Mickey 17 (Bong Joon Ho, 2025)

Robert Pattinson in Mickey 17

Cast: Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, Patsy Ferran, Cameron Britton, Daniel Henshall, Steve Park, Anamaria Vartolomei, Holliday Grainger. Screenplay: Bong Joon Ho, based on a novel by Edward Ashton. Cinematography: Darius Khondji. Production design: Fiona Crombie. Film editing: Jinmo Yang. Music: Jung Jae-il. 

Bong Joon Ho's Mickey 17 is carpet-bomb satire, spread out over so many social, political, scientific, and theological targets that it's bound to hit all of them but inflict no lasting damage on any of them. What it has going for it is a watchable cast, starting with Robert Pattinson, who adds to his reputation as one of our most versatile young actors. Pattison is Mickey Barnes, whom technology allows to essentially live forever as a succession of Mickeys who die and get reborn. By the time the film starts, he's Mickey 17, an "Expendable" on a voyage to settle a new planet. He's essentially a guinea pig, sent out to test whether humans can survive the new environment. Each time something on the planet, such as a virus, kills him, he's re-created out of something like a 3-D printer and his previously stored memories are replaced so he can go out again, after the scientists on-board have discovered a cure or preventative for what killed him. That's the principal set-up, but Bong has more twists to Mickey's story in line. The captain of the spaceship, for example, Kenneth Marshall, is a wealthy politician out for glory. He's played well over the top by Mark Ruffalo in a performance that evokes several contemporary egomaniacs with more money and power than scruples and common sense. And the planet is inhabited by creatures that look like large pill bugs; they turn out to be intelligent beings, setting the plot up for a showdown with the blustering Marshall. It's a darkly funny movie that reflects Bong's somewhat jaundiced view of humankind. 

The Grey Zone (Tim Blake Nelson, 2001)

Allan Corduner and Kamelia Grigorova in The Grey Zone

Cast: David Arquette, Michael Stuhlbarg, Daniel Benzali, Allan Corduner, Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel, Kamelia Grigorova, Mira Sorvino, Natasha Lyonne, Jessica Hecht, Brian F. O'Byrne. Screenplay: Tim Blake Nelson, based on his play and a book by Miklos Nyiszli. Cinematography: Russell Lee Fine. Production design: Maria Djukovic. Film editing: Michelle Botticelli, Tim Blake Nelson. 

In basing his film (originally a play) on the memoirs of Miklos Nyiszli, a Jewish physician who aided Josef Mengele in his hideous experiments at Auschwitz, Tim Blake Nelson makes one grave mistake. Instead of making Nyiszli the focus of the film, he chooses to scatter the narrative among others imprisoned at the death camp. One of the strengths of Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993) was its use of Oskar Schindler as a pivotal figure, and Son of Saul (László Nemes, 2015), a much better film about the Sonderkommandos, the Jews who did the dirty work for the Nazis at the camps, is centered on the dilemma of one man. The Grey Zone remains a harrowing film, but it's easy to get lost as it shifts from the discovery of a girl found alive in one of the gas chambers to the plotting that results in the destruction of one of the crematoria. 

  

Unknown Pleasures (Jia Zhang-ke, 2002)

Zhao Tao and Wu Qiong in Unknown Pleasures

Cast: Zhao Wei Wei, Zhao Tao, Wu Qiong, Li Zhubin, Wang Hongwei, Zhou Qingfeng, Bai Ru, Liu Xi An, Xu Shou Lin, Xiao Dao, Ying Zi. Screenplay: Jia Zhangke. Cinematography: Nelson Yu Lik-wai. Production design: Jingdong Liang. Film editing: Keung Chow. 

At one point in Jia Zhangke's Unknown Pleasures, a character tells another about a movie he saw that sounds a lot like Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994), and it's followed by a cut to a shabby discotheque where people are dancing to music that sounds like a bad imitation of "Misirlou," the number that opens Tarantino's film. The homage is ironic, because the young idlers of Jia's film are a world away from the stylish gangsters and lowlifes of the American film. They're wannabes and would-bes, trapped in a decaying backwater and trying to get as much pleasure as they can out of life, which isn't much. China has never looked more drab than in Unknown Pleasures, which is usually taken to be a portrait of the generation produced under China's "one child" policy that was initiated in 1979. They long for what they see as the glamour of Beijing, but have to settle for what little glamour they can milk out of popular culture. Bin Bin (Zhao Wei Wei) has a frustrating relationship with his more ambitious girlfriend, Yuan Yuan (Zhou Qingfeng), and decides to rob a bank. Xiao Ji (Wu Qiong) aimlessly rides his unreliable motorbike as he tries to get the attention of Qiao Qiao (Zhao Tao), who works as a singer and dancer promoting the wares of a liquor company.  It's sometimes a confusing film, taking sidetracks into the stories ancillary to those of the principal characters, but what it lacks in narrative structure it makes up for in atmosphere.

