The Photograph (Nikos Papatakis, 1986)

Aris Retsos in The Photograph

Cast: Aris Retsos, Hristos Tsagas, Zozo Zarpa, Despina Tomazani, Christos Valavanidas, Marina Delivoria, Yannis Totsikas, Stratos Pahis. Screenplay: Nikos Papatakis. Cinematography: Arnaud Desplechin, Aris Stavrou. Production design: Nikos Meletopoulos. Film editing: Delphine Desfons. Music: Hristodoulos Halaris. 

Lying has become so entrenched in the highest levels of our government that Nikos Papatkis's The Photograph feels a bit like a parable for our times. It's set in the past, however, during the period when Greece was ruled by a right wing junta that, among other things, cracked down on people suspected of being communists. That includes young Ilias (Aris Retsos), whose father was a communist -- a stain that lingers on  Ilias even though he was a boy when his father died. So Ilias leaves for France, where he seeks out a relative, Gerasimos (Hristos Tsagas), who makes a comfortable living as a furrier. After some failed attempts at finding employment, Ilias decides to get on Gerasimos's good side and learn that trade. He has with him a photograph of a pop star that he picked up by accident in Greece, and he passes that off as a photo of the sister he doesn't really have. Gerasimos is smitten with the young woman's portrait, so Ilias cooks up a complex system of correspondence with the imaginary sister, whom he calls Joy, using his mother back in Greece as an intermediary. Gerasimos can't read, so he's an easy mark as Ilias preys on the other man's fascination with Joy as a potential bride. Eventually, Ilias's ambition causes the scheme to mushroom out of control. Papatakis's fable is first comic and then tragic, culminating in a harrowing road trip on the hairpin turns of the Greek mountains. The performances of Retsos and Tsagas give this somewhat fantastic tale the reality it needs. 

Buzzard (Joel Potrykus, 2014)

Joshua Burge in Buzzard

Cast: Joshua Burge, Joel Potrykus, Teri Ann Nelson, Jason Roth, Joe Anderson, Alan Longstreet. Screenplay: Joel Potrykus. Cinematography: Adam J. Minnick. Film editing: Joel Potrykus. 

Marty Jackitansky (Joshua Burge), the hangdog protagonist of Joel Potrykus's Buzzard, is the consummate slacker, a temp worker fueled by junk food, energized by video games and horror movies, and sustained by petty scams. He's not the typical loner who lives in his parents' basement: He lives in his friend Derek's parent's basement -- or at least he does after pulling a scam that's likely to get him jail time. Eventually, even that hideout becomes too perilous, and he hits the streets of Detroit where, in one possible interpretation of the film's trick ending, he vanishes from sight after taking his scam a step too far. Potrykus, who wrote, directed, edited, and acted in the film (as Derek), gives us a pungent sketch of contemporary life that blends itchy black comedy with  keen satire of the fringes of finance that include mortgage companies and payday loan operations, along with a touch of actuality where the comedy and satire sour into something more disturbing. If it occasionally gives way to independent film self-indulgence -- an overlong scene of Marty eating spaghetti and meatballs in bed -- it succeeds largely on the strength of Burge's performance and Potrykus's keen eye and ear. 

Les Abysses (Nikos Papatakis, 1963)

Francine Bergé and Colette Bergé in Les Abysses

Cast: Francine Bergé, Colette Bergé, Pascale de Boysson, Colette Régis, Paul Bonifas, Jean-Louis Le Goff, Lise Daubigny, Robert Benoit, Marcel Roche. Screenplay: Jean Vauthier, Louis Jouvet. Cinematography: Jean-Michel Boussaguet. Film editing: Edwidge Bernard, Denise de Casabianca, Pascale Laverrière. Music: Pierre Barbaud. 

Nikos Papatakis's raw, unsparing Les Abysses is one of the many films, plays, and even operas inspired by the case of the Papin sisters, Christine and Léa, who in 1933 murdered their employer's wife and daughter. The most distinguished of the artistic treatments of the case are probably Jean Genet's 1947 play The Maids and Claude Chabrol's 1995 film La Cérémonie, but Papatakis's version stands up well against them. It opens with the mad antics of the two maids, called Michelle (Francine Bergé) and Marie-Louise (Colette Bergé) in this version of the story. They have been left alone in the country house of their employers and have spent the time wreaking havoc in the property. The employers, the Lapeyres, have been taking advantage of the two women, withholding their wages for three years but promising them that they will be given part of the property as recompense. Now the Lapeyres return unexpectedly to discover the house, which they are planning to sell, in chaos. When Michelle and Marie-Louise discover they're about to be cheated out of their expectations, things escalate. The film was widely interpreted as a fable about capitalism and the class system as well as a kind of allegory of the exploitation of colonial Algeria by France. It's a mad, brutal work with uninhibited performances by the Bergé sisters, and a nerve-racking score by Pierre Barbaud adds to the dissonance of the relationships shown in it. 

Stranger Eyes (Yeo Siew Hua, 2024)

Lee Kang-sheng in Stranger Eyes

Cast: Wu Chien-ho, Lee Kang-sheng, Anicca Panna, Vera Chen, Xenia Tan, Pete Teo, Maryanne Ng-Yu, Anya Chow. Screenplay: Yeo Siew Hua. Cinematography: Hideho Urata. Production design: James Page. Film editing: Jean-Christophe Bouzy. Music: Thomas Foguenne. 

In Stranger Eyes, Yeo Siew Hua attempts a deconstruction of the missing child thriller to make a comment on voyeurism and video surveillance. As we're trying to figure out how and why Little Bo disappeared and follow the attempts of her parents to find her, we're also thrust back into the life of the chief suspect, Lao Wu (Lee Kang-sheng). It turns out that well before their child vanished, he has been spying on Junyang (Wu Chien-ho) and Peiying (Anicca Panna), who live across from him in a Singapore high-rise. Eventually we're thrust into a web of motives and secret relationships documented on a variety of cameras. The narrative scrambling that lifts Stranger Eyes out of the routine keeps the viewer off base, but it also becomes a distraction, calling attention as much to the way the story is told as to the story itself and its implications for a world in which privacy is an illusion.  

Betty Blue (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1986)

Jean-Hugues Anglade and Béatrice Dalle in Betty Blue

Cast: Jean-Hugues Anglade, Béatrice Dalle, Gérard Darmon, Consuelo De Haviland, Clémentine Célarié, Jacques Mathou. Screenplay: Jean-Jacques Beineix, based on a novel by Philippe Dijian. Cinematography: Jean-François Robin. Production design: Carlos Conti. Film editing: Monique Prim, Pablo Ferro. Music: Gabriel Yared. 

Jean-Jacques Beineix's "director's cut" of Betty Blue is three hours long, more than an hour longer than its theatrical release, padding out its story of the relationship of a man and an unstable woman to epic length. I have to admit that it didn't feel that long, partly because its whiplash changes in tone and its constant introduction of new, oddball characters kept me wondering what might happen next. Some credit, too, must go to the actors who play its protagonists, the hapless Zorg (Jean-Hughes Anglade) and the unpredictable Betty (Béatrice Dalle), whose undeniable chemistry holds the whole thing together. It's often quite beautiful: Jean-François Robin's cinematography makes the most of its various French settings, and the frequently naked Anglade and Dalle are pleasant to see. But is it anything more than an overextended tale of an ill-fated couple, laced with soft-core porn? Is there a point in its switches from comedy to pain? Unfortunately, Beineix doesn't give us enough substance to make me feel that answering those questions is worth the effort.  

