Whore (Ken Russell, 1991)

Theresa Russell in Whore

Cast: Theresa Russell, Benjamin Mouton, Antonio Fargas, Elizabeth Morehead, Daniel Quinn, Sanjay Chandani, Jason Saucier, Michael Crabtree, John Nance, Danny Trejo, John Diehl. Screenplay: Ken Russell, Deborah Dalton, based on a play by David Hines. Cinematography: Amir Mokri. Production design: Richard B. Lewis. Film editing: Brian Tagg. Music: Michael Gibbs. 

The bluntness of its title suggests that Whore might be a serious film, a necessary corrective to the typical Hollywood treatment of prostitution, on a par with Lizzie Borden's 1986 Working Girls. And I think at some point that was its intent, especially with the hiring of a well-known actress like Theresa Russell. But in the hands of screenwriter-director Ken Russell, it turned into a bore, hammering home its message about the sordid lives of streetwalkers and their pimps, while giving it an entirely inappropriate glossy look. It also features an uncommonly bad performance by its star, who somehow can't find a way to deliver her lines that doesn't feel like a caricature of the tough girl she's supposed to be. The emotions she's meant to evoke feel fake. The screenplay, which forces her to talk directly to the camera, also undermines any sense of actuality to what she's saying. It's an 85-minute film that feels twice that length.  

The Quiet Earth (Geoff Murphy, 1985)

Alison Routledge, Bruno Lawrence, and Pete Smith in The Quiet Earth

Cast: Bruno Lawrence, Alison Routledge, Pete Smith, Anzac Wallace, Norman Fletcher, Tom Hyde. Screenplay: Bill Baer, Bruno Lawrence, Sam Pillsbury, based on a novel by Craig Harrison. Cinematography: James Bartle. Production design: Josephine Ford. Film editing: Michael Horton. Music: John Charles. 

One day a scientist, Zac Hobson (Bruno Lawrence), wakes up to discover that he's the last person on Earth. Apparently every living human being has vanished. Absolute freedom and solitude make Zac go a little nuts until he encounters two other survivors, and they set out to explore the world they've been left. Comparing stories, they realize that at the moment when everything else disappeared, they were dying: Suicidal about his work, Zac had taken an overdose of sleeping pills; Joanne (Alison Routledge) was being electrocuted by a faulty hair dryer; and Api (Pete Smith) was being killed in a fight. They deduce that because they were half-dead, the disappearance effect didn't take hold on them. Eventually, Zac discovers that a repeat of the effect is about to occur, which would obliterate him and his companions. He manages to forestall it, but although Joanne and Api survive, he winds up in a setting that seems to be on another planet. And there the movie has its enigmatic ending. Although The Quiet Earth does a great job of depicting Zac's breakdown when he discovers he is alone, and how he and his fellow survivors cope with the situation when they discover one another, it doesn't add up to a satisfactory movie. It fails to avoid the Questions You're Not Supposed To Ask. Like, why did people's clothes vanish with them? (Zac finds the wreckage of an airplane, but the seat belts are fastened over nothing. The passengers were presumably not naked.) The premise of mysterious mass disappearances was done better in the HBO series The Leftovers. which was inspired by the Christian eschatological belief in the Rapture, but without the theological underpinnings. There is a feint at a scientific explanation in The Quiet Earth, having to do with a global energy project, but it feels like just a plot device to set up a fable about technological overreach or something. Its aims are muddled and it feels flimsy.  

Two Lovers (James Gray, 2008)

Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow in Two Lovers

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Vinessa Shaw, Isabella Rossellini, Moni Moshonov, Elias Koteas, Bob Ari, Julie Budd, Iain J. Bopp, David Cale. Screenplay: James Gray, Ric Menello. Cinematography: Joaquin Baca-Asay. Production design: Happy Massee. Film editing: John Axelrad. 

A Jewish man who lives with his parents falls in love with a pretty blonde shiksa, despite his parents' urging him to marry the nice Jewish girl whose parents are involved in a business deal with them. Seen this one, have you? Was it an early Woody Allen movie? Or the one with Richard Benjamin and Cybill Shepherd? It was a comedy, right? With lots of ethnic jokes and some cringey scenes? No, it's a James Gray movie set in Brighton Beach. Oh, then the son is a hitman and the business deal is a shady one involving the mob? And it's bleak and unforgiving in both mood and setting? Sorry, no. It's a tender, romantic film, perhaps still a little bleak, about some damaged people who nevertheless find a resolution to their problems. Two Lovers marked a remarkable turn in Gray's filmography, not so much away from the melancholy New York streets of his first films as toward a perception that there's another side to the lives led there. Gray knows the clichés and stereotypes that his plot evokes and deftly avoids them. There's even a bar mitzvah scene that in other hands would have been fertile ground for ethnic stereotyping but just skirts it. It helps that he has actors who know how to avoid the clichés, too. Gwyneth Paltrow, who is sometimes mocked for epitomizing an aloof upper-middle-class image, finds the poignancy in her role as the kept woman of a married hotshot lawyer (Elias Koteas). Isabella Rossellini completely ignores the Jewish mother stereotype while managing somehow to remind us of it. Vinessa Shaw is terrific as the nice Jewish girl who may hear the ticking of her biological clock but doesn't show that she feels pressured by it. But mostly it's Joaquin Phoenix's film as Leonard Kraditor, a man in early middle life who has never found a place in life that wasn't prepared for him by someone else. He opens the film with what may be a suicide attempt -- he's tried it before -- from which he decides to rescue himself. He's had a breakdown before and is on medication, and he's something of a screwup in his work for his father's dry cleaning business, but he realizes that he's still loved by his somewhat bewildered parents. When he gets involved in a relationship with Paltrow's Michelle, a head case and a druggie, we fear for the worst -- which almost happens. But then it doesn't, and in a scene that might have been sentimental, except that it was created by Gray and Phoenix, one of the best director-actor relationships in film, things turn out at least provisionally okay. And we recognize that sometimes that's just the way life is.    

Working Girls (Lizzie Borden, 1986)

Louise Smith in Working Girls

Cast: Louise Smith, Ellen McElduff, Amanda Goodwin, Deborah Banks, Liz Caldwell, Marusia Zach, Boomer Tibbs, Frederick Neumann, Carla-Maria Sorey. Screenplay: Lizzie Borden, Sandra Kay. Cinematography: Judy Irola. Production design: Kurt Ossefort. Film editing: Lizzie Borden. Music: David Van Tieghem.

Working Girls puts the emphasis on the "work" in "sex work." All work is alienating in that we do it out of necessity rather than choice. Even the most enjoyable job involves the submission of self to the demands of the boss, the client, and time itself. That alienation is key to Lizzie Borden's deglamorizng of the profession of sex worker. The film's protagonist, Molly (Louise Smith) is a sensible, well-educated (if we take her at her word that she went to Yale) woman who has somehow become a prostitute in a New York City brothel, to which she commutes by bicycle through the city streets. For most of the film she is confined to a windowless apartment -- a feeling of claustrophobia develops through every scene in that setting -- where she services a series of men, feigning interest in them as well as orgasms. The men are ordinary, middle-class, mostly unthreatening business types with a few hangups and predilections. Molly collects her fees and sets aside part of the money for the madam, Lucy (Ellen McElduff), a giddy, vain, but shrewd businesswoman. Molly's downtime is spent chatting and gossiping (usually about Lucy) with the other women who work there, some of them bitter, some naive. The boredom and frustration the women express are much like the ones you'd expect from office workers, schoolteachers, retail clerks, anyone with a job routine: financial problems, relationship issues, resentment of the boss, distaste for some of the regular clients, and so on. It's hard to make a movie about boredom without being boring, but Borden succeeds, if only because of the titillation involved in a movie that focuses on sex. Smith and McElduff give good performances, but some of the other actresses deliver their lines a little woodenly. There's not much in the way of plot, but it's a solid, well-crafted film that feels a little obligatory, as if designed to make a point about sex work and the media's portrayal of it rather than just to tell a good story.  