The Magic Christian (Joseph McGrath, 1969)

Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan in The Magic Christian

Cast: Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr, Isobel Jeans, Caroline Blakiston, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Richard Attenborough, Leonard Frey, Laurence Harvey, Christopher Lee, Spike Milligan, Roman Polanski, Raquel Welch, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Yul Brynner. Screenplay: Terry Southern, Joseph McGrath, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Peter Sellers, based on a novel by Southern. Cinematography: Geoffrey Unsworth. Production design: Assheton Gorton. Film editing: Kevin Connor. Music: Ken Thorne. 

There are some funny people doing funny things in The Magic Christian: John Cleese as a Sotheby's employee aghast when the billionaire played by Peter Sellers mutilates a painting thought to be a Rembrandt; Spike Milligan as a traffic warden bribed into eating the ticket he's given the billionaire for parking in a loading zone; and Sellers himself trying out an unpredictable variety of accents. There are also some inspired moments: Laurence Harvey playing Hamlet and doing a striptease during the "To be or not to be" soliloquy, and an unbilled Yul Brynner in drag, singing "Mad About the Boy." But this scattershot, anything-for-a-gag movie has too many gags that don't land, including some dodgy gay jokes like a swishy character named Laurence Faggot -- pronounced fa-GOH. It's a sledgehammer satire on the familiar premise that people will do anything for money, and it often lands flat on its own banality. 

Blue Steel (Kathryn Bigelow, 1990)

Jamie Lee Curtis in Blue Steel

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Ron Silver, Clancy Brown, Elizabeth Peña, Louise Fletcher, Philip Bosco, Kevin Dunn, Richard Jenkins. Screenplay: Kathryn Bigelow, Eric Red. Cinematography: Amir Mokri. Production design: Toby Corbett. Film editing: Lee Percy. Music: Brad Fiedel. 

Whatever points Kathryn Bigelow may earn for style in her direction of Blue Steel have to be offset by the fact that she co-wrote (with Eric Red) its nonsensical screenplay. Jamie Lee Curtis plays a rookie cop who becomes the obsession of a psychotic commodities trader and serial killer played by Ron Silver. The setup isn't a bad one, but the film is padded out with an unnecessary subplot in which Curtis's character is trying to persuade her mother (Louise Fletcher) to leave her abusive father (Philip Bosco) and a gratuitous sex scene before the expected final shootout. Bigelow demonstrated her gift for narrative economy in The Hurt Locker (2008) and for over-the-top action sequences in Point Break (1991). Blue Steel could use both.  

The Loveless (Kathryn Bigelow, Monty Montgomery, 1981)

Willem Dafoe in The Loveless

Cast: Willem Dafoe, Robert Gordon, Marin Kanter, J. Don Ferguson, Tina L'Hotsky, Lawrence Matarese, Danny Rosen, Phillip Kimbrough, Ken Call, Jane Berman. Screenplay: Kathryn Bigelow, Monty Montgomery. Cinematography: Doyle Smith. Production design: Lilly Kilvert. Film editing: Nancy Kanter. Music: Robert Gordon. 

If, as it's said to be, The Loveless is an homage to The Wild One (Laslo Benedek, 1953), it's not a bad example of the truism that there's a thin line between homage and parody. It's hard not to laugh at the poses of its leather-clad 1950s-style bikers, saying things like "daddio" and "cool your jets." One of them is an up-and-coming Willem Dafoe, making his debut as a movie lead. It was also Kathryn Bigelow's debut as a feature-film director, and was made as her master's thesis in the film program at Columbia -- the university, not the studio. Both Dafoe and Bigelow, as they say, show promise. Though it's slow and somewhat overcooked, it demonstrates, among other things, Bigelow's eye for male posturing, which would serve her well in a later film like Point Break (1991). It was her co-director Monty Montgomery's one outing as a feature director; he's better known as a producer, working with among other, David Lynch. The Loveless is one of those movies that are less interesting in themselves than for the conditions and circumstances under which they were made and as the harbinger of better things for some of its personnel.