Four Murders Are Enough, Darling (Oldrich Lipsky, 1971)

Lubomír Lipsky and Jirina Bohdalová in Four Murders Are Enough, Darling

Cast: Lubomír Lipsky, Jirina Bohdalová, Iva Janzurová, Marie Rosulková, Frantisek Filipovsky, Jan Libícek, Josef Hlinomaz, Karel Effa, Lubomír Kostelka, Vlastomil Hasek, Stella Zâzvorková, Josef Kemr. Screenplay: Milos Macourek, Oldrich Lipsky, based on a novel by Nenad Brixi. Cinematography: Jirí Tantrík. Production design: Jirí Hlupy. Film editing: Miroslav Hájek. Music: Vlastimil Hála. 

Oldrich Lipsky's Four Murders Are Enough, Darling is a throwback to the anarchic comedy of the silent era, so much so that for those of us who don't speak Czech the subtitles are almost a distraction. It's non-stop visual gags with only a thread of a plot to hold them together. All you need to know is that the MacGuffin is a check for a million dollars that rival gangs are trying to get their hands on. Caught in the middle is a mild-mannered schoolteacher, George Camel (Lubomír Lipsky, the director's brother), into whose hands the check manages to fall. After that, everything mushrooms into an explosion of cops and robbers, mistaken identities, corpses in closets and cupboards, car crashes and gunfire and fistfights. It's interlarded with comic book illustrations of the actors and action, mock TV commercials, and probably more than a few topical jokes that go over the heads of non-Czech viewers. Many find it hilarious, and I can see why, though I found it exhausting. 

Farewell, My Lovely (Dick Richards, 1975)

Robert Mitchum and Charlotte Rampling in Farewell, My Lovely

Cast: Robert Mitchum, Charlotte Rampling, John Ireland, Sylvia Miles, Anthony Zerbe, Harry Dean Stanton, Jack O'Halloran, Joe Spinell, Sylvester Stallone, Kate Murtagh, John O'Leary, Walter McGinn. Screenplay: David Zelag Goodman, based on a novel by Raymond Chandler. Cinematography: John A. Alonzo. Production design: Dean Tavoularis. Film editing: Joel Cox, Walter Thompson. Music: David Shire. 

Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely had been filmed before, as Murder, My Sweet, with Dick Powell playing Philip Marlowe and Edward Dmytryk directing, and it's in many ways better than this attempt by director Dick Richards and screenwriter David Zelag Goodman. What this version has going for it is the absence of Production Code censors blue-penciling the script. Goodman is able to be open about the fact that one character is gay and another is the madam of a whorehouse, and he can emphasize the homophobia and racism of some of his more unsavory characters. But his script lacks the wit of John Paxton's earlier screenplay, not to mention that of William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman's script for The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946), the best of all the Philip Marlowe movies, in which Humphrey Bogart as Marlowe was paired with Lauren Bacall. That comparison is inevitable, because Charlotte Rampling in Farewell, My Lovely is made to look and act uncannily like Bacall, but there's no real heat between her and Robert Mitchum as Marlowe. Mitchum does what he can with the role, but he's too old for it. The standout in the cast is the Oscar-nominated Sylvia Miles as the alcoholic Mrs. Florian, one of the many gears and springs and cogwheels in the intricate, impenetrable plot. Dean Tavoularis's design and John A. Alozo's camera give us a gritty, neon-lit re-creation of 1940s Los Angeles, but there's something tired and perfunctory about the film.  

 

Bye Bye Love (Isao Fujisawa,1974)

Ren Tamura and Miyabi Ichijo in Bye Bye Love

Cast: Ren Tamura, Miyabi Ichijo, Atsuko Ami, Yuzo Morita, Satomi Oki, Enver Tenpai. Screenplay: Isao Fujisawa. Cinematography: Norimoto Ichinose. Art direction: Shinichi Otani. Film editing: Eiko Yoshida, Hisako Aizawa. 

Two young people go on the run when one of them shoots the man the other was living with, an official in the American embassy in Japan. The familiar fugitive road movie formula has caused Isao Fujisawa's Bye Bye Love to be compared to several films that are roughly of its era, like Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967), Pierrot le Fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965), and Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973). But the treatment of gender identity in Bye Bye Love makes it feel ahead of its time: One of the fugitives has chosen a female persona. The shooter, who calls himself Utamaro (Ren Tamura), is a cocky young nihilist who first encountered his fugitive partner, Giko (Miyabi Ichijo), fleeing from a street cop. Utamaro interfered, knocked the cop out and stole his gun. Giko and Utamaro turn out to be the perfect team: After the initial surprise, Utamaro isn't bothered by Giko's gender fluidity, and Giko isn't bothered by Utamaro's nihilism.  Fujisawa's only fiction film was thought to be lost since it first appeared, but a negative was discovered in 2018, and it has continued to astonish new audiences since then. Fujisawa delights in off-beat choices: The music track that accompanies the pair's flight is organ music by Bach, and there's a threesome with a prostitute that is literally shocking. (It involves electric wires and a radio.) Not everything in the movie works -- the murdered official is heavy-handedly named Nixon -- and it risks associating queerness with criminality, but so much of it does that Bye Bye Love is one of the most fascinating rediscoveries of recent years.

Downpour (Bahram Beyzaie, 1972)

Cast: Parviz Fanizadeh, Parvaneh Massoumi, Mohamad Ali Keshavarz, Manucher Farid, Esmat Safavi, Abbas Dastranj, Parvin Soleymani. Screenplay: Bahram Beyzaie. Cinematography: Barbod Taheri. Film editing: Mehdi Rajaian. Music: Sheyda Garachedaghi. 

Most of us are familiar with Iranian film only through the work of the audacious and often courageous directors like Asghar Farhadi, Abbas Kiarostami, and Jafar Panahi, who achieved international fame after the Islamic revolution. The restoration of a surviving print of Behram Beyzaie's first feature film, Downpour, once thought to have been destroyed, affords us a glimpse into the pre-revolutionary Iranian cinematic world. It's a charming, bittersweet tale of a schoolteacher who is transferred to an unfamiliar neighborhood, and immediately has to cope with his rowdy young pupils. Hekmati (Parviz Fanizadeh) also glimpses a pretty young woman, Atafeh (Parvaneh Massoumi), in the crowd that meets him as he moves into his lodgings. She turns out to be the sister of one of his pupils, and they meet face to face when she comes to complain that he has kicked the boy out of his class. Atafeh is being courted by her landlord, Rahim (Manucher Farid), whom she doesn't particularly care for, but she fears being evicted along with her elderly mother if she resists his advances. Eventually, the bookish Atafeh and the bullish Rahim confront each other. The post-revolutionary censors presumably suppressed the film because Atafeh sometimes wears short skirts and goes with her hair uncovered, and perhaps because there's a scene in which Hekmati and Rahim get drunk together. The sometimes had-to-read English subtitles of the original print had to be retained in the restoration, and some of the dialogue went untranslated, but the engaging and familiar story is simple and directly presented. 

