Mothra vs. Godzilla (Ishiro Honda, 1964)

Cast: Akira Takarada, Yuriko Hoshi, Hiroshi Koizumi, Yu Fujiki, Kenji Sahara, Emi Ito, Yumi Ito, Yoshifuma Tajima, Jun Tazaki, Kenzo Tabu, Haruo Nakajima, Katsumi Tezuka. Screenplay: Shin'ichi Sekizawa. Cinematography: Hajime Koizumi. Production design: Takeo Kita. Film editing: Ryohei Fujii. Music: Akira Ifukube.

The contest between the benevolent insect god Mothra and the rampaging Godzilla sounds unequal. What's Mothra going to do, flap Godzilla to death? It turns out in Ishiro Honda's Mothra vs. Godzilla that the giant lepidopteran has a few unexpected tricks in her repertoire, not the least that she has progeny in the form of larvae with teeth. As usual, the humans are clumsy spectators, prone to do as much harm as good, but fortunately they have the help of Mothra's diminutive acolytes, the Shobijin (Emi Ito, Yumi Ito). We begin with a typhoon that washes a giant egg ashore, whereupon greedy promoters set out to make a fortune exploiting it. The egg, of course, is Mothra's, and fortunately we have an intrepid newspaper reporter (Akira Takarad) and a photographer (Yuriko Hoshi) who are more interested in getting the story than in making money. (The demise of newspapers is going to make such plots obsolete: Can we rely on intrepid podcasters to save the world in future encounters with giant monsters?) The movie is bright and busy entertainment with just enough sermonizing about human foibles to make it feel like the time watching it wasn't misspent.  

Two Evil Eyes (George A. Romero, Dario Argento, 1990)

Adrienne Barbeau in Two Evil Eyes ("The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar") 

Harvey Keitel in Two Evil Eyes ("The Black Cat")

Cast of "The Facts in the Case of Mr. Waldemar": Adrienne Barbeau, Ramy Zada, Bingo O'Malley, Jeff Howell, E.G. Marshall, Chuck Aber, Tom Atkins. Cast of "The Black Cat": Harvey Keitel, Madeleine Potter, John Amos, Sally Kirkland, Kim Hunter, Holter Graham, Martin Balsam, Jonathan Adams, Julie Benz. Screenplay: George A. Romero, Peter Kober ("The Facts in the Case of Mr. Waldemar"); Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini ("The Black Cat"), based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Cinematography: Peter Reniers ("The Facts in the Case of Mr. Waldemar), Giuseppe Maccari ("The Black Cat"). Production design: Cletus Anderson. Film editing: Pasquale Buba. Music: Pino Donaggio. 

The title Two Evil Eyes seems intended to suggest that its two directors, George A. Romero and Dario Argento, have different visions when trained on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and they do. Romero takes a straightforward approach to updating one of Poe's less familiar tales as "The Facts in the Case of Mr. Waldemar." Argento's is a stylistic embroidering on "The Black Cat," loaded with allusions to other Poe stories. Neither is a particularly memorable addition to the corpus of either director's work, but devotees of their films will find much to like in both. 

Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster (Ishiro Honda, 1964)

Cast: Yosuke Natsuki, Yuriko Hoshi, Hiroshi Koizumi, Akiko Wakabayashi, Emi Ito, Yumi Ito, Takashi Shimura, Akihiko Hirata, Hisaya Ito, Haruo Nakajima, Masanori Shinohara, Shoichi Hirose. Screenplay: Shin'ichi Sekizawa. Cinematography: Hajime Koizuma. Production design: Takeo Kita. Film editing: Ryohei Fujii. Music: Akira Ifekube. 

This time the monster terrifying Japan comes from outer space, not spawned by atomic testing here on Earth. Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster centers on a creature that destroyed civilization on Venus before directing its attention toward this planet. Fortunately, it meets its match in some terrestrial monsters, Godzilla, Rodan, and Mothra, although Mothra has some difficulty persuading the other two lunkheads to join forces against a common enemy. But the parts of the film that deal with humans are even more screwy than usual, involving a princess (Akiko Wakabayashi) from another country, visiting Japan on a good-will trip.  Somehow, the princess gets possessed by the spirit of a Venusian who witnessed Ghidorah's destruction of her planet, and she's able to aid the earthly scientists and good guys once he starts his rampage. But the princess has her own human enemies, assassins from a rival political faction, who only complicate things once the monster action starts. Also there to help are the Shobijin, a pair of fairy acolytes to Mothra who facilitate communication with the larval creature. They're played by the twins Emi Ito and Yumi Ito, who are also a musical duo known as Peanut. Fortunately, you don't need all the backstory of these creatures to watch Ghidorah. It's the usual non-stop mixture of dated but charming special effects, with some sly humor thrown in.  

