Identification of a Woman (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1982)

Tomas Milian in Identification of a Woman

Cast: Tomas Milian, Daniel Silverio, Christine Boisson, Lara Wendel, Veronica Lazar, Enrica Antonioni, Sandra Monteleoni, Marcel Bozzufi, Giampaolo Saccarola, Dado Ruspoli, Arianna De Rosa. Screenplay: Michelangelo Antonioni, Gérard Brach, Tonino Guerra. Cinematography: Carlo Di Palma. Production design: Andrea Crisanti. Film editing: Michelangelo Antonioni. Music: John Foxx. 

In the middle of Identification of a Woman, the protagonist, Niccolò (Tomas Milian), and his girlfriend, Mavi (Daniela Silverio), get lost in a fog. They emerge from it eventually, but they leave some of the audience behind, to judge from the rather chilly critical reception. Niccolò is a film director trying to focus his ideas for a new film, and you can see from his experiences how much of Antonioni's own frustration in trying to make his ideas cohere is reflected in the film. The difficulty may lie in the milieu, the 1980s, the Reagan-Thatcher era, with its triumphant resurgence of conservatism and capitalism -- so different from the angst-ridden, activist, youth-oriented 1960s in which Antonioni made his name. The political, social, and sexual concerns that seethed underneath the films of the '60s were exploded by Antonioni in Zabriskie Point (1970), leaving him lost for a subject. Even the sex in Identification of a Woman, though more explicit than his earlier films, has no heat, no risk, no daring. 

In the Folds of the Flesh (Sergio Bergonzelli, 1970)

Eleanora Rossi Drago and Pier Angeli in In the Folds of the Flesh

Cast: Eleanora Rossi Drago, Pier Angeli, Fernando Sancho, Alfredo Mayo, Emilio Gutiérrez Caba, María Rosa Sclauzero, Victor Barrera, Gaetano Imbró, Luciano Catenacci, Bruno Ciangola. Screenplay: Fabio De Agostini, Sergio Bergonzelli, Mario Caiano. Cinematography: Mario Pacheco. Art direction: Eduardo Torre de la Fuente. Film editing: Donatella Baglivo. Music: Jesús Villa Rojo. 

Death by cuckoo clock. That's one of the less outrageous moments in the violent vulgarity that is In the Folds of the Flesh, a film that goes so far over the top that you realize there isn't a top. Murder, incest, rape, Nazi extermination camps, gratuitous nudity, orgasmic bathing -- there's almost nothing that Sergio Bergonzelli's exercise in the worst possible taste won't exploit. Throw in a couple of pet vultures and some Etruscan skeletons along with multiple mistaken identities and some truly awful performances, and you've got a trash heap of a movie that even some lovers of horror films and giallo are inclined to admit goes too far. If you still really want to see it, don't say I didn't warn you.  

 

Ju-on: The Grudge (Takashi Shimizu, 2002)

Megumi Okina in Ju-on: The Grudge

Cast: Megumi Okina, Misaki Ito, Misa Uehara, Yui Ichikawa, Kanji Tsuda, Kayoko Shibata, Yukako Kukuri, Suri Matsuda, Yoji Tanaka, Yoshiyuki Morishita, Hideo Sakaki, Takashi Matsuyama. Screenplay: Takashi Shimizu. Cinematography: Tokusho Kikumura. Production design: Toshiharu Tokiwa. Film editing: Nobuyuki Takahashi. Music: Shiro Sato. 

Takashi Shimizu's Ju-on: The Grudge didn't scare me much, partly because I go to horror movies to watch the techniques used to scare people, but also because its major effect is simple creepiness. Some of that comes from the nonlinear narrative technique: We spend so much of our attention on sorting out when things happened and to whom that the story doesn't build the suspense it might. This is a feature, not a bug in Shimizu's scheme of things. The essential point is that a murder took place in a house, which then became haunted by the victims, and that the evil infecting the house is spread by anyone who visits it. In fact, it's spread so widely that there's a hint -- shots of empty streets -- that it has begun to infect the entire city. While the movie is undoubtedly unsettling, I think it needs better character development to have its best effect. 

Twelve Angry Men (William Friedkin, 1997)

Cast: Courtney B. Vance, Ossie Davis, George C. Scott, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Dorian Harewood, James Gandolfini, Tony Danza, Jack Lemmon, Hume Cronyn, Mykelti Williamson, Edward James Olmos, William Petersen, Mary McDonnell. Screenplay: Reginald Rose. Cinematography: Fred Schuler. Production design: Bill Malley. Film editing: Augie Hess. 

William Friedkin's Twelve Angry Men is not so easily dismissed as an unnecessary remake of Sidney Lumet's classic 1957 film, itself a remake of Reginald Rose's 1954 television drama. Forty years of change have taken place, and although such a jury today would almost certainly have women on it, at least Friedkin's version includes four Black men. One of them, strikingly, is the most virulent racist on the panel: a former Nation of Islam follower played by Mykelti Williamson, who delivers a vicious diatribe against Latinos. Which incidentally brings up another anomaly: There are no Latinos on this jury, even though it is impaneled in New York City, which certainly has a significant Latino population. Oddly, one of the actors, Edward James Olmos, is Latino, but he plays an Eastern European immigrant. The rant of the juror played by Williamson has perhaps even more significance today than it did in 1997, after an election campaign tainted by racist taunts against immigrants: The speech sounds like it might have been delivered at Donald Trump's infamous Madison Square Garden rally. As for the film itself, it retains the 1954 movie's power to entertain, if only the pleasure of watching 12 good actors at peak performance (and in George C. Scott's case, a bit over the peak). It also retains the tendency to preachiness, like a dramatized civics lesson, though maybe we need that more than ever.  