Case for a Rookie Hangman (Pavel Jurácek, 1970)

Lubomír Kostelka in Case for a Rookie Hangman

Cast: Lubomír Kostelka, Klára Jerneková, Milena Zahrynowska, Radovan Lukavsky, Jirí Janda, Ludek Kopriva, Milos Vávra, Miroslav Machácek. Screenplay: Pavel Jurácek. Cinematography: Jan Kalis. Production design: Milan Nejedly. Film editing: Miroslav Hájek. Music: Lubos Fiser. 

The protagonist of Pavel Jurácek's Case for a Rookie Hangman is called Lemuel Gulliver, but the film owes as much to Lewis Carroll, Franz Kafka, and Luis Buñuel as it does to Jonathan Swift. It might almost have been titled Gulliver's Travels Through the Looking Glass to the Castle of the Exterminating Angel. Jurácek's Gulliver (Lubomír Kostelka) is on a trip through the countryside when he gets lost and his car crashes off the road. Extricating himself from the wreck, he comes across the body of a large white rabbit wearing a waistcoat and carrying a pocket watch, which Gulliver takes from the rabbit. He soon finds that he is in the land of Balnibarbi, the locale of the third voyage of Swift's story, above which is the floating city of Laputa. At this point narrative logic gives way to a series of extraordinary incidents, which Jurácek presents without being limited by time and space. The film has its admirers, but I found its dreamlike transitions and off-kilter events less startling than soporific. The Czech government wasn't lulled to sleep, however, and as usual when it didn't understand something, it suspected it was being made fun of (as of course it was), so it banned it, putting an end to Jurácek's career as a filmmaker. 

Tricheurs (Barbet Schroeder, 1984)

Bulle Ogier in Tricheurs

Cast: Jacques Dutronc, Bulle Ogier, Kurt Raab, Virgilio Teixeira, Robby Müller, Claus-Dieter Reents, Carlos Wallenstein. Screenplay: Pascal Bonitzer, Steve Baës, Barbet Schroeder, based on a book by Baës. Cinematography: Robby Müller. Production design: Zé Branco. Music: Peer Raben. 

Tricheurs are people who cheat at gambling, no easy feat in casinos where there are surveillance cameras and eagle-eyed croupiers. In Barbet Schroeder's film, they are a special breed, gamblers who add the thrill of possible capture to the compulsion to bet large sums of money. Elric (Jacques Dutronc) begins with the latter compulsion, and when we first see him he has lost big. And then he spots a woman in a red dress with a large number 7 on the back. Elric takes it as a sign and follows her to the casino, where she turns out to be his lucky charm, and soon he and Suzie (Bulle Ogier) have merged their compulsions. But then Elric meets Jorg (Kurt Raab), who claims to have a foolproof system for cheating at roulette, so Elric and Suzie go their separate ways and he begins touring the casinos of the world with Jorg, raking it in. Eventually Elric and Suzie meet again, and when Jorg gets careless and gets caught, Suzie tells him that she has met a croupier who knows a new way to cheat: a loaded roulette ball that can be triggered by remote control. The croupier, Toni (Virgilio Teixeira), wants to retire, and is willing to go in with Elric and Suzie on the scam, slipping the loaded ball onto the wheel. With a little practice, they can win big by triggering the ball at the right moment. Tricheurs is a clever morality fable and a shrewd portrait of compulsive behavior, but the techniques used by the cheaters -- distracting the croupiers, hitting the button on the remote at the right time -- seem clumsy, so that the film winds up feeling thin and contrived.  

Chop Shop (Ramin Bahrani, 2007)

Alejandro Polanco in Chop Shop

Cast: Alejandro Polanco, Isamar Gonzales, Rob Sowulski, Carlos Zapata, Ahmad Razvi, Anthony Felton, Evelisse "Lilah" Ortiz, Michael "Gringo" Nieto, Carlos Ayala, Laura Patalano, Nick Jasprizza. Screenplay: Bahareh Azimi, Ramin Bahrani. Cinematography: Michael Simmonds. Production design: Richard A. Wright. Film editing: Ramin Bahrani. Music: M. Lo. 

Ramin Bahrani's docufictional Chop Shop takes us into a subterranean segment of American life, viewing it through a 12-year-old boy named Alejandro, played by 12-year-old Alejandro Polanco. Ale, as he's called, is a school dropout whose only known family is his older sister, Isamar (Isamar Gonzales), who comes to live with him in a garage adjacent to an auto-repair shop in the Willets Point area of Queens, near Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets. It's a run-down area where no one but a handful of off-the-grid types like Ale and his sister live, but it comes to life during the day when the auto parts, repair shops, and junkyards are busy. "Urban blight" at its unloveliest. But there's nothing blighted about Ale, who has dreams and hustles to make them real. Even though the plot of the film demands that Ale's dreams don't come true, Bahrani and his remarkable cast of non-professionals give this story of human survivors heart and soul without compromise or sentimentality.

Obsession (Curry Barker, 2025)

Inde Navarrette in Obsession

Cast: Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, Andy Richter, Haley Fitzgerald, Darin Toonder, Anthony Pavone, Justice, Anthony Casablanca, Chloe Breen. Screenplay: Curry Barker. Cinematography: Taylor Clemons. Production design: Vivian Gray. Film editing: Curry Barker. Music: Rock Burwell. 

Curry Barker's low-budget shocker Obsession hinges on one of those "be careful what you wish for" plots. Baron, aka "Bear" (Michael Johnston), works in a music store and is attracted to the pretty Nikki (Inde Navarrette), but he's too shy to make a play for her affections. So when he finds a magic gizmo in a New Agey store he makes a fatal wish that she will fall in love with him. Everything that could go wrong does. The film succeeds because of the commitment of its performers, particularly Navarrette, who switches deftly from modestly charming to murderously terrifying as the unwitting victim. Obsession was a big surprise hit, perhaps because there seems to be a lot of post-feminist angst going around. It's the age of the "manosphere," in which the secretary of war wants to pump up the troops with testosterone, so why shouldn't an incel like Bear turn to magic for help? Fortunately, Barker's horror-comic sensibility keeps that particular subtext in check.  

 

I Knew Her Well (Antonio Pietrangeli, 1965)

Stefania Sandrelli in I Knew Her Well 

Cast: Stefania Sandrelli, Mario Adorf, Jean-Claude Brialy, Joachim Fuchsberger, Nino Manfredi, Enrico Maria Salerno, Ugo Tognazzi, Karin Dor, Franco Fabrizi, Franco Nero, Robert Hoffmann. Screenplay: Antonio Pietrangeli, Ruggiero Maccari, Ettore Scola. Cinematography: Armando Nannuzzi. Production design: Maurizio Chiari. Film editing: Franco Fraticelli. Music: Piero Piccioni, Benedetto Ghilia.

