shadow characteristic of the genre, and Mychael Danna's sometimes off-beat score also sidesteps familiarity. 

School on Fire (Ringo Lam, 1988)

Fennie Yuen in School on Fire

Cast: Fennie Yuen, Sarah Lee, Damian Lau, Lam Ching-ying, Roy Cheung, Terrence Fok Shui-Wah, Joe Chu Kai-Sang, William Ho Ha-Kui, Chan Lap-Ban, Li Kwong-Tim. Screenplay: Nam Yin. Cinematography: Joe Chan. Art direction: Luk Tze-Fung. Film editing: Tony Kwok-Chung Chow. Music: Lowell Lo. 

Ringo Lam's School on Fire is the culmination of a series of "on fire" movies that started with City on Fire (1982) and continued with Prison on Fire (1987). (The 1991 sequel to the latter, Prison on Fire II, was made a response to the popularity of Chow Yun-fat in the first two films.) School on Fire centers on a schoolgirl, Chu Yuen Fong (Fennie Yuen), who is caught up in the infiltration into the schools of a triad headed by Smart (a handsomely sinister Roy Cheung). I think School on Fire is the best of the lot, in part because Lam's concentration on characters as well as action brings in focus his vision of corruption in Hong Kong. Still, nobody does frenzy better than Lam, and he tops himself with the climactic scene of School on Fire in which people and weapons and furniture are whipped into a chaotic conflict that makes you wonder how any of the actors involved in it survived.  

Maniac Cop (William Lustig, 1988)

Robert Z'Dar in Maniac Cop

Cast: Tom Atkins, Bruce Campbell, Laurene Landon, Richard Roundtree, William Smith, Robert Z'Dar, Sheree North, Nina Arvesen, Nick Barbaro, Lou Bonacki, Barry Brenner, Victoria Catlin. Screenplay: Larry Cohen. Cinematography: James Lemmo, Vincent J. Rabe. Production design: Jonathan R. Hodges. Film editing: David Kern. Music: Jay Chattaway. 

Whoever did the closed captions for William Lustig's Maniac Cop deserves special credit for recognizing the movie's essence. Instead of the usual description of background noises, like "swooshing sounds" or "loud explosion," they inserted the equivalent of comic book words like "POW!" and "WHAM!" So when a van takes a nose-dive into the waters of the bay, instead of "gurgling sounds" as it sinks, we get "*BLUB* *BLUB*." In short, Maniac Cop is schlock, but knows it, as you might expect that when you see that the cast includes Bruce Campbell, who made his name by teaming up with director Sam Raimi on such campy horror movies as The Evil Dead (1981) and Army of Darkness (1992). (Raimi has a cameo in Maniac Cop as a TV reporter.) Lustig's movie is less outrageously over the top than the Raimi films, and there's a good deal of sub-par dialogue and acting, but it spawned two sequels.  

We Don't Live Here Anymore (John Curran, 2004)

Mark Ruffalo, Peter Krause, Naomi Watts, and Laura Dern in We Don't Live Here Anymore

Cast: Mark Ruffalo. Laura Dern, Peter Krause, Naomi Watts, Sam Charles, Ginger Page, Jennifer Bishop, Amber Rothwell, Meg Roe, Jim Francis, Marc Baur, Patrick Earley. Screenplay: Larry Gross, based on stories by Andre Dubus. Cinematography: Maryse Alberti. Production design: Tony Devenyi. Film editing: Alexandre de Franceschi. Music: Michael Convertino. 

Even a quartet of accomplished actors can't save John Curran's We Don't Live Here Anymore from the fact that none of the characters they play is interesting enough to elicit our concern about what happens to  them. The Lindens, Jack (Mark Ruffalo) and Terry (Laura Dern), and the Evanses, Hank (Peter Krause) and Edith (Naomi Watts), are thirtysomethings living in a town where Jack and Hank teach at the local college. Jack and Edith are having an affair, and the tensions their sneaking around causes eventually drive Terry into a reciprocal affair with Hank. At some point it occurred to me that these marital disputes were really none of my business, and that I didn't really care if or how they worked things out. The film tries to keep us involved, laying on Michael Convertino's melancholy score to elicit emotions that the screenplay fails to inspire, but in the end I was left with nothing but the pleasure of watching actors act. 

Dead Presidents (Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes, 1995)

Bokeem Woodbine, Freddy Rodriguez, Larenz Tate, and Keith David in Dead Presidents

Cast: Larenz Tate, Keith David, Chris Tucker, Freddy Rodriguez, Rose Jackson, N'Bushe Wright, Alvaleta Guess, James Pickens Jr., Jennifer Lewis, Clifton Powell, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Terrence Howard, Bokeem Woodbine. Screenplay: Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes, Michael Henry Brown. Cinematography: Lisa Rinzler. Production design: David Brisbin. Film editing: Dan Lebental. Music: Danny Elfman. 

The Hughes Brothers' Dead Presidents sags under the weight of its own ambition to portray the urban Black experience in the Vietnam War era, trying to be both a war film and a heist movie. Larenz Tate is too lightweight an actor for the central role of Anthony Curtis, who chooses to join the Marines and returns from the war to find his expectations of fitting into postwar life thwarted. The film succeeds in providing vivid roles for supporting actors, particularly Chris Tucker and Keith David, but the final third of the movie feels rushed to its rather flat conclusion.

Winter Brothers (Hlynur Pálmason, 2017)

Elliott Crosset Hove in Winter Brothers

Cast: Elliott Crosset Hove, Simon Sears, Vic Carmen Sonne, Lars Mikkelsen, Peter Plaugborg, Michael Brostrup, Anders Hove, Birgit Thøt Jensen, Laurits Honoré Rønne, Frédéric André. Screenplay: Hlynur Pálmason. Cinematography: Maria von Hausswolff. Production design: Gustav Potoppidan. Film editing: Julius Krebs Damsbo. Music: Toke Brorson Odin. 

Hlynur Pálmason's Winter Brothers begins in darkness, with a few lights shuttling around in the blackness that eventually reveal that we are in a mine, part of the limestone quarry and chalk factory that forms the setting for the film. It's a way of setting up the contrast of dark and light that gives the film its peculiar power. This is a bleak setting for wintry lives, particularly those of the brothers, Emil (Elliott Crosset Hove) and Johan (Simon Sears), who work in the factory. There's not much story to be told in the movie beyond delineating the tensions that exist between the brothers, the unsettled Emil and the more stoic Johan, but Pálmason, with the significant aid of Maria von Hasswolff's cinematography, provides a darkly poetic vision of figures in a forbidding landscape. 

Neighboring Sounds (Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2012)

Gustavo Jahn and Irma Brown in Neighboring Sounds

Cast: Irandhir Santos, Gustavo Jahn, Maeve Jinkings, W.J. Solha, Irma Brown, Lula Terra, Yuri Holanda, Clébia Souza, Albert Tenório, Nivaldo Nascimento, Felipe Bandeira, Clara Pinheiro de Oliveira. Screenplay: Kleber Mendonça Filho. Cinematography: Pedro Sotero, Fabricio Tadeu. Production design: Juliano Dornelles. Film editing: João Maria, Kleber Mendonça Filho. Music: DJ Dolores. 

Oblique, elliptical, subtly unsettling, Kleber Mendonça Filho's debut fictional feature film Neighboring Sounds is a glimpse into the private lives of some middle-class residents of a condominium complex. It gradually exposes their secrets in ways that will frustrate viewers expecting conventionally dramatic revelations. But then, how much do you really know about your neighbors?