Powwow Highway (Jonathan Wacks, 1988)

A Martinez and Gary Farmer in Powwow Highway

Cast: A Martinez, Gary Farmer, Amanda Wyss, Joanelle Romero, Geoff Rivas, Roscoe Born, Wayne Waterman, Margo Kane, Sam Vlahos, John Trudell, Wes Studi, Graham Greene. Screenplay: David Seals, Janet Heaney, Jean Stawarz, based on a novel by Seals. Cinematography: Toyomichi Kurita. Production design: Cynthia Sowder. Film editing: Jim Stewart. Music: Barry Goldberg. 

If you like the series Reservation Dogs, you ought to like Powwow Highway. To my mind (white, male, aged) these comic works get closer to capturing the Native American experience than do more earnest movies like Dances With Wolves (Kevin Costner, 1994) and Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese, 2023), which rely too heavily on the white man's point of view. As the title suggests, it's a road movie, and as with any good road movie, the travelers are an odd couple. Buddy Red Bow (A Martinez) is a hot-tempered activist, trying to stymie the latest corporate takeover of land on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation. Philbert Bono (Gary Farmer) is a corpulent, easy-going eccentric, enthralled by Native American myths and legends. When Buddy's sister is arrested on trumped-up charges in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he persuades Philbert to drive him there to get her released. Philbert has recently acquired (via a trade for some marijuana) an ancient wreck of a car that he refers to as his "pony" and calls Protector. Despite Buddy's insistence on going straight to Santa Fe, he can't keep Philbert from getting sidetracked onto locations associated with Native American history. The result is an engaging blend of farce and travelogue, with a provocative, sometimes bittersweet point of view. Farmer's creation of the endearing Philbert, a fine blend of sweet and stubborn, of naive and canny, is a remarkable performance. Martinez has just the right hair-trigger quality as Buddy, and the supporting cast, which includes bit parts for the then-unknown Wes Studi and Graham Greene (particularly good as an aphasic Vietnam veteran), is wonderful. The "happy ending" is by-the-book, but well-deserved nevertheless. 

The Yards (James Gray, 2000)

Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix in The Yards

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, Charlize Theron, James Caan, Ellen Burstyn, Faye Dunaway, Steve Lawrence, Andy Davoli, Tony Musante, Victor Argo, Tomas Milian, Robert Montano. Screenplay: James Gray, Matt Reeves. Cinematography: Harris Savides. Production design: Kevin Thompson. Film editing: Jeffrey Ford. Music: Howard Shore. 

With its powerhouse cast acting glum, The Yards is a slow downer of a movie. But it repays attention, immersing us in an almost too-familiar milieu, the Mean Streets of New York City. It's more elegiac than the visions of the milieu given us by Scorsese, Coppola, Lumet and many others, portraying a city almost beyond hope and reform, in which the well-meaning can be dragged down by circumstance. Leo Handler (Mark Wahlberg) is certainly well-meaning: Just out of prison for a crime for which he took the fall for his friends, he would like to stay straight if only to help his ailing mother (Ellen Burstyn), but the corruption that is eating his friends and family, particularly his friend Willie Gutierrez (Joaquin Phoenix) and his uncle Frank (James Caan), is bound to swallow him up, too. Eventually, meaning well is not enough, and Leo finds himself taking the fall again. In the end, it turns out that the only way to fight the kind of corruption that ensnares Leo is with corruption itself, a truly vicious cycle. James Gray's steady, slow direction probably tested audiences too much, for the film was a box office loser. But it boasts superb ensemble work, with standout performances from Phoenix and Caan and particularly from Charlize Theron as Erica, Leo's cousin and Willie's girfriend. Howard Shore's music underscores Gray's melancholy vision. 

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (Henry King, 1952)

Ava Gardner and Gregory Peck in The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Cast: Gregory Peck, Susan Hayward, Ava Gardner, Hildegard Knef, Leo G. Carroll, Torin Thatcher, Ava Norring, Helene Stanley, Marcel Dalio, Vicente Gómez, Richard Allan. Screenplay: Casey Robinson, based on a story by Ernest Hemingway. Cinematography: Leon Shamroy. John DeCuir, Lyle R. Wheeler. Film editing: Barbara McLean. Music: Bernard Herrmann.

The film version of The Snows of Kilimanjaro is handsome and dull, just like its protagonist, Harry Street, who lies waiting for death on the plains below the mountain as his life flashes past his eyes. Harry is a writer who has spent his life doing all the things he thinks a writer should, which amounts to a men's magazine version of masculinity: hunting big game, going to bullfights and to war, and sleeping with beautiful women. The actor who plays Harry, Gregory Peck, is handsome, too. And if he's also a little dull it's because Peck is miscast: The part needs an actor with a lived-in face, someone like Humphrey Bogart, who was considered for the role. At 36, Peck was about ten years too young for the role. (The 52-year-old Bogart might have been a shade too old.) Still, Peck does what he can, and it's credible that women like Ava Gardner, Susan Hayward, and Hildegard Knef would have fallen hard for him. But the screenplay by Casey Robinson is a rambling muddle that turns Hemingway's spare prose into melodrama, partly by crafting Gardner's role out of nothing -- or borrowing hints of it from other Hemingway works like The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms. Henry King, one of those studio directors who were handed big projects because they wouldn't mess them up, brings no particular vision or style to the film. The handsomeness of the movie is mostly in its casting, and in the Oscar-nominated cinematography of Leon Shamroy. Bernard Herrmann's score helps, too.  

The Munekata Sisters (Yasujiro Ozu, 1950)

Kinuyo Tanaka and Hideko Takamine in The Munekata Sisters

Cast: Kinuyo Tanaka, Hideko Takamine, Ken Uehara, So Yamamura, Sanae Takasugi, Chishu Ryu, Yuji Hori, Tatsuo Saito. Screenplay: Kogo Noda, Yasujiro Ozu, based on a story by Jiro Osaragi. Cinematography: Joji Ohara. Production design: Seiya Kajima. Film editing: Toshiro Goto. Music: Ichiro Saito. 