The Runner (Amir Naderi, 1984)

Madjid Niroumand in The Runner

Cast: Madjid Niroumand, Behrouz Maghsoudlou, Mohsen Shah Mohammadi, Abbas Nazeri, Reza Ramezani, Musa Torkizadeh. Screenplay: Behrouz Gharibpour, Amir Naderi. Cinematography: Firooz Malekzadeh. Production design: Mohammad Hassanzadeh, Amir Naderi. Film editing: Bahram Beyzale. 

Amir Naderi's enthralling The Runner is about escape. Or, more particularly, about escape from one's own limits. When the protagonist, Amiro (Madjid Niroumand), keeps running after losing a footrace to another boy, he's asked why he didn't stop. "I wanted to see how far I could run," he replies. Amiro is a street kid with no parents, living in an abandoned boat on the shore in a coastal Iranian town. He survives with odd jobs: scavenging in a rubbish dump, collecting bottles that float ashore, peddling ice water, shining shoes. But he dreams of escape, of sailing on the ships that he sees in the harbor, flying on the planes that take off from a nearby airfield. Scorned for his illiteracy by a newsstand owner whose magazines he collects for images of airplanes and another world, he enrolls in a night class to learn to read. And he runs and runs, not only in races with other boys, but also to assert himself, chasing down a bicyclist who cheats him of a rial owed for a glass of ice water, pursuing a man who grabs a block of ice Amiro needs for the water he sells. He wins both times, even though the sum of money is petty and the ice has melted by the time he catches the thief. There is no story, only a fable of determination, and although the film ends in a fiery scene of triumph, Amiro's circumstances have not altered. Beautifully filmed, with a charismatic performance by Niroumand, The Runner is a neglected classic of childhood. 

The Brutalist (Brady Corbet, 2024)

Adrien Brody in The Brutalist

Cast: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn, Raffey Cassidy, Stacy Martin, Isaac De Bankolé, Alessandro Nivola, Ariane Labed, Michael Epp, Emma Laird, Jonathan Hyde. Screenplay: Brady Corbet, Mona Fastvold. Cinematography: Lol Crawley. Production design: Judy Becker. Film editing: Dávid Jancsó. Music: Daniel Blumberg. 

Reading some of the online comments about Brady Corbet's The Brutalist, I was surprised to learn that some people thought László Tóth was a real person. Which made me realize that I much prefer a faux biopic like The Brutalist to the ones like Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan, 2023) that purport to be about a real person. Tóth may be based on architects like Gropius, Breuer, and Mies van der Rohe, but he's wholly the creation of Corbet and co-writer Mona Fastvold, and we don't need to waste time fussing over what's fact and what's fiction. To be sure, with its curlicues of plot and eruptions of emotion, The Brutalist feels more Baroque than Bauhaus, the spare and linear architectural style it celebrates in the film's epilogue. It's also overlong and sometimes substitutes caricature for characterization, as in the role of Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who utters lines more florid than any real American captain of industry ever mustered. Still, Adrien Brody's performance brings Tóth to life and richly deserved the Oscar it received.   

Touchez Pas au Grisbi (Jacques Becker, 1954)

Jean Gabin in Touchez Pas au Grisbi

Cast: Jean Gabin, René Dary, Dora Doll, Vittorio Sanipoli, Marilyn Buferd, Gaby Basset, Jeanne Moreau, Paul Barge, Denise Clair, Michel Jourdan, Lino Ventura, Paul Frankeur. Screenplay: Jacques Becker, Albert Simonin, Maurice Griffe, based on a novel by Simonin. Cinematography: Pierre Montazel. Production design: Jean d'Eabonne. Film editing: Marguerite Renoir. Music: Jean Wiener. 

Grisbi is French slang for "the loot," which in Jacques Becker's classic Touchez Pas au Grisbi is the gold bullion Max (Jean Gabin) has stashed away after a successful heist at Orly. In another film, we'd see the heist, but Becker is not interested in that, but rather in the effect the grisbi has on the gangsters who'd like to get their hands on it. His film is a mood piece and a character study, centered on the aging Max, a guy with an expanding waistline and bags under his eyes, ready to retire from his life of crime and enjoy his ill-gotten gains. But loyalty to his old chum Riton (René Dary) will make it impossible when Riton lets on to his girlfriend Josy (Jeanne Moreau), a showgirl, that Max is sitting on a fortune. Eventually, there will be a chase and a shootout, but most of Becker's film is taken up with a portrait of the autumnal life of the once dashing Max and Riton. As a "gangster grown old" movie, it had an obvious influence on such later films as Louis Malle's Atlantic City (1980) and Martin Scorsese's The Irishman (2019), but it stands on its own, thanks to Gabin's performance and Becker's restrained storytelling.  