Will Your Heart Beat Faster? (Mike De Leon, 1980)

Johnny Delgado in Will Your Heart Beat Faster?

Cast: Christopher De Leon, Charo Santos, Jay Ilagan, Sandy Andolong, Boboy Garrovillo, Johnny Delgado, Armida Siguion-Reyna, Leo Martinez, Moody Diaz, Joe Jardi, Danny Javier. Screenplay: Cloduado Del Mundo Jr., Raquel Villavicencio, Mike De Leon. Cinematography: Rody Lacap. Production design: Raquel Villavicencio. Film editing: Ike Jariego Jr. Music: Lorrie Ilustre. 

Comedy often doesn't translate well, and for most of us non-Filipino viewers, a great deal of Mike De Leon's romantic, satiric musical comedy Will Your Heart Beat Faster? gets lost in translation. There's a lot of business involving the attempt of a particularly inept member of the Japanese yakuza to smuggle drugs into the Philippines, involving a quartet of attractive young people who become his unwitting vehicle when he slips a cassette tape into the pocket of the hero, a pop star named Johnny (Christopher De Leon). Lots of mistaken identities and slapstick action ensue, especially when the Chinese decide to muscle in on the territory. But when everything comes together toward the end, the movie blossoms into a goofy, entertaining extravaganza involving nuns, priests, smugglers, cops, mysterious passageways, and who knows what else. It's definitely not politically correct -- I'm assuming that the "Japs" and "Chinks" of the subtitles are translations of equivalent slurs in the original Filipino language. Under the original title, Kakabakaba Ka Ba?, it was a big hit in its homeland, which has been no stranger to exploitation by its more powerful neighbors. 

Godzilla Raids Again (Motoyoshi Oda, 1955)

Cast: Hiroshi Koizumi, Setsuko Wakayama, Minoru Chiaki, Takashi Shimura, Masao Shimizu, Seijiro Onda, Sonosuke Sawamura, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Mayuri Mokusho, Minosuke Yamada, Haruo Nakajima. Katsumi Tezuka. Screenplay: Takeo Murata, Shigeaki Hidaka, based on a novel by Shigeru Kayama. Cinematography: Seiichi Endo. Production design: Teruaki Abe, Takeo Kita. Film editing: Kazuji Taira. Music: Masura Sato. 

The inevitable sequel to Ishiro Honda's 1954 hit, Godzilla Raids Again introduces what would become the mainstay of the franchise: monster vs. monster. Godzilla encounters his first kaiju antagonist, an ankylosaurus called Anguirus, who looks like a cross between a hedgehog and a nubbly scrub brush. Anguirus's inflexible carapace somewhat limits his mobility in his conflict with Godzilla, but the two manage to do quite a bit of damage to Osaka before the latter prevails. Unfortunately, the rest of the film feels anticlimactic after the scenes of destruction, as it deals with the plan to bury Godzilla under a mass of rock and ice on an island near Hokkaido. This results in a rather perfunctory subplot, turning the film into a kind of buddy movie featuring two pilots, Tsukioka (Hiroshi Koizumi) and Kobayashi (Minoru Chiaku), who are the first to encounter the two monsters and are determined to see it through to the end. If you somehow missed the first movie, there are some clips from it, and Takashi Shimura returns in a cameo as the paleontologist Dr. Yamane, who shares his expertise on the creatures. 

Kisapmata (Mike De Leon, 1981)

Vic Silayan in Kisapmata

Cast: Vic Silayan, Charito Solis, Charo Santos, Jay Ilagan, Ruben Rustia, Aida Carmona. Screenplay: Clodualdo Del Mundo Jr., Raquel Villavicencio, Mike De Leon, based on an article by Nick Joaquin. Cinematography: Rody Lacap. Production design: Cesar Hernando. Film editing: Jess Navarro. Music: Lorrie Ilustre. 

