Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes, 1998)

Jonathan Rhys Meyers in Velvet Goldmine

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Christian Bale, Toni Collette, Eddie Izzard, Emily Woof, Michael Feast, Janet McTeer (voice). Screenplay: Todd Haynes, James Lyons. Cinematography: Maryse Alberti. Production design: Christopher Hobbs. Costume design: Sandy Powell. Film editing: James Lyons. Music: Carter Burwell, Craig Wedren.

I used to think that if Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950), Smiles of a Summer Night (Ingmar Bergman, 1952), and 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963) could all be made into musicals, why couldn't someone do that to Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)? I mean, aside from the fact that the only person who sings in that movie, Susan Alexander Kane, isn't very good at it, there are lots of opportunities for musical numbers. Kane himself has a scene with some dancing girls that could be turned into a production number, and Bernstein's recollection of the girl in a white dress with a white parasol could be turned into a wistful ballad. Of course, you'd probably wind up calling the musical Rosebud!, with a theme song reprised throughout. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that Todd Haynes had already made a Kane musical called Velvet Goldmine. Actually, what Haynes does is superimpose the Kane plot on a story about a reporter (Christian Bale) searching for the truth about a glam rocker, Brian Slade, aka Maxwell Demon (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), whose fake death led to a career death. The resulting movie is a bit of a muddle, especially when Haynes adds elements drawn from Oscar Wilde to the mix, but it's probably better than Rosebud! would have been, and it might even have reached greatness if Haynes had been able to secure the cooperation (and the songs) of David Bowie, as he originally wanted. As it is, it's an intriguing picture of a moment in rock history and the continuing change in attitudes about gender identity. Ewan McGregor is particularly good as Curt Wild, a figure modeled on Iggy Pop, especially considering McGregor's retreat from edgy roles like this one and the junkie in Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996) into the Star Wars universe.    

The Magnificent Butcher (Yuen Woo-ping, 1979)

Sammo Hung in The Magnificent Butcher

Cast: Sammo Hung, Kwan Tak-hing, Yuen Biao, Wei Pai, Fan Mei-sheng, Chung Fat, Hoi Sang Lee, Fung Hak-on, JoJo Chan, Tong Ching, Chong Kam, Lam Ching-ying, Yuen Miu, Tsang Cho-lam. Screenplay: Edward Tang, Wong Jing. Cinematography: Ma Koon-wah.  Art direction: Wo Mak. Film editing: Peter Cheung. Music: Frankie Chan. 

A kung fu action comedy doesn't really need an elaborate plot, and certainly not one with the rape-murder subplot that sours Yuen Woo-ping's The Magnificent Butcher. What it needs is lots of setups for flips and feints, strikes and sweeps and rapid-fire conflict, and the rival martial arts schools of Yuen's movie set that up adequately. Mostly the movie is a showcase for Sammo Hung, the endearingly pudgy star whose agility belies his girth. I admit that I began to tire of so many choreographed confrontations, skillful as they were, and of the mugging of some of the actors, especially Fan Mei-sheng as Beggar So, but things picked up again when Hung's Butcher Wing took on Chung Fat's Wildcat, who displayed moves I haven't seen since the last time I tried to trim my cat's claws. Devotees of the discipline will relish the movie. Others may just want to sample it. 

Breaking News (Johnnie To, 2004)

Richie Jen and Kelly Chen in Breaking News

Cast: Richie Jen, Kelly Chen, Nick Cheung, Eddie Cheung, Benz Hui, Lam Suet, Yong You, Ding Haifeng, Li Haitao, Simon Yam, Alan Chiu Chung-San, Maggie Shiu, Wong Chi-wai, Wong Wah-wo. Screenplay: Chan Hing-kai, Yip Tin-shing. Cinematography: Cheng Siu-keung. Production design: Bruce Yu. Film editing: David M. Richardson. Music: Ben Cheung, Chung Chi-wing.

Johnnie To's Breaking News treats media manipulation as if it were something new, which it isn't. It's been with us at least since FDR used radio for his "fireside chats" and Adolf Hitler hired Leni Riefensthal to make Triumph of the Will (1935). But propaganda is so much a part of our life that although To's thriller tells us nothing new, it cleverly integrates it into a standard cops-and-crooks plot. When a shootout between the police and the bad guys goes wrong, media-savvy police superintendent Rebecca Fong (Kelly Chen) takes over with a double aim: to catch the criminals and to save the department's reputation. The failed shootout takes place in a bravura opening sequence, in which Cheng Siu-keung's camera travels through, around, up, and over the scene with breathtaking, apparently uninterrupted fluidity. The movie barely rests after that's over. There are a few bobbles in the movie's storytelling, and it's sometimes hard to see who's shooting whom, but we're here for the chase, the suspense, and a few laughs, so nobody who really matters will mind. 

The Green, Green Grass of Home (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1982)

Cast: Kenny Bee, Chiang Ling, Yen Jing-Kuo, Meifeng Chen. Screenplay: Hou Hsiao-hsieng. Cinematography: Chen Kun-Hou. Art direction: Chi Kai-Cheng. Film editing: Liao Cheng-Sung. Music: Huang Mou-Shun. 