Vermiglio (Maura Delpero, 2024)

Cast: Tommaso Ragno, Roberta Rovelli, Martina Scrinzi, Giuseppe De Dominico, Carlotta Gamba, Orietta Notari, Santiago Fondevila, Rachele Potrich, Anna Thaler, Patrick Gardner. Screenplay: Maura Delpero. Cinematography: Mikhail Krichman. Production design: Pirra, Vito Giuseppe Zito. Film editing: Luca Mattei. Music: Matteo Franceschini. 

Maura Delpero's Vermiglio is a story about the impossibility of security. Vermiglio is a village in the Italian Alps untouched by World War II until one day Pietro Riso (Giuseppe De Dominico), a Sicilian deserting from the Italian army, shows up with a resident of the town, Attilio (Santiago Fondevila), who has also had enough of fighting in the now lost cause of the war. Before long, Pietro and Lucia Graziadei (Martina Scrinzi), the oldest daughter of the village schoolteacher, Cesare (Tommaso Ragno), have fallen in love. The lives of the large Graziadei family, which have been carefully ordered by the imperious patriarch, Cesare, are disrupted in unexpected ways. Delpero's film is a quiet one, but filled with tension as the family's secrets and desires are uncovered. Although the story of Pietro and Lucia is central to the film, it's laced with subplots as we learn more about the family and the people of Vermiglio, focusing especially on the repressed and dutiful lives of women. Cinematographer Mikhail Krichman takes advantage of the scenery of the area, but also composes interior shots that evoke classic genre paintings of village life.    

Intimate Relations (Philip Goodhew, 1996)

Julie Walters in Intimate Relations

Cast: Julie Walters, Rupert Graves, Laura Sadler, Matthew Walker, Holly Aird, Les Dennis, Elizabeth McKechnie, James Aidan, Michael Bertenshaw, Judy Clifton. Screenplay: Philip Goodhew. Cinematography: Andrés Garretón. Production design: Caroline Greville-Morris. Music: Laurence Schragge. 

Given that the characters Philip Goodhew has written for them don't make a lot of sense, Julie Walters, Rupert Graves, and Laura Sadler do a fine job of just holding on as Intimate Relations morphs from black comedy satire to brutal based-on-a-real-crime drama. The satire is directed at a familiar target: middle class sexual hypocrisy in 1950s Britain. It's laid on thick from the start with Rosemary Clooney's 1951 hit "Come on-a My House" on the soundtrack as Harold Guppy (Graves), just out of the navy, becomes a lodger in the house of primly respectable Marjorie Beasley (Walters). Marjorie is married to Stanley (Matthew Walker), a one-legged World War I veteran, with whom she no longer sleeps, telling the horny Stanley that she's been advised against it for "medical reasons." Their youngest daughter, Joyce (Sadler), who has just turned 13, also lives with them -- in fact, she shares a bed with her mother. But it's not long before Marjorie creeps into Harold's room and bed. And it's barely a moment before Joyce joins them, pretending to sleep as nature takes its course with Harold and Marjorie. For a while, this situation is played for some queasy laughs, but the volatility of the ménage is obvious. To say that Intimate Relations doesn't work is an understatement, though the film has admirers who are willing to overlook the inconsistency of tone and the absence of plausible backstories for its uniformly unlikable characters.    

Infernal Affairs (Andrew Lau, Alan Mak, 2002)

Andy Lau and Tony Leung Chiu-wai in Infernal Affairs

Cast: Andy Lau, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Anthony Chau-Sang Wong, Eric Tsang, Kelly Chen, Sammi Cheng, Edison Chen, Sawn Yue. Screenplay: Alan Mak, Felix Chong. Cinematography: Yu-Fai Lai, Andrew Lau. Art direction: Sung Pong Choo, Ching-Ching Wong. Film editing: Curran Pang, Danny Pang. Music: Kwong Wing Chan, Ronald Ng. 

The spy-vs.-spy thriller Infernal Affairs is also a fable about identity. A young man is chosen by the mob to become a cop and serve as a mole within the police force; another young man is chosen by the cops to go undercover in the mob. After years posing as something they're not, each finds himself at odds with the persona he has assumed, but their lives depend on maintaining that identity, even when they come face to face. Co-directors Andrew Lau and Alan Mak keep this intricate and potentially lethal dance going to the final face-off. Though on a first viewing it's sometimes hard to keep straight who's ratting on whom and how and about what, the star charisma of Andy Lau as the mob's spy and Tony Leung Chiu-wai as the undercover cop gives the movie the drive it needs, with solid support from Anthony Chau-Sang Wong as the police inspector and Eric Tsang as the mob boss. It's a cleaner and leaner film than Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning 2006 remake, The Departed. 
 