Antonioni Pietrangeli's I Knew Her Well is a "lost girl" movie most often compared to Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) because its setting is Rome in the hedonistic 1960s. But the film it most reminds me of is John Schlesinger's Darling, made the same year as Pietrangeli's. Both movies center on a pretty young model who comes to grief because she doesn't have much more than beauty going for her. Darling won an Oscar for Julie Christie, but Stefania Sandrelli is just as impressive in her performance as Adriana, who breezes through a series of men and incidents until she realizes that she's going nowhere fast. If I prefer Pietrangeli's film, it's because its satire is less heavy-handed. The cruelty and exploitation of the entertainment industry is skewered in both, but Pietrangeli at least demonstrates that the people it hurts and exploits feel something, especially in the scene in which the has-been actor Baggini (Ugo Tognazzi) is humiliated at a glamorous party. I Knew Her Well doesn't quite avoid the problem that movies about aimless and empty lives can be aimless and empty, but the performances give it an appearance of substance. 

People's Hero (Derek Tung-Sing Yee, 1987)

Ronald Wong, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, and Ti Lung in People's Hero

Cast: Ti Lung, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Elaine Jin, Paul Chun, Bowie Lam, Ronald Wong, Sabrina Ho, Benz Kong, Jessie Lee, Wing-Cho Yip, Mansook Ahmed. Screenplay: Derek Tung-Sing Yee, Keith Lee, Kwan Yiu-Wing. Cinematography: Wilson Chan. Art direction: Yank Wong. Film editing: John Ma. Music: Lowell Lo. 

The bank heist hostage movie is a thriller subgenre that reached its glory in Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975), and Derek Tung-Sing Yee's People's Hero begins almost like a remake of that classic. Two inept would-be robbers, Sai (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Boney (Ronald Wong), take the customers and staff of a bank hostage, immediately attracting the attention of the police. Like Lumet, Yee is as interested in the hostages and the cops as he is in the robbers. The hostages are a fractious, quarrelsome lot; the cops are hamstrung by bureaucracy. But People's Hero takes a twist almost as soon as the standoff of cops and robbers occurs: One of the hostages turns out to be a gangster, Sunny Koo (Ti Lung), who immediately takes charge, turning Sai and Boney into both hostages and accomplices. Koo is so well known to the police that he has the clout to summon an old adversary on the force, Capt. Chan (Tony Leung Ka-fai), to negotiate with. The result is an entertaining suspense thriller, more focused on characters than your usual Hong Kong action movie. The performances are stellar, particularly Lung as the masterly, cunning gangster and Elaine Jin as his girlfriend, Lotus, called on by Koo to help him make his getaway, only to show she has a mind of her own. People's Hero ends with a little more graphic bloodshed than necessary, but it's a movie with a perhaps unexpected wit and irony. 

Variety Lights (Alberto Lattuada, Federico Fellini, 1950)

F

Giulietta Masina and Peppino De Filippo in Variety Lights 

Cast: Peppino De Filippo, Carla Del Poggio, Giulietta Masina, John Kitzmiller, Dante Maggio, Checco Durante, Gina Mascetti, Giulio Calì, Silvio Bagolini, Giacomo Furia, Mario De Angelis. Screenplay: Federico Fellini, Alberto Lattuada, Tullio Pinelli. Cinematography: Otello Martelli. Art direction: Aldo Buzzi. Film editing: Mario Bonotti. Music: Felice Lattuada. 

For Federico Fellini, there was no business like show business. More than almost any other major filmmaker, his movies centered on the lives of performers or directors or just would-be stars and starfuckers, people in search of a way to be larger than life. He launched his career as director with a pure example of this preoccupation, Variety Lights, co-directed with Albert Lattuada but distinctively Felliniesque. It's the story of Checco Dal Monte (Peppino De Filippo), the hapless manager of a rag-tag company of vaudevillians, who thinks he's found the way to the big time when an ambitious would-be star, Liliana (Cara Del Poggio), latches on to him after seeing the troupe perform. Initially skeptical, Checco comes round when the young woman, whose beauty exceeds her talents, wins over a raucous audience and attracts the attention of a wealthy man whose obvious aim is to seduce her. Checco's mistress, Melina (Giulietta Masina), is furious when he falls for Liliana and begins trying to promote her career. The film goes a long way on the energy of its performers, including the members of the marginally talented company, but it lacks enough story to give it coherence.  

Diamonds of the Night (Jan Nemec, 1964)

Ladislav Jánsky and Antonin Kumbera in Diamonds of the Night

Cast: Antonin Kumbera, Ladislav Jánsky, Ilse Bischofská. Screenplay: Arnost Lustig, Jan Nemec, based on a novel by Lustig. Cinematography: Jaroslav Kuchera, Miroslav Ondrícek. Production design: Oldrich Bosák. Film editing: Miroslav Hájek. Music: Vlastimil Hala, Jan Rychlik. 

Two young men escape from a Nazi transport at the start of Jan Nemec's Diamonds of the Night, and the camera follows them in a breathless run through the fields toward an uncertain destination. And in a sense that destination remains uncertain, even though they manage to cadge a hunk of bread from a woman in a farmhouse and are eventually captured by a group of old men with hunting rifles. Nemec gives us two visions of the young men's fate at the hands of their captors. His first feature film, a little over an hour, is laced with memories and ambiguous images and touches of the surreal. At its best, it's almost hyperreal. In the scene in which the old men celebrate their capture, for example, the soundtrack is filled with the slightly disgusting noises of eating as the victors scarf down their lunch. It's possible to interpret Diamonds of the Night as allegory, as a fable about escaping from Nazi terror only to end up under Soviet repression, but it stands on its own as an example of the innovative use of cinematic technique that marked the brief period of liberation experienced by Czech filmmakers in the 1960s.  

A Tale of Springtime (Éric Rohmer, 1990)

Anne Teyssèdre, Florence Darel, Hugues Quester, and Eloïse Bennett in A Tale of Springtime

Cast: Anne Teyssèdre, Florence Darel, Hugues Quester, Eloïse Bennett, Sophie Robin, Marc Lelou, François Lamore. Screenplay: Éric Rohner. Cinematography: Luc Pagès. Film editing: María Luisa García. 

Jeanne (Anne Teyssèdre) and Natacha (Florence Darel) meet at a party neither of them wants to be at, sparking a friendship that will be tested when their separate worlds collide. That's the essential dynamic of Éric Rohmer's A Tale of Springtime, the first in his quartet of Tales of the Four Seasons. Jeanne, who teaches philosophy, is several years older than Natacha, an aspiring pianist just emerging from her teens, so their relationship is something like older and younger sister. Soon, Jeanne will meet Natacha's divorced father, Igor (Hugues Quester), who is dating Ève (Eloïse Bennett), a woman Jeanne's age, who is also well-educated in philosophy. Jeanne soon realizes that she's being set up by Natacha as a rival for Ève, whom Natacha dislikes, in her father's affections. It's the kind of situation that Jane Austen would have enjoyed playing with, and Rohmer's delight in it is apparent. He has a talented cast, a lovely springtime setting, and well-chosen music -- ranging from the melancholy of Schumann's Études Symphoniques to the freshness of Beethoven's "Spring" Sonata  -- to work with, and he makes the most of it.   