The cheerful naïveté of Hou Hsiao-hsien's third feature, The Green, Green Grass of Home, reminded me of the old Hollywood movies in which a city slicker comes to a small town where both he and the local yokels learn a few things from each other. In Hou's movie, Da-Nian (Kenny Bee) comes from Taipei to a village to teach school and immediately encounters unfamiliar attitudes and manners. Unabashedly sentimental, Hou's movie is laced with some comic scenes featuring mischievous kids, but it harps too much on a message about the necessity of being close to nature and it repetitively features an icky pop song that sounds a lot like a soft drink commercial. But it's beautifully filmed, and at its best, it affords a glimpse of what daily life might have been like in a Taiwanese village. 

The Castaways of Turtle Island (Jacques Rozier, 1976)

Jacques Villeret and Pierre Richard in The Castaways of Turtle Island

Cast: Pierre Richard, Jacques Villeret, Maurice Risch, René Gros, Bernard Dumaine, Lise Guicheron, Bernadette Palas, Maryse Viscard, Cléa de Oliveira, Alain Sarde, Jean François Balmer, Arlette Emmery. Screenplay: Jacques Rozier. Cinematography: Colin Mounier. Film editing: Jacques Rozier, Françoise Thévenot. Music: Dorival Caymmi, Nana Vasconcelos. 

The castaways of Jacques Rozier's satire on tourism don't know what they're in for, and frankly neither did I. The Castaways of Turtle Island is a grand muddle of a movie, starting with one plot line and then dropping it entirely for the main one: Two disgruntled employees at a tourist agency come up with the idea of offering something for the new breed of adventure tourist. They will find a desert island and drop their clients off there with no amenities, leaving them to fend for themselves in the manner of Robinson Crusoe. (The film was made 25 years before Survivor.) If you can endure 145 minutes of aimless humor and enigmatic characters, it's worth a watch, and at least the scenery is often lovely. But it failed to find an audience when it was originally released in France, and it's easy to see why.
 

71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (Michael Haneke, 1994)

Lukas Miko in 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance

Cast: Gabriel Cosmin Urdes, Lukas Miko, Otto Grünmandl, Anne Bennent, Udo Samel, Branko Samarovski, Claudia Martini, Georg Friedrich, Alexander Pschill, Klaus Händl, Corina Eder, Dorothee Hartinger, Patricia Hirschbiegler, Barbara Nothegger. Screenplay: Michael Haneke. Cinematography: Christian Berger. Production design: Christoph Kanter. Film editing: Marie Homolkova. 

Is there a connection between individual violence and the collective violence of war? That seems to be the underlying question in Michael Haneke's 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance, the third film in a trilogy about what the media call "senseless violence" that also contains The Seventh Continent (1989) and Benny's Video (1992). I think it's the best of the three because it avoids the element of melodrama that tinges the other two. In its fragmentary way, it follows the lives of several people in Vienna in the days leading up to what appears to be a too familiar act of random violence: a man firing a gun into a crowd of people in the lobby of a bank and then shooting himself. Intercut with these glimpses into their ill-fated lives are TV news reports about deadly conflicts in other places, including Somalia, Northern Ireland, and Bosnia. Haneke handles it all with his usual cold distancing, only occasionally yielding to flourishes of technique, as in an extended take that consists only of a young man named Max (Lukas Miko) repeatedly batting back Ping-Pong balls fired at him by a machine. That scene goes on so long that I for one kept wanting it to end, and felt relief when it did, which is exactly the effect Haneke wants to have on the viewer's nerves and patience. 

Lilies (John Greyson, 1996)

Brent Carver in Lilies

Cast: Marcel Sabourin, Aubert Pallascio, Jason Cadieux, Danny Gilmore, Matthew Ferguson, Brent Carver, Alexander Chapman, Rémy Girard, Ian D. Clark, Gary Farmer, Robert Lalonde, John Dunn-Hill. Screenplay: Michel Marc Bouchard, based on his play. Cinematography: Daniel Jobin. Production design: Sandra Kybartas. Film editing: André Corriveau. Music: Mychael Danna. 

John Greyson's Lilies is compounded of many elements: religious hypocrisy, small town homophobia, gender fluidity, the wrong man murder mystery, the revenge drama, the prison thriller, the Saint Sebastian legend, the play-within-a-play trope from Hamlet, and a dash of homoerotic nudity. It's no surprise that it doesn't hold together, but that it's fascinating nonetheless. The premise is that a distinguished Roman Catholic bishop has come to a prison in a rural area of Quebec to hear the confession of a dying man, only to have the tables turned on him when the man turns out to not to be dying and to have a score to settle with the bishop. Moreover, the prisoners have conspired with the chaplain to stage a play that will catch the conscience of the bishop. We see the play both as it might have been staged in the confines of the prison and opened up into the wider gaze of cinema, with the male inmates playing female roles in both the play and film segments. Like most plays turned into movies, it retains the suggestion that it might have worked better on the stage, but the novelty of the concept and the skill of the performers remain. 

July Rhapsody (Ann Hui, 2002)

Karena Lam and Jacky Cheung in July Rhapsody

Cast: Jacky Cheung, Anita Mui, Karena Lam, Shaun Tam, Eric Kot, Tou Chung-hua, Jin Hui, Leung Tin, Race Wong. Screenplay: Ivy Ho. Cinematography: Kuan Pun-leung. Production design: Man Lim-Chung. Film editing: Eric Kwong. Music: Tommy Wai. 

