Black Narcissus (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1947)

Cast: Deborah Kerr, David Farrar, Kathleen Byron, Flora Robson, Sabu, Jean Simmons, May Hallatt, Jenny Laird, Judith Furse, Esmond Knight, Eddie Whaley Jr. Screenplay: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, based on a novel by Rumer Godden. Cinematography: Jack Cardiff. Production design: Alfred Junge. Film editing: Reginald Mills. Music: Brian Easdale.

This much-loved film has so far escaped condemnation for its "orientalism," the brown-face performances of Jean Simmons, May Hallatt, and Esmond Knight, and its treatment in general of the Indian characters as mysterious and alien. And perhaps it's better to concentrate on the erotic instead of the exotic in Black Narcissus, to enjoy its stunning, Oscar-winning cinematography and production design. Who can forget the vertiginous moments at the precipice where the bell was rung -- even though those moments were sheer camera-trickery, accomplished in the Pinewood Studios with matte paintings? Or the erotic charge every time David Farrar walks shirtless among the nuns and Kathleen Byron gives him the eye?

Westward Passage (Robert Milton, 1932)

Laurence Olivier and Ann Harding in Westward Passage

Cast: Ann Harding, Laurence Olivier, Irving Pichel, Zasu Pitts, Juliette Compton, Irene Purcell, Emmett King, Florence Roberts, Ethel Griffies, Don Alvarado, Bonita Granville, Florence Lake, Edgar Kennedy, Herman Bing. Screenplay: Margaret Ayer Barnes, Bradley King, Humphrey Pearson. Cinematography: Lucien N. Andriot. Art direction: Carroll Clark. Film editing: Charles Craft. Music: Bernhard Kaun. 

Laurence Olivier made an early try at American movie stardom with this creaky marital drama, and its failure sent him back to England and success on the stage. He plays an egotistical would-be writer, Nick Allen, who makes things hard for his wife, Olivia (Ann Harding), and their small daughter. After trying to make a go of it, they divorce and she re-marries. Both find success, she in marriage and he in writing, but when they meet again on a ship bound for America from Europe, he tries to rekindle their relationship. It's a fairly flimsy movie, and Olivier looks alarmingly skinny and lupine.

Divorce Italian Style (Pietro Germi, 1961)

Marcello Mastroianni in Divorce Italian Style

Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Daniela Rocca, Stefania Sandrelli, Leopoldo Trieste, Odoardo Spadaro, Margherita Girelli, Angela Cardile, Lando Buzzanca, Pietro Tordi, Ugo Torrente, Antonio Acqua, Bianca Castagnetta, Giovanni Fassiolo. Screenplay: Alfredo Giannetti, Ennio De Concini, Pietro Germi. Cinematography: Leonida Barboni, Carlo Di Palma. Production design: Carlo Egidi. Film editing: Roberto Cinquini. Music: Carlo Rustichelli.

American movies were still trying to shrug off the morality enforced by the Production Code when Italy sent us the brilliant comedy about adultery and murder called Divorce Italian Style. And how ready Hollywood was to jettison that morality can be gauged by the fact that the film's screenplay won an Oscar, and that its director and star, Pietro Germi and Marcello Mastroianni, were nominated as well. The irony here is that Divorce Italian Style is about the consequences of a hidebound moral code, one in which murder could be condoned but divorce was forbidden. Germi and his co-screenwriters make the most of this irony, providing ingenious twists as Mastroianni's Ferdinando encounters multiple obstacles to his plans to rid himself of his wife, Rosalia (Daniela Rocca), and marry the lovely Angela (Stefania Sandrelli). It's one of Mastroianni's greatest performances, made even more striking by the inclusion of a screening of La Dolce Vita, the 1960 Federico Fellini film that made Mastroianni into an international star, in the Sicilian town that is the setting of Germi's film. 

Say Anything.... (Cameron Crowe, 1989)

John Cusack in Say Anything....