Kisapmata begins as a straightforward domestic drama about an overbearing father, played with sinister roughness by Vic Silayan. Dadong, a retired police sergeant, is upset when his daughter, Mila (Charo Santos) announces that she's pregnant and wants to marry her co-worker, Noel (Jay Ilagan), but he seems to swallow his objections after Noel's widowed father, Peping (Ruben Rustia, agrees to a generous dowry and an elaborate wedding. But the nervousness of the bride and her mother, Dely (Charito Solis), signal to the audience that all is not well. Then, during the reception, after everyone dances together in a show of unity, Dely is suddenly taken ill. The honeymoon is off when Dely is rushed home and Dadong says that Mila must come help her mother recover. Mike De Leon deftly handles the transition from the original sense that Dadong has accepted and adjusted to the marriage to a growing awareness that dark secrets threaten his accommodation, not to mention the lives of the people under his control. Kisapmata means "in the wink of an eye," and the film's denouement, after Mila and Noel struggle to escape from Dadong's control, comes in exactly that manner. Based on a reporter's account of an actual incident, De Leon's movie gives us the experience of a conventional thriller, but leaves us pondering the deeper forces that drive the desire to exert control over other people. It has sometimes been interpreted as a veiled portrait of the authoritarian state represented by the Marcos regime in the Philippines. 

An Actor's Revenge (Kon Ichikawa, 1963)

Kazuo Hasegawa in An Actor's Revenge

Cast: Kazuo Hasegawa, Fujiko Yanamoto, Ayako Wakao, Raizo Ichikawa, Shintaro Katsu, Eiji Funakoshi, Chusha Ichikawa, Narutoshi Hayashi, Nakamura Ganjior II, Saburo Date, Eijiro Yanaki, Jun Hamamura. Screenplay: Notto Wada, Daisuke Ito, Teinosuke Kinugasa, based on a novel by Otokichi Mikami. Cinematography: Setsuo Kobayashi. Production design: Yoshinobu Nishioka. Film editing: Shigeo Nishida. Music: Yasushi Akutagawa, Masao Yagi. 

Kon Ichikawa's An Actor's Revenge was made in part to celebrate a milestone in the career of actor Kazuo Hasegawa: his 300th film performance. It does so by providing him two roles: the actor Yukinojo Nakamura and the thief Yamitaro. The actor is an onnagata, a male who plays female roles and retains the dress and manner of a woman offstage. The thief provides a running commentary, as he observes the action, which centers on Yukinojo's manipulation of the lovely Namiji (Ayako Wakao), the daughter of one of the men who caused the death of his parents 20 years earlier. He uses his acting skills to lure the men into a trap, trusting that their perception of his effeminate manner will make them unaware of his cunning and his prowess with a sword. Hasegawa's remarkable double performance gives the film its great distinction, but it's also beautifully filmed and staged, with a score that uses a variety of modes, including a surprising switch to jazz in one scene.  

Batch '81 (Mike De Leon, 1982)

Ricky Sandico in Batch '81

Cast: Mark Gil, Sandy Andolong, Ward Luarca, Noel Trinidad, Ricky Sandico, Jimmy Javier, Rod Leido, Bing Pimentel, Dang Cecilio, Mike Arvisu, Vic Lima, Dodo Cabasal, Edwin Reyes. Screenplay: Clodualdo Del Mundo Jr., Raquel Villavicencio, Mike De Leon. Cinematography: Rody Lacap. Production design: Cesar Hernando. Film editing: Jess Navarro. Music: Lorrie Ilustre. 