The Lams, Yiu-kwok (Jacky Cheung) and Man-ching (Anita Mui), have been married for 20 years. They live in a cramped Hong Kong high-rise apartment with their two sons, who can hear the couple fighting through the thin walls that separate the bedrooms. They're not intense fights, but rather the mostly low-key disagreements that arise between two people who've lived together for a long time and are nursing secrets. Yin-kwok, who teaches Chinese literature at an exclusive school, feels a little resentment that his choice of a profession that he loves has deprived him of the wealth enjoyed by not only his students but also his former classmates. Then a pretty student, Choi-lam (Karena Lam), starts flirting with him. Carefree and a bit spoiled, she enjoys leading him on. This teacher-student liaison, we discover, has a special significance for Yiu-kwok, one that figures in his own relationship with his wife and gives the narrative an extra layer. July Rhapsody is Ann Hui's variation on the domestic melodrama that arises from the familiar midlife crisis, lifted above its genre by lyrical elements and sensitive performances.

Female Perversions (Susan Streitfeld, 1996)

Tilda Swinton in Female Perversions

Cast: Tilda Swinton, Amy Madigan, Karen Sillas, Frances Fisher, Clancy Brown, Laila Robins, John Diehl, Paulina Porizkova, Dale Shuger. Screenplay: Julie Hébert, Susan Streitfeld, based on a book by Louise J. Kaplan. Cinematography: Teresa Medina. Production design: Missy Stewart. Film editing: Curtiss Clayton, Leo Trombetta. Music: Debbie Wiseman. 

Susan Streitfeld's Female Perversions lays on its theme with a trowel: The complaisance of women pervades and perverts their lives, from the beginning when the lawyer Eve Stephens (Tilda Swinton) submits to the male gaze of a panel of judges through the somewhat ambiguous revelations about her father to the conclusion when she rescues a girl from her own self-disgust. It's unabashedly a feminist fable -- not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just that Eve's story (yes, we get the name) is involving enough to embody the theme without an overlay of obvious symbolism and the surreal exploration of her dreams and fantasies. Still, the film might be what we need when men in power are trying to restore the straight rich white man as our normative figure.

92 in the Shade (Thomas McGuane, 1975)

 

Margot Kidder and Peter Fonda in 92 in the Shade

Cast: Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Margot Kidder, Burgess Meredith, Harry Dean Stanton, Elizabeth Ashley, Sylvia Miles, William Hickey, Louise Latham, Joe Spinell. Screenplay: Thomas McGuane, based on his novel. Cinematography: Michael C. Butler. Film editing: Ed Rothkowitz. Music: Michael J. Lewis. 

Thomas McGuane's 92 in the Shade feels like a souped-up home movie, as if he had invited a group of his friends down to Key West to smoke weed and act out scenes from his novel. The movie is all set-up and no delivery, the set-up being the efforts of Tom Skelton (Peter Fonda) to muscle in on the business of taking tourists on fishing trips that has been monopolized by the team of Carter (Harry Dean Stanton) and Dance (Warren Oates). The rest is a collection of incidents involving oddball characters played by scene stealers like Burgess Meredith, Elizabeth Ashley, Sylvia Miles, and William Hickey, though Joe Spinell manages to steal more scenes than any of them. Eventually, the movie has to end, a problem that McGuane solved by filming at least three endings, only one of which, the darkest, I have seen. It's the kind of film that could only have been made in the 1970s, the heyday of stoner movies, which means that its audience today is probably limited to film historians, curiosity seekers, and aging potheads. 

It Felt Like Love (Eliza Hittman, 2013)

Ronen Rubinstein and Gina Piersanti in It Felt Like Love

Cast: Gina Piersanti, Giovanna Salimeni, Ronen Rubinstein, Kevin Anthony Ryan, Nyck Caution, Nicolas Rosen, Case Prime. Screenplay: Eliza Hittman. Cinematography: Sean Porter. Production design: James Boxer. Film editing: Scott Cummings, Carlos Marques-Marcet. 

Eliza Hittman's first feature, It Felt Like Love, is a dip into the hormonal stew of adolescence, centered on 14-year-old Lisa (Gina Piersanti), who wants to be like her older but not wiser friend Chiara (Giovanna Salimeni). It's summer, and the girls don't have much to do besides hang out on the beach, while Chiara goes through a series of boyfriends. Taking her cues from her friend, Lisa singles out Sammy (Ronen Rubinstein), who works in a convenience store, and makes a play for him that ends in an awkward sexual encounter. There's not much more to the film than that, but Hittman, working on a shoestring budget, manages to craft an edgy portrait of a time in life when desire dangerously encounters possibility.  

The Boys From Fengkuei (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1983)

Cast: Doze Niu, Chang Shih, Chao Peng-chue, Lin Hsiu-ling, Chen Shu-fang, Jang Chuen-fang, Tuo Tsung-hua, Hou Hsao-hsien, Lang Li-yin. Screenplay: Chu T'ien-wen. Cinematography: Chen Kunhou. Film editing: Liao Ching-song. Music: Jonathan Lee, Su Lai. 

Like the boys of its title, Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Boys From Fengkuei isn't going anywhere in particular. The boys are in a kind of limbo, out of school and waiting to be called up for military service, spending the time as adolescence segues into adulthood by goofing off and getting into fights. It centers on Ah-ching (Doze Niu), the most thoughtful of the group, but also the one who gets them in trouble with the police, spurring their departure from the small town of Fengkuei to the larger port city of Kaohsiung where they manage to do a little growing up. A colorful coming-of-age movie, its strengths lie in the way it universalizes its particulars, capturing an epoch in the boys' lives and vividly depicting its Taiwanese setting.