Fruit of Paradise (Vera Chytilová, 1970)

Jitka Novátková and Karel Novák in Fruit of Paradise

Cast: Jitka Novátková, Karel Novák, Jan Schmid. Screenplay: Vera Chytilová, Ester Krumbachová. Cinematography: Jaroslav Kucera. Art direction: Vladimir Labsky. Film editing: Miroslav Hájek. Music: Zdenek Liska. 

Vera Chytilová's Fruit of Paradise opens with an acid-trip account of the story of Adam and Eve and the serpent, set against an oratorio-like chorus singing the biblical text set to music by Zdenek Liska. We have scarcely recovered from this prologue when we are thrust into a different kind of paradise that seems to be a health retreat, with another Eve (Jitka Novátková) offering her husband, Josef (Karel Novák), fruit plucked for the tree they're sitting under. He refuses it, but when he says he's hungry, so goes off to forage some herbs for his snack. While she's cutting them, she's almost pissed on by Robert (Jan Schmid), another guest at the spa. And so begins a loopy series of encounters in which, among other things, Eve discovers that Robert may be a serial killer. Make of it what you will, but Fruit of Paradise was Chytilová's farewell to the kind of avant-garde filmmaking that led to her being unemployed in the Czech film industry after the Soviet crackdown on art that it didn't understand but sort of felt was subversive. From our point of view, the only thing it subverts is traditional narrative and cinematic technique. No, it's not as deliciously accessible as Daisies, Chytilová's 1966 breakthrough film. It's a ragged, itchy film that tests the audience's patience while also demonstrating the potential of the motion picture as art. 

A Tale of Winter (Éric Rohmer, 1992)

Charlotte Véry and Frédéric von den Driessche in A Tale of Winter

Cast: Charlotte Véry, Frédéric von den Driessche, Michel Voletti, Hervé Furic, Ava Lorasci, Christiane Desbois. Screenplay: Éric Rohmer. Cinematography: Luc Pagès. Film editing: Mary Stephen. Music: Éric Rohmer. 

"It's not plausible," says Loīc (Hervé Furic) about Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, which he and Félicie (Charlotte Véry) have just seen. She has been brought to tears by the scene in which Hermione, thought to be dead, has returned to life after posing as a statue. Éric Rohmer is doing two things here: He's signaling to us that Loīc and Félicie are not meant for each other: He's too intellectual, she's too romantic. But he's also slyly signaling that his own A Tale of Winter is about to do something almost as implausible as Shakespeare's late romance. Five years ago, as we see in a montage, Félicie, perhaps the flightiest of Rohmer's heroines, had a summer affair with Charles (Frédéric von den Driessche), but at their parting she absent-mindedly gave him the wrong address, didn't get his own, and even neglected to find out his last name. This caused a problem when she discovered she was pregnant and gave birth to their child, Elise (Ava Loraschi). Always convinced that Charles was the true love of her life, she has never really connected with the men she met afterward, even though Loīc and Maxence (Michel Voletti), the hairdresser she works for, have fallen for her. She persists in her dream that she will find Charles again, keeping his photograph by Elise's bedside and telling the little girl that he's her father. Rohmer's Conte d'Hiver, the second in his series of Tales of the Four Seasons, is a late romance itself, made in the waning years of a career, and designed more as a fable than as a story to be taken literally. There's much talk (of course, since talk is the essence of any Rohmer film) about faith, both religious and secular. There are those who find A Tale of Winter contrived and saccharine, just as there are those who find The Winter's Tale implausible. But those who take each work on its own terms may discover their rewards.  

Prefab Story (Vera Chytilová, 1980)

Cast: Lukás Bech, Antonín Vanha, Eva Kacírková, Oldrich Navrátil, Jirí Kodet, Bronislav Poloczek, Daniela Srajerová, Milan Klásek, Ladislav Potmesil, Hana Hejduková, Petr Kratochvíl. Screenplay: Vera Chytilová, Eva Kacírová. Cinematography: Jaromir Sofr. Production design: Ales Voleman. Film editing: Jirí Brozek. Music: Jirí Sust. 

Vera Chytilová's Prefab Story (aka Panelstory or Birth of a Community) is so brilliantly made that I'm saddened that it isn't better known. The setting is a huge modern housing complex in Prague, where the apartments are being filled with eager new tenants even while construction is going on. Construction equipment plows and scrapes through the muddy site as the residents try to go about their daily business, with great crane-hoisted slabs of walls sailing high above them. Life goes on in often intersecting narratives, which Chytilová links into continuity with two characters who perambulate through the complex: a small boy (Lukás Bech) and an old man (Antonin Vanha). The boy thinks it's all a grand adventure, while the old man is the only one who seems to care about his fellow inhabitants. It's a superb mix of documentary-style footage and multiple, a humanistic satire edited with wit and given bite by a spiky, often atonal score.  

A Tale of Summer (Éric Rohmer, 1996)

Amanda Langlet and Melvil Poupaud in A Tale of Summer

Cast: Melvil Poupaud, Amanda Langlet, Gwenaëlle Simon, Aurelia Nolin, Aimé Lefèvre, Alain Guelaff, Evelyne Lahana, Yves Guérin, Franck Cabot-David. Screenplay: Éric Rohmer. Cinematography: Diane Baratier. Film editing: Mary Stephen. Music: Philippe Eidel, Éric Rohmer, Mary Stephen. 

Had we but world enough and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime. 

We would sit down, and think which way

To walk, and pass our long love's day. 

Andrew Marvell's great carpe diem lyric "To His Coy Mistress" was probably written when Marvell was in his 30s. Éric Rohmer's carpe diem movie, A Tale of Summer (Conte d'Été, aka A Summer's Tale) was made when Rohmer was 75. Marvell heard "Time's wingéd chariot hurrying near." Rohmer was all but riding in it. This film, the third in his series of "Tale of the Four Seasons," though set in the present, is a kind of memory piece, based on Rohmer's youthful experience. It centers on Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud), a twentysomething taking a summer break before starting his career teaching mathematics, idling in a beach resort in northwestern France. He attracts the attention of Margot (Amanda Langlet), on a summer job as a waitress before continuing her work as a researcher in ethnology. They start a flirtatious friendship, taking long walks and talking about each other's love life. Gaspard is in a tenuous relationship with Léna (Aurelia Nolin), whose arrival he expects any day -- she has been traveling in Spain with her sister and some cousins. At a disco with Margot one evening, Gaspard also attracts the attention of Solène (Gwenaëlle Simon), an acquaintance of Margot's. When Léna finally arrives, he finds himself juggling the attentions of all three women. In summary it sounds like an adolescent male fantasy, but Rohmer slyly exposes the awkwardness and discomfort in Gaspard's commitment phobia and his missteps with each woman. A lovely setting and a particularly skillful performance by Langlet as the most sensible figure in this romantic quadrangle give this slight film its great charm.  