Cast: John Cusack, Ione Skye, John Mahoney, Lili Taylor, Amy Brooks, Pamela Adlon, Joan Cusack, Jason Gould, Loren Dean, Jeremy Piven, Bebe Neuwirth, Eric Stoltz, Philip Baker Hall. Screenplay: Cameron Crowe. Cinematography: Lásló Kovács. Production design: Mark W. Mansbridge. Film editing: Richard Marks. Music: Anne Dudley, Richard Gibbs.

No teen comedy is more full of memorable moments and lines than Cameron Crowe's Say Anything.... "I gave her my heart and she gave me a pen." "I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed.'' And even today, John Cusack's Lloyd Dobler holding up a boom box playing Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" remains one of the definitive movie images, long after boom boxes became obsolete. Crowe managed to overcome the banality of the misfit romance trope -- slacker and high achiever fall in love -- with the help of an enormously talented cast.

Che: Part Two (Steven Soderbergh, 2008)

Benicio Del Toro in Che: Part Two

Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Demián Bichir, Franka Potente, Norman Santiago, Joaquim de Almeida, Lou Diamond Phillips, Jorge Perugorría, Rubén Ochandiano, Cristian Mercado, Carlos Acosta-Milian, Armando Riesco, Marisé Álvarez, Marc-André Grondin, Carlos Bardem, Yul Vazquez. Screenplay: Peter Buchman, Benjamin A. van der Veen. Cinematography: Steven Soderbergh. Production design: Antxón Gómez, Philip Messina. Film editing: Pablo Zumárraga. Music: Alberto Iglesias.

The continuation of Steven Soderbergh's epic portrait of Ernesto "Che" Guevara almost stands on its own as a film, focused as it is on Che's ill-fated attempt to stir revolution in Bolivia after the success in Cuba. Che: Part Two is subtitled "Guerrilla," and it deals largely with Che's illness -- he suffers from asthma -- and inability to control his troops before his final capture and execution. Soderbergh avoids an elegiac tone, concentrating instead on the details of guerrilla warfare.

Journey Into Fear (Norman Foster, 1943)

Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles in Journey Into Fear

Cast: Joseph Cotten, Dolores Del Rio, Everett Sloane, Ruth Warrick, Orson Welles, Agnes Moorehead, Jack Durant, Eustace Wyatt, Frank Readick, Edgar Barrier, Jack Moss, Hans Conried. Screenplay: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, based on a novel by Eric Ambler. Cinematography: Karl Struss. Art direction: Albert S. D'Agostino, Mark-Lee Kirk. Film editing: Mark Robson. Music: Roy Webb.

While they were working on The Magnificent Ambersons, Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten used some spare time to rewrite a screenplay by Richard Collins and Ben Hecht for a property owned by RKO, Eric Ambler's spy novel Journey Into Fear. Welles would have directed, but he was still tied up on Ambersons, so he assigned the job to Norman Foster, though he still had time to play the secondary role of Col. Haki, and as producer to see to it that many of the actors he had worked with -- Cotten, Dolores Del Rio, Everett Sloane, Ruth Warrick, and Agnes Moorehead -- played key roles. The result is a film whose complicated plot never quite resolves itself into clarity, but which abounds in Wellesian moments, such as the desperate struggle on the rainswept ledge of a hotel at the film's climax. Unfortunately, Welles's battle with RKO over the editing of Ambersons resulted in his firing, and the editing of Journey Into Fear was similarly taken out of his hands.

Che: Part One (Steven Soderbergh, 2008)

Benicio Del Toro and Demián Bichir in Che: Part One

Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Demián Bichir, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Rodrigo Santoro, Julia Ormond, Oscar Isaac, Ramon Fernandez, Yul Vazquez, Santiago Cabrera, Édgar Ramírez. Screenplay: Peter Buchman. Cinematography: Steven Soderbergh. Production design: Antxón Gómez. Film editing: Pablo Zumárraga. Music: Alberto Iglesias.