Some very non-Ozu things happen in Yasujiro Ozu's The Munekata Sisters. For example, the camera actually moves in one scene. Granted, it's only a brief pan across the setting at the end of the scene, but it was enough to startle anyone used to Ozu's locked-in low-angle points of view. But more unusually, there is actual physical violence in the film: A man slaps his wife repeatedly, and a few scenes later drops dead on the floor. The most contemplative of filmmakers, Ozu rarely deals directly with violence, preferring to show us the emotional consequences of disturbing events. The man, Ryosuke Mimura (So Yamamura), is unemployed. During his desultory search for a job, he is supported by his wife, Setsuko (Kinyuo Tanaka), who runs a small bar with the help of her much younger sister, Mariko (Hideko Takamine). The two sisters are very different: Setsuko, brought up before the war, is quiet and reserved and dresses in traditional Japanese style. Mariko reflects postwar attitudes in dress and manner: She's outspoken, with a spunky carefree manner, and sharply critical of her brother-in-law, whom she sees as an idler and a drunk. Then an old flame of Setsuko's, Hiroshi Tashiro (Ken Uehara), returns to town. Setsuko might have married him, but he decided to go to France before the war, so she married Mimura instead. Hiroshi is handsome and successful, and Mariko immediately sets her sights on reuniting him with her sister. Ozu develops all four characters with great finesse. Mimura is something of a dead-end case, and his outburst of jealous rage at Mimura's seeing Hiroshi again is frightening, but he has a softer side that he shows with the clowder of cats that he apparently fosters. There is something of the too-detached sophisticate about Mimura that shows in his scenes with Mariko, who falls in love with him while she's trying to reunite him with her sister. As a whole, The Munekata Sisters is more melodramatic than Ozu's films usually are, including the ending, which involves one of those renunciations that movies typically rely on as a plot resolution. But it's beautifully acted, especially by Tanaka and Takamine. 

The Cassandra Cat (Vojtech Jasný, 1963)

Cast: Jan Werich, Emília Vášáryová, Vlastimil Brodský, Jiří Sovák, Vladimír Menšík, Jiřina Bohdalová, Karel Effa, Vlasta Chramostová, Alena Kreuzmannová. Screenplay: Jirí Brdecka, Vojtech Jasný, Jan Werich. Cinematography: Jaroslav Kucera. Production design: Oldrich Bosák. Film editing: Jan Chaloupek. Music: Svatopluk Havelka. 

Sometimes you have to wonder how a movie came about. I mean, how did the premise underlying The Cassandra Cat --  a cat whose gaze makes people change colors, revealing their true selves -- emerge? It surely didn't come from spitballing in a story conference. Was it from someone nibbling on a funky mushroom while foraging in the Bohemian forest? And even granted that premise, how did it become the basis for a fable about hidebound authority stifling the creative imagination? Actually, that latter is pretty much standard for Eastern European filmmakers under Soviet rule, finding any way to poke at the oppressors without waking the censors. Whatever the origins, the resulting film is a sprightly creation, featuring an astonishingly docile cat. I mean, if anyone tried to put sunglasses on one of my cats, or trundle them about a village square with a gang of children, I'm sure the results would have been unpleasant. Still, The Cassandra Cat makes me wish the story had been turned over to one of the Czech masters of animation like Karel Zeman or Jiří Trnka rather than made into a live action film. The special effects in the movie are just clunky enough to be distracting, especially if your tolerance for the kind of whimsy prevalent in the film is low.   

Broken English (Zoe R. Cassavetes, 2007)

Gena Rowlands and Parker Posey in Broken English

Cast: Parker Posey, Melvil Poupaud, Drea de Matteo, Justin Theroux, Gena Rowlands, Peter Bogdanovich, Tim Guinee, Roy Thinnes, Dana Ivey, Bernadette Lafont, Thierry Hancisse. Screenplay: Zoe R. Cassavetes. Cinematography: John Pirozzi. Production design: Happy Massee. Film editing: Andrew Weisblum. Music: Scratch Massive. 

The ending of Broken English is a direct copy, down to the dialogue, of the ending of Richard Linklater's Before Sunset (2004), a movie about a fractured relationship that finds a satisfactory resolution. This similarity can only be an homage, but it shows up the comparative lack of originality in Zoe R. Cassavetes' film. In fact, the copy is so blatant, and the plotline of Broken English is so familiar that I hope Cassavetes' intention was to parody romantic comedies, especially those about young women who have trouble finding satisfactory men. Unfortunately, the parody doesn't go far enough to relieve the sense I have of a movie gone flat. Parker Posey plays Nora Wilder, a young woman with a good job who is anxious about her future without a steady relationship with a man. She has a failed fling with an actor (Justin Theroux) that leaves her more in the dumps, but then she meets a lanky, easy-going Frenchman (Melvil Poupaud) who manages to overcome her anxieties and defense mechanisms. But then he returns to France, leaving his cell number with her. It's a fine cast: Posey displays her exceptional gift for edgy humor and Drea de Matteo fits nicely into the familiar role of the best friend and confidante. The invaluable Gena Rowlands rises above her role as the stereotypical mother who wants her to get married. And Poupaud, smoking like a chimney, is a steady foil for Nora's jitteryness. But by the time the movie gets Nora to Paris and the city casts its patented romantic spell over things, including a stereotypical older Frenchman (Thierry Hancisse) who imparts his worldly wisdom, we get the feeling we've seen it all before.   

Threads (Mick Jackson, 1984)

Cast: Karen Meagher, Reece Dinsdale, David Brierly, Rita May, Nicholas Lane, Jane Hazlegrove, Henry Moxon, June Broughton, Sylvia Stoker, Harry Beeton, Ruth Holden, Ashley Barker, Michael O'Hagan, Phil Vaughan (voice). Screenplay: Barry Hines. Cinematography: Andrew Dunn, Paul Morris. Production design: Christopher Robilliard. Film editing: Donna Bickerstaff, Jim Latham. 

Was it because it was a "made-for-TV movie," a label that was once a byword for mediocrity, that I never saw Threads before now? Or was it that I knew what it was about and didn't need to put myself through watching a film that existed to tell me something I already knew: that nuclear war would be unspeakably horrible? But knowing is one thing and seeing is another. Threads is propaganda of the best kind, designed to disseminate truth rather than opinion. Its visceral but wholly credible horrors make criticism impotent, even though as a creative work it's not immune to criticism: There is some clunky dialogue; the narrative voiceover is awkwardly inserted and sometimes sententious; the evocation of a nativity scene near the end is too obvious. But the performances of the unknown actors, the skillful editing of stock footage into vividly staged scenes, and the unrestrained depiction of human suffering and degradation add up to a punch to the gut. Threads is a movie that has to be seen, or ought to be at least by anyone who holds a political or military position and needs to be have what it's trying to tell us engraved on their consciences. And that boils down to a demonstration of something often attributed to, of all people, Nikita Khrushchev: that in the aftermath of a nuclear war, the living would envy the dead.    

Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (Yasujiro Ozu, 1941)

Shin Saburi and Mieko Takamine in Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family

Cast: Mieko Takamine, Shin Saburi, Hideo Fujino, Ayako Katsuragi, Mitsuko Yoshikawa, Chishu Ryu, Masao Hayama, Tatsuo Saito, Kuniko Miyake, Michiko Kuwano. Screenplay: Tadao Ikeda, Yasujiro Ozu. Cinematography: Yuharu Atsuta. Art direction: Tatsuo Hamada. Film editing: Yoshiyasu Hamamura. Music: Senji Ito. 

Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family is an insular work like the novels of Jane Austen, which were written during the upheavals in Europe during the Napoleonic wars. Austen created her own world of domestic conflict while ignoring the larger world's conflicts, alluding to them only with incidental characters like the soldiers who delight the younger Bennet girls in Pride and Prejudice or the naval officers who appear in Persuasion. Similarly, Ozu creates a little island of family in the midst of Tokyo, and does so in the fateful year of 1941, when Japan's imperial ambitions would finally bring the United States and its allies into global war. The film focuses on family tensions following the death of the patriarch, Shintaro (Hideo Fujino), which reveals his bankruptcy and forces his widow (Ayako Katsuragi) and unmarried daughter Setsuko (Mieko Takamine) to depend on the other family members. The difficulties of living with Setsuko's siblings and in-laws form the plot of the film, until finally the two women go to live in a rundown family property by the sea. Meanwhile, the unmarried brother, Shojiro (Shin Saburi), is off running a business in the city of Tianjin, in China. When he returns for the anniversary of his father's death, Shojiro, who has always been somewhat at odds with his siblings, excoriates them for their neglect of their mother and sister, and invites the two women to come with him to China. There's a brief comic episode in which Shijoro arranges a marriage for Setsuko and she does likewise for him -- though the film ends with Shojiro shyly avoiding an encounter with the bride-to-be. What makes the insularity of Ozu's film so poignant is that Tianjin had been acquired by Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, and Japan ordered troops from Great Britain to leave in 1940 and followed with an expulsion of American Marines stationed there in November 1941, just weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was clearly not a peaceful place to do business, let alone to bring one's wife and mother to. Censorship would have forbidden Ozu from acknowledging any of this, but history has a way of imposing irony where none would have been intended.  

Altered States (Ken Russell, 1980)

William Hurt in Altered States

Cast: William Hurt, Blair Brown, Bob Balaban, Charles Haid, Thaao Penghlis, Miguel Godreau, Dori Brenner, Peter Brandon, Charles White-Eagle, Drew Barrymore, Megan Jeffers. Screenplay: Paddy Chayefsky, based on his novel. Cinematography: Jordan Cronenweth. Production design: Richard Macdonald. Film editing: Eric Jenkins. Music: John Corigliano. 

In theory, choosing Ken Russell to direct Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay based on his novel, an updating of Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to the psychedelic era, had some potential. Russell is known for his flamboyant visuals and Chayefsky for his talky screenplays like the Oscar-winning Marty (Delbert Mann, 1955), The Hospital (Arthur Hiller, 1971), and Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976). Perhaps the visuals would moderate the verbosity, or vice versa. Unfortunately, Altered States wound up something of a mess -- a watchable mess, but still not a satisfying film. Chayefsky was so upset with the movie he took his name off the credits and substituted a pseudonym, Sidney Aaron. But the problem is inherent in the premise: that a potion can alter not only the mental state of the person who takes it but also the physical state -- that matter itself, the human body, can be changed by drinking a mixture of blood and hallucinogenic mushrooms. It's the stuff of fairy tales, not science. So when Dr. Jessup (William Hurt in his film debut), a respected physician researching the causes of schizophrenia, drinks the concoction, he reverts to his primordial self: a small, aggressive carnivorous simian. Good enough for a horror-movie setup, but not quite what Chayefsky had in mind when he wrote lines like these: "It is the Self, the individual mind, that contains immortality and ultimate truth....  Ever since we dispensed with God we've got nothing but ourselves to explain this meaningless horror of life." Chayefsky's existential conundrums go missing in a welter of special effects. And ultimately, the film collapses in bathos, with a plot resolution in which love conquers all after Jessup's experiments go calamitously awry. Hurt and Blair Brown as Jessup's wife do what they can with the material, giving controlled performances, but Russell, that connoisseur of excess, lets Charles Haid overplay his role as Dr. Parrish, the supposed skeptic about Jessup's research who seems like a nutcase himself.   

Personal Velocity: Three Portraits (Rebecca Miller, 2002)

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The Swimmer (Frank Perry, 1968)

Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer

Cast: Burt Lancaster, Janet Langford, Janice Rule, Joan Rivers, Tony Bickley, Marge Champion, Kim Hunter, Bill Fiore, Rose Gregorio, Charles Drake, House Jameson, Nancy Cushman, Bernie Hamilton. Screenplay: Eleanor Perry, based on a short story by John Cheever. Cinematography: David L. Quaid. Art direction: Peter Dohanos. Film editing: Sidney Katz, Carl Lerner, Pat Somerset. Music: Marvin Hamlisch.

The Swimmer evokes that common anxiety dream in which you're naked or in your underwear in a familiar place like work or school. The people around you don't seem to notice, but you suspect that they're secretly laughing at you. The dream is produced, of course, by something that you don't want other people to know about you. Ned Merrill (Burt Lancaster) isn't naked, but he's exposed, wearing swim trunks and barefoot, when we first see him walking through the woods. He comes upon a group of his neighbors gathered around their swimming pool. They greet him heartily, commenting on how long it's been since they got together, serving drinks and making small talk. Ned suddenly has an idea: All of his neighbors have pools. Why couldn't he swim his way home, moving from pool to pool until he reaches his destination? The group cheers him on. Ned is an athletic middle-aged man (Lancaster was in his mid-50s when the film was made, but looked perhaps ten years younger), and the day is sunny and warm. But as he continues his pool-hopping, he injures himself slightly and the day gets darker and chillier, and so does the reception of the pool-owners he encounters. We begin to discover that Ned is in financial trouble and that the marriage he initially portrayed as happy has fallen apart. The John Cheever story on which the film is based is often read as a fable about suburban hypocrisy and male anxiety, and the movie supports those and other interpretations. Lancaster is perfect casting, not only because of his physical fitness but also because of the signs of aging that the camera inevitably reveals -- camera angles, for example, sometimes show the thinning of the hair at the crown of his head. But the film version lacks the Everyman quality of Cheever's story, missing some of the shock of recognition by the reader, an inevitability in its translation to a visual medium. It also ran into some trouble with producer Sam Spiegel, who had many scenes recast and reshot, firing director Frank Perry and replacing him with Sydney Pollack. It was not a success at the box office, being a little too oblique for audiences and some critics, but it has gained stature with time. 

Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese, 2023)

Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Cara Jade Myers, Jenae Collins, Jillian Dion, Jason Isbell, William Belleau, Louis Cancelmi, Scott Shepherd, Everett Waller, Talee Redcorn, Yancey Red Corn, Tatanka Means. Screenplay: Eric Roth, Martin Scorsese, based on a book by David Gran. Cinematography: Rodrigo Prieto. Production design: Jack Fisk. Film editing: Thelma Schoonmaker. Music: Robbie Robertson.

Like everyone who knows anything about movies, I admire Martin Scorsese. He's an acknowledged master storyteller, able to elicit fine performances and to find just the way to place and move the camera. But why does Killers of the Flower Moon, like so many of his films, leave me cold? The treatment of the indigenous people of this country will always be an urgent American subject, and Scorsese has found a story with vivid characters, both about the exploited and the exploiters. The film has sweep and texture, which is exactly what it needs. But the moment Leonardo DiCaprio appeared on screen, looking puffy and thick-headed in contrast to his usual bright, handsome persona, turning his mouth down at the corners so he looks a little like Robert De Niro, who plays his uncle, I felt something was off. He gives a good performance as the somewhat slow Ernest Burkhart, who is roped by his uncle William Hale into a scheme to defraud the newly oil-rich members of the Osage tribe of their money. But that's what it is: a performance. And when Jesse Plemons comes on screen as the federal agent investigating the scheme, I knew what was wrong: DiCaprio was originally slated to play the fed, which would have been consistent with his acting persona, but he asked Scorsese if he could play Burkhart instead, knowing that it was the more complex role. Scorsese yielded to the star who has been the lead in six of his films, starting with Gangs of New York (2002). So instead of feeling the urgency of the story, I felt I was watching an actor try out something new. Would Killers of the Flower Moon have been a better movie if, say, DiCaprio took the intended role and let Plemons play Burkhart, casting that would have been a better fit? I don't know, because the other thing about the movie that bothers me is more fundamental: It's a story told from the white man's point of view. All of the bad guys in the film are fully characterized, but of the Osage characters, only Mollie (Lily Gladstone), whose marriage to Burkhart sets the plot in motion, comes alive as a real person, thanks in large part to Gladstone's fine performance but also to Scorsese for giving the role substance. I kept wanting the Osages to break out of movie stereotypes of Native Americans -- the way, for example, the characters in the great TV series Reservoir Dogs did. Instead we get the usual victimization and swoony nature mysticism that afflict even well-meaning films dealing with indigenous people. Killers of the Flower Moon is often a very good movie, but something is lacking at its core.      