Mike De Leon's Batch '81 is a scathing account of what some people will do to gain acceptance that goes well beyond the particular setting, a university in the Philippines during the Marcos era. Sid (Mark Gil), a pre-med student, decides to join the fraternity Alpha Kappa Omega, along with 14 other applicants who are put through a series of uncomfortable, embarrassing, and increasingly hazardous tests of their loyalty to the group. As the unpleasantness of the hazing increases, more and more of the young men drop out until half a dozen are left. Sid is the toughest and most determined of the lot, and even the deaths that occur along the way -- ignored by the authorities -- only strengthen his resolve and resistance. De Leon tells the story ironically, with music cues like a triumphant chorus set to the turn of Gaudeamus Igitur helping to turn it into a tale of heroic persistence. At one point, the fraternity brothers perform in a scene from the musical Cabaret against a backdrop of swastikas. At the end, a closeup of Sid's face, drained of humanity, suggests the toll that the experience of being forced into this sinister brotherhood has taken on him. That Batch '81 is designed as a satire on the authoritarian Marcos regime is evident, especially in the torture scene in which one of the candidates is strapped to a chair attached to electrodes and asked whether martial law was good for the Philippines -- a question cut from the film in its original release. With college fraternity misbehavior lately in the headlines, and an administration in this country that often behaves like a collection of fratboys, the movie feels more relevant than ever. 

Hustler White (Bruce LaBruce, Rick Castro, 1996)

Tony Ward in Hustler White

Cast: Tony Ward, Bruce LaBruce, Kevin P. Scott, Ivar Johnson, Kevin Kramer, Alex Austin, Ron Athey, Glen Meadmore, Graham David Smith, Miles H. Wildecock II, Bud Cockerham, Michael Glass, Vaginal Davis. Screenplay: Bruce LaBruce, Rick Castro. Cinematography: James Carman. Production design: Rick Castro, Bruce LaBruce. Film editing: Rider Siphron.

Like Dante descending into the Inferno, writer Jürgen Anger (Bruce LaBruce) arrives in LA to gather material for a book on street hustlers. He finds his Virgil in a hunky hustler named Montgomery Ward (hunky model Tony Ward), who helps him tour the circles of fetish and kink along Santa Monica Boulevard. Hustler White is a not-so-divine comedy cooked up by LaBruce and photographer Rick Castro, but never quite assembled into a coherent movie. Anger (no relation to Kenneth) and Ward provide as much of a focus as the film ever achieves, but mostly it's a collection of jumbled-together incidents, some grotesque, some gross, some satiric, some even actually funny, and none of them very erotic unless you're particularly into some of the practices depicted. It's a movie full of allusions to other movies, the chief of which is Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950): As Hustler White begins, Montgomery Ward is lying face-down, apparently dead, in a Jacuzzi, introducing his story in voiceover the way William Holden's Joe Gillis does in Wilder's film. Jürgen is as queeny as Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond, but there the parallels between the two films mostly peters away. Tony Ward performs well in the role, but LaBruce is no actor, and if we didn't have better controlled and more imaginatively conceived films like Otto; or, Up With Dead People (2008) and Gerontophilia (2013) from him, we might suspect that he's not much of a writer-director. 

La Tête d'un Homme (Julien Duvivier, 1933)

Harry Baur and Valéry Inkijinoff in La Tête d'un Homme

Cast: Harry Baur, Valéry Inkijinoff, Gina Manès, Alexandre Rignault, Gaston Jacquet, Henri Échourin, Louis Gauthier, Marcel Bourdel. Screenplay: Louis Delaprée, Pierre Calman, Julien Duvivier, based on a novel by Georges Simenon. Cinematography: Armand Thirard. Art direction: Georges Wakhévitch. Film editing: Marthe Poncin. Music: Jacques Belasco. 

The seamy side of Paris gets a thorough exploration in Julien Duvivier's La Tête d'un Homme, an adaptation of one of Georges Simenon's gritty and intricately plotted Maigret novels. The film begins in a seedy, crowded bar, where a man down to his last sou voices the wish that someone would murder his aunt, whose fortune he will inherit. And he gets his wish, thanks to a man who overhears him. That's the setup for a story that spins out into frameups and blackmail and double crossings that take Inspector Maigret (Harry Baur) a good deal of effort and a few slyly unorthodox tricks of his own to sort out. The main pleasure of the film lies not in the detective work, but in its creation of atmosphere through moody, expressionist camerawork and skilled performances. Baur is superb as Maigret, but he meets his match in Valéry Inkijinoff as Radek, a man who has nothing to lose because he's dying, and spends his last days manipulating others to take the fall for the murder he has committed. La Tête d'un Homme is sometimes a little too slowly paced for a mystery thriller, but its slowness allows for character development not typical of the genre.  

