Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)

Sakda Kaewbuadee and Banlop Lomnoi in Tropical Malady

Keng: Banlop Lomnoi
Tong: Sakda Kaewbuadee

Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Screenplay: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Cinematography: Jarin Pengpanitch, Vichit Tanapanitch, Jean-Louis Vialard
Production design: Akekarat Homlaor
Film editing: Lee Chatametikool, Jacopo Quadri

Tropical Malady comes in two not-quite-discrete segments. The first is a more-or-less realistic account of the romance of Keng, a soldier, with Tong, a farmboy Keng meets during a mission to recover a body. The second part is an elaboration on a kind of ghost story in which a soldier (also played by Banlop Lomnoi) goes into the jungle to search for a missing villager, and there encounters the spirit of a shaman (also played by Sakda Kaewbuadee) who can turn himself into a tiger. Although the first part is mostly a love story, it is as shadowy in its way as the second part, beginning with the discover of the body -- and the soldiers' glee in having their photographs taken with the corpse -- and ending with Tong's disappearance into the dark, after which Keng rides his motor scooter past a group of men beating up another man and then pursuing Keng. Although the narrative of Tropical Malady is more conventionally handled than that of Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010), there are some clear links between the two films, including the fact that Kaewbuadee plays a character named Tong in both, and in Tropical Malady refers to his uncle who can recall his past lives. There's also a key scene in both films set in a cavern, along with an obvious preoccupation with the spirit world. If there's a theme that runs through both, it's that of the thinness of the boundary between civilization and the primitive world, or between body and spirit.

Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949)

Dennis Price and Joan Greenwood in Kind Hearts and Coronets

Louis D'Ascoyne Mazzini: Dennis Price
Edith D'Ascoyne: Valerie Hobson
Sibella: Joan Greenwood
Ethelred, Lord Ascoyne/Rev. Lord Henry/ Gen. Lord Rufus/Admiral Lord Horatio/Young Ascoyne/Young Henry/Lady Agatha D'Ascoyne: Alec Guinness
Louis's Mother: Audrey Fildes
The Hangman: Miles Malleson
The Prison Governor: Clive Morton
Lionel: John Penrose
Lord High Steward: Hugh Griffith

Director: Robert Hamer
Screenplay: Robert Hamer, John Dighton
Based on a novel by Roy Horniman
Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe
Art direction: William Kellner
Film editing: Peter Tanner
Costume design: Anthony Mendleson
Music: Ernest Irving

Kind Hearts and Coronets is best known for Alec Guinness's tour de force as the entire D'Ascoyne family, but that's hardly the greatest of pleasures the film affords. Dennis Price's performance as the suavely lethal Louis is as much a demonstration of how to act sophisticated comedy as one could wish, and who can resist Joan Greenwood as Sibella, especially in hats that seem to contain an entire florist's shop? It evokes her definitive Gwendolen Fairfax in Anthony Asquith's 1952 filming of The Importance of Being Earnest. In fact, Oscar Wilde's play is the essential background reference for Robert Hamer's screenplay -- it apparently also influenced the novel on which the film is based -- and you hear Wilde's voice in such lines as Mazzini's "It is so difficult to make a neat job of killing people with whom one is not on friendly terms." Hamer's staging also provides the necessary distancing from Mazzini's murders, as in the scene in which he offs Young Henry D'Ascoyne: While Mazzini is taking tea with Edith in the garden we hear a whump that neither character acknowledges as Henry's darkroom explodes with him in it. Then smoke begins to arise beyond the garden wall, and Mazzini comments that someone must be burning leaves. Not this time of year, Edith replies, and Mazzini rushes off to "investigate" what he knows has happened. Kind Hearts and Coronets seems to me the best of all the classic British comedies of the late 1940s and the 1950s.