Sex Is Comedy (Catherine Breillat, 2002)

Grégoire Colin and Roxane Mesquida in Sex Is Comedy

Cast: Anne Parillaud, Grégoire Colin, Roxane Mesquida, Ashley Wanninger, Dominique Colladant, Bart Binnema. Screenplay: Catherine Breillat. Cinematography: Lauren Mahuel. Production design: Frédérique Belvaux. Film editing: Pascale Chavance. 

Sex scenes are so common in movies today that producers routinely hire "intimacy coordinators" to supervise them, mostly to avoid lawsuits and media controversies of the sort that have followed the release of films as various as Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968), Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1972), and Abdellatif Kechiche's Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013). There are no intimacy coordinators in Catherine Breillat's Sex Is Comedy. There's only the director, Jeanne (Anne Parillaud), who is trying to get the most out of the actors in the sex scene of the movie she's making. And this involves much pleading, coddling, coaching, and even bullying on Jeanne's part, especially since the actor played by Grégoire Colin and the actress played by Roxane Mesquida despise each other. Sex Is Comedy is based on Breillat's own experience filming a painful scene in a painful movie,  Fat Girl (2001). She is using this metafictional approach to examine several things, including the nature of acting, the role of the director, and the simulation of private intimacy as public performance. Despite its title, the movie provides very little comedy beyond some scenes involving the penile prosthetic the actor is forced to wear, and it ends in tears rather than laughter as Jeanne gets the performance she wants from the actress. Mostly, the value of Sex Is Comedy lies in the insights it provides into Breillat as the creator of films that push the boundaries of depicting sex on screen. 

The Bitter Stems (Fernando Ayala, 1956)

Carlos Cores in The Bitter Stems

 Cast: Carlos Cores, Julia Sandoval, Vassili Lambrinos, Gilda Lousek, Pablo Moray, Virginia Romay, Aída Luz, Bernardo Perrone, Adolfo Linvel, Otto Webber. Screenplay: Sergio Leonardo, based on a novel by Adolfo Jasca. Cinematography: Ricardo Younis. Production design: Germán Gelpi, Mario Vanarelli. Film editing: Gerardo Rinali, Antonio Ripoll. Music: Astor Piazzola. 

Fernando Ayala's The Bitter Stems is as solid and twisty a thriller as you're likely to see, and only because it was made in Argentina explains why you've probably never heard of it. The handsome Argentine leading man Carlos Cores plays Alfredo Gasper, a journalist who hates his job because it never brought him the excitement and wealth he hoped for -- and, in an expressionistic sequence, dreams about. He's so fed up with the work that when he meets a Hungarian émigré named Liudas (Vassili Lambrinos) who has a get-rich-quick scheme, he signs on. Liudas wants to make enough money to bring his family, especially his son Jarvis, to Argentina. Gasper is so impressed with Liudas's devotion to his family that he agrees to give him a majority interest in the proceeds. But after the money begins to flow in, Gasper begins to suspect that Liudas is conning him out of his rightful share, and that the much-lauded Jarvis doesn't really exist. So he plots to bump Liudas off and take over the business himself. How could anything go wrong? The Bitter Stems benefits from the cinematography of Ricardo Younis, who was influenced by the work of Gregg Toland: In addition to a skillful use of light and shadow, Younis also effectively employs the deep-focus camerawork that was Toland's signature. 

Nine (Rob Marshall, 2009)

Daniel Day-Lewis in Nine

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Fergie, Sophia Loren. Screenplay: Michael Tolkin, Anthony Minghella, based on a musical by Arthur Kopit, Maury Yeston, and Mario Fratti and a screenplay by Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, and Brunello Rondi. Cinematography: Dion Beebe. Production design: John Myhre. Film editing: Claire Simpson, Wyatt Smith. Music: Andrea Guerra, songs by Maury Yeston.