Subtitled "The Argentine," the first part of Steven Soderbergh's epic portrait of Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Benicio Del Toro) covers the revolutionary's life from his first meeting with Fidel Castro (Demián Bichir) in 1955 through the success of the campaign in Cuba to Che's address to the United Nations in 1964, proclaiming a "battle to the death" against American imperialism. With a less coherent narrative line than the one in Che: Part Two, the first film feels more scattered and just a little superficial, but it has a strong feeling of actuality in any given sequence.

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (Preston Sturges, 1943)

Diana Lynn, William Demarest, Betty Hutton, and Eddie Bracken
in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek

Cast: Betty Hutton, Eddie Bracken, William Demarest, Diana Lynn, Porter Hall, Emory Parnell, Al Bridge, Julius Tannen, Victor Potel, Brian Donlevy, Akim Tamiroff. Screenplay: Preston Sturges. Cinematography: John F. Seitz. Art direction: Hans Dreier, Ernst Fegté. Film editing: Stuart Gilmore. Music: Charles Bradshaw, Leo Shuken.

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek is one of the funniest films ever made, but it's my least favorite Preston Sturges movie. That's because it leans more heavily on wackiness than on wit. I have to admire how skillfully Sturges managed to hoodwink the censors -- could anyone else have managed to name a character, let alone one who mysteriously gets pregnant, Trudy Kockenlocker? The sheer audacity and the skill of the story's construction are breathtaking. But it's just a little too loud for my taste, which is partly the fault of casting Betty Hutton. Sturges was a director who could get astonishingly funny performances out of serious actresses like Barbara Stanwyck and Claudette Colbert, but casting the uninhibited Hutton as Trudy seems to kick the film up a notch too high. Still, the movie has one of my boyhood crushes, Diana Lynn, to bring a sly note to her role as Trudy's wisecracking kid sister, and every moment William Demarest is on the screen, steam coming out of his ears, is welcome.

Still Walking (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2008)

Cast: Hiroshi Abe, Yui Natsukawa, You, Kazuya Takahashi, Shohei Tanaka, Kirin Kiki, Yoshio Harada. Screenplay: Hirokazu Koreeda. Cinematography: Yutaka Yamazaki. Art direction: Toshihiro Isomi, Keiko Mitsumatsu. Film editing: Hirokazu Koreeda. Music: Gontiti.

A family gathers for an annual ritual: mourning the eldest son, who drowned 12 years earlier while saving the life of another boy. Hirokazu Koreeda's film earned the expected but appropriate comparison to Yasujiro Ozu's films that explored family tensions, as the surviving son, Ryota (Hiroshi Abe), struggles with his resentment of the parents' devotion to their dead son and their disappointment with and disapproval of the course his life has taken.

The Big Steal (Don Siegel, 1949)

Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Patric Knowles, John Qualen, and William Bendix in The Big Steal

Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, William Bendix, Patric Knowles, Ramon Novarro, Don Alvorado, John Qualen, Pascual García Peña. Screenplay: Daniel Mainwaring, Gerald Drayson Adams, based on a story by Richard Wormser. Cinematography: Harry J. Wild. Art direction: Ralph Berger, Albert S. D'Agostino. Film editing: Samuel E. Beetley. Music: Leigh Harline.

Can film noir be funny? The Big Steal is unquestionably noirish, reteaming as it does the pair from the über-noir Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947), Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer, and involving a lot of twists and turns in its plot centered on a payroll heist. But director Don Siegel and his cast give it a lightness and wit that elicits as much amusement as suspense. Ramon Novarro has some droll moments as a Mexican police inspector.

Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle, 1958)

Maurice Ronet in Elevator to the Gallows

Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Georges Poujouly, Yori Bertin, Jean Wall, Iván Petrovich, Elga Andersen, Lino Ventura. Screenplay: Roger Nimier, Louis Malle, based on a novel by Noël Calef. Cinematography: Henri Decaë. Art direction: Jean Mandaroux, Rino Mondellini. Film editing: Léonide Azar. Music: Miles Davis.