The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984)

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Brad Rearden, Bill Paxton, and Brian Thompson in The Terminator

The Terminator: Arnold Schwarzenegger
Sarah Connor: Linda Hamilton
Kyle Reese: Michael Biehn
Lt. Ed Traxler: Paul Winfield
Detective Hal Vukovich: Lance Henriksen
Ginger Ventura: Bess Motta
Matt Buchanan: Rick Rossovich
Dr. Peter Silberman: Earl Boen
Pawn Shop Clerk: Dick Miller

Director: James Cameron
Screenplay: James Cameron, Gale Ann Hurd
Cinematography: Adam Greenberg
Art direction: George Costello, Maria Caso
Film editing: Mark Goldblatt
Music: Brad Fiedel

Watching The Terminator a week after the school shootings in Parkland, Florida, is a different experience than it might have been, especially when the Terminator goes into a pawnshop to get his weaponry and is told by the owner, "There's a 15-day wait on the handguns, but the rifles you can take right now." Still, although the movie's promiscuous mayhem may feel a bit off at the moment, it serves its purpose. The Terminator is a film of ideas about humanity and artificial intelligence, about machismo and law and order and survival -- maybe not as much as it's a film about things blowing up, but still enough that many of us can watch it and not feel the deadening effect that some action films produce. It's also a movie whose old-fashioned special effects like stop-motion puppetry feel oddly fresh and real when contrasted with the slick computer-generated effects of most sci-fi films now -- including most of director James Cameron's later work. The performances are good, the pacing is right, there's just enough humor in the dialogue, and even the time-travel gimmickry manages to make enough sense to be plausible within the confines of its fable.

The Parallax View (Alan J. Pakula, 1974)

Joseph Frady: Warren Beatty
Bill Rintels: Hume Cronyn
Lee Carter: Paula Prentiss
Austin Tucker: William Daniels
Sheriff L.D. Wicker: Kelly Thordsen
Deputy Red: Earl Hindman
Senator Carroll: William Joyce
George Hammond: Jim Davis
Former FBI Agent Will: Kenneth Mars

Director: Alan J. Pakula
Screenplay: David Giler, Lorenzo Semple Jr.
Based on a novel by Loren Singer
Cinematography: Gordon Willis
Production design: George Jenkins
Film editing: John W. Wheeler
Music: Michael Small

This somewhat elliptical political paranoia thriller was a critical and commercial dud in its day, but time has been kinder to it than it has to more conventional films in its subgenre, such as Three Days of the Condor (Sydney Pollack, 1975), which looks rather slick and self-satisfied by comparison. The story, about a reporter's investigation of a shadowy company that seems to provide fall guys for political assassination, is framed by shots of a panel of judicial figures delivering their conclusion that the most recent assassination was the work of a "lone gunman." We think "Warren Commission" without hesitation. Although the main story is somewhat fragmented and the film occasionally seems rushed, there are some terrific action sequences and an overall feeling that the director and screenwriters are on to something real. The "downer" ending leaves us with that sinister panel floating in darkness, and although conspiracy theories are thicker than fleas these days, who doesn't think there might be one or two of them that have merit?

Arsenic and Old Lace (Frank Capra, 1944)

Cary Grant, Raymond Massey, and Peter Lorre in Arsenic and Old Lace

Mortimer Brewster: Cary Grant
Abby Brewster: Josephine Hull
Martha Brewster: Jean Adair
Elaine Harper: Priscilla Lane
Jonathan Brewster: Raymond Massey
Dr. Einstein: Peter Lorre
O'Hara: Jack Carson
Mr. Witherspoon: Edward Everett Horton
Teddy Brewster: John Alexander
Lt. Rooney: James Gleason

Director: Frank Capra
Screenplay: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein
Based on a play by Joseph Kesselring
Cinematography: Sol Polito
Art direction: Max Parker
Film editing: Daniel Mandell
Music: Max Steiner

This may be Cary Grant's worst performance. Certainly director Frank Capra put no restraints on Grant's lurching, mugging, groaning, and whinnying as he tries to portray Mortimer Brewster's reaction to the discovery that his beloved maiden aunts have been killing old men and burying him in their basement. But then Capra doesn't bother to restrain anyone else in this too-frantic version of the very popular Broadway farce. It's a film in which nobody listens to anyone else, producing complications that are supposed to be hysterically funny but are just hysterical. The Epstein twins do a fairly good job of adapting Joseph Kesselring's one-set stage play into a slightly opened-out movie -- though some scenes, such as the opening baseball park sequence and the bit at City Hall where Mortimer and Elaine get their wedding license, seem to be staged just for the sake of getting out of the confines of the Brewster house. No one covers themselves with comedy glory here, with the possible exception of Peter Lorre, who remains on the fringes of most of the action, providing a wry, restrained point of view on the nonsense. The film was made in 1941, but was held from release for three years because it couldn't be exhibited before the play had ended its Broadway fun.