True Chronicles of the Blida Joinville Psychiatric Hospital ... (Abdenour Zahzah, 2024)

Alexandre Desane in True Chronicles of the Blida Joinville Psychiatric Hospital ...

Cast: Alexandre Desane, Gérard Debouche, Nicolas Dromard, Omar Boulakirba, Amal Kateb, Catherine Boskowitz, Chahrazad Kracheni, Kader Affak. Screenplay: Abdenour Zahzah. Cinematography: Aurélien Py. Film editing: Youcef Abba, Abdenour Zahzah. 

The full title is True Chronicles of the Blida Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in the Last Century, When Dr Frantz Fanon Was Head of the Fifth Ward Between 1953 and 1956. Which pretty much tells you that the film is a docudrama about the work of the revolutionary intellectual during a crucial period of his life. Fanon, played by Alexandre Desane, came to work at the Algerian mental institution when the conflict between the colonizing French and the Algerian people was nearing a flashpoint. He found a hospital in the grip of antique psychotherapeutic practices and racist assumptions by the French doctors in charge. His work transformed the hospital and drew attention to his ideas about the mental damage done by racism and colonialism not only to the native Algerians but also to the French who were occupying their country. It's a sober film, a series of incidents with no leavening humor or narrative suspense, but a provocative one even today, as racial stereotyping and inflexible ideology continue to afflict even those of us who oppose them. 

The Escapist (Rupert Wyatt, 2008)

Joseph Fiennes, Brian Cox, Liam Cunningham, and Seu Jorge in The Escapist

Cast: Brian Cox, Damian Lewis, Joseph Fiennes, Seu Jorge, Liam Cunningham, Dominic Cooper, Steven Mackintosh. Screenplay: Rupert Wyatt, Daniel Hardy. Cinematography: Philipp Blaubach. Production design: Jim Furlong. Film editing: Joe Walker. Music: Benjamin Wallfisch. 

Prison break movies tend to fall into three types: the moral fable like A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956), the technical thriller like Escape From Alcatraz (Don Siegel, 1979) and Le Trou (Jacques Becker, 1960), and the sentimental melodrama like The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont, 1994). The Escapist tries to be all three, which results in something of a muddle. Director and co-writer Rupert Wyatt intercuts the drama leading up to the escape with scenes from the escape itself, which challenges the viewer to keep track of time and place. This scrambling of the narrative serves a purpose which is revealed at the end of the film, at the risk of alienating the viewer. Fortunately, he has an ensemble of fine actors, headed by Brian Cox, who make things watchable even amid the confusion and occasional implausibility.  

Bona (Lino Brocka, 1980)

Nora Aunor and Phillip Salvador in Bona

Cast: Nora Aunor, Phillip Salvador, Marissa Delgado, Raquel Monteza, Venchito Galvez, Rustica Carpio, Nanding Josef, Spanky Manikan. Screenplay: Cenen Ramones. Cinematography: Conrado Baltazar. Art direction: Joey Luna. Film editing: Augusto Salvador. Music: Max Jocson, Lutgardo Labad.

Nora Aunor, who was a superstar in the Philippines, gives a fine performance in the title role of Bona, Lino Brocka's portrait of toxic masculinity. Hanging out on the fringes of a location shoot for an action movie, Bona develops a crush on Gardo (Phillip Salvador), a good-looking bit player who has aspirations to stardom. Gardo notices her and starts letting her run errands for him, but when she neglects her duties in her large working class household, her irascible father (Venchito Galvez), beats her with his belt. Bona moves into Gardo's shack in the Manila slums, serving as his housekeeper. He's a drunk and a layabout with a succession of girlfriends, but he's not as given to violence as Bona's father -- or, as we will see, her older brother. Their relationship gradually disintegrates until, expelled from her family and threatened with abandonment by Gardo, Bona finally takes revenge. It's a solid domestic melodrama given bite and purpose by Brocka's characteristic attention to the actuality of life on the fringes of Philippine society. 

The Seventh Continent (Michael Haneke, 1989)

Cast: Birgit Doll, Dieter Berner, Leni Tanzer, Udo Samel, Silvia Fenz, Elisabeth Rath, Georg Friedrich. Screenplay: Michael Haneke, Johanna Teicht. Cinematography: Anton Peschke. Production design: Rudolf Czettel. Film editing: Marie Homolkova. 

In The Seventh Continent, Michael Haneke reveals himself as a mannerist filmmaker, relying more on camera and editing technique than on conventional narrative and characterization. He knows precisely how to manipulate the audience, realizing that they're likely to have a visceral reaction to images of tropical fish flopping in their death throes, money being flushed down a toilet, or perfectly good clothing and furniture being ripped to shreds and smashed wantonly, and that their reaction has a greater emotional immediacy than the fate of his human characters. He only trusts that the audience will realize the enormity of their reactions afterward. The problem, I think, is that his mannerisms become almost comic, allowing viewers to distance themselves from whatever Haneke may be trying to say about existential ennui or whatever else motivates the ordinary family in his film to do the terrible thing they do. 