Calamity (Vera Chytilová, 1982)

Bolek Polívka in Calamity

Cast: Bolek Polívka. Dagmar Bláhovká, Jana Synková, Marie Pavliková, Jaroslava Kretschmarová, Zdenek Sverák. Screenplay: Vera Chytilová, Josef Silhavy. Cinematography: Ivan Slapeta. Production design: Bohumil Pokorny. Film editing: Jirí Brozek. Music: Laco Deczi. 

Vera Chytilová's Calamity is a loosey-goosey comedy about the misadventures of Honza Dostál (Bolek Polívka), a college dropout who has decided he wants to drive a train. And so he does eventually, while dealing with the advances of several young women. The lanky but agreeable Honza is nobody's idea of a hunk, but perhaps there was a shortage of available young men in 1980s Czechoslovakia. Eventually, the film stops being a collection of occasionally funny incidents and focuses on the titular calamity: The train Honza is driving gets buried in snow, and the movie centers on the reactions of the passengers, including several of his girlfriends, to their predicament. Chytilová, whose career had suffered after the Soviets cracked down on sassy Czech filmmakers, manages to insert some sly digs at the government bureaucracy but they lack the bite of her earlier films. It's a benign, amusing movie with one or two laugh-out-loud moments. 

Intervista (Federico Fellini, 1987)

Cast: Federico Fellini, Sergio Rubini, Antonella Ponziani, Maurizio Mein, Paola Liguori, Lara Wendel, Antonio Cantafora, Nadia Ottaviani, Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Mario Miyakawa. Screenplay: Federico Fellini, Gianfranco Angelucci. Cinematography: Tonino Delli Colli. Production design: Danilo Donati. Film editing: Nino Baragli. Music: Nicola Pionvani. 

Federico Fellini is a colorful hodgepodge of Fellinian themes, a kind of nesting doll movie in which several stories reside within one another. There's the interview itself, by a Japanese television crew, which frames a story about Fellini and his career, which frames stories about Fellini's early days at Cinecittà, the process of casting for his movies, his aborted plans to film Franz Kafka's Amerika, and the highlights of his career. The last culminates in the reunion of Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg along with clips from the Trevi Fountain scene in La Dolce Vita (1960). Like many of Fellini's films, it's a memory piece, part humorous, part regretful. It succeeds as a movie about movies, but never emerges from its self-reflectiveness into anything more substantial, the way his great movie about movies, 8 1/2 (1963) does. 

Boat People (Ann Hui, 1982)

Season Ma and Guo Jun-yi in Boat People

Cast: George Lam, Season Ma, Andy Lau, Cora Miao, Mengshi Qi, Meiying Jia, Shujing Lin, Guo Jun-yi, Wu Shu-Jun. Screenplay: Chiu Kang-Chien. Cinematography: Wong Chung-Gei, David Chung, Huang Zong Ji. Art direction: Tony Au. Film editing: Kin Kin. Music: Law Wing-Fai, Hako Yamasaki. 

Controversy still lingers around Ann Hui's Boat People, as it does around any work that attempts to tell the story of the Vietnam War and its aftermath. The initial controversy arose because Hui made it in the opening phases of the transfer of the territory of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China, with the financial backing of that country and in a location, the island of Hainan, that belonged to China. It was the first Hong Kong film made in the People's Republic, and those holding out for Hong Kong's independence were upset by the collaboration. Today, the controversy centers on how accurate the portrayal of Vietnam and its government in the years immediately after the war really is. Boat People depicts a land of fear and repression, and its heroes are those who resist and try to escape from it. Critics of the film call it distorted and melodramatic. It centers on a Japanese photographer, Shiomi Akutagawa (George Lam), who witnessed the fall of South Vietnam and has returned three years later to document how the country has changed. He has the occasionally grudging and suspicious support of the new government, which of course wants a favorable portrait of the country. But as he travels about, he begins to suspect that he's not being allowed to see the whole truth. Befriending a small family, and particularly a 14-year-old girl, Cam Nuong (Season Ma), and her younger brothers Nhac (Wu Shu-Jun) and Lam (Guo Jun-yi), he starts to find the darker side of the new Vietnam. He also meets Nguyen (Mengshi Qi), who is unhappy with the course the country has taken, and his mistress (Cora Miao), who trades in the black market and helps people escape Vietnam. Boat People is an often compelling and brutal film that succeeds as drama despite (or perhaps because of) its political biases.  
 

A Tale of Autumn (Éric Rohmer, 1998)

Marie Rivière and Béatrice Romand in A Tale of Autumn

Cast: Marie Rivière, Béatrice Romand, Alain Libolt, Didier Sandre, Alexia Portal, Stéphane Darmon, Aurélia Alcaïs, Matthieu Davette, Yves Alcaïs. Screenplay: Éric Rohmer. Cinematography: Diane Baratier. Film editing: Mary Stephen. Music: Claude Marti, Gérard Pansanel, Pierre Peyras, Antonello Salis. 

A matchmaking mixup forms the plot of Éric Rohmer's A Tale of Autumn (Conte d'automne, aka Autumn Tale), the final film in Rohmer's quartet, Tales of the Four Seasons. It's a setup that will be familiar to watchers of rom-coms, or even TV sitcoms: Two people independently try to make a romantic match for a friend, leading to confusion when the unwitting friend meets the two different would-be mates chosen for them. Magali (Béatrice Romand), a widow in her 40s with two grown children, runs a small vineyard in the Rhône Valley. She's friends with Rosine (Alexia Portal), a young woman who is dating Magali's son, Léo (Stéphane Darmon). Rosine admires Magali, and when the older woman confesses that she gets lonely, decides that she has the perfect match for her: Étienne (Didier Sandre), who was her professor at the university and with whom she has been carrying on a mutual flirtation. Meanwhile, another of Magali's friends, Isabelle (Marie Rivière), also gets it in her head that Magali needs a man and places an ad in the personals section of the newspaper. When Gérald (Alain Libolt), a widower, responds to the ad, Isabelle at first pretends to be Magali, whom she has described in the ad, and then confesses the truth. Rosine and Isabelle separately arrange for Magali to meet their choices at a reception celebrating the wedding of Isabelle's daughter. Predictably, nothing goes quite as either of the matchmakers wishes. Rohmer relies on intelligent dialogue, the beauty of the French wine country, and the skill of his performers to cover up the artificiality of his plot, and he mostly succeeds. 

My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, 2007)

Ann Savage in My Winnipeg

Cast: Ann Savage, Louis Negin, Amy Stewart, Darcy Fehr, Brendan Cade, Wesley Cade, Lou Profeta, Fred Dunsmore, Kate Yacula, Jacelyn Lobay, Eric Nipp, Jennifer Palichuk, Guy Maddin (voice). Screenplay: Guy Maddin, George Toles. Cinematography: Jody Shapiro. Production design: Réjean Labrie. Film editing: John Gurdebeke.

A man on a train dozes and dreams, and we see his dreams because they are in a way ours. He is dreaming about the city he is trying to leave, which is at once the real city of Winnipeg, a remembered hometown, and a fantastic extrapolation from the actual place. Guy Maddin's "docu-fantasia" My Winnipeg gets its power to seize the imagination from our own experiences growing up in a place with a family. Maddin sets out to recreate the merging of memory and feeling that makes up our dreams about people and places we have known, and he succeeds remarkably. It's a feat that can only be accomplished in the movies, the medium that is most often likened to dreams. I leave the exegesis and interpretation to others because it's a personal work that inspires personal reflection.    