The Curse of the Werewolf (Terence Fisher, 1961)

Oliver Reed in The Curse of the Werewolf

Cast: Clifford Evans, Oliver Reed, Yvonne Romain, Catherine Feller, Anthony Dawson, Josephine Llewellyn, Richard Wordsworth, Hira Talfrey, Justin Walters, John Gabriel, Warren Mitchell, Anne Blake. Screenplay: Anthony Hinds, based on a novel by Guy Endore. Cinematography: Arthur Grant. Production design: Bernard Robinson. Film editing: Alfred Cox. Music: Benjamin Frankel. 

Hammer Films thoroughly exploited the public taste for monster movies by borrowing story ideas from the classic black-and-white horror films of the 1930s and '40s that originated at Universal Studios. It gave Dracula and Frankenstein's creature multiple outings, but surprisingly only once made a film about a werewolf. It was a success, and launched the career of Oliver Reed, who played Leon Corledo, a young man afflicted by lycanthropic tendencies. Reed actually doesn't appear in The Curse of the Werewolf until well into the film, after an extensive backstory that explains how he became a monster under the spell of the full moon. That's the chief flaw of this otherwise solid, if not terribly scary film, which is handsomely photographed by Arthur Grant and moodily scored by Benjamin Frankel. The bulk of the narrative is handled by Clifford Evans as Don Alfredo Corledo, Leon's adopted father. Reed doesn't get a chance to wolf out until the very end of the movie, but he does so effectively.  

Early David Cronenberg

Clara Mayer in Stereo

Stereo (David Cronenberg, 1969)

Cast: Ronald Mlodzik, Jack Messinger, Paul Mulholland, Iain Ewing, Arlene Mlodzik, Clara Mayer, Glenn McCauley. Screenplay: David Cronenberg, Cinematography: David Cronenberg. Film editing: David Cronenberg. 

Ronald Mlodzik in Crimes of the Future

Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg, 1970)

Cast: Ronald Mlodzik, Ronald Mlodzik, John Lidolt, Tania Zolty, Paul Mulholland, Jack Messinger, Iain Ewing, William Haslam, Raymond Woodley, Stefan Czernecki, Rafe Macpherson, Willem Poolman. Screenplay: David Cronenberg. Cinematography: David Cronenberg. Film editing: David Cronenberg.  

I can't imagine there's much of an audience for David Cronenberg's Stereo and Crimes of the Future (a title he reused in the 2022 feature, which borrows an element of the 1970 film but otherwise has no resemblance to the first one) except among film scholars and passionate devotees of his work. They look like the work of a film school student, although Cronenberg was teaching himself how to make movies at the time. Both are silent except for voiceovers that do what they can to give the images a narrative shape. In the case of Stereo, there's very little of that: The voiceovers sound like excerpts of lectures given by social science professors about a research project concentrated on telepathy and sexuality. Crimes of the Future has a more complex narrative line, as Adrian Tripod (Ronald Mlodzik), a dermatologist who heads a clinic called the House of Skin, tells about the attempts to halt a plague caused by cosmetics. It's a creepier film than Stereo, more in the line with Cronenberg's later work, with a nice performance by Mlodzik, who appeared in several of his films before entering the clergy.    

An Egyptian Story (Youssef Chahine, 1982)

Nour El-Sherif and Mohamed Mounir in An Egyptian Story

Cast: Nour El-Sherif, Oussama Nadir, Mohsen Mohieddin, Yousra, Ahmed Mehrez, Mohamed Mounir, Ragaa Hussein, Seif Abdelrahman, Hanan, Layla Hamadah, Magda El-Khatib, Ragaa Al-Gidawy. Screenplay: Youssef Chahine. Cinematograpby: Mohsen Nasr. Art direction: Gabriel Karraze. Film editing: Rashida Abdel Salam. Music: Gamal Salamah. 

An Egyptian Story is the middle film of Youssef Chahine's autobiographical "Alexandria trilogy," and it may be the most accessible to people not familiar with his work. Perhaps inspired by Bob Fosse's All That Jazz (1979), it centers on the memories and fantasies of a film director, Yehia Choukry Mourad (Nour El-Sherif), who is Chahine's alter ego, as he undergoes open heart surgery. Some of the action takes place in a set designed to resemble Yehia's chest cavity, where a trial takes place. The defendant is Yehia's "inner child," played by young Oussama Nadir, who is on trial for killing the mature Yehia -- though he isn't really dead yet. Key events of Yehia's life take place in flashbacks that are sometimes realistic, sometimes surreal. In the first film of the trilogy, Alexandria ... Why? (1979), Yehia was played by Mohsen Mohieddin, who appears in this film as Yehia as a young man. In the third film, Alexandria Again and Forever (1990), Chahine himself takes the role as the aging Yehia. Because of the trial setting, the narrative of An Egyptian Story is more linear than the first and third stories in the trilogy, and might be the one to watch if you're just getting started with Chahine's work or if, like me, you're not well versed in the history of Egypt in the 20th century that serves as the backdrop of Yehia's story. Chahine doesn't spare himself in any of the films, revealing much about his ego and ambition, his neglect of his family, and even hinting rather broadly at his bisexuality. Those more familiar with his work may find An Egyptian Story a little less colorful and creative than the others, but it's still a remarkable movie.  

Hold Your Man (Sam Wood, 1933)

Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in Hold Your Man

Cast: Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Stuart Erwin, Dorothy Burgess, Muriel Kirkland, Garry Owen, Barbara Barondess, Elizabeth Patterson, Blanche Friderici, Theresa Harris, George Reed. Screenplay: Anita Loos, Howard Emmett Rogers. Cinematography: Harold Rosson. Art direction: Merrill Pye. Film editing: Frank Sullivan. 