Near Orouët (Jacques Rozier, 1971)

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

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

Miami Blues (George Armitage, 1990)

Alec Baldwin in Miami Blues

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

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

Bully (Larry Clark, 2001)

Nick Stahl and Brad Renfro in Bully

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

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

China Moon (John Bailey, 1994)

Ed Harris and Madeleine Stowe in China Moon

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

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

Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1978)

Kaycee Moore and Henry G. Sanders in Killer of Sheep

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

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

The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, 2024)

 

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

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

The Big Night (Joseph Losey, 1951)

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

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

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

Eureka (Nicolas Roeg, 1983)

Gene Hackman in Eureka 

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

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

Fruitvale Station (Ryan Coogler, 2013)

Michael B. Jordan in Fruitvale Station

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

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

Benny's Video (Michael Haneke, 1992)

Arno Frisch in Benny's Video

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

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

Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier, 1962)

Cast: Jean-Claude Aimini, Stefania Sabatini, Yveline Céry, Daniel Descamps, Vittorio Caprioli, David Tonelli, André Tarroux, Christian Longuet, Michel Soyet, Arlette Gilbert, Maurice Garre. Screenplay: Michèle O'Glor, Jacques Rozier. Cinematography: René Mathelin. Film editing: Monique Bonnot, Claude Durand, Marc Pavaux. Music: Jacques Denjean, Paul Mattei, Maxime Saury. 

The Nouvelle Vague loved its threesomes, but the dynamic in Jacques Rozier's Adieu Philippine is different from the more famous ones in François Truffaut's Jules and Jim (1962) and Jean-Luc Godard's Bande à Part (1962). Instead of two men and one woman, Rozier gives us two women and one man. Otherwise, it walks the same sexual tightrope, juggling the same ideas about what it means to be free in a world that seems determined to stifle that freedom. 

Sambizanga (Sarah Maldoror, 1972)

Elisa Andrade in Sambizanga

Cast: Elisa Andrade, Domingos de Oliveira, Jean M'Vondo, Dino Abelino, Benoît Moutsila, Talagongo, Lopes Rodrigues, Henriette Meya, Manuel Videira, Ana Wilson (voice). Screenplay: Sarah Maldoror, Maurice Pons, Mário de Andrade, Claude Agostini, based on a novel by Luandino Vieira. Cinematography: Claude Agostini. Film editing: Georges Klotz. 

Sarah Maldoror's Sambizanga is a tough, heartbreaking portrait of Angola struggling for independence from colonial rule, focused on the arrest, torture, and death of a revolutionary leader called Domingos Xavier (Domingos de Oliveira) and the attempt of his wife Maria (Elisa Andrade) to discover what has happened to him. Beautifully filmed and performed by a mostly non-professional cast, many of whom had ties to the revolutionary movement. It was shot in the neighboring Republic of the Congo. 

Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025)

Michael B. Jordan in Sinners

Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O'Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller, Delroy Lindo, Peter Dreimanis, Lola Kirke, Li Jun Li, Saul Williams, Yao, David Maldonado, Helena Hu, Adrene Ward-Hammond, Nathaniel Arcand, Emonie Ellison. Screenplay: Ryan Coogler. Cinematography: Autumn Durald Arkapaw. Production design: Hanna Beachler. Film editing: Michael P. Shawver. Music: Ludwig Göransson. 

I admit that I felt a little let down when, after one of the most exhilarating scenes I've seen in a movie for years, Ryan Coogler's Sinners turned into a vampire movie. But by the end of the film, and the mid-credits coda that HBO Max stupidly will make some viewers miss, I was back with it again. It's a movie so alive in texture and significance that it reminds me of the old days when people would sit around and talk about what they had just seen. I'm not surprised that in the online world there are people asking if the version now available for streaming is the same one they saw in theaters: It's easy to miss some of the nuances when you're having your expectations challenged -- not in the gimmicky plot twist way but in changing insights into characters and themes -- at every turn. I can only hope that Coogler's hit sets an example for directors to make movies that succeed by provoking comment and thought rather than just gratifying expectations.

Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2001)

Shu Qi in Millennium Mambo

Cast: Shu Qi, Jack Kao, Duan Chun-hao, Chen Yi-Hsuan, Jun Takeuchi, Doze Niu, Jenny Tsen Yan Lei, Pauline Chan, Huang Xiao Chu. Screenplay: Chu T'ien-wen. Cinematography: Mark Lee Ping-bing. Production design: Huang Wen-Yin, Wang Chih-cheng. Film editing: Yoshihiro Hanno, DJ Fish, Giong Lim. 

In Millennium Mambo, Hou Hsiao-hsien presents Vicky (Shu Qi) to us as an object of contemplation, as lacking in agency and volition as an apple in a Cézanne still life. She is being contemplated not only by us but also by herself, ten years later, so Vicky sometimes narrates events before we even see them. She is existentially passive, allowing herself to be propelled through life by others, especially men and particularly her boyfriend Hao-Hao (Duan Chun-hao) and the gangster Jack (Jack Kao). Naturally, as a woman and not an apple, she responds to stimuli, pleasure and pain, but we're no more expected to pass judgment on her than we are the apple. It's a film that replaces plot and narrative with incident and images, handsomely provided by cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bing, in a cinema moving away from novels and plays toward paintings and sculpture, yet retaining a connection with actuality inherent in the medium. Millennial indeed.

In Celebration (Lindsay Anderson, 1974)

James Bolam, Alan Bates, and Brian Cox in In Celebration

Cast: Alan Bates, Brian Cox, James Bolam, Constance Chapman, Bill Owen, Gabrielle Daye. Screenplay: David Storey, based on his play. Cinematography: Dick Bush. Art direction: Alan Withy. Film editing: Russell Lloyd. Music: Christopher Gunning. 