Evil Cat (Dennis Yu, 1987)

Hsu Shu-Yan in Evil Cat

Cast: Lau Kar-Leung, Lai-Ying Tang, Mark Cheng Ho-Nam, Wong Jing, Hsu Shu-Yan, Stuart Ong, Teresa Ha Ping. Screenplay: Wong Jing. Cinematography: Arthur Wong. Art direction: Sita Yeung. Film editing: Ming Lam Wong. Music: Law Wing-Fai. 

A phantom kitty litters Hong Kong with mutilated corpses in Dennis Yu's anarchic horror movie Evil Cat. When a construction crew unearths the site where the feline spirit is entombed, Master Cheung (Lau Kar-Leung) escapes from the nursing home where he is spending his last days dying of cancer in order to fulfill the ancient duty imposed on him: to put an end to the cat's ninth life. Along the way, he enlists the aid of Long (Mark Cheng Ho-Nam), chauffeur to the rich Mr. Fan (Stuart Ong), who becomes one of the first victims of the cat. His daughter, Siu-Chuen (Lai-Ying Tang), and the bumbling police inspector Mr. Woo (Wong Jing), also get involved in the hunt. It's a movie careless of genre, tone, and sometimes taste that doesn't end well for anyone, except maybe the cat. But it's catnip to aficionados of Hong Kong action movies, who will go on and on about its sources and influences, while the rest of us are wondering what the hell we just watched. 

Project Hail Mary (Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, 2026)

Ryan Gosling in Project Hail Mary

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, James Ortiz (voice), Lionel Boyce, Milana Vayntrub, Ken Leung, Priya Kansara (voice). Screenplay: Drew Goddard, based on a novel by Andy Weir. Cinematography: Greig Fraser. Production design: Charles Wood. Film editing: Joel Negron. Music: Daniel Pemberton. 

Like most sci-fi movies, Project Hail Mary is more fiction than science, but it does put the science at its center. It has that in common with the other movie scripted by Drew Goddard from a novel by Andy Weir, The Martian (Ridley Scott, 2015).  Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's film is somewhat more fantastical than Scott's, involving as it does the extinction of the human race by a plague of extraterrestrial entities known as astrophages -- star-eaters. This time the hero is not a plucky astronaut trying to survive on Mars by sciencing the shit out of it, but a misfit scientist who gets shanghaied into a one-way trip to Tau Ceti. There he has a close encounter with a benign ET. Yes, Project Hail Mary is derivative, but at this stage what sci-fi movie isn't? It's all done with a great deal of wit and charm, largely on Ryan Gosling's part but also the puppetry and voice work of James Ortiz as the amiable Rocky. At an hour and half, it's a shade too long, but it deserved to be the hit it was. 

Pressure (Horace Ové, 1976)

Herbert Norville in Pressure

Cast: Herbert Norville, Oscar James, Frank Singuineau, Lucita Lijertawood, Sheila Scott Wilkinson, Ed Devereaux, T-Bone Wilson, Ram John Holder, Norman Beaton, John F. Landry, Archie Pool. Screenplay: Horace Ové, Samuel Selvon. Cinematography: Michael J. Davis. Film editing: Alan Cummer-Price. 

"Message movies" get a bad rap. The message too often undermines characterization, turning people into ideas. Horace Ové's Pressure is guilty in that regard. His young protagonist, Tony (Herbert Norville), is a vehicle for the film's ideas about racism, immigration, capitalism, and imperialism. Tony is the England-born son of Trinidadian immigrants, who would like nothing more than for him to assimilate into British culture. His older brother, Colin (Oscar James), who came to Britain with his parents, however, has turned his experience of racism into activism in the Black Power movement. Tony has finished school but struggles to find work, and his idleness begins to get him in trouble. Eventually he joins Colin in the movement, but the film ends on a bleak moment in that struggle, too. It's easy to dismiss Pressure as preaching to the choir and to observe that the struggle for economic justice and ethnic identity continues unabated 50 years after the film was made. But Pressure is skillfully made, effectively dramatizing its issues with scenes that verge on comedy, like Tony's job interview with a politely indifferent potential employer, and even touches of the fantastic, like the dream Tony has under the influence of a reefer. Ové has successfully channeled anger into art. 

Vera (Sergio Toledo, 1986)

Ana Beatriz Nogueira in Vera

Cast: Ana Beatriz Nogueira, Raul Cortez, Aida Leiner, Carlos Kroeber. Screenplay: Sergio Toledo, based on a book by Anderson Bigode Herzer. Cinematography: Rodolfo Sánchez. Art direction: Naum Alves de Souza, Simone Raskin. Film editing: Tércio G. Mota. Music: Arrigo Bernabé. 

The title, Vera, is the deadname of Bauer (Ana Beatriz Nogueira), a young transgender man who does what he can to reject it, an even harder task in 1980s Brazil than it is today. Growing up in an orphanage, he writes poems that get the attention of a prominent educator (Raul Cortez), whom he calls "Professor." (The character is based on the economist Eduardo Suplicy.) When Bauer ages out of the institution, "Professor" finds work for him in a research center, where he meets Clara (Aida Leiner) and falls in love with her. The film, based on the life of Anderson Bigode Herzer, flashes back to his struggles in the institution as he faces a different set of obstacles in the outside world.  Sergio Toledo does nothing to mitigate the sadness and pain in the story he tells, although he stops short of the suicide that ended Herzer's life, leaving some hope for Bauer. Nogueira's beautifully sensitive performance won a best actress award at the Berlin Film Festival in 1987. The only real flaw in the film is in framing Bauer's story with gratuitous shots of the launch of a space shuttle (1986 was the year of the Challenger disaster) and atomic explosions, which seem to be an attempt to heighten the story's significance but only distract from it. 

Art School Confidential (Terry Zwigoff, 2006)

Max Minghella in Art School Confidential

Cast: Max Minghella, Sophia Myles, John Malkovich, Jim Broadbent, Matt Keeslar, Ethan Suplee, Joel David Moore, Nick Swardson, Anjelica Huston, Adam Scott, Jack Ong, Scoot McNairy, Jeremy Guskin, Steve Buscemi. Screenplay: Daniel Clowes. Cinematography: Jamie Anderson. Production design: Howard Cummings. Film editing: Robert Hoffman. Music: David Kitay. 

Terry Zwigoff's Art School Confidential has its origins in a story that appeared in a comic book, and it shows. Daniel Clowes's screenplay, like much graphic fiction, often feels like a collection of set pieces, composed of individual scenes and moments, instead of a coherent narrative. Jerome (Max Minghella), whose artistic talent helped him survive being bullied in high school, goes to a prestigious art school in New York City, thinking that art is his calling. The Strathmore School of Art is staffed by artists who need the money because they have never quite made it on art alone, and it's attended by a variety of kids like Jerome, who have talent but not vision and maturity. It soon becomes clear that the school isn't likely to help them develop that. In addition to scenes lampooning the pretentiousness of the art world, Clowes and Zwigoff also supply a romance, when Jerome falls for Audrey (Sophia Myles), a pretty model who poses nude for his class, and a subplot about a serial killer. Eventually, Jerome becomes a successful artist, but in a heavily ironic way. Art School Confidential has some bite, but it's messily put together, with a few too many irrelevant bits. One of Jerome's roommates, for example, is a closeted gay man whose coming out is tossed into the movie for cheap laughs. An unbilled Steve Buscemi has a pointless role as a cafe owner, and Anjelica Huston and Adam Scott are wasted in bit parts. 