Otto; or, Up With Dead People (Bruce LaBruce, 2008)

Jey Crisfar in Otto; or, Up With Dead People

Cast: Jey Crisfar, Katharina Klewinghaus, Marcel Schlutt, Christophe Chemin, Guido Sommer, Gio Black Peter, Susanne Sachße, Stefan Kuschner. Screenplay: Bruce LaBruce. Cinematography: James Carman. Production design: Stefan Dickfeld. Film editing: Jörn Hartmann, Bruce LaBruce. Music: Mikael Karlsson. 

Otto (Jey Crisfar) may be a zombie. Or, depending on which side of the bifurcated title of Otto; or, Up With Dead People you fall, he may be a schizophrenic young man who gets lured into making a movie about zombies by a pretentious director called Medea Yarn (Katharina Klewinghaus). We first see Otto clawing his way out of his grave, but later we see the same scene under Medea's direction. Bruce LaBruce's movie is a scattershot satire, never salacious enough to be labeled porn, never coherent enough to be taken seriously as a commentary on capitalism, the environment, homophobia, AIDS, commercialism, or any of the other topics it glances at. Sometimes gross, sometimes sexy, sometimes sad, and never one thing long enough for the viewer to make up their mind about, as a collection of remarkable and sometimes disturbing moments it works often enough to credit LaBruce with fertile imagination, undisciplined as it may be. 

A Report on the Party and Guests (Jan Nemec, 1966)

Jan Klusák in A Report on the Party and Guests

Cast: Ivan Vyskocil, Jan Klusák, Jiri Nemec, Pavel Bosek, Karel Mares, Evald Schorm, Jana Pracharová, Zdena Skvorecká, Milon Novotny, Helena Pejsková, Dana Nemcová, Antonin Prazák, Josef Skvorecky. Screenplay: Ester Krumbochová, Jan Nemec. Cinematography: Jaromír Sofr. Production design: Oldrich Bosák. Film editing: Miroslav Hájek. Music: Karel Mares. 

If there's really such a thing as the Zeitgeist, Jan Nemec's A Report on the Party and Guests is a fine example of a film that captured it. Like other films of the 1960s, such as Luis Buñel's The Exterminating Angel (1962) and Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964), Nemec's caught the social and political mood of the era, reducing it to an absurdity with the aim of puncturing complacency. Nemec gives us a gaggle of bourgeoises out for a picnic, exchanging platitudes and small talk until they're suddenly set upon by a group of strange men, who intimidate them and imprison them in an imaginary room. But then they're rescued by other men who turn out to be friends of the strangers and taken to an alfresco banquet, a combination wedding and birthday celebration. All goes well until their host discovers that one of the original group has left the festivity and determines that he must be found and returned. This giddy nonsense with dark overtones has some of the flavor of Lewis Carroll, a favorite of directors of the Czech New Wave. A Report on the Party and Guests doesn't transcend the era in which it was made as well as Buñuel and Kubrick's films do, so a contemporary viewer may miss the point of the satire, but the Soviet-imposed Czech government knew its arbitrariness and authoritarianism was being made fun of and quickly banned the film. 

Gerontophilia (Bruce LaBruce, 2013)

Walter Borden and Pier-Gabriel Lajoie in Gerontophilia

Cast: Pier-Gabriel Lajoie, Walter Borden, Katie Boland, Yardly Kavanagh, Marie-Hélène Thibault, Shawn Campbell, Jean-Alexandre Létourneau, Dana Wright, Brian D. Wright. Screenplay: Bruce LaBruce, Daniel Allen Cox. Cinematography: Nicolas Canniccioni. Art direction: Oliver Laberge. Film editing: Glenn Berman. Music: Ramachandra Borcar. 