Part sexy pre-Code romp and part weepie melodrama, Hold Your Man succeeds on both counts. Clark Gable plays small-time con man Eddie Hall, who while fleeing from the cops winds up in the apartment of Ruby Adams (Jean Harlow), while she's taking a bath. He winds up there for good until he slugs an intruder into her apartment, accidentally killing him. He takes it on the lam and she takes the rap, going to a women's prison where she learns that she's carrying his child. The denouement, in which Ruby's fellow inmates help unite her with Eddie, is full of suspense. In a surprisingly almost enlightened twist, the heroine of this section of the movie is a Black prisoner, Lily Mae (Theresa Harris), whose father, a minister (George Reed), just happens to be at the prison for visitors' day, and thus available with a little maneuvering to marry Ruby and Eddie. (I say "almost enlightened" because neither Harris nor Reed gets a screen credit, and an alternate ending was filmed for Southern release, in which the minister was played by Henry B. Walthall.) The switch from hijinks among lowlifes to redemptive love story is a little jarring, but Harlow was never more in her element, and Gable's smirky charm is engaging.  

Dheepan (Jacques Audiard, 2015)

Kalieaswari Srinivasan, Claudine Vinasithamby, and Jesuthasan Antonythasan in Dheepan

Cast: Jesuthasan Antonythasan, Kalieaswari Srinivasan, Claudine Vinasithamby, Vincent Rottier, Faouzi Bensaïdi, Marc Zinga, Bass Dhem, Franck Falise, Joséphine de Meaux, Jean-Baptiste Pouilloux. Screenplay: Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Noé Debré. Cinematography: Éponine Momenceau. Production design: Marcel Barthélémy. Music: Nicolas Jaar. 

Writer-director Jacques Audiard has a recurring theme in his films: the search for redemption thwarted by past transgressions. In The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005), for example, an enforcer for a corrupt real estate firm decides to turn away from the gangster life of his father and instead follow in the footsteps of his mother, a classical pianist, but doesn't succeed. And in his current film, Emilia Pérez, a drug lord transitions from male to female, but old relationships undo the attempt to become a better person. Much of Dheepan is a stirring, fascinating story about a makeshift family: three unrelated refugees from the civil war in Sri Lanka, who take on new names and pose as husband, wife, and daughter to escape the country and find safety in a suburb of Paris. How they manage to endure cultural, social, and linguistic changes and form a new family is the heart of the film. Unfortunately, they find themselves in a housing development that is the locus of a turf war between various drug cartels, and Dheepan (Jesuthasan Antonythasan) discovers that his old identity as a fighter for the Tamils in Sri Lanka hasn't been hidden. Memories of that old conflict possess him, and Audiard climaxes his story by having Dheepan pull off a single-handed rescue of Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) and Ilayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby), resorting to old combat techniques. Although this part of the film is exciting, it's a reversion to conventional movie-making, turning Dheepan into Rambo, and it upends the neo-realistic style of the rest of the film. 

Emilia Pérez (Jacques Audiard, 2024)

Zoe Saldaña in Emilia Pérez

Cast: Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofia Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Edgar Ramirez, Mark Ivanir, Eduardo Aladro, Emilio Hasan. Screenplay: Jacques Audiard, based on a novel by Boris Razon. Cinematography: Paul Guilhaume. Production design: Emmanuelle Duplay. Film editing: Juliette Welfling. Music: Camille, Clément Ducol. 

While I was watching Emilia Pérez I was caught up in the audacity of its neat intermeshing of drama with song and dance, but when it ended I felt let down. Jacques Audiard accomplishes what he set out to do: tell a story about a drug lord who transitions from male to female in search of authenticity and redemption. And he does it with the help of superb performances by Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofia Gascón, and Selena Gomez, and witty choreography by Damien Jalet. But the film is all surface: It doesn't treat its characters as real people but rather as figures in a neo-noir melodrama laden with contemporary attitudes about sexuality and identity. The ending is far more conventional than I expected from such an interesting premise, turning the premise into a gimmick.

The Killer That Stalked New York (Earl McEvoy, 1950)

Evelyn Keyes in The Killer That Stalked New York

Cast: Evelyn Keyes, Charles Korvin, William Bishop, Dorothy Malone, Lola Albright, Barry Kelley, Carl Benton Reid, Ludwig Donath, Art Smith, Whit Bissell, Roy Roberts, Connie Gilchrist, Dan Riss, Harry Shannon, Jim Backus, Reed Hadley (voice). Screenplay: Harry Essex, based on a magazine article by Milton Lehman. Cinematography: Joseph F.  Biroc. Art direction: Walter Holscher. Film editing: Jerome Thoms. Music: Hans J. Salter. 

I wonder what RFK Jr. would have to say about The Killer That Stalked New York, now that he threatens to put his anti-vax quackery into effect. It's a taut little thriller about a smallpox epidemic, in which the heroes are the governmental and medical officials who race against time to vaccinate 8 million people against the disease while its carrier moves among them. The carrier is Sheila Bennet (Evelyn Keyes), who has been to Cuba to retrieve some diamonds that her boyfriend, Matt Krane (Charles Korvin), wants to fence. Somewhere in her journey, she started to get sick, and by the time she arrives in New York City, she's really not feeling so well. Trying to dodge the Treasury agent (Barry Kelley) who's on her tail, she plays hide-and-seek around the city, and when she discovers her boyfriend is double-crossing her, she gets even more furtive. Several people will die from direct contact with her, and others will become carriers before her pursuers, including the doctor (William Bishop) who treated her without knowing the real nature of her disease, finally track her down. A voiceover (Reed Hadley) keeps hyping the urgency of the situation, but it's really not necessary -- Earl McEvoy's crisp pacing and the effective location shooting by Joseph F. Biroc supply enough intensity and reality. There are some nice surprises among the cast, including Dorothy Malone as a nurse and Jim Backus as a club owner, both of them pre-stardom.  