Federico Fellini's 1963 classic 8 1/2 is a work of self-deprecating wit, in which a director played by Marcello Mastroianni, who was Fellini's cinematic alter ego, tries to launch a new film while at the same time scrutinizing his failures and foibles, most of which have to do with women, including his mother, his wife, his mistresses, and his flings. Any attempt to remake or adapt that film is going to lack its essence: the personality of Fellini himself. On Broadway, the musicalization of the film as Nine substituted performance for personality, using the very slight plot of the movie as a reason to string together songs and production numbers. But by returning the stage production to its original medium, Rob Marshall's Nine not only loses the energy of live performance but also invites comparison of one movie to the other. Nine is essentially a remake, and has to be judged as that. Everyone in Marshall's film works very hard to put it across. As Guido, Daniel Day-Lewis energetically tries to efface the memory of Mastroianni is the tormented director. Penélope Cruz has a sizzling musical number and manages to create a vivid character out of Carla, Guido's mistress. Marion Cotillard sings well and acts beautifully as Guido's wife. And just the presence of Sophia Loren as Guido's mother is enough to cast a spell over the movie. But in the end nothing works, and the film falls flat where 8 1/2 sent moviegoers out of the theater with a sense of exhilaration, of having experienced a director's complete and complex vision. Once, while typing the title of Marshall's movie, I wrote None. Maybe I should have left the typo.   

Black Caesar (Larry Cohen, 1973)

Fred Williamson in Black Caesar

Cast: Fred Williamson, Gloria Hendry, Art Lund, D'Urville Martin, Julius Harris, Minnie Gentry, Philip Roye, William Wellman Jr., James Dixon, Val Avery. Screenplay: Larry Cohen. Cinematography: Fenton Hamilton. Production design: Larry Lurin. Film editing: George Folsey Jr. Music: James Brown. 

Larry Cohen's Black Caesar is often clumsily put together, as in the big scene in which the protagonist, Tommy Gibbs (Fred Williamson), is shot on the streets of New York, stumbles for several blocks, commandeers a taxi that he somehow forces to drive on the sidewalks, goes several places for help, and even rides the subway, without showing any signs that he's bleeding from the wound. Some of the dialogue and acting are inept and many of its scenes are derivative and even laughable. But it's also immensely watchable, thanks in large part to Williamson's charisma and the rawness of its unabashed treatment of racism -- every taboo epithet for several ethnic groups is spoken at some point in the movie. The title, of course, is an homage to Mervyn LeRoy's 1931 classic Little Caesar, about the rise and fall of a gangster. The movie views that 1930s melodrama through a Blaxploitation lens, much the way Brian De Palma's Scarface (1983) filtered Howard Hawks's 1932 classic through the experience of Cuban expatriates in Miami, though more successfully. 

Ash Is Purest White (Jia Zhang-ke, 2018)

Zhao Tao in Ash Is Purest White

Cast: Zhao Tao, Liao Fan, Feng Xiogang, Xu Zheng, Zhang Yibai, Casper Liang. Screenplay: Jia Zhang-ke. Cinematography: Eric Gautier. Art direction: Liu Weixin. Film editing: Matthieu Laclau, Lin Xudong. Music: Lim Giong. 

Like many of Jia Zhang-ke's films, the real protagonist of Ash Is Purest White is China itself, undergoing its own character arc in tandem with the people depicted in the movie. It this case, the focus is on Qiao (Zhao Tao), the mistress of the gangster Bin (Liao Fan). When we first meet them, they are partying and Bin is muscling his mob. But that soon comes to a violent halt when Bin is almost beaten to death by rival gang members, saved only by Qiao's firing an illegal gun, which lands her in prison for five years. After her release, she devotes herself to reuniting with Bin, whose own life has taken a mostly downward course. And through Qiao's peregrinations we get a view of China across almost two decades of change. It's an absorbing, sometimes enigmatic film, held together by a magnetic performance by Zhao, Jia's favorite actress. 

Across 110th Street (Barry Shear, 1972)

Anthony Quinn and Yaphet Kotto in Across 110th Street

Cast: Anthony Quinn, Yaphet Kotto, Anthony Franciosa, Paul Benjamin, Ed Bernard, Richard Ward, Antonio Fargas, Nora Donaldson, Gilbert Lewis, Marlene Warfield, Nat Polen, Tim O'Connor, Gloria Hendry, Burt Young. Screenplay: Luther Davis, based on a novel by Wally Ferris. Cinematography: Jack Priestley. Art direction: Perry Watkins. Film editing: Byron "Buzz" Brandt, Carl Pingitore. Music: J.J. Johnson. 