Blast of Silence (Allen Baron, 1961)

Allen Baron in Blast of Silence 

Cast: Allen Baron, Mollie McCarthy, Larry Tucker, Peter Clune, Danny Meehan, Howard Mann, Lionel Stander (voice). Screenplay: Allen Baron, Waldo Salt (voiceover narration). Cinematography: Merrill S. Brody. Art direction: Charles Rosen. Film editing: Merrill S. Brody, Peggy Lawson. Music: Meyer Kupferman. 

A very late film noir, Blast of Silence strips the genre to its bleak essence. A hitman (Allen Baron) comes to New York at Christmastime to whack a guy, falls in love, carries out his job, and pays the consequences for his decision that this would be his last hit. Made on a shoestring with equipment that had been smuggled out of Cuba after Baron appeared in Errol Flynn's last movie, Cuban Rebel Girls (Barry Mahon, 1959), it's a tightly assembled sleeper of a movie that wonderfully milks its New York location and ends with a memorable scene shot on Long Island during Hurricane Donna. Baron had wanted his friend Peter Falk to play the melancholy gunman, but took over the role himself when Falk was unavailable. It's a great one-off of a performance: Baron has no other acting credits besides this one and the Flynn movie, and his directing credits were mostly in TV on shows ranging from Surfside 6 to The Love Boat. The atmosphere of New York in the late 1950s and early '60s is wonderfully captured: That beatnik-era accoutrement the bongo drum makes its appearance at a party and again as the accompaniment to some mopey ballads with titles like "Dressed in Black" and "Torrid Town," sung by Dean Sheldon at the Village Gate nightclub. A voiceover narrative, written by Waldo Salt under his nom de blacklist "Mel Davenport" and read by uncredited fellow blacklistee Lionel Stander, was added after the film was assembled to cover some expository gaps. It's more effective than most voiceovers are at setting the mood and tone of the film, although I find it occasionally too portentous.  

How to Get Ahead in Advertising (Bruce Robinson, 1989)

Richard E. Grant in How to Get Ahead in Advertising

Cast: Richard E. Grant, Rachel Ward, Richard Wilson, Jacqueline Tong, John Shrapnel, Susan Wooldridge. Screenplay: Bruce Robinson. Cinematography: Peter Hannan. Production design: Michael Pickwoad. Film editing: Alan Strachan. Music: David Dundas, Rick Wentworth. 

The satire in How to Get Ahead in Advertising is as obvious as the pun in its title. Denis Bagley (Richard E. Grant), a Type A advertising executive, has a breakdown under the stress of coming up with a campaign for an acne medicine. He suddenly realizes the venality of his profession: trying to sell things to people that they don't need and which probably don't work. He quits his job and in a fit of manic behavior almost destroys his house. What's more, he develops a boil on his neck, and in a few days the boil comes to a head -- quite literally -- and begins to talk to him, muttering the advertising slogans and clichés he is determined to put behind him. His distressed wife, Julia (Rachel Ward), tries to help him and sends him to a psychiatrist (John Shrapnel), but things only get worse when a medical accident turns the second head into the primary one. Borrowing from "body horror" movies, Bruce Robinson's screenplay sets up a promising situation, but doesn't have a way of resolving it successfully. Only Grant's terrifically frantic performance, as both Denis and his pustular alter ego, keeps the film going, but the hilarity feels a bit strained toward the end.  

What Did the Lady Forget? (Yasujiro Ozu, 1937)

Michiko Kuwano and Shuji Sano in What Did the Lady Forget?

Cast: Sumiko Kurishima, Tatsuo Saito, Michiko Kuwano, Shuji Sano, Takeshi Sakamoto, Choko Iida, Ken Uehara, Mitsuko Yosshikawa, Masao Hayama, Tomio Aoki, Mitsuko Higashiyama. Screenplay: Akira Fushimi, Yasujiro Ozu. Cinematography: Yuharu Atsuta, Hideo Shigehara. Film editing: Kenkichi Hara. Music: Senji Ito.

The denouement of this early Ozu talkie is rather unfortunate: a man slaps his wife and makes her behave. It's a throwback to the marital dynamics of the era of domestic comedy when gags were milked from the relationship of a henpecked husband and a shrewish wife. Otherwise, What Did the Lady Forget? is an amusing glimpse at the conflict of tradition and modernity in pre-war Japan. A mild-mannered university professor (Tatsuo Saito) is married to a woman (Sumiko Kurishima) conscious of propriety and her station in society. When his modernized, free-thinking niece (Michiko Kuwano) comes to visit, the two women immediately are at odds, and the professor is caught in their conflict. It's a sly, sophisticated movie, influenced, as many have noted, by the films of Ernst Lubitsch, but with Ozu's own distinctive style prevailing, so much so that it's easy to forgive the retrograde element of the plot resolution. So what did the lady forget? It's not an easy question to answer, but some think it's the wife's failure to compromise with her husband's less restrictive view of his niece's behavior. 

The Boy Friend (Ken Russell, 1971)

Christopher Gable and Twiggy in The Boy Friend

Cast: Twiggy, Christopher Gable, Max Adrian, Bryan Pringle, Murray Melvin, Moyra Fraser, Georgina Hale, Sally Bryant, Vladek Sheybal, Tommy Tune, Brian Murphy, Graham Armitage, Antonia Ellis, Caryl Little, Glenda Jackson. Screenplay: Ken Russell, based on a musical play by Sandy Wilson. Cinematography: David Watkin. Production design: Tony Walton. Costume design: Shirley Russell. Music: Peter Maxwell Davies; songs: Sandy Wilson, Nacio Herb Brown, Arthur Freed. 

Nothing succeeds like excess. That seems to have been Ken Russell's motto, well displayed in The Boy Friend. As I watched it, I thought the first parody of Busby Berkeley's kaleidoscopic production numbers for Warner Bros. musicals was brilliant. The second was entertaining. The third was ... well, maybe the law of diminishing returns had set in. The original stage musical was a campy sendup of the kind of musical comedies that P.G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton, and Jerome Kern used to create for the Princess Theatre and later in the 1920s: tuneful light romances with silly plots. But for the movie, Russell superadds a campy sendup of the backstage movie musicals of the 1930s, borrowing plot and even dialogue from 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933), hence the Berkeley parodies. I first saw The Boy Friend around the time of its first release, and enjoyed it. But watching it again now, I found myself looking at the clock after the first hour and a half passed. The version I had seen in the theater was the one MGM had cut by 25 minutes; the restored version runs an exhausting two hours and 17 minutes. That said, there is much to enjoy about Russell's movie, especially the vividly colored production design by Tony Walton and costumes by Shirley Russell (the director's wife). The presence of the great Tommy Tune in the cast is also a plus. The Sandy Wilson songs are pleasantly hummable, and the interpolation of two songs by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed that were featured in Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952) is nice. But a little camp goes a long way, and piling camp on camp can be tiresome, especially if the camp is done the way Russell does it: with a smirk rather than a wink.      