 

Illuminata (John Turturro, 1998)

Katherine Borowitz and John Turturro in Illuminata

Cast: John Turturro, Katherine Borowitz, Susan Sarandon, Christopher Walken, Beverly D'Angelo, Rufus Sewell, Georgina Cates, Ben Gazzara, Bill Irwin, Donal McCann, Aida Turturro, Leo Bassi. Screenplay: Brandon Cole, John Turturro, based on a play by Cole. Cinematography: Harris Savides. Production design: Robin Standefer. Film editing: Michael Berenbaum. Music: Arnold Black, William Bolcom.

Illuminata is poetic, witty, and beautifully filmed, designed, and acted. But it's also a little twee, which means it misses the mark for a lot of viewers. It's a tale of the theater, which means it comes with one strike against it already: Movies about the stage inevitably fail to capture what's most important about theater, the quality of being live. The theater in question is a small New York repertory company in 1905, a time and place when the stage and actors were most alive, before they became canned by radio, movies, and television. Almost all of the characters have Europeanish names, not because they're immigrants but because the film has a commedia dell'arte quality to it and a sense of playing to the rafters. John Turturro is the playwright Tuccio, married to the actress Rachel (Katherine Borowitz), but tempted by the diva Celimene (Susan Sarandon). His nemesis is the theater critic Bevalaqua (Christopher Walken), and the company includes a Beppo (Leo Bassi), a Dominique (Rufus Sewell), a Marta (Aida Turturro), a Flavio  (Ben Gazzara), and a Marco (Bill Irwin). The theater is owned by the Astergourds (Beverly D'Angelo and Donal McCann). Everyone in the cast seems to be sleeping with everyone else, or at least trying to. Bevalaqua, for example, tries to seduce Marco, the occasion for much clowning by Walken and Irwin. As noted, it's not for all tastes: It has a 46% rating on the Tomatometer. But I found it sweet and amusing, and I don't get much sweetness and amusement from movies these days.  

Godland (Hlynur Pálmason, 2022)

Cast: Elliott Crosset Hove, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Vic Carmen Sonne, Jacob Lohmann, Hilmar Guðjónsson, Waage Sandø, Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir. Screenplay: Hlynur Pálmason. Cinematography: Maria Von Hausswolff. Production design: Frosti Fridrikkson. Film editing: Julius Krebs Damsbo. Music: Alex Zhang Hungtai. 

Godland is the age-old tale of man against the elements, as a Danish preacher, Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove), makes his way across the unforgiving landscape of Iceland to a place where he plans to build a church for the settlers. He is working with a guide, Ragnar (Ingvar Sigurdsson), who doesn't (or won't) speak Danish, so he relies on an interpreter played by Hilmar Guðjónsson until the interpreter is drowned in a river crossing that Lucas stubbornly insists on. From then on, he's in Ragnar's hands, and he will be until the fated ending of the film. When they reach the settlement he finds shelter with Carl (Jacob Lohmann) and his two daughters, Anna (Vic Carmen Sonne) and Ida (Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir. director Hlynur Pálmason's actual daughter). Since the settlement is near the coast, Carl wonders why Lucas has taken such a long overland route. Lucas explains that he wanted to get a feeling for the land and to photograph it: The crew has hauled his bulky photographic equipment all the way. From then on, it's a story of Lucas against Ragnar and to some extent Carl, who wants to protect his daughters, especially the marriageable Anna, against the priest. Cinematographer Maria Von Hausswolff provides spectacular images, viewed not in the widescreen panoramas usually called on for such photogenic landscapes, but in the old, narrow Academy ratio that was standard in movies until the 1950s, when the film industry decided to compete with television with techniques like CinemaScope. The images in Godland even have rounded corners, an evocation of the wet-plate photography used by Lucas. The film is technically dazzling, a visual tour de force, but I just wish it moved me more. Too often it feels like the creation of a gifted and imaginative director out to display his gifts rather than one who wants to tell a story and evoke human emotions.

The Shadowless Tower (Zhang Lu, 2023)

Huang Yao and Xin Baiqing in The Shadowless Tower

Cast: Xin Baiqing, Huang Yao, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Li Qinqin, Siqin Gaowa, Wang Honwei, Wang Yiwen. Screenplay: Zhang Lu. Cinematography: Piao Songri. Production design: Zhang Yican. Film editing: Liu Xinzhu. Music: He Xiao. 

The Shadowless Tower is a fable about dislocation and the attempt to reconnect. It opens with a family visit to the grave of the mother of Gu Wentong (Xin Baiqing) and his sister Wenhui (Li Qinqin). Wentong and Wenhui are surprised to see that there are flowers already on the grave, but Wenhui's husband explains that they were brought there by Gu Yuntai (Tian Zhuangzhuang), the estranged father of the siblings. It's a dislocated family in many ways: Wentong is divorced, and his daughter, Xiao Xiao (Wang Yiwen), whose name the subtitles translate as "Smiley," lives with Wenhui and her husband. Yuntai, the father, separated from the family many years earlier, when he was convicted and jailed (perhaps wrongly) for sexual misconduct on a bus; he now lives in Beidaihe, a seaside town many miles from Beijing, where his children live. Even the titular tower, the 13th century White Pagoda, a Buddhist temple, is a symbol of dislocation: Because of its unusual shape, it's said not to cast a shadow locally but instead 3,000 miles away in Tibet. The film concentrates mostly on Wentong, a restaurant reviewer who is accompanied on his visits to dining spots by a photographer, Ouyang Wenhui (Huang Yao), a much younger woman with a sardonic manner. What plot the film has concerns Wentong's attempts to reconnect with his father, who coincidentally lives in the same town where Ouyang was born. There's also some sexual tension between Wentong and Ouyang. It's a leisurely film, beautifully shot by Piao Songri, that could use some trimming to heighten its witty, wistful atmosphere.