Hard, unforgiving, and extremely violent, Across 110th Street sometimes feels like director Barry Shear tried to turn it up to 11. Even the reliably volatile Anthony Quinn sometimes feels like he's holding back in comparison with the hyped-up performances of Anthony Franciosa as a mob boss and Paul Benjamin an ex-con who tries to rip off the mob. The film exploits the hair-trigger racial tensions of New York City in the '70s by pairing Quinn as an aging police captain forced -- for "political reasons"-- to work with a young Black lieutenant (Yaphet Kotto). Almost every character in the movie is unlikable, although the movie manages to elicit some sympathy for the three men whose attempt to steal the haul from the numbers racket ends in a shootout in which both mobsters and cops are killed. Caught between the police and the mob in their attempt to get away with the loot, the robbers meet gruesome ends. Critics were hard on the film when it was released, but it has gained some stature with time as an unvarnished portrait of a dark era in the city's history.  

When the Tenth Month Comes (Dang Nhat Minh, 1984)

Le Van in When the Tenth Month Comes

 Cast: Le Van, Nguyen Huu Muoi, Nguyen Minh Vuong, Lai Phu Cuong, Trinh Le Phong. Screenplay: Dang Nhat Minh. Cinematography: Nguyen Manh Lan, Pham Phuc Dat. Film editing: Hien Luong. Music: Phu Quang. 

Dang Nhat Minh's When the Tenth Month Comes is a lovely, poignant film about village life in Vietnam after the end of the war with the Americans, but while war was still being waged along the border with Laos. A young woman, Duyen (Le Van), learns that her husband has been killed in conflict with the Khmer Rouge, but decides to keep it a secret from her aging father-in-law and her young son. When she finds it difficult to maintain the illusion that her husband is still alive, she persuades the village schoolteacher, Khang (Nguyen Huu Muoi), to forge a letter from him to her father-in-law. Khang's attraction to the beautiful Duyen causes village gossip. When Duyen, who has been an actress, is persuaded to perform in a scene from an opera about a woman whose husband is leaving to go to war, the similarity to her own life overcomes her and she flees the stage, causing more talk. Dang effectively blends elements of the fantastic into Duyen's story, connecting its contemporary reality to the mythic traditions of rural Vietnam. 

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008)

Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem in Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Cast: Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson, Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Chris Messina, Patricia Clarkson, Kevin Dunn, Christopher Evan Welch (voice). Screenplay: Woody Allen. Cinematography: Javier Aguiressarobe. Production design: Alain Bainée. Film editing: Alisa Lepselter. 

There are no surprises in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona. It's the oft-told tale of Americans abroad, experiencing culture shock when their preconceptions about life don't mesh with those in other parts of the world. In this case, it's two young women, Rebecca Hall's somewhat uptight Vicky and Scarlett Johansson's more free-spirited Cristina, who get caught up in the relationship between a sexy Spanish painter, Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), and his volatile ex-wife, Maria Elena (Penélope Cruz). Triangles and even quadrangles form among them. Allen supplies a narrator (Christopher Evan Welch) who sounds very much like Woody Allen, but he's not really necessary unless you've never seen one of his movies before. It's late-career Allen, and one of the few to be both critically and commercially successful, winning an Oscar for Cruz's vivid performance. 

Eye of God (Tim Blake Nelson, 1997)

Nick Stahl in Eye of God

Cast: Martha Plimpton, Kevin Anderson, Nick Stahl, Richard Jenkins, Margo Martindale, Mary Kay Place, Hal Holbrook. Screenplay: Tim Blake Nelson. Cinematography: Russell Lee Fine. Production design: Patrick Geary. Film editing: Kate Sanford. Music: David Van Tieghem. 

A solid drama about a crime in a small Oklahoma town, Tim Blake Nelson's debut as a feature film director, Eye of God, is among other things a piercing look into Bible Belt religiosity. Martha Plimpton plays Ainsley, a waitress in the barely there town of Kingfisher, who has struck up a correspondence with a man in the state prison, Jack Stillings (Kevin Anderson). When he's released he heads for Kingfisher, where he's soon married to Ainsley. While in prison, he got religion, and is bent on making her go to church with him. She doesn't care for it, and before long his insistence on having his way drives them apart: When she gets pregnant he insists that she not leave the house. Then she befriends 14-year-old Tom Spencer (Nick Stahl), a shy loner, and their lives intersect in calamitous fashion. But in the film this narrative line is fragmented into flashbacks from the moment police find Tom, covered in blood, wandering alone on a road at night. The nature of the crime and the identity of the victim are cleverly withheld until all the pieces of the story are assembled. But the real strength of the film lies in the performances, not only of Plimpton, Anderson, and Stahl, but of such estimable character actors as Richard Jenkins, Margo Martindale, and Hal Holbrook, playing people who have their own problems that color their responses to the crime. 