Crime doesn't pay, we're often told, and if any movie seemed designed to make that point it's Louis Malle's first non-documentary feature Elevator to the Gallows which is about two intersecting crimes that both go wrong. The first is the plot by Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet) to kill his boss, Simon Carala, whose wife, Florence (Jeanne Moreau), is Julien's mistress. Things begin to go wrong when Julien's car is stolen during the carefully plotted murder and Julien finds himself trapped overnight in an elevator. Then the car thief, Louis (Georges Poujouly), and his girlfriend, Véronique (Yori Bertin), go for a joy ride, during which Florence spots the car with Véronique in it and thinks Julien has abandoned her. Meanwhile, the joyriders find Julien's identification in the car they have stolen and check in under his name in a motel on the outskirts of Paris. They wind up partying with a German couple, taking pictures of the group that Véronique leaves for developing. But Louis murders the German couple when he tries to steal their Mercedes so he can abandon Julien's car. Oh, murder will out, too. Moreau was already well known in France as a stage actress, but her performance in Elevator to the Gallows made her a movie star, especially after Malle cast her in his next film, The Lovers (1958). The engaging twists of the film are given a melancholy cast by Miles Davis's evocative score.

Amélie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001)

Cast: Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus, Lorella Cravotta, Serge Merlin, Jamel Debbouze, Clotilde Mollet, Claire Maurier, Isabelle Nanty, Dominique Pinon, Artus de Penguern, Yolande Moreau, Urbain Canceller, Maurice Bénichou, Michel Robin. Screenplay: Guillaume Laurant, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Cinematography: Bruno Delbonnel. Production design: Aline Bonetto. Film editing: Hervé Schneid. Music: Yann Tiersen.

Amélie is a charming film, but I have to admit that I'm immune to its charms, finding it a bit self-conscious and much too aggressive in thrusting them upon us. It was a huge international hit, however, and remains a favorite of a lot of people whose taste I trust. Chacun à son goût.

Empire of Passion (Nagisa Oshima, 1978)

Kazuo Yoshiyuki and Tatsuya Fuji in Empire of Passion

Cast: Tatsuya Fuji, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Takahiro Tamura, Takuzo Kawatani, Akiko Koyama, Taiji Tonoyama, Sumie Sasaki, Eizo Kitamura, Masami Hasegawa, Kenzo Kawarasaki. Screenplay: Nagisa Oshima, based on a story by Itoko Nakamura. Cinematography: Yoshio Miyajima. Set decoration: Jusho Toda. Film editing: Keiichi Uraoka. Music: Toru Takemitsu.

A fine, creepy ghost story set in Edo period Japan. A man and woman plot to murder her husband and throw his body in a well. But as their passion cools, they become the subject of gossip and rumor, driving them apart. And then the murdered man's ghost begins appearing and the police decide to investigate. Handled with Oshima's characteristic take on sexual obsession.

Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick, 1987)

Vincent D'Onofrio in Full Metal Jacket

Cast: Matthew Modine, Vincent D'Onofrio, R. Lee Ermey, Adam Baldwin, Dorian Harewood, Kevyn Major Howard, Arliss Howard, Ngoc Lee, Papillon Soo. Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr, Gustav Hosford, based on a novel by Gustav Hosford. Cinematography: Douglas Milsome. Production design: Anton Furst. Film editing: Martin Hunter. Music: Vivian Kubrick. 

Is Full Metal Jacket one movie or two? That debate continues to rage, with a lot of us preferring the first half of the film, about the Marine boot camp, to the second, which follows some of the trainees into combat in Vietnam. Certainly the first half is dominated by the two most memorable performances in the movie, R. Lee Ermey as the drill sergeant and Vincent D'Onofrio as the private driven to madness by the former's training techniques. That inevitably leads to some dissatisfaction with the more conventional nature of the combat sequences, which, though often shot thrillingly, making use of various locations in, of all places, England, sometimes have a war movie familiarity that even a director like Stanley Kubrick can't overcome. 