Upward mobility is not all it's cracked up to be in the Shaw family, the focus of David Storey's play and Lindsay Anderson's film In Celebration. The middle-aged sons of a coal miner have come home to the cramped house where they grew up to celebrate the 40th wedding anniversary of their parents. The oldest, Andrew (Alan Bates), studied the law but has given it up to become an artist. The middle son, Colin (James Bolam), works for an automobile manufacturer as a labor negotiator. And the youngest, Stephen (Brian Cox), is a schoolteacher who has been writing a book but has hit a block. The father (Bill Owen) still works the mines at 64, and the mother (Constance Chapman) keeps a tidy house. You can see where this is going, and it doesn't take long for family secrets and half-buried resentments to surface. D.H. Lawrence and Eugene O'Neill, among others, did this kind of cultural and generational clash with more color and meaning. But this is mostly a vehicle for actors, and we get to watch several very good ones do their thing. Bates, Cox, and Chapman get the roles with more nuance and ambiguity built into them, and  
they serve them up well. It's barely a movie rather than a play opened up around the edges, partly because it was part of an experiment called The American Film Theatre, which for a couple of years in the mid 1970s produced adaptations of stage plays shown in selected movie theaters on an advanced sale and subscription basis. The results satisfied neither theatergoers nor movie lovers, but they provide an interesting portrait of the theatrical life of the era and preserve some performances that would otherwise be lost. In this case, it's interesting to see the young Brian Cox after becoming familiar with him as the patriarch on Succession.  

Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell in Miami Vice

Cast: Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell, Gong Li, Naomie Harris, Ciaràn Hinds, Justin Theroux, Barry Shabaka Henley, Luis Tosar, John Ortiz, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Dominick Lombardozzi, Eddie Marsan, Isaach De Bankolé, John Hawkes. Screenplay: Michael Mann. Cinematography: Dion Beebe. Production design: Victor Kempster. Film editing: William Goldenberg, Paul Rubell. Music: John Murphy. 

The dark-on-dark credits roll for Michael Mann's film version of his hit 1980s TV series Miami Vice is the most illegible I've ever tried to read. It's as if no one connected with the movie was especially eager to be associated with it. Not that it's a bad movie, but that it never comes to life, never stirs the kind of enthusiasm that the original did. It has all the elements: attractive performers, hip music, fast cars, boats, and planes, the requisite sex and violence. But it doesn't seem to be going anywhere new or interesting. The characters don't generate much empathy or commitment to their fates. It ends on the most perfunctory note I think I've seen in a big American movie, not even trying to make you want a sequel.

Breakfast of Champions (Alan Rudolph, 1999)

Bruce Willis in Breakfast of Champions

Cast: Bruce Willis, Albert Finney, Nick Nolte, Barbara Hershey, Glenne Headly, Lukas Haas, Omar Epps, Vicki Lewis, Buck Henry, Ken Hudson Campbell, Jake Johanssen, Will Patton, Chip Zien, Owen Wilson. Screenplay: Alan Rudolph, based on a novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Cinematography: Elliot Davis. Production design: Nina Ruscio. Film editing: Suzy Ruscio. Music: Mark Isham. 

When a film starts with a man with a gun in his mouth, you expect it to explain why he's doing that. Alan Rudolph's Breakfast of Champions never really does. You can only accept as explanation a desire to escape the hurly-burly of events that follows. There are those who love this movie and those who would need to be strapped to a chair with their eyes taped open to watch it again. I found it exhausting and pointless, with gags that went on too long and characters who serve no function in whatever plot it possesses.  

Mapplethorpe (Ondi Timoner, 2018)

Matt Smith in Mapplethorpe

Cast: Matt Smith, Marianne Rendón, John Benjamin Hickey, Brandon Sklenar, Tina Benko, Mark Moses, Carolyn McCormick, Thomas Philip O'Neill, Mickey O'Hagan, Anthony Michael Lopez, McKinley Belcher III, Brian Stokes Mitchell. Screenplay: Ondi Timoner, Mikko Alanne, based on a screenplay by Bruce Goodrich. Cinematography: Nancy Schreiber. Production design: Jonah Markowitz. Film editing: John David Allen, Lee Percy, Ondi Timoner. Music: Marcelo Zarvas. 

An unconventional artist like Robert Mapplethorpe deserves an unconventional biopic. Ondi Timoner's Mapplethorpe isn't. It's full of clichés like the meet-cute: Mapplethorpe (Matt Smith) meets Patti Smith (Marianne Rendón) on a park bench when she latches on to him as a pretend boyfriend to evade a pursuing creep. There are the usual clashes with the parents, a bullying father (Mark Moses) and an ineffectual mother (Carolyn McCormick). There's the chance meeting that launches him to success: The wealthy art collector Sam Wagstaff (John Benjamin Hickey) becomes both mentor and lover. And the faint funk of disapproval hangs over the film, as if Mapplethorpe's life were something of a warning to aspiring artists, especially queer ones. I think it wants to celebrate Mapplethorpe as an artist, but is afraid to do so, stepping gingerly around gay sexuality as if afraid of rousing the "ick factor" in a straight audience. The lives of artists are notoriously hard to dramatize, and everyone connected with Mapplethorpe deserves respect for trying, but they didn't succeed.