Bruce LaBruce's Gerontophilia is a solid effort at exploring two topics: sexuality, which is common in movies, and getting old, which unfortunately isn't. Even rarer is combining the two in a story about the sexual attraction of young and old. Eighteen-year-old Lake (Pier-Gabriel Lajoie) has a girlfriend, but he's experiencing some unexpected sensations: Working as a lifeguard, he gets an erection when he performs mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on an elderly man. And when he goes to work as an aide in a Montreal nursing home, he finds himself attracted to the old men he bathes and empties bedpans for. He strikes up a friendship with one of the more alert patients, Melvyn Peabody (Walter Borden), a gay man who refers to himself as "an old queen." Lake secretly sketches his patients, including a nude Melvyn, with whom he plays strip poker. He helps Melvyn hide the tranquilizing meds he's supposed to take, and eventually engineers an escape for him. They hit the road, heading for the Pacific, which Melvyn wants to see again. The road movie formula becomes predictable from that point. Even LaBruce, never known for reticence, is aware that for many viewers the relationship between the two men contains a strong "ick factor." There are no explicit sex scenes, although once Lake disposes of a used condom. Borden gives a skilled performance as Melvyn, and newcomer Lajoie is a handsome presence, somewhat resembling the young Keanu Reeves. The problem with Gerontophilia is that, for all its potential to shock, it feels derivative. It has inevitably been called "a reverse Lolita" and "a gay Harold and Maude." Neither characterization is entirely fair to LaBruce, who has taken a touchy subject and handled it with enough imagination to make it both watchable and provocative. 

Intentions of Murder (Shohei Imamura, 1964)

Masumi Harukawa in Intentions of Murder

Cast: Masumi Harukawa, Ko Nishimura, Shigeru Tsuyuguchi, Yuko Kusonoki, Ranko Akagi, Tomio Aoki, Kazuo Kitamura, Yoshi Kato, Tanie Kitabayashi, Seiji Miyaguchi, Shoichi Ozawa. Screenplay: Shinji Fujiwara, Keiji Hasebe, Shohei Imamaura. Cinematography: Shinsaku Himeda. Art direction: Kimihiko Nakamura. Film editing: Mutsuo Tanji. Music: Toshiro Mayuzumi. 

Shohei Imamura's dark, even cynical vision was never more fully on display than in Intentions of Murder, a thriller in which a woman's revenge on her rapist is accomplished more by accident than intent. Sadako (Masumi Harukawa) is alone in her house when an intruder in search of money discovers and rapes her. A plain, overweight woman, Sadako is in a loveless marriage arrangement (the relationship has never been officially cerified) with Koichi (Ko Nishimura), raising his son by another marriage and generally being scorned by his family. Koichi, a librarian, is meanwhile having an affair with his colleague Yoshiko (Yuko Kusonoki). Sadako contemplates suicide after the rape but fails to follow through, and when she again encounters the rapist, Hiraoka (Shigeru Tsuyuguchi), he develops an obsession with her. Discovering that she's pregnant and uncertain whether the child is Hiraoka's or Koichi's, she agrees to run away with Hiraoka to Tokyo, planning to poison him along the way. Meanwhile, Yoshiko discovers Sadako's relationship with Hiraoka, and begins following them, taking photographs of the pair to persuade Koichi to leave Sadako and marry her. This complex, melodramatic plot takes some twists before an ending in which Sadako is ironically better off than she started. Expressionist camerawork sets the mood and tone for the film, which never lets the viewer relax enough to question some of its characterization and motives. 

Wildlife (Paul Dano, 2018)

Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal in Wildlife

Cast: Ed Oxenbould, Carey Mulligan, Jake Gyllenhaal, Bill Camp, Zoe Margaret Colletti, Darryl Cox, Travis Bruyer, Mollie Mulligan. Screenplay: Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan, based on a novel by Richard Ford. Cinematography: Diego Garcia. Production design: Akin McKenzie. Film editing: Louise Ford, Matthew Hannam. Music: David Lang. 

Paul Dano made his debut as a director with Wildlife, a well-made, particularly well-acted adaptation of a Richard Ford novel. It details the breakup of a marriage as seen primarily from the point of view of a 14-year-old boy played by Ed Oxenbould. Joe Brinson has moved with his parents, Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Jeanette (Carey Mulligan), to a town in Montana where Jerry hopes their fortunes will improve. It's clear from the start that things are not going right for the Brinsons: Jerry loses his job at a country club; Jeanette, a former teacher, is unhappy as a stay-at-home mom; and Joe disappoints his father, who wants him to play football, by winding up as a benchwarmer. When a forest fire breaks out, Jerry goes off to join the crew fighting it, leaving Jeanette and Joe to fend for themselves. Joe gets a job as an assistant to the photographer in a portrait studio, and Jeanette takes work as a swimming teacher at the Y. One of her students is a middle-aged man, Warren Miller (Bill Camp), the well-to-do owner of a car dealership. She responds to his flirtation, seeing a way out of a marriage gone stale. Mulligan is perfect in the part of Jeanette. demonstrating her frustration with Jerry and her semi-reluctant capitulation to the advances of Warren, who has not much other than his wealth to attract her. Oxenbould also skillfully captures Joe's awakening to the reality of his parents' dysfunctional marriage and his mother's infidelity. Gyllenhaal has a less demanding role, mostly demonstrating Jerry's fundamental aimlessness and initially passive response to worsening circumstances. Wildlife is a sober, low-key film that probably worked better on the page than on the screen because its melancholy story lacks urgency and drama. It too often feels like we're watching performers instead of actual people. 