Diary of a Chambermaid (Luis Buñuel, 1964)

Jeanne Moreau and Michel Piccoli in Diary of a Chambermaid

Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Georges Géret, Daniel Ivernel, Françoise Lugagne, Muni, Jean Ozenne, Michel Piccoli. Screenplay: Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carrière, based on a novel by Octave Mirbeau. Cinematography: Roger Fellous. Production design: Georges Wakhévitch. Film editing: Louisette Hautecoeur.

Jeanne Moreau's aura of knowingness serves as a filter through which we view the Monteil household in Luis Buñuel's sharp-edged satire on wealth and privilege.

Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

Cast: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Sydney Pollack, Todd Field, Marie Richardson, Thomas Gibson, Julienne Davis, Vinessa Shaw, Rade Serbedzija, Leelee Sobieski, Alan Cumming. Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick, Frederic Raphael, based on a story by Arthur Schnitzler. Cinematography: Larry Smith. Production design: Leslie Tomkins, Roy Walker. Film editing: Nigel Galt. Music: Jocelyn Pook.

Some people think Eyes Wide Shut is a masterpiece; others think it's pretentious hooey. While I incline toward the latter opinion, I have to wonder if Stanley Kubrick had lived to see it fully through its postproduction stage -- he died shortly after submitting a final cut to the studio -- he would have tinkered it into something that inspired less ambivalence. I also wonder if he hadn't yielded to studio pressure to cast movie stars in the lead roles, we wouldn't have found the characters played by Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman less glossy and more interesting. And then there are the orgy scenes, too choreographed to be real, although movie orgies are rarely titillating even when they're not digitally altered as the ones in the original release of the film were to avoid an NC-17 rating. The main thing for me, however, is that every time I see the movie I can't remember a few days later what it was all about. Which makes me wonder if it's about anything. 

The Tale of Zatoichi (Kenji Misumi, 1962)

Shintaro Katsu in The Tale of Zatoichi

Cast: Shintaro Katsu, Masayo Banri, Ryuzo Shimada, Hajime Mitamura, Shiguro Amachi, Michiro Minami, Eijiro Yanagi, Toshio Chiba, Manabu Morita. Screenplay: Minoru Inazaka, based on a story by Kan Shimozawa. Cinematography: Chikashi Makiura. Production design: Akira Naito. Film editing: Kanji Suganuma. Music: Akira Ifukube.

Shintaro Katsu's performance in The Tale of Zatoichi as the blind masseur who happens to be a brilliant swordsman launched a string of sequels as well as a long-running Japanese TV series in which he starred.

Cousin Cousine (Jean-Charles Tacchella, 1975)

Victor Lanoux and Marie-Christine Barrault in Cousin Cousine

Cast: Marie-Christine Barrault, Victor Lanoux, Marie-France Pisier, Guy Marchand, Ginette Garcin, Sybil Maas, Popeck, Pierre Plessis, Catherine Verlor. Screenplay: Jean-Charles Tacchella, Danièle Thompson. Cinematography: Eric Faucherre, Georges Lendi, Michel Thiriet. Film editing: Marie-Aimée Debril, Agnès Guillemot, Juliette Welfing. Music: Gérard Anfosso.

A pleasant romantic comedy about the ideal couple, Karine (Marie-Christine Barrault) and Ludovic (Victor Lanoux), who can't seem to get around to coupling, even though their spouses are having it off with each other. A bright international hit that was less brightly remade in 1989 as Cousins by Joel Schumacher with Ted Danson and Isabella Rossellini. It seems to need the French touch to bring its events and its off-beat characters to life.

Matador (Pedro Almodóvar, 1986)

Nacho Martínez and Assumpta Serna in Matador

Cast: Assumpta Serna, Antonio Banderas, Nacho Martínez, Eva Cobo, Julieta Serrano, Chus Lampreave, Carmen Maura, Eusebio Poncela. Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar, Jesús Ferrero. Cinematography: Ángel Luis Fernández. Production design: Fernando Sánchez. Film editing: José Salcedo. Music: Andrés Vicente Gómez.