Richard III (Laurence Olivier, 1955)

Laurence Olivier in Richard III

Cast: Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud, Cedric Hardwicke, Claire Bloom, Alec Clunes, Mary Kerridge, Andrew Cruikshank, Clive Morton, Norman Wooland, Helen Haye, George Woodbridge, Pamela Brown, Stanley Baker. Screenplay: Laurence Olivier, based on a play by William Shakespeare. Cinematography: Otto Heller. Production design: Roger K. Furse. Film editing: Helga Cranston. Music: William Walton. 

Laurence Olivier clearly relished Shakespeare's cunning Machiavel Richard III, and with good reason: It's a role that put him front and center at all times. Of the roles he filmed, even Hamlet has to share the stage with others as colorful as Polonius, Claudius, and Ophelia, and Othello stands on equal footing with Iago in getting attention. But Richard is buzzed around by characters he can swat off like flies, which lets Olivier cast his two rivals for greatest English actor of the 20th century, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, alongside him. For good measure, he even adds that hammy knight Cedric Hardwicke, who chews the scenery in his big moment. I happen to think that Gielgud gives the best performance in the film, but Clarence leaves the play early. Richardson for some reason underplays the role of Buckingham, and Olivier said that he wished he had been able to cast Orson Welles instead. Outfitted with a prosthetic nose and a page-boy wig of stygian blackness, Olivier lurks and limps around the stage, scowling and plotting. In adapting the play, he cuts and rearranges: The scene in which Richard woos the Lady Anne (Claire Bloom) is cut into two pieces, but it helps increase the credibility of a widow succumbing to the man who killed her husband. The ranting of Queen Margaret is one of the play's more entertaining moments, but it interrupts the flow, so Olivier cuts the role entirely. He brings Mistress Shore onto the stage and casts her generously with Pamela Brown, even though she has only one interpolated line. He borrows bits from 18th century adaptations of the play by David Garrick and Colley Cibber. The result is a reasonably swift and tight account of the play, less confusing to audiences that have trouble with the tangled genealogy of the Yorks and Lancasters. Unfortunately, Roger Furse's design is a little drab, and in some scenes Olivier's blocking and camera direction are cluttered. Still, on the whole, Richard III deserves its current reputation as Olivier's best adaptation of Shakespeare to the screen.

Sing Sing (Greg Kwedar, 2023)

Cast: Colman Domingo, Clarence Maclin, Sean San Jose, Paul Raci, David Giraudy, Mosi Eagle, James "Big E" Williams, Sean Dino Johnson. Screenplay: Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin, John Divine G Whitfield. Cinematography: Pat Scola. Production design: Ruta Kiskyte. Film editing: Parker Laramie. Music: Bryce Dessner. 

Greg Kwedar's docudrama Sing Sing is an object lesson on how solid characterization combined with skillful acting can carry a film beyond the limitations of genre and plot. Not much really happens in the movie: A group of convicts put on a play. There is one death, but it happens non-violently off-screen and the film is concerned with how it affects the characters and their relationships to one another. There is an explosion of temper but it's resolved peacefully. There are revelations of backstory, but the chief concern is immediacy. There is a bit of advocacy for more humane treatment of prisoners, but it's not preached at us. There is some tension about whether the play will actually take place and whether some of the prisoners will receive clemency or parole, but it's more in service of character than of plot. In short, it's a movie that lets you do the thinking and feeling without undue manipulation, which is rare these days. 

Past Lives (Celine Song, 2023)

Teo Yoo, Greta Lee, and John Magaro in Past Lives

Cast: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro, Moon Seung-ah, Leem Seung-min, Jun Ji-hye, Choi Won-young, Ahn Min-yeung, Seo Yeon-Woo. Screenplay: Celine Song. Cinematography: Shabier Kirchner. Production design: Grace Yun. Film editing: Keith Fraase. Music: Christopher Bear, Daniel Rossen. 

Celine Song's Past Lives is full of silences, some of them lasting for 12 years, some merely the moments in which communication between the characters is suspended out of embarrassment or awkwardness or uncertainty. But the silences are productive: They allow both the characters and the viewer to reflect on the meaning of the moment. When we first meet Nora (aka Na Young) and Hae Sung, they are 12-year-old schoolmates and close friends in Korea. We sense something blossoming between them, but it's nipped in the bud by the immigration of Nora and her family to Canada. Then the first silence begins: They lose contact as Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) finishes school, does his military service, and begins his studies to become an engineer, and Nora (Greta Lee) moves from Toronto to New York where she begins a career as a playwright. Then, after 12 years, Hae Sung searches out Nora on the internet, and they begin to catch up with each other in cyberspace. But Nora abruptly breaks off the connection, for reasons that she never fully articulates. She meets a fellow writer, Arthur (John Magaro), and they get married. Hae Sung finds a girlfriend but it's not a solid relationship. Finally, after another 12-year-silence, Hae Sung lets Nora know that he's coming to New York on a vacation. And thus begins a fable about the limits of human connection, the burdens of ethnic difference, and the barriers to desire. Hae Sung is plainly in love with Nora, and Arthur senses it with some trepidation about how she will respond. This dance to the music of the past would be nothing without actors as skilled at manifesting the interior as Lee, Yoo, and Magaro are, or without a director like Song, who keeps the pace as stately as a pavane.   