Deadpool and Wolverine (Shawn Levy, 2024)

Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool & Wolverine

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, Matthew Macfadyen, Dafne Keen, Jon Favreau, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Leslie Uggams, Jennifer Garner, Wesley Snipes, Channing Tatum, Chris Evans, Henry Cavill, Wunmi Mosaku, Aaron Stanford, Tyler Mane, Karan Sonni, Brianna Hildebrand. Screenplay: Ryan Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Zeb Wells, Shawn Levy. Cinematography: George Richmond. Production design: Ray Chan. Film editing: Shane Reid, Dean Zimmerman. Music: Rob Simonsen. 

Raucous, rude, and raunchy, Deadpool & Wolverine holds nothing sacred, even the production companies that made it, as the irrepressible Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) teams up with the grouchy Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to take on the Time Variance Authority, represented by Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), and Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin) in the Void and elsewhere. You might wonder how Deadpool could team with Wolverine since the latter died in James Mangold's 2017 film Logan. It involves traveling through the multiverse and encountering all the various Wolverines that exist in other timelines, including one known as The Cavillrine, a cameo by Henry Cavill. The Wolverine Deadpool chooses turns out to be the worst Wolverine, someone reviled in his own universe for bringing about the deaths of all the other X-Men. The arc of Wolverine's story in the movie turns out to be a quest for redemption. The multiverse trope itself gets lampooned by treating its actors as moving through their roles as if through other universes than the one they inhabit, the Marvel Universe. So there are allusions to Jackman's career as a performer in musicals and to Reynolds's older films like The Proposal (Anne Fletcher, 2009) and Van Wilder (Walt Becker, 2002). Chris Evans's appearance in the film is also a bit of role-switching. Deadpool at first thinks he's Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, until he reveals himself as Johnny Storm, aka Human Torch, the earlier Marvel role Evans played in Fantastic Four (Tim Story, 2005). Evans's brief performance in Deadpool & Wolverine includes one of the funniest speeches in the film, a foul-mouthed diatribe about Cassandra that's so good it gets repeated in the end credits. Thoroughly mindless and thoroughly entertaining, Deadpool & Wolverine is the superhero movie to end all superhero movies. Well, we can dream, can't we?

Alexandria: Again and Forever (Youssef Chahine, 1989)

Youssef Chahine and Zaky Fateen Abdel Wahab in Alexandria: Again and Forever

Cast: Youssef Chahine, Youssra, Hussein Fahmy, Amr Abdulgalil, Hesham Selim, Tahiyya Karyuka, Huda Sultan, Seif Abdelrahman, Abla Kamel, Manha Batraoul, Zaky Fateen Abdel Wahab. Screenplay: Youssef Chahine, Youry Nasrallah. Cinematography: Ramses Marzouk. Art direction: Mahmoud Mabrouk. Film editing: Rashida Abdel Salam. Music: Mohamad Nouh. 

As with so many of Youssef Chahine's films, I find myself sorely lacking in a background in Egyptian history and politics. In this case, my ignorance of the film industry strike in 1987 made my comprehension of a central section of the narrative difficult to follow. What I can grasp is that Alexandria: Again and Forever is a very personal film about the writer-director's life, including his relationship with a favorite actor named Amr (Amr Abdulgalil). The film opens with the director Yehia Eskendarany (Chahine) trying to coax a performance out of a recalcitrant Arm in Yehia's film version of Hamlet. We gather that the relationship between Yehia and Amr is more than just that of director and actor: Chahine's bisexuality was widely known. As the film goes on, Yehia either tries to or imagines (things aren't really clear) casting Amr as Alexander the Great, and he also turns his attention to the actress Nadia (Youssra), who becomes his imagined Cleopatra. Meanwhile, everyone in the Egyptian film industry is involved in a strike against government interference. And throughout the film, there are musical interludes. It's all very watchable, and as a self-portrait of the director, it has been likened to Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 (1963), a potent comparison. But it's one of those movies I'll have to reserve judgment on simply because of ignorance.  

Blondie of the Follies (Edmund Goulding, 1932)

Billie Dove and Marion Davies in Blondie of the Follies

Cast: Marion Davies, Robert Montgomery, Billie Dove, Jimmy Durante, James Gleason, Zasu Pitts, Sidney Toler, Douglass Dumbrille, Sarah Padden, Louise Carter, Clyde Cook. Screenplay: Frances Marion, Anita Loos. Cinematography: George Barnes. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: George Hively. Music: William Axt. 

Marion Davies is always a delight to watch, but Blondie of the Follies is a mess. A sort of backstage, rags-to-riches, romantic comedy with music, it was tailor-made for Davies, who had once been a Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl. In fact, it was where she caught the eye of William Randolph Hearst, But why Hearst would have okayed a story so reflective of his liaison with Davies is something of a mystery, especially since he meddled in the production to make sure it wasn't too close to real life. Not that he was a reluctant meddler: He set up his own production company with MGM for her and made sure that she was photographed and clothed in the most flattering ways possible. Davies is such an adroit comedian, the forerunner of such glamorous funny women as Carole Lombard and Lucille Ball, that she didn't need Hearst's help, especially his desire to see her in serious dramatic roles. There's some drama in Blondie of the Follies, but it's much less entertaining than Davies's clowning, as when she mimics Greta Garbo in a sendup of Grand Hotel (Edmund Goulding, 1932) with Jimmy Durante as John Barrymore. The story isn't much: Blondie McClune (Davies) and Lottie Callahan (Billie Dove) are on-and-off friends and neighbors in a tenement before Lottie runs off to become a Follies girl. Visiting Lottie (now known as Lurline Cavanaugh), Blondie meets Larry Belmont (Robert Montgomery), who has set Lottie/Lurline up in a swank apartment. Blondie decides that the life of a chorus girl isn't so bad after all, and sure enough she follows in Lottie's footsteps, becoming a star and getting set up in her own swell digs by an oilman (Douglass Dumbrille). Moreover, Larry decides that Blondie is more his type than the pretentious Lurline, who is outraged when she finds out. Even though this is a pre-Code movie, there needs to be some indication that the filmmakers don't fully endorse all of this gold-digging and living-in-sin, so Blondie's dad (James Gleason) shows up to disapprove. Finally, he gives in and decides to let Blondie live how she wants to, but not without touching her conscience a bit. Blondie's ambivalence about her lifestyle and her attraction to Larry will be tested, forming what amounts to the plot. There's an interpolated party scene to let Durante do his comic shtick, which hasn't aged well, and a couple of rather clunky production numbers, but they only add to the generally unfocused character of the movie.  