Father Amin (Youssef Chahine, 1950)

Mary Mounib, Esam Abdu, Hussein Riad, and Faten Hamama in Father Amin

Cast: Hussein Riad, Faten Hamama, Kamal El-Shinnawi, Mary Mounib, Farid Shawqi, Hind Rostom, Mohammed Tawfik, Hasan Kamel, Esam Abdu. Screenplay: Youssef Chahine, Ali El Zorkani, Hussein Helmi El-Mohandes. Cinematography: Massimo Dellamano. Art direction: Abdel Monem Shoukry. Film editing: Kamal Abul Ela. 

Youssef Chahine's first feature film, Father Amin (aka Baba Amin and Daddy Amin), is an amusing mashup of family drama, screwball comedy, musical, romance, and fantasy. Amin (Hussein Riad) dies suddenly but comes back in ghostly form to watch the consequences of an imprudent investment he made just before his death. His wife (Mary Mounib) is forced to sell the furniture in an attempt to pay the installment due on the house she shares with their daughter, Huda (Faten Hamama), and young son, Nabil (Esam Abdu). Huda is being courted by a shy, studious young man, Ali (Kamal El-Shinnawi), who is just about to leave for Alexandria when Amin dies. In his absence, she tries to earn money as a singer in a nightclub, though she's too embarrassed to tell Ali and the family of her job, claiming that she's a nurse. Hovering through this hubbub, Amin learns a few lessons that he will try to put into practice when, you guessed it, he turns out not really to be dead. Chahine deftly blends Hollywood movie tropes with Egyptian style. 

Deep Crimson (Arturo Ripstein, 1996)

Regina Orozco and Daniel Giménez Cacho in Deep Crimson

Cast: Regina Orozco, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Sherlyn, Giovani Florido, Fernando Soler Palavicini, Patricia Reyes Spindola, Alexandra Vicencio, Julieta Egurrola, Marisa Paredes, Rosa Furman, Verónica Merchant, Juan de la Loza. Screenplay: Paz Alicia Garciadiego. Cinematography: Guillermo Granillo. Production design: Mónica Chirinos, Macarena Folache, Antonio Muño-Hierro, Nava, Marisa Pecanins. Film editing: Rafael Castanedo. Music: David Mansfield. 

Arturo Ripstein's Deep Crimson carries a dedication in its credits to "Leonard, Martha, and Raymond," the director and protagonists of The Honeymoon Killers (Leonard Kastle, 1970). Ripstein has moved the events of Kastle's film to Mexico, and the actual "lonely hearts killers" Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez have become Coral Fabre (Regina Orozco) and Nicolás Estrella (Daniel Giménez Cacho), but the sequence of events follows pretty much the same brutal line as Kastle's film. Ripstein's is the more sophisticated version of the story, enhanced by the Sonoran Desert setting of much of the film and by the intense color of Guillermo Granillo's cinematography. The protagonists of Deep Crimson are perhaps even more psychotic than those of Kastle's, and the justice served up to them is ironically almost as corrupt as they are. In the end, it's a question of whether you prefer the low-budget earnestness of Kastle's treatment or the sardonic tone of Ripstein's.    

Salvatore Giuliano (Francesco Rosi, 1962)

Cast: Salvo Randone, Frank Wolff, Pietro Cammarata, Sennuccio Benelli, Giuseppe Calandra, Max Cartier, Fernando Cicero, Bruno Ukmar, Cosimo Tonino, Federico Zardi, Francesco Rosi (voice). Screenplay: Francesco Rosi, Suso Cecchi D'Amico, Enzo Provenzale, Franco Solinas. Cinematography: Gianni Di Venanzo. Production design: Sergio Canevari, Carlo Egidi. Film editing: Mario Serandrei. Music: Piero Piccioni. 

Francesco Rosi's docudrama Salvatore Giuliano is remarkable for not making the title character, a charismatic Sicilian Robin Hood, the focus of the film. Instead, Giuliano, played by a non-professional actor, Pietro Cammarata, is seen only in long shots and in death. The film is about the milieu, post-war Sicily, rather than the man. Rosi, who serves as voiceover narrator in the few moments of the film that try to make it more comprehensible to those not versed in the biographical and historical backstory, is concerned not to make Giuliano into a glamorous figure. Instead he wants us to feel caught up in the political currents, with a masterly use of crowds massing and meeting. Only two figures stand out from these crowds: Gaspare Pisciotta (Frank Wolff), who followed and betrayed Giuliano, and the judge (Salvo Randone) presiding over the trial of Pisciotta and his accomplices. Even the most melodramatic moments in the film, as when Giuliano's mother (an uncredited performer chosen from the local people where the film was made) weeps and fondles her son's corpse, are viewed with detachment. Yet the film works with a masterly display of technique, especially Mario Serandrei's editing and Gianni Di Venanzo's views of the Siciilian landscape. It's a film that asks you to do your homework, but it rewards you for it.  

The Honeymoon Killers (Leonard Kastle, 1970)

Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco in The Honeymoon Killers

Cast: Shirley Stoler, Tony Lo Bianco, Mary Jane Higby, Doris Roberts, Kip McArdle, Marilyn Chris, Dortha Duckworth, Barbara Cason, Ann Harris, Mary Breen. Screenplay: Leonard Kastle. Cinematography: Oliver Wood. Film editing: Richard Brophy, Stanley Warnow. Music: excerpts from Symphonies No. 5, 6, and 9 by Gustav Mahler. 

The Honeymoon Killers was Leonard Kastle's only outing as a director and it shows. Some scenes are framed badly, lopping off characters' heads or bodies, and many of the performers, actors never to be seen again, are awkward and wooden. The set decor is thrift-store cheap, the sound is often tinny, and the music cues hacked out of Mahler symphonies are jarring. It's easy to laugh at the opening title, which hammers home the message that what you're about to see is shocking. But at some point I stopped laughing. It's an undeniably effective movie perhaps because its low-budget cheesiness feels appropriate to the subject matter: a mismatched pair of con artists who prowl American suburbia in search of lonely women whom they can fleece for their sometimes paltry savings. Martha (Shirley Stoler) and Ray (Tony Lo Bianco) squabble and reconcile as they go about their spree of originally unintended murders. The director first hired for the movie was the young Martin Scorsese, who was fired for being too slow. Scorsese, who at that point had made only one feature, Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967), later admitted that the firing was probably justified. You have to wonder what the movie would be like if Scorsese decided to remake it today and if it would be nearly so sleazily effective. The Honeymoon Killers will never be what François Truffaut called it, "my favorite American film," but it's in some way an essential one.