May December (Todd Haynes, 2023)

Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore in May December

Cast: Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Charles Melton, Cory Michael Smith, Elizabeth Yu, Gabriel Chung, Piper Curda, D.W. Moffett, Lawrence Arancio. Screenplay: Samy Burch, Alex Mechanik. Cinematography: Christopher Blauvelt. Production design: Sam Lisenco. Film editing: Affonso Gonçalves. Music: Marcelo Zarvas. 

The high-concept way of looking at May December is to call it the Mary Kay Letourneau scandal filtered through Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966). But that's reducing the complexity of Todd Haynes's film to a formula, and there's nothing formulaic about Haynes's work, except that his films are often about the secret lives of middle-class women: the woman suffering from a mysterious illness in Safe (1995), the woman with a closeted gay husband who has an interracial affair in Far From Heaven (2002), the woman in a closeted lesbian relationship in Carol (2015). And that his films are sometimes homages to other directors, such as Douglas Sirk in Far From Heaven and Carol. But Haynes centers his work on the unknowability of his characters, who resist giving up their secrets. In May December the actress Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) tries to get to know everything she can about Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), the Mary Kay Letourneau analogue whom she is set to portray in a movie. She snoops into every aspect of Gracie's life, even to the extent of sleeping with Gracie's husband, Joe Yoo (Charles Melton), with whom Gracie had the scandalous relationship when she was 36 and he was 13. But the truth eludes her about almost everything in Gracie's life, from how the relationship between a middle-aged woman and a teenager began to what the status of their relationship is now, 23 years later. (Haynes gives us scenes between Gracie and Joe that Elizabeth doesn't witness.) She finds that even the family gossip is unreliable. So although we get an image of Elizabeth mirroring Gracie, which evokes a similar image of the merging of Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann in Persona, we find that it's only an image. At the end, we see Elizabeth playing Gracie as a scene is filmed, and not only is the Gracie she's performing not much like the one we've seen, but the scene requires multiple takes, each one different from the other. It's a subtle and intricate movie, perhaps as much Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950) as it is Persona.    

Josie and the Pussycats (Harry Elfont, Deborah Kaplan, 2001)

Tara Reid, Rachael Leigh Cook, and Rosario Dawson in Josie and the Pussycats

Cast: Rachael Leigh Cook, Tara Reid, Rosario Dawson, Gabriel Mann, Paulo Costanzo, Missi Pyle, Alan Cumming, Parker Posey, Tom Butler, Donald Faison, Seth Green, Breckin Meyer, Alexander Martin, Serena Altschul, Carson Daly, Aries Spears, Eugene Levy. Screenplay: Deborah Kaplan, Harry Elfont. Cinematography: Matthew Libatique. Production design: Jasna Stefanovic. Film editing: Peter Teschner. Music: John Frizzell. 

A "cult film" is any movie that didn't make it on the first theatrical release but later gained a huge following, either in theatrical re-release or TV and video. The reason usually given for the initial failure is often the mass incomprehension of film critics, but also the failure of marketing to target the right audience. In the case of Josie and the Pussycats it's a bit of both. In the case of the critics, a typical reaction might be Roger Ebert's decidedly thumbs-down comment, "The movie is a would-be comedy about prefab bands and commercial sponsorship, which may mean that the movie's own plugs for Coke, Target, Starbucks, Motorola and Evian are part of the joke." Is there a better example of seeing the point but not getting it? The central irony in the theatrical failure of Josie and the Pussycats is that it was a blatant satire of marketing that failed because of poor marketing: It was targeted to the wrong audiences. Instead of hip audiences like, say, viewers of Saturday Night Live, it was marketed to the teens and pre-teens who are the vehicle for its satire. Now, granted, I don't think it's a particularly good satire. It's silly where it should be edgy, and  a bit too loud and obvious. The comparatively novice writer-directors, Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan, have allowed skilled comic actors like Alan Cumming and Parker Posey to play too far over the top. But I do endorse what it's doing in its product-placement overkill, and maybe it made a few in its audience aware of how they're being manipulated. Or as Josie (the very good Rachael Leigh Cook) puts it, "Oh my god, I'm a trend pimp!"   

The Day the Earth Caught Fire (Val Guest, 1961)

Edward Judd in The Day the Earth Caught Fire

Cast: Edward Judd, Janet Munro, Leo McKern, Michael Goodliffe, Bernard Braden, Reginald Beckwith, Gene Anderson, Renée Asherson, Arthur Christiansen. Screenplay: Wolf Mankowitz, Val Guest. Cinematography: Harry Waxman. Art direction: Anthony Masters. Film editing: Bill Lenny. Music: Stanley Black. 

Screenwriters Wolf Mankowitz and Val Guest (who also directed) find a way to send a message in The Day the Earth Caught Fire, whose message is all about nuclear disarmament. They let the newspapers (remember them?) do it. Much of the movie was actually filmed in the old Daily Express building on Fleet Street in London, and the real editor of the Express, Arthur Christiansen, played the fictional editor in the film. The result is that a lot of the exposition is carried by the actors playing the reporters for the newspaper as they try to figure out what the hell is going on with the planet. It seems it was knocked off its axis by two simultaneous nuclear test explosions at the poles, one by the United States, the other by the Soviet Union. The immediate result is disastrous climate change, but the greater threat comes when scientists realize that the Earth's orbit has changed so that the planet is reeling closer to a fiery death by crashing into the sun. The message is not only about nuclear testing but also about the way the authorities keep secrets that they think the public is not ready to know. The protagonist, Peter Stenning (Edward Judd), is a hard-drinking newspaper columnist who uses some unethical methods to disclose the coverup. There's a romantic subplot, of course, involving Stenning's liaison with Jeannie Craig (Janet Munro), a pretty clerk in one of the government offices. And much of the swift, quippy dialogue is between Stenning and his editor, Bill Maguire (Leo McKern). These players make the most of their stereotypical characters, keeping the film lively as the tension builds over whether the world is really catching fire, and whether the proposed fix for the crisis -- a tremendous blast of nukes in Siberia to right the planet on its axis -- is going to work. The movie feels less dated than it once did, because the scenes of climate disaster evoke our current concerns about the Earth and the fear that governments are too secretive and inept to save us. It's a well-made movie whose budgetary inadequacies show but are mostly overcome by the use of camera tricks and stock news footage. The ending is ambiguous, though tilted in the direction of hope by the sound of church bells, which are said to have been introduced by the American distributor, Universal, which wanted a less somber ending. 

Roadblock (Harold Daniels, 1951)

Charles McGraw and Joan Dixon in Roadblock

Cast: Charles McGraw, Joan Dixon, Lowell Gilmore, Louis Jean Heydt, Milburn Stone. Screenplay: Steve Fisher, George Bricker, Richard H. Landau, Daniel Mainwaring. Cinematography: Nicholas Musuraca. Art direction: Albert S. D'Agostino, Walter E. Keller. Film editing: Robert Golden. Music: Paul Sawtell. 