Wise Blood (John Huston, 1979)

Brad Dourif in Wise Blood

Cast: Brad Dourif, Dan Shor, Harry Dean Stanton, Amy Wright, Mary Nell Santacroce, Ned Beatty, William Hickey, John Huston. Screenplay: Benedict Fitzgerald, Michael Fitzgerald, based on a novel by Flannery O'Connor. Cinematography: Gerry Fisher. Film editing: Roberto Silvi. Music: Alex North. 

John Huston's Wise Blood is a classic example of the difficulty of translating a novel to film. With only a few small deviations from the plot, the screenplay by Benedict and Michael Fitzgerald sticks closely to Flannery O'Connor's novel, but it misses the effect of O'Connor's prose, characterization, tone, and point of view on the reader. The novel is one kind of experience, an immersion in O'Connor's private imaginings and her particular religious beliefs and sensibility. The film is another, a puzzling, exasperating, sometimes tiresome tale of eccentric people in a setting familiar to moviegoers, the Southern small town. That the film is its own thing apart from any resemblance to the novel it was drawn from is suggested by the casting. Huston originally wanted Tommy Lee Jones to play Hazel Motes, with Brad Dourif in the role of Enoch Emory. It's hard to imagine two actors with more different personae than the tough, bullish Jones and the weedy, vulnerable Dourif. But when Jones became unavailable, Dourif was cast in the part, and Hazel Motes became something quite different. Wise Blood has many admirers, but there are those of us who find it weighed down by Southern Gothic clichés and ambiguous in intent. Is it a satire on the excesses of evangelical Protestantism? An exploration of religious fanaticism, or a demonstration of the weakening hold of religious belief? Or just an incoherent collection of oddball characters with unusual fixations doing unlikely things?   

Zegen (Shohei Imamura, 1987)

Mitsuko Baisho and Ken Ogata in Zegen

Cast: Ken Ogata, Mitsuko Baisho, Ko Chun-hsiung, Norihei Miki, Hiroyuki Konishi, Sansho Shinsui, Tetta Sugimoto, Taiji Tonoyama, Leonard Kuma, Fujio Tokita, Minori Terada. Screenplay: Shohei Imamura, Kota Okabe. Cinematography: Masao Tochizawa. Art direction: Yoshinaga Yoko'o. Film editing: Hajime Okayasu. Music: Shinichiro Ikebe. 

Sardonic and often raunchy, Shohei Imamura's Zegen takes a jaundiced look at Japanese imperial ambitions in the early 20th century. Ken Ogata stars as Iheji Muraoka, an actual figure who made his fortune by running a chain of brothels in southeastern Asia. In the film, he jumps ship off of Hong Kong and sets up as a barber before being recruited to spy against Russia during the Russo-Japanese War. He becomes convinced of the greatness of the emperor of Japan, especially after being financially rewarded for his services in Manchuria. Returning to Hong Kong, he sets up his business as a zegen -- a pimp -- with the aid of an old love, Shiho (Mitsuko Baisho, recruiting Japanese women to serve in his brothels in Malaya. Eventually, he's challenged both in business and in his relationship with Shiho, by a Chinese rival, Wang (Ko Chun-hsiung). With abundant nudity and talk about sex, Zegen is certainly not reticent about the business it examines, but it also serves as a scathing look at that era in the history of Japan. There are a few really funny moments, such as Muraoka's failed attempt at harakiri, in which he discovers not only that it hurts but that there's actual blood. But it's the kind of film that makes you wince more often than it makes you laugh. 