Pedro Almodóvar was just getting established as a major filmmaker -- his big breakthrough, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, would come in 1988 -- when he released Matador, a film whose spicy stew of eccentrically transgressive characters, sex, and violence, all treated with a comic vision, led critics to compare him to Luis Buñuel. It has become more clear that Almodóvar is his own man, whatever the influences may have been. 

Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945)

Ann Savage and Tom Neal in Detour

Cast: Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald, Tim Ryan, Esther Howard, Pat Gleason. Screenplay: Martin Goldsmith, based on his novel. Cinematography: Edmund H. Kline. Art direction: Edward C. Jewell. Film editing: George McGuire. Music: Leo Erdody. 

If you ever want to discourage someone from hitchhiking, show them Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour. It's a classic B-movie noir with some astonishing twists and one of the most fascinatingly snake-like performances by a woman -- Ann Savage -- ever put on film. 

A River Called Titas (Ritwik Ghatak, 1973)

Cast: Prabir Mitra, Rosy Samad, Kabori Sarwar, Rawshan Jamil, Rani Sarkar, Sufia Rastam, Bonani Choudury, Golam Mustafa, Shafikul Islam. Screenplay: Ritwik Ghatak, based on a story by Advaita Malla Burman. Cinematography: Baby Islam. Film editing: Bashir Hossain. Music: Ustad Bahadur Khan.

The river, and the villages past which it flows, really does seem to be the central character in A River Called Titas, a film tinged by the turbulent history of Bangladesh. Although it weaves together many narrative threads, the central one is of the arranged marriage of Kishore (Prabar Mitra) and Rajar (Kabori Sarwar), which lasts only one night before Rajar is abducted. So brief is their marriage that she doesn't know his name, and after surviving the kidnapping and giving birth to the child they had conceived, spends much of her life searching for the boy's father, who went mad after the attack. The old-fashioned melodramatic fable blends with the realistic portrait of lives along the river.

Land of the Pharaohs (Howard Hawks, 1955)

Joan Collins in Land of the Pharaohs

Cast: Jack Hawkins, Joan Collins, Dewey Martin, Alexis Minotis, James Robertson Justice, Luisella Boni, Sydney Chaplin, James Hayter, Kerima, Piero Giagnoni. Screenplay: William Faulkner, Harry Kurnitz, Harold Jack Bloom. Cinematography: Lee Garmes, Russell Harlan. Art direction: Alexandre Trauner. Film editing: Vladimir Sagovsky. Music: Dimitri Tiomkin.    

Why has there never been a really good movie about ancient Egypt? Is it that we can't imagine those ancient peoples in any other terms than the sideways-walking figures on old walls? Archaeologists have uncovered enough about their daily lives, their customs and their religion, that it might be possible to put together a plausible story set in those times, but eventually filmmakers turn to spectacle, with lots of crowds and opulently fitted palaces inhabited by kings and courtiers wearing lots of gold and jewels. Land of the Pharaohs was an attempt by one of the great producer-directors of his day, Howard Hawks, enlisting none other than William Faulkner as a screenwriter. It, too, laid on the usual ancient frippery and a cast of thousands, and it was a box-office bomb, eliciting some critical sneers. More recently, it has attracted some admirers, including Martin Scorsese, though only as a "guilty pleasure." Hawks himself admitted that one of the problems he and the writers faced was that they "didn't know how a pharaoh talked," and Hawks was always a master of movies with good talk. So while it's impossible to take seriously, Land of the Pharaohs provides a good deal of entertainment, even if only of the sort derived from making fun of the movie. Though it's not ineptly made, it's also impossible to take seriously, especially when Joan Collins is vamping around. 

All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, 1999)

Toni Cantó and Cecilia Roth in All About My Mother

Cast: Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Candela Peña, Antonia San Juan, Penélope Cruz, Rosa Maria Sardà, Fernando Fernán Gómez, Toni Cantó, Eloy Azorín. Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar. Cinematography: Affonso Beato. Production design: Antxón Gómez. Film editing: José Salcedo. Music: Alberto Iglesias.