Gypsy 83 (Todd Stephens, 2001)

Birkett Turton and Sara Rue in Gypsy 83

Cast: Sara Rue, Birkett Turton, Karen Black, John Doe, Anson Scoville, Paulo Costanzo, Carolyn Baeumler, Stephanie McVay, Amanda Talbot, Vera Beren, Eileen Letchworth. Screenplay: Todd Stephens, Tim Kaltenecker. Cinematography: Gina Degirolamo, Mai Iskander. Production design: Nancy Arons. Film editing: Annette Davey. Music: Marty Beller.

Misfits searching for a way to escape, Gypsy (Sara Rue) and Clive (Birkett Turton) hit the road from Sandusky, Ohio, to New York City, where misfits always think they can find a way to fit. Todd Stephens's Gypsy 83 is filled with more misfits than those two, a 25-year-old woman and a gay teenager. They also include a hitchhiking young Amish man (Anson Scoville), a disaffected fraternity boy (Paulo Costanzo), and a middle-aged has-been singer (Karen Black). Stephens follows these characters through an entertainingly scruffy road movie that ends, as many road movies do, where it probably should just be beginning.   

Rebel Ridge (Jeremy Saulnier, 2024)

Don Johnson and Aaron Pierre in Rebel Ridge

Cast: Aaron Pierre, Don Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, David Denman, Emory Cohen, Steve Zissis, Zsané Jhé, Dana Lee, James Cromwell, CJ LeBlanc. Screenplay: Jeremy Saulnier. Cinematography: David Gallego. Production design: John P. Goldsmith, Ryan Warren Smith. Film editing: Jeremy Saulnier. Music: Brooke Blair, Will Blair. 

Rebel Ridge begins painfully, with the too-familiar image of a Black man being forced to the ground and handcuffed by two white cops. But it recovers from that to become one of the better action thrillers of recent years, thanks to writer-director-editor Jeremy Saulnier's ability to surprise, a charismatic performance by Aaron Pierre as Terry Richmond, the protagonist, and a reliably watchable one by Don Johnson as Terry's antagonist, Chief Sandy Burnne. Granted, the plot of Rebel Ridge is familiar: stranger comes to a small town and tangles with corrupt law enforcement, a trope we've seen in Reacher and the Lee Child novels it's based on, for example. But Saulnier gives his characters depth and he avoids the expected conclusion in which the bad guys get blown away in a spectacularly messy fashion. There are witty moments, too. Terry gets help from several people, including Summer (AnnaSophia Robb), a court house clerk, and Liu (Dana Lee), the elderly owner of a Chinese restaurant. When Terry introduces them to each other, he tells Summer that Liu is a veteran of the Korean War. Summer chirps the familiar "Thank you for your service," whereupon Terry explains that Liu was on the other side. Rebel Ridge is no ground-breaker, but it deservedly won the Critics Choice Award for best TV movie, and we should be seeing a lot more of Aaron Pierre. 

Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh, 2025)

Michael Fassbender, Tom Burke, and Pierce Brosnan in Black Bag

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett, Marisa Abela, Tom Burke, Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, Kae Alexander, Ambika Mod, Gustaf Skarsgard, Pierce Brosnan. Screenplay: David Koepp. Cinematography: Steven Soderbergh. Production design: Philip Messina. Film editing: Steven Soderbergh. Music: David Holmes. 

Steven Soderbergh's Black Bag is a solid, satisfying spy thriller that breaks no new ground for the genre, which may be why it was not a success at the box office: There are no spectacular moments, no stunts, no especially gory deaths -- in short, nothing to spark a word of mouth publicity campaign. Its characters are all handsome and sexy but also not very likable. In fact, they delight in getting on each other's nerves. In fact, it feels more like a pilot for a series on a streaming channel like Netflix or Hulu than a stand-alone movie. 

Wolfwalkers (Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart, 2020)

Cast (voices): Honor Kneafsey, Eva Whittaker, Sean Bean, Simon McBurney, Tommy Tiernan, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Jon Kenny, John Morton, Nora Twomey, Oliver McGrath. Screenplay: Will Collins, Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart. Production design: Tomm Moore, Maria Pareja, Ross Stewart. Film editing: Darragh Byrne, Richie Cody, Darren T. Holmes. Music: Bruno Coulais. 

The images and animation of Wolfwalkers are so dazzling, so beautiful, so witty that it feels almost churlish to wish that they were in service to a less conventional story. It's the familiar tale of the spunky, underestimated kid who overcomes obstacles to save the day. The time is the 17th century and the place is the village of Kilkenny in Ireland, governed by a lord protector who is determined to exterminate a pack of wolves in a nearby forest. He hires Bill Goodfellowe, an English hunter, to do the job. His small daughter, Robyn, wants to help him, and ventures into the forest on her own. There she encounters a girl, Mebh, who turns out to be a wolfwalker, a human who can take the form of a wolf and who has mysterious healing powers. When Robyn is accidentally bitten by Mebh, she too becomes a wolfwalker, and gets involved in a plan to free Mebh's mother, Moll, who has been captured by the lord protector, and to save the wolf pack led by Moll from his campaign against them. The mythology gets a bit confusing and the denouement has the usual crises before a somewhat ambivalent resolution. But why complain about story when the visuals are so ravishing? The design contrasts the rigid, sharp-angled human world with the fluid, sinuous natural world, and even the characters are delineated by angles or curves -- the more angular, the more villainous, and the lord protector is virtually boxlike. Wolfwalkers is the third in a trilogy of films by Tomm Moore about Irish legends, after The Secret of Kells (2009) and Song of the Sea (2014). It was deservedly nominated for a best animated feature Oscar, but lost to Pete Docter's Pixar film Soul.