Terri (Azazel Jacobs, 2011)

Jacob Wysocki in Terri

Cast: Jacob Wysocki, John C. Reilly, Creed Bratton, Bridger Zadina, Olivia Crocicchia, Tim Heidecker, Justin Prentice, Mary Anne McGarry, Curtiss Frisle, Tara Karsian, Diane Salinger, Jenna Gavigan. Screenplay: Patrick DeWitt, Azazel Jacobs. Cinematography: Tobias Datum. Production design: Matt Luem. Film editing: Darrin Navarro. Music: Mandy Hoffman. 

Terri sounds like another teen movie, but it isn't. It has all the elements of the genre: misfit kids, mean girls, horny guys, uncomprehending teachers, absent parents, and so on. Terri (Jacob Wysocki) is an overweight high school student whose misfit status is signified by the spelling of his name, which is usually that of a girl. He lives with his Uncle James (Creed Bratton), who is some kind of an invalid -- we never learn what the illness is, whether mental or physical, other than that he sometimes takes too many pills and blacks out. We also never learn what happened to Terri's parents, only that he doesn't know where they are. He wears pajamas to school and is usually late, which gets him sent to the office of the vice principal, Mr. Fitzgerald (John C. Reilly), who is something of an eccentric himself and specializes in trying to connect with the school misfits. What director Azazel Jacobs and screenwriter Patrick DeWitt do with this setup is to keep the audience off balance as Terri learns to embrace his misfit status. Terri is a wholehearted embrace of eccentricity, with good performances, engaging twists and turns, and a welcome lack of preachiness, but it left me feeling that there was too much quirk for quirk's sake. It's a bit like someone watched The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985), Dead Poets Society (Peter Weir, 1989), and Good Will Hunting (Gus Van Sant, 1997) and smoked too much weed.

The Man I Love (Raoul Walsh, 1947)

Ida Lupino and Robert Alda in The Man I Love

Cast: Ida Lupino, Robert Alda, Andrea King, Martha Vickers, Bruce Bennett, Alan Hale, Dolores Moran, John Ridgely, Don McGuire, Warren Douglas, Craig Stevens, Tony Romano. Screenplay: Catherine Turney, Joe Pagano, based on a novel by Maritta M. Wolff. Cinematography: Sidney Hickox. Art direction: Stanley Fleischer. Film editing: Owen Marks. 

The Man I Love is a rather scattered and melodramatic film noir laced with music. It gives Ida Lupino one of her best roles, and she takes charge of it with such authority and intensity that it's not surprising that she collapsed during the filming. She plays Petey Brown, a lounge singer who decides to come home for Christmas, only to find her family embroiled in a number of crises. Her brother, Joe (Warren Douglas), is involved in some shady business and her sister Sally (Andrea King) is dealing with the hospitalization of her husband, Roy (John Ridgely), a shell-shocked veteran. Sally and her other sister, Ginny (Martha Vickers), spend a lot of time looking after the infant twins of their neighbors, Gloria (Dolores Moran) and Johnny O'Connor (Don McGuire), partly because Gloria is a boozy tramp to whom Johnny is devoted. Joe works for nightclub owner Nicky Toresca (Robert Alda), so Petey goes to work as a singer at his club, partly to keep her eye on her brother. When Joe gets involved in some kind of scuffle, Petey goes to bail him out of jail and discovers that the other guy arrested in the dust-up was San Thomas (Bruce Bennett), a pianist well-known in the jazz circles in which Petey travels. While the womanizing Nicky is making a play for her, Petey is falling for San, giving her another problem: managing two men. Raoul Walsh manages to keep all these plot threads from getting too tangled, but not without some loss of credibility. Fortunately, there's some good music to listen to, including the Gershwin song that gives the movie its title. (Lupino's singing was dubbed by Peg La Centra.) But mostly the movie is a showcase for Lupino, whippet-thin and sharp of tongue.  

Read My Lips (Jacques Audiard, 2001)

Vincent Cassel and Emmanuelle Devos in Read My Lips

Cast: Emmanuelle Devos, Vincent Cassel, Olivier Gourmet, Olivier Perrier, Olivia Bonamy, Bernard Alane, Céline Samie, Pierre Diot, François Loriquet, Serge Onteniente, David Saracino, Christophe Vandevelde. Screenplay: Jacques Audiard, Tonino Benacquista. Cinematography: Mathieu Vadepied. Production design: Michel Barthélémy. Film editing: Juliette Welfling. Music: Alexandre Desplat. 