Fascinatingly complex melodrama that's part hommage to movies like Douglas Sirk's and part exploration of contemporary views on gender and sexuality, but mostly one of Pedro Almodóvar's most searching and honest films. It won the Oscar for best foreign language film.

The Barbarian (Sam Wood, 1933)

Cast: Ramon Novarro, Myrna Loy, Reginald Denny, Louise Closser Hale, C. Aubrey Smith, Edward Arnold, Blanche Friderici, Marcel Corday, Hedda Hopper, Leni Stengel. Screenplay: Anita Loos, Elmer Harris, based on a story by Edgar Selwyn. Cinematography: Harold Rosson. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Tom Held. Music: Herbert Stothart.

Orientalist fiddle-faddle with Ramon Novarro as an Egyptian prince disguised as a translator and tour director wooing a wealthy American tourist played by Myrna Loy. Novarro is dashing and handsome, but not quite a match for Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik (George Melford, 1921), the classic film in this dubious genre. Loy is still emerging from her "exotic" phase, playing the sultry woman of the world -- she's supposedly half Egyptian on her mother's side.

White Material (Claire Denis, 2009)

White Material (Claire Denis, 2009)

Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Christopher Lambert, Nicolas Devauchelle, William Nadylam, Michel Subor, Isaach De Bankolé, Adèle Ado, Ali Barkai. Screenplay: Claire Denis, Marie N'Diaye, Lucie Borleteau. Cinematography: Yves Cape. Production design: Abiassi Saint-Père. Film editing: Guy Lecorne. Music: Stuart Staples. 

Isabelle Huppert is an almost routinely extraordinary actress, and she gives one of her most striking performances in White Material, about the French owner of a coffee plantation in Africa. This is a far cry from Sydney Pollack's Out of Africa (1987), the glossy Oscar winner. Huppert's Maria Vial is a woman determined to the point of madness to get out her coffee crop during a civil war, even though the authorities have insisted she and her family should leave. Her husband, André (Christopher Lambert), is ready to flee, but she persists, even after their lazy, self-indulgent son, Manuel (Nicolas Duvauchelle), is captured by young rebel soldiers, abused, and possibly raped. Things continue to escalate in ever more complex and chaotic ways. It's an often harrowing film, held together in large part by Huppert's magnetism. 

I Know Where I'm Going! (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1945)

Cast: Wendy Hiller, Roger Livesey, Duncan MacKechnie, Finlay Currie, Pamela Brown, Murdo Morrison, Margot Fitzsimons, Catherine Lacey, Valentine Dyall, Petula Clark. Screenplay: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger. Cinematography: Erwin Hillier. Production design: Alfred Junge. Film editing: John Seabourne Sr. Music: Allan Gray.

A stubborn young Englishwoman travels to the Hebrides to marry a man who lives on a remote island, but her journey there is interrupted by bad weather. Stuck on the Isle of Mull, she finds herself falling in love with another man, a naval officer who also plans to journey to the island on shore leave. Lo and behold, she and the officer begin to fall in love, which only makes her more desperate to complete her journey. Complicating things, there's an ancient curse on the naval officer. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's film manages to overcome some dodgy psychology and hokey superstition with the aid of fine performances by Wendy Hiller as Joan, the stubborn young woman, and Roger Livesey as the officer under the weight of the curse, making their characters persuasive and credible. Erwin Hillier's cinematography is superbly atmospheric, and incidentally overcomes an unusual handicap: Although much of the film is shot on the Isle of Mull, Livesey never went there because he was performing in a play in London. His scenes were all filmed in the studio and a double was used in the location shots. 

L'Humanité (Bruno Dumont, 1999)

Cast: Emmanuel Schotté, Séverine Caneele, Philippe Tullier, Ghislain Ghesquère, Ginette Allègre. Screenplay: Bruno Dumont. Cinematography: Yves Cape. Production design: Marc-Philippe Guerig. Film editing: Guy Lecorne. Music: Richard Cuvillier.