You know that movie about the insurance man who commits a crime for a femme fatale? No, not Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944). That one starred Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. This one stars Joan Dixon and Charles McGraw, and it's called Roadblock. It was directed by Harold Daniels, an actor who turned B-movie and later TV director. Double Indemnity is a classic and Roadblock is ... well, not too bad. McGraw plays Joe Peters, an insurance investigator who falls for an attractive woman he encounters in an airport. She's Diane Morley (Dixon), a sometime model headed for LA in hopes that she'll strike gold in some guy's wallet. He's exactly not what she's looking for, a guy who makes $350 a month, but they wind up together anyway. Eventually, he'll use his knowledge as an investigator to bring off a million-dollar mail car heist, all for love. It won't end well. McGraw is effective as a soft-hearted tough guy who falls hard for the woman he loves. Dixon's performance, however, is less successful. She starts out as a tough girl on the make and becomes mistress of a mobster (rather swishily played by Lowell Gilmore), but falls so hard in love with Joe that she's willing to live on his salary after all. I doubt that even Stanwyck could have brought off the role as written, and Dixon certainly can't. Still, the plot is nicely complex and it moves along so swiftly. There are worse ways to spend 73 minutes.

Little Odessa (James Gray, 1994)

Tim Roth and Edward Furlong in Little Odessa

Cast: Tim Roth, Edward Furlong, Moira Kelly, Vanessa Redgrave, Maximilian Schell, Paul Guilfoyle, Natalya Andrejchenko, David Vadim. Screenplay: James Gray. Cinematography: Tom Richmond. Production design: Kevin Thompson. Film editing: Dorian Harris. 

James Gray's debut film, Little Odessa, is a chilly movie about a dysfunctional family, set in wintry Brighton Beach, the Brooklyn neighborhood adjacent to Coney Island. Gray uses the seasonally shut down amusement park and boardwalk as a correlative for the frozen lives of the Shapira family, for which a reviving spring will never arrive. The film won more favor from European critics, winning an award at the Venice Film Festival and praise from director Claude Chabrol, than it did from Americans, who have less taste for grimness. And Little Odessa is almost unrelievedly grim in its account of what happens when the older son, Joshua, returns to the home where his mother, Irina (Vanessa Redgrave), is dying of cancer. He hates his father, Arkady (Maximilian Schell), who is having an affair with a younger woman while tending to Irina in her final days. Joshua feels close, however, to his teenage brother, Reuben (Edward Furlong), who dutifully helps his father run a small newsstand and look after his mother, but he has secretly stopped going to school, hiding the letters to his parents from the school in his sock drawer. Joshua is a hitman for the Russian mob. He has avoided returning home, but he can't refuse an order to rub out an Iranian jeweler with a store located in Brighton Beach. There are violent consequences not only for Joshua's target but also for his own family. The Shapira family is not so poetic and articulate as the Tyrones of Long Day's Journey Into Night (Sidney Lumet, 1962) but they have a similar lacerating candor that gives actors free rein to perform. And it's mostly the performances that justify spending 98 minutes with them (as compared to the nearly three hours we spend with the Tyrones in Lumet's film). Redgrave, as always, is a marvel, all fragility and grit and love for her family, and Furlong demonstrates the kind of promise as an actor that his personal problems have never allowed him to fulfill. I think Schell is somewhat miscast as the father, who gets the blame for what has happened to his sons, but he gives the role substance if not the undertones of selfishness and desperation that it needs. The real star is Roth, an undervalued actor who always performs to the mark and beyond. Gray's screenplay is a touch too melodramatic, especially in the final confrontation of Joshua and his father, but with the help of Tom Richmond's cinematography and Kevin Thompson's production design, he maintains the oppressive mood and gloomy milieu effectively.  

Guelwaar (Ousmane Sembene, 1992)

Thierno Ndiaye and Mame Ndoumbé Diop in Guelwaar

Cast: Thierno Ndiaye, Mame Ndoumbe Diop, Omar Seck, Ndiawar Diop, Marie Augustine Diatta, Moustapha Diop, Babacar Faye, Sadara Mbaye. Screenplay: Ousmane Sembene. Cinematography: Dominique Gentil. Film editing: Marie-Aimée Debril. Music: Baaba Mal. 

The protagonist of Ousmane Sembene's sharply ironic tragicomedy Guelwaar is postcolonial Africa itself, viewed with a mixture of hope and frustration like that of the Europeanized Barthelemy (Nidiawar Diop) in the film, who often utters an exasperated "Africa!" when he encounters bureaucratic and cultural roadblocks in his attempt to bury his father. Actually, Barthelemy is trying to re-bury his father, Pierre Henri Thioune (Thierno Ndiaye), a political activist called by his followers "Guelwaar" (noble one), who died following a beating by political opponents. His body was mistakenly removed from the morgue and buried in a Muslim cemetery. Although Pierre Henri was a Catholic, the heads of the Muslim community don't want the grave disturbed to verify the identity of the corpse. The expatriate Barthelemy is not the best person to handle the problem, attracting suspicion from the authorities because he has become a French citizen, but he's the only member of the family capable of taking charge: His widowed mother, Nogoy Marie (Mame Ndoumbé Diop), is prostrate with grief; his sister, Sophie (Marie Augustine Diatta), is a sex worker in Dakar, and hence something of an outcast; and his younger brother, Alois (Moustapha Diop), is handicapped, crippled after a fall from a tree. Tensions build between Catholics and Muslims, and ultimately troops are called in by the area's representative in the legislature to keep violence from breaking out. Sembene tells the story beautifully, if occasionally resorting to the kind of blatant expository dialogue and didactic commentary aimed at his audience. Pierre Henri's radical politics center on an issue that reminds us how the causes of both right and left can sometimes converge: foreign aid to developing counties. He opposes the shipments of supposedly humanitarian aid such as food to his country, seeing it a tool used by foreign governments to gain influence, a cause of corruption in the government that distributes it, and a hindrance to the growth of a self-sustaining Africa. Sembene clearly endorses that view when, at the very end of the film, the young followers of the Guelwaar tear open the bags of rice and flour and the procession of carts carrying the funeral entourage drives over the spillage in an ironic triumph. With its keen portrayal of religious tensions, corruption, bureaucracy, and economic hardship, Guelwaar is a fine satiric blend of humor and pain, one of Sembene's best films.

The Killer (David Fincher, 2023)

Michael Fassbender in The Killer

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Charles Parnell, Arliss Howard, Kerry O'Malley, Sophie Charlotte, Emiliana Pernia, Gabriel Polanco, Sala Baker, Monique Ganderton, Daran Norris, Jack Kesy. Screenplay: Andrew Kevin Walker, based on a graphic novel series by Alexis Nolent and Luc Jacamon. Cinematography: Erik Messerschmidt. Production design: Donald Graham Burt. Film editing: Kirk Baxter. Music: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross. 