It's so easy to imagine an American remake of Jacques Audard's Read My Lips that it's surprising it hasn't been done with, say, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in the roles played by Emmanuelle Devos and Vincent Cassel. At its core it's a romantic thriller about a mousy office worker who blossoms when she teams up with a scruffy ex-con for a heist that depends in large part on her ability to read lips. But this is the French version, so it's also violent and murky, with some complicated backstories and sidebar episodes. Devos plays Carla, an overworked secretary/office manager with a hearing impairment, who collapses one day after being harassed once too often by other members of the staff. Her boss takes notice, however, and lets her hire an assistant to do some of the grunt work like photocopying. The hire is Paul (Cassel), who has just got out of prison, and Carla is so grateful for what he does -- and so obviously turned on by his rough masculinity -- that she goes out of her way to help him find a place to live and even gives him money. Paul repays her by helping her get even with one of the office harassers, but he still owes money to Marchand (OIivier Gourmet), one of his old criminal associates. That's where Carla's ability to lip-read comes in. So Carla and Paul team up to rob a large amount of money that Marchand is holding for some fellow criminals. Read My Lips was well received, winning César awards for Devos and for the screenplay, and nominations for Cassel, Audiard's direction, and for best film. But it also has some detractors, who criticize it as overlong and needlessly complicated, including a subplot involving Paul's parole office (Olivier Perrier) that seems to have nothing to do with the main plot. The treatment of Carla's hearing impairment is vague, and some have questioned whether even the most skilled lip-readers could do what the film has her do. But Devos and Cassel are terrific, generating real sexual tension, and Audiard skillfully provides suspense and surprises. 

Romance & Cigarettes (John Turturro, 2005)

James Gandolfini and Kate Winslet in Romance & Cigarettes

Cast: James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemi, Bobby Cannavale, Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker, Aida Turturro, Christopher Walken, Barbara Sukowa, Elaine Stritch, Eddie Izzard, Amy Sedaris. Screenplay: John Turturro. Cinematography: Tom Stern. Production design: Donna Zakowska. Film editing: Ray Hubley. 

Romance & Cigarettes is ... well, certainly unique. It's a marital/family drama with songs and dances, a sort of dramusical with an all-star cast of mostly non-singers. It has passionate advocates and a good number who dislike it. It was spottily released, first at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, then in the UK and Europe, but not in the United States until 2007, partly owing to disagreements among the various production companies, but also to the difficulty of marketing such an oddball movie. I happen to like it a lot, mostly because of the enthusiastic professionalism of its actors, who were called on to do things they don't usually do. James Gandolfini plays a construction worker named (no kidding) Nick Murder, married to Kitty (Susan Sarandon) but with a mistress named Tula (Kate Winslet). Nick and Kitty have three daughters: Baby (Mandy Moore), Constance (Mary-Louise Parker), and Rosebud (Aida Turturro), who serve as a kind of Greek chorus to the breakup that occurs when Kitty discovers a seriously raunchy love note (there's a lot of raunch in the movie) Nick has written to Tula. Things get heated, kicked off by a production number set to Engelbert Humperdinck's "A Man Without Love," that features garbage men dancing in the streets of Queens. And it doesn't let up from there, as actors lipsynch or sing along with singers like Bruce Springsteen, James Brown, Ute Lemper, Elvis Presley, and more. They also smoke a lot of cigarettes, and this half of the film's title precipitates the film's conclusion, which is probably its weakest part, as if writer-director John Turturro couldn't find another way to resolve the plot he has begun. Still, I welcome any movie that gathers a company as variously talented as Steve Buscemi, Christopher Walken, Elaine Stritch, and Eddie Izzard to support its superb leads. I have to single out Winslet in particular for giving another performance that demonstrates what a chameleon she is. 

The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Jacques Audiard, 2005)

Linh-Dam Pham and Romain Duris in The Beat That My Heart Skipped

Cast: Romain Duris, Niels Arestrup, Jonathan Zaccaï, Gilles Cohen, Linh-Dan Pham, Aure Atika. Emmanuelle Devos, Anton Yakoviev, Mélanie Laurent. Screenplay: Jacques Audiard, Tonino Benacquista, based on a screenplay by James Toback. Cinematography: Stéphane Fontaine. Production design: François Emmanuelli. Film editing: Juliette Welfling. Music: Alexandre Desplat. 

Cry of the Hunted (Joseph H. Lewis, 1953)

Vittorio Gassman and Barry Sullivan in Cry of the Hunted

Cast: Barry Sullivan, Vittorio Gassman, Polly Bergen, William Conrad, Mary Zavian, Robert Burton, Harry Shannon, Jonathan Cott. Screenplay: Jack Leonard, Marion Wolf. Cinematography: Harold Lipstein. Art direction: Malcolm Brown, Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Conrad A. Nervig. 

Mac (John Turturro, 1992)

John Turturro, Carl Capotorto, and Michael Badalucco in Mac

Cast: John Turturro, Michael Badalucco, Katerine Borowitz, Paul Capotorto, Matthew Sussman, Ellen Barkin, Dennis Farina, Olek Krupa, John Amos. Screenplay: John Turturro, Brandon Cole. Cinematography: Ron Fortunato. Production design: Robin Standefer. Film editing: Michael Berenbaum. Music: Richard Termini, Vin Tese. 

The Hard Way (Vincent Sherman, 1943)

Ida Lupino, Jack Carson, and Joan Leslie in The Hard Way

Cast: Ida Lupino, Dennis Morgan, Joan Leslie, Jack Carson, Gladys George, Faye Emerson, Paul Cavanaugh. Screenplay: Daniel Fuchs, Peter Viertel. Cinematography: James Wong Howe. Art direction: Max Parker. Film editing: Tomas Pratt. Music: Heinz Roemheld. 

Pickup Alley (John Gilling, 1957)

Bonar Colleano and Victor Mature in Pickup Alley

Cast: Victor Mature, Anita Ekberg, Trevor Howard, Bonar Colleano, Dorothy Allison, André Morell, Martin Benson, Eric Pohlmann, Alec Mango. Screenplay: John Paxton, A.J. Forrest. Cinematography: Ted Moore. Art direction: Paul Sheriff. Film editing: Richard Best. Music: Richard Rodney Bennett. 