Leila and the Wolves (Heiny Srour, 1984)

Cast: Nabila Zeitouni, Rafik Ali Ahmad, Raja Nehme, Sabah Obeid, Samar Samy. Emilia Fowad, Ferial Abillamah. Screenplay: Heiny Srour. Cinematography: Curtis Clark, Charlet Recors. Film editing: Eva Houdova. Music: Bachir Mounir, Laki Nassif. 

Lebanese filmmaker Heiny Srour's Leila and the Wolves is a fascinating journey into the 20th century history of the conflict in Lebanon and Palestine. Nabila Zeitouni plays Leila, who is mounting an exhibition in London on the role of women in the heavily male-dominated struggle. She imagines herself, wearing the same white dress she wears to the opening of the exhibition, wandering through time and space as events in the conflict unfold through the eyes of women contributing however they can to the liberation of the Palestinians. In one scene, the women throw flowerpots and pour boiling water onto the enemy troops as their run beneath their balconies. In another, they take an active role by staging a mock wedding that allows them to smuggle weapons and ammunition to the men doing the fighting. Finally, young women emerge as actual combatants. Srour's film is a collage of newsreel footage and reenacted scenes, with symbolic touches such as a crowd of women shrouded and veiled and seated on a beach as a kind of silent chorus on the action.  

24 City (Jia Zhang-ke, 2008)

Joan Chen in 24 City

Cast: Jianbin Chen, Joan Chen, Liping Lü, Tao Zhao. Screenplay: Yongming Zhai, Jia Zhang-ke. Cinematography: Yu Wang, Nelson Lik-wai Yu. Production design: Qiang Liu. Film editing: Kong Jinglei, Xudong Lin. Music: Yoshihiro Hanno, Giong Lim. 

Jia Zhang-ke's 24 City takes a docufictional approach to the history of modern China, telling the story of the conversion of a former aircraft parts factory into a planned community, and by extension commenting on the past, present, and implied future of the country and its people. Jia mixes scenes in which actors impersonate factory workers and members of their families with scenes in which the actual workers appear before the camera. The stories are sometimes painful, as in the one in which a woman tells how she was separated from her little boy during the war and never saw him again, and sometimes poignant, such as the narrative of a smartly dressed, contemporary young woman who was shocked to witness the unpleasant conditions in which her mother worked. Their narratives are interspersed with musical sequences and snippets of poetry, including some lines by W.B. Yeats that prove oddly resonant. The result is an absorbing journey into a world unfamiliar to most of us. 

Chain (Jem Cohen, 2004)

 Cast: Miho Nikaido, Mira Billotte. Screenplay: Jem Cohen. Cinematography: Jem Cohen. Film editing: Jem Cohen, Davey Frankel. 

Look at something familiar -- a word, a face, a tree, a building -- long enough and it becomes something alien, an arrangement of shapes and lines. Look at it for a while longer, and it can begin to take on a significance you've never found in the object before. That's what Jem Cohen's Chain does to one of the most familiar and banal of American institutions: the shopping mall. For some it's a place of comfort and convenience, while for others it's an emblem of consumer capitalism. For the two very different women who are the focus (not the protagonists, certainly not the heroines) of the film, it's a bit of both. Tamiko (Miho Nikaido) is a Japanese businesswoman who sees the shopping mall as a place to be exploited for the profits of the company she works for. Amanda (Mira Billotte) is a homeless runaway who sees the mall as a place to be exploited for mere survival. Adroitly manipulating images filmed at malls all over the country, Cohen first deconstructs the shopping mall and its welter of familiar corporate logos, and then, through juxtaposing what happens during the days Tamiko and Amanda (who never meet) spend in this ambiance, allows viewers to bring their own significance to an unlikely place. The result is eerie and revelatory.

Saving Face (Alice Wu, 2004)

Joan Chen and Michelle Krusiec in Saving Face

Cast: Michelle Krusiec, Joan Chen, Lynn Chen, Jin Wang, Guang Lan Koh, Jessica Hecht, Ato Essandoh, David Shih, Brian Yang, Nathanel Geng, Mao Zhao, Louyong Wong, Clare Sum. Screenplay: Alice Wu. Cinematography: Harlan Bosmajian. Production design: Daniel Ouellette. Film editing: Susan Graef, Sabine Hoffman. Music: Anton Sanko. 

Alice Wu's Saving Face is a pleasant mixture of family drama and romantic comedy that never quite gets the two genres to work together and doesn't break any new ground for either of them. It plays on the usual themes of stories about immigrant families adjusting to American life, particularly clashes between tradition and change, old and young, queer and heteronormative. Only the fine performances of its cast really hold the movie together.