The Haunted Strangler (Robert Day, 1958)

Boris Karloff in The Haunted Strangler

Cast: Boris Karloff, Anthony Dawson, Derek Birch, Dorothy Gordon, Elizabeth Allan, Diane Aubrey, Tim Turner, Jean Kent, Vera Day, Max Brimmell, Leslie Perrins. Screenplay: Jan Read, John Croydon. Cinematography: Lionel Banes. Set designer: John Elphick. Film editing: Peter Mayhew. Music: Buxton Orr. 

The Haunted Strangler is a moderately effective B-movie from Britain, created mainly to exploit the skill and reputation of Boris Karloff. He plays a writer, James Rankin, who becomes obsessed with a crime that happened 20 years earlier: the strangling and stabbing of five women by an assailant who had the use of only one arm. Circumstantial evidence pointed to a man named Edward Styles, who was hanged for the murders. We see his public execution at the beginning of the film, an effective mood-setter. In the course of investigating the crime, Rankin becomes convinced that a physician named Tennant, who conducted autopsies on both Styles and his victims, was the true killer. His investigations take him to a shabby music hall called The Judas Hole, where he interrogates witnesses to the last of the murders, and eventually to the grave of Styles, where he exhumes the body -- and where the plot takes a sudden twist. Although burdened with lame expository dialogue and mediocre performances (aside from Karloff, professional and effective as always), The Haunted Strangler gives the viewers the creeps they came for. 

Backrooms (Kane Parsons, 2026)

Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell, Avan Jogia, Robert Bobroczkyi, Ember Ambrose, Krista Kosonen, Philip Granger. Screenplay: Will Soodik. Cinematography: Jeremy Cox. Production design: Danny Vermette. Film editing: Greg Ng. Music: Kane Parsons, Edo Van Breemen. 

Eerie and empty, like the rooms it features. Kane Parsons's Backrooms was a hit debut that reminds me a lot of another sleeper hit, The Blair Witch Project (Eduardo Sánchez, Daniel Myrick, 1999), and not just because so much of it features hand-held video camera work. We seem to like watching people fall apart. The backroom world of the film is an obvious metaphor for the recesses of our repressed memories, mostly empty and unremarkable. Parsons makes the most of it by having his protagonists struggling to come to terms with the past: Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) with the failure of his career and his marriage, Mary (Renate Reinsve) with her childhood as the daughter of a woman suffering and eventually institutionalized with agoraphobia. What better setting for a failed architect and someone with a history of dealing with the fear of open spaces than a maze-like agglomeration of windowless rooms? The problem with the film is that it never goes beyond concept into anything that merits interpretation and analysis. It's staged and acted well, and it probes nicely into universal fears of the unknown and feelings of claustrophobia. But is that enough?  

Padre Pio (Abel Ferrara, 2022)

Shia LaBeouf in Padre Pio

Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Cristina Chiriac, Marco Leonardi, Asia Argento, Vincenzo Crea, Luca Lionello, Salvatore Ruocco, Brando Pacitto, Stella Mastrantonio, Federico Majorana, Michelangelo Dalisi. Screenplay: Maurizio Braucci, Abel Ferrara. Cinematography: Alessandro Abate. Production design: Tommaso Ortino. Film editing: Leonado Daniel Bianchi. Music: Joe Delia. 

Although Shia LaBeouf said that he became a devout Christian while making Abel Ferrara's Padre Pio, his performance is one of the worst things about a misfired film. Now officially Saint Pio of Pietrelcina after his canonization by Pope John Paul II in 2002, the Capuchin friar played by LaBeouf lends his name to a film that's not very much about him. Most of Padre Pio, and certainly the more interesting part, deals with the conflict in the village of San Giovanni Rotondo between socialists and the landowners who became part of the emerging National Fascist Party, culminating in a massacre following an election that went against the landowners in 1920. Ferrara stages the scenes that culminate in the massacre well, beginning with the arrival in the village of the men who had served in World War I, and continuing with the exploitation of farmworkers by the landowners, some of whom had fought side by side in the war. But the depiction of Padre Pio's spiritual torment, including a literal fight with the devil and his receiving the stigmata at the film's end, feels cooked up in comparison with the realistic depiction of the political conflict. LaBeouf's American accent also clashes distractingly with the accents of the Italian actors who surround him. Ferrara stunt-casts Asia Argento as a man who confesses his incestuous desire for his daughter to the friar. The gender switch of the casting only adds to the film's general incoherence.