36 Fillette (Catherine Breillat, 1988)

Delphine Zentout in 36 Fillette

Cast: Delphine Zentout, Etienne Chicot, Olivier Parnière, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Berta Dominguez D., Jean-François Stévenin, Diane Bellego, Adrienne Bonnet. Screenplay: Catherine Breillat, Roger Salloch, based on a novel by Breillat. Cinematography: Laurent Dailland. Production design: Olivier Paultre. Film editing: Yann Dedet. Music: Maxime Schmitt. 

Catherine Breillat's explorations of adolescent female sexuality continue in 36 Fillette. (The title refers to a French dress size in the "Junior" range.) The protagonist, Lili (Delphine Zentout), is 14 years old and precocious both mentally and physically, but perhaps not emotionally. She's visiting Biarritz with her mother (Adrienne Bonnet) and father (Jean-François Stévenin) and her 17-year-old brother, Bertrand, (Olivier Parnière). One evening, she wheedles her self-absorbed parents into letting her accompany her brother on a nighttime excursion into the clubs at Biarritz, and they hitch a ride with a 40-something businessman named Maurice (Etienne Chicot), who has a couple of Bertrand's acquaintances in his car. Eventually, Lili and Bertrand go their separate ways, and in the course of her explorations Lili encounters a local celebrity, Boris Golovine -- an extended cameo by Jean-Pierre Léaud, who got his start in movies playing a disaffected adolescent in The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959). They strike up a conversation which provides the bulk of exposition for Lili's character. Then she re-connects with Bertrand and Etienne, and goes off with the latter for an evening of sexual and emotional exploration in which it becomes apparent that Lili is in many ways the more mature person of the two -- though perhaps not enough to justify such an exploitative relationship. In the French manner, the film is too talkative to be shocking, but Breillat is really not out to shock audiences so much as make them question their own reactions to such a pairing. Zentout, who was 16 at the time, gives an astonishing performance, though I find myself queasy at the thought of so young an actress playing such a role.  

The Face Behind the Mask (Robert Florey, 1941)

Evelyn Keyes and Peter Lorre in The Face Behind the Mask

Cast: Peter Lorre, Evelyn Keyes, Don Beddoe, George E. Stone, John Tyrrell, Cy Shindell, Stanley Brown, James Seay, Warren Ashe, Charles C. Wilson, George McKay. Screenplay: Allen Vincent, Paul Jarrico, Arthur Levinson, based on a radio play by Thomas Edward O'Connell. Cinematography: Franz Planer. Art direction: Lionel Banks. Film editing: Charles Nelson. Music: Sidney Cutner. 

A real sleeper, Robert Florey's The Face Behind the Mask performed poorly at the box office and was critically dismissed on its release, but over time it has gained admirers. Florey and cinematographer Franz Planer do what they can with the movie's scrawny budget, achieving some haunting expressionistic images and telling the story with great economy: The film runs only 69 minutes. It's a showcase for Peter Lorre, who plays Janos Szabo, a Hungarian immigrant to the United States whose naïve enthusiasm is smothered when he's horribly scarred in a fire. (We get only a brief glimpse of his scarred face, but it's enough to make what follows plausible.) Trained as a watchmaker and skilled with his hands, Janos is unable to find work. Then a chance encounter with a small-time thief (George E. Stone) sets him on the road to crime. Trying to earn money for plastic surgery, he becomes the head of a small ring of jewel thieves, using his expertise to break into safes and circumvent burglar alarms. (It's a sign of the small budget, and of Florey's narrative economy, that we never see him and his gang at work.) They make enough for Janos to have a rather creepy mask made to cover his disfigurement, but on learning that surgery can never fully repair his face he becomes despondent. Then he meets a blind woman (Evelyn Keyes) who doesn't care what he looks like, and they fall in love. It's a rather soppy twist to the story, and Keyes is never able to make her character other than a saccharine cliché, but the film takes a darker turn that undercuts the sentimentality. Lorre is terrific throughout, as Janos ranges from meek to menacing to heroic. 

Nowhere (Gregg Araki, 1997)

James Duval in Nowhere

Cast: James Duval, Rachel True, Nathan Bexton, Chiara Mastroianni, Debi Mazar, Kathleen Robertson, Joshua Gibran Mayweather, Jordan Ladd, Christina Applegate, Sarah Lassez, Guillermo Diaz, Jeremy Jordan, Alan Boyce, Jaason Simmons, Ryan Philippe, Heather Graham, Scott Caan, Thyme Lewis, Mena Suvari, Beverly D'Angelo, Charlotte Rae, Denise Richards, Teresa Hill, Kevin Light, Traci Lords, Shannen Doherty, Rose McGowan, John Ritter, Christopher Knight, Eve Plumb, Lauren Tewes, David Leisure. Screenplay: Gregg Araki. Cinematography: Arturo Smith. Production design: Patti Podesta. Film editing: Gregg Araki. 

I have taken the liberty of listing more cast members than usual just because Nowhere is a crowded movie, a throng of newcomers, future stars, familiar faces, and a few one-shots. It's a mess, but an intentional one, the chaotic culminating film of Gregg Araki's Teenage Apocalypse trilogy that began with Totally F***ed Up in 1993 and continued with The Doom Generation in 1995. Araki called it "Beverly Hills 90210 on acid," and that serves as well as anything to describe this freewheeling farrago of sex and drugs, as Araki puts a lot of Gen Xers and Millennials through hell. It's eye-bombing and ear-assaulting, and it contains a rape scene as well as a murder committed with a can of Campbell's Tomato Soup. In short, don't watch it unprepared.