Emmanuel Schotté's performance as an unlikely police detective in L'Humanité won the best actor award at Cannes. The film, about the detective's efforts to solve a case involving the rape and murder of a little girl,  is full of enigmatic moments and even paranormal events that test a viewer's credulity, but it winds up exerting a kind of exasperated fascination.

Dance, Girl, Dance (Dorothy Arzner, 1940)

Lucille Ball, Maureen O'Hara, and Virginia Field in Dance, Girl, Dance

Cast: Maureen O'Hara, Louis Hayward, Lucille Ball, Virginia Field, Ralph Bellamy, Maria Ouspenskaya, Mary Carlisle, Katharine Alexander, Edward Brophy, Walter Abel. Screenplay: Tess Slesinger, Frank Davis, based on a story by Vicki Baum. Cinematography: Russell Metty. Art direction: Van Nest Polglase, Alfred Herman. Film editing: Robert Wise. Music: Edward Ward.

Dorothy Arzner's film about chorus girls struggling to make lives for themselves in a milieu dominated by males and their gaze earned its place in the National Film Registry by being one of the few movies of the era to take the women's point of view seriously. It has its melodramatic excesses, but it steadily keeps its focus on the characters played by Lucille Ball and Maureen O'Hara instead of yielding time to its male leads, Louis Hayward and Ralph Bellamy. 

La Ciénaga (Lucrecia Martel, 2001)

Cast: Mercedes Morán, Graciela Borges, Martín Adjemián, Leonora Balcarce, Silvia Baylé, Sofia Bertolotto, Juan Cruz Bordeu, Noelia Bravo Herrera, Andrea López, Sebastián Montagna, Daniel Valenzuela, Franco Veneranda, Fabio Villafane, Diego Baenas. Screenplay: Lucrecia Martel. Cinematography: Hugo Colace. Production design: Graciela Oderigo. Film editing: Santiago Ricci. 

The members of an upper-middle-class Argentine family torment one another during the course of a sweltering summer spent at their country house. Lucrecia Martel established herself as one of the premier Latin American filmmakers with this, her first feature. 

Nobody Lives Forever (Jean Negulesco, 1946)

Cast: John Garfield, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Walter Brennan, Faye Emerson, George Coulouris, George Tobias, Robert Shayne, Richard Gaines, Richard Erdman. Screenplay: W.R. Burnett, based on his novel. Cinematography: Arthur Edeson. Art direction: Hugh Reticker, Max Parker. Film editing: Rudi Fehr. Music: Adolph Deutsch.

Changes of heart are always risky, especially in film noir, so when Nick Blake (John Garfield) falls in love with the rich widow Gladys Halvorsen (Geraldine Fitzgerald), who has been chosen as the mark in a con game, things get a little screwed up. Originally planned as a vehicle for Humphrey Bogart, Nobody Lives Forever benefits from Garfield's good looks, making the romantic twist a little more interesting. Jean Negulesco, better known for glossy romance than for noir, handles the material well, especially the climactic shootout.

Time Bandits (Terry Gilliam, 1981)

Craig Warnock and Sean Connery in Time Bandits

Cast: John Cleese, Sean Connery, Shelley Duvall, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Michael Palin, Ralph Richardson, Peter Vaughan, David Warner, Craig Warnock, David Rappaport, Kenny Baker, Malcolm Dixon, Mike Edmonds, Jack Purvis, Tiny Ross, Jim Broadbent, David Daker, Sheila Fearn. Screenplay: Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam. Cinematography: Peter Biziou. Production design: Milly Burns. Film editing: Julian Doyle. Music: Mike Moran. 

A film with many admirers, but I find it too much a kids' movie -- noisy and sometimes silly -- with not enough genuine wit to please grownups. What works best for me in it are the star performers -- Sean Connery, Ralph Richardson, Ian Holm -- letting themselves go.