In essence, The Killer is a routine thriller about a hit man who screws up and then has to undo the consequences of his screwup. But director David Fincher, screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, and actor Michael Fassbender make it seem fresh and novel, not by departing from formula but by creating characters and giving them something fresh to say. Fassbender is The Killer (most of the dramatis personae are given labels rather than names), a lean, mean killing machine who rises above that cliché by a variety of quirks, including an addiction to maxims and mottoes that we hear from constantly in voiceover: "Stick to your plan. Anticipate, don't improvise. Trust no one. Never yield to an advantage. Fight only the battle you're paid to fight." Even by itself that constant voiceover could be annoying, except that Fassbender makes it amusing by intoning it in a flat American accent, and by occasionally failing to follow his own advice. Fincher spends a long time on the setup to the first kill, which makes it even more startling when the suspense is broken by the Killer's mistake. There's some swift action as he gets rid of the equipment used in the shoot, then boards a plane (using one of his many passports and credit cards, all carrying fake names borrowed from TV characters) for his home in the Dominican Republic, where he finds that he still has to keep running, eliminating not only those pursuing him, but also everybody else who knows his true identity. These incidents introduce us to a variety of characters, wittily played by, among others, Charles Parnell (The Lawyer, aka Hodges, who is a middle man between The Killer and his targets), Tilda Swinton (The Expert, a fellow assassin who knows his identity), and Arliss Howard (The Client, one of the few people The Killer manages to intimidate but not kill). All of this nonsense -- which is praise, not criticism -- is set to a variety of songs, mostly by the Smiths, whose dark humor perfectly complements the style of the movie. I could quibble about this being one of those films in which the big fight scene takes place in the dark, so you're never quite sure who's beating whom, but then moral ambiguity is the whole point of the movie. 

The Great Sinner (Robert Siodmak, 1949)

Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner in The Great Sinner

Cast: Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Melvyn Douglas, Walter Huston, Ethel Barrymore, Frank Morgan, Agnes Moorehead. Screenplay: Ladislas Fodor, Christopher Isherwood, René Fülöp-Miller, based on a novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Cinematography: George J. Folsey. Art direction: Hans Peters, Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Harold F Kress. Music: Bronislau Kaper. 

Gregory Peck's handsomeness and charisma made him a movie star, and served him well in films like Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953) and To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962), but he never achieved the gravitas and vulnerability that would have made him a great actor. Unfortunately, both of those characteristics are what was needed to play the Dostoevskyan protagonist of The Great Sinner, loosely based on the novella The Gambler, with borrowings from Crime and Punishment and the author's own life, including his epilepsy and his addiction to gambling. The handsomely mounted production was a prestige project for MGM, but it ran into problems with the script and director Robert Siodmak's reluctance to film it as written. After the first cut, Siodmak was replaced by Mervyn LeRoy, with instructions to make more of the romance between the characters played by Peck and Ava Gardner. The cuts made in the film may explain why the roles played by Agnes Moorehead and Ethel Barrymore seem to be cast more generously than they deserve, considering the time they spend on screen. The "sin" of the title is gambling, of course, but the topic of gambling addiction is perfunctory at best. There are some good lines in the screenplay, such as the casino employee's observation that it's hard to detect patrons who are suicidal: "They smile right before they pull the trigger." And Ava Gardner is, as Peck's character calls her, "irritatingly beautiful." There's no excuse, however, for the swooningly pious climax of the film and the unconvincing happy ending. Best to skip The Great Sinner and watch a better movie about glamorous addicted gamblers, Jacques Demy's Bay of Angels (1963). 

The Only Son (Yasujiro Ozu, 1936)

Choko Iida and Shinichi Himori in The Only Son

Cast: Choko Iida, Shinichi Himori, Masao Hayama, Yoshiko Tsoubuchi, Mitsuko Yoshkawa, Chishu Ryu, Tomio Aoki. Screenplay: Yasujiro Ozu, Tadao Ikeda, Masao Arata. Cinematography: Shojiro Sugimoto. Production design: Tatsuo Hamada. Film editing: Eiichi Hasagawa, Hideo Mohara. Music: Senji Ito. 

If someone were to ask me what movie by Yasujiro Ozu they should watch first, I'd probably suggest the one that makes the critics' lists of the greatest films ever made, Tokyo Story (1953), or perhaps his very last one, An Autumn Afternoon (1962). I probably wouldn't select his first talkie, The Only Son, but only because the print I saw was blotchy and its soundtrack occasionally noisy. It's also one of his most melancholy films, drenched in the kind of disappointment that Ozu himself must have felt in the Depression year of 1936 as militarism took stronger hold on Japan. It tells the simple story of a single mother, O-Tsune (Choko Iida), who supports her son, Ryosuke (Shinichi Himori), by working in a silk mill as he grows up, gets an education, and moves to Tokyo determined to be a "great man." But when she pays a visit to him there, she discovers that he has married and has an infant son of his own, and that the little family is struggling to make ends meet. The best job he's able to find is teaching night school. His failure to thrive mirrors that of the teacher, Okubo (Chishu Ryu), who mentored him, urging him to further his education, and went to Tokyo himself to advance his career. Now, even the teacher is struggling, supporting his wife and four children by running a small tonkatsu restaurant. Ryosuke, who is living from paycheck to paycheck, borrows money from friends so he can show his mother a good time in Tokyo. They do some sightseeing and he takes her to the movies. The film is Unfinished Symphony (Willi Forst and Anthony Asquith, 1934) a British-Austrian biopic of Franz Schubert that Ozu uses for an ironic allusion: It's about a disappointed genius and it has dialogue in German, echoing the fact that Japan signed a pact with Hitler's Reich in 1936. Ryosuke tries to impress his mother by pointing out that it's "a talkie," but she nods off during the film -- perhaps Ozu's sly dismissal of the medium that he has finally been persuaded to adopt. Though it's touched with humor, The Only Son persists in its melancholy portrait of failed hopes, ending with Ryosuke's vow that he will go back to school and get a better job. O-Tsune returns to her work in the mill, and tells her friends that her son has become a great man, but her face when she's alone reveals the truth.    

The Anniversary Party (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Alan Cumming, 2001)

Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Anniversary Party

Cast: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Alan Cumming, Kevin Kline, Phoebe Cates, John C. Reilly, Jane Adams, Parker Posey, John Benjamin Hickey, Gwyneth Paltrow, Denis O'Hare, Mina Badie, Michael Panes, Jennifer Beals, Matt Malloy. Screenplay: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Alan Cumming. Cinematography: John Bailey. Production design: Emma Bailey. Film editing: Carol Littleton, Suzanne Spangler. Music: Michael Penn.  

Hollywood professionals Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh wrote, directed, and starred in The Anniversary Party, a movie about a gathering of Hollywood professionals. Which at least follows the advice to write about what you know. But that way lies a certain insularity, which is probably the biggest problem their movie has. Watching it made me feel like an outsider, even a voyeur. They play a couple, actress Sally Nash and novelist turned filmmaker Joe Therrian, who have recently put their marriage back together after a separation, and are celebrating their sixth wedding anniversary -- not usually a landmark occasion, but considering their marital difficulties can be considered an achievement. So they invite their friends, most of them colleagues and co-workers in the film industry, plus some newcomers, including the hot young actress Skye Davidson (Gwyneth Paltrow), whom Joe has cast in the movie he's making. This in itself is a source of tension, which some of the guests are not above pointing out, because Skye is playing a character from Joe's novel who is clearly based on Sally, and he didn't cast Sally herself, perhaps because she's too old to play the role. Also among the outsiders in the gathering are Joe and Sally's next-door neighbors, Ryan (Denis O'Hare) and Monica Rose (Mina Badie), whom they invited because they'd like to quell the tension that has arisen between the two households over the barking of Joe and Sally's dog. The volatility within the group gives rise to some snarky gossip and a few ruffled egos, but it remains mostly under control until Skye produces some ecstasy that releases everyone's inhibitions. Naturally, it climaxes with a big fight between Joe and Sally, in which the unstated tension is clearly and loudly stated. There's nothing particularly new about the film and the characters, but the ensemble work of the cast is fun to watch and Leigh and Cumming know when and how to end their movie on a quietly amusing note.