Ballad of a Worker (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1962)

Hideko Takamine and Keiji Sada in Ballad of a Worker

Torae Nonaka: Hideko Takamine
Yoshio Nonaka: Keiji Sada
Chiyo: Yoshiko Kuga
Toshiyuki Nonaka: Toyozo Yamamoto
Miyoko Ishikawa: Chieko Baisho
Mochizuki: Kiyoshi Nonomura
Mrs. Mochizuki: Kin Sugai
Yoshio's Mother: Teruko Kishi
Yoshio's Father: Toranosuke Ogawa

Director: Keisuke Kinoshita
Screenplay: Keisuke Kinoshita
Cinematography: Hiroshi Kusuda
Music: Chuji Kinoshita

Keisuke Kinoshita's somewhat conventional and sentimental temperament informs this film about 16 years in the lives of Torae and Yoshio Nanaka, beginning with Yoshio's return from the war in 1946 and ending with the graduation of their son, Toshiyuki, from university in 1962. The couple scrimp and save to give their only child an education, hoping that he'll have a better live than theirs: Yoshio works on the roads around their village, and Torae is a housekeeper for his boss. The strength of the film lies in its earnest portrayal of ordinary lives -- even Toshiyuki is only a middling student, which means he has to work his way through college, even with the help of his parents. What it lacks is some wit and irony to leaven the rather plodding narrative.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010)

Wallapa Mongkolprasert in Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Boonmee: Thanapat Saisaymar
Jen: Jenjira Pongpas
Tong: Sakda Kaewbuadee
Huay: Natthakarn Aphaiwonk
Boonsong: Geerasak Kulhong
Princess: Wallapa Mongkolprasert
Roong: Kanokporn Tongaram
Jaai: Samud Kugasang

Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Screenplay: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Cinematography: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom
Production design: Akekarat Homlaor
Film editing: Lee Chatametikool

I think I would have to be more familiar with Southeast Asian history and culture to fully appreciate Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, especially to understand the relationship between the Thai landowner Boonmee and the Laotians who work on his farm. My ignorance only adds another layer of mystery to an enigmatic film.

The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)

Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight

Bruce Wayne: Christian Bale
Joker: Heath Ledger
Harvey Dent: Aaron Eckhart
Alfred: Michael Caine
Rachel: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Lucius Fox: Morgan Freeman

Director: Christopher Nolan
Screenplay: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer
Cinematography: Wally Pfister
Production design: Nathan Crowley
Film editing: Lee Smith
Music: James Newton Howard, Hans Zimmer

I have never really understood the appeal of Batman, or really of Bruce Wayne: a superwealthy technocrat whose compulsive dressing up to hide his identity seems like silly bit of role-playing rather than an essential element of his superheroism. Moreover, he always seems to be outshone by his villainous adversaries, whose own dressing up is a manifestation of psychosis that eerily mirrors his own. So I'm not as enthusiastic as some are about the rebooting of the comic book hero as a dark knight, rather than the old TV series' campy avatar of the character. The best thing about The Dark Knight is clearly the re-imagining of the Joker and the superb performance by Heath Ledger. Otherwise, I found the usual slam-bang action rather tiresome.

Pigs and Battleships (Shohei Imamura, 1961)

Jitsuko Yoshimura in Pigs and Battleships

Kinta: Hiroyuki Nagato
Haruko: Jitsuko Yoshimura
Himori: Masao Mishima
Slasher Tetsuji: Tetsuro Tanba
Hoshino: Shiro Osaka
Ohachi: Takeshi Kato
Gunji, Gangster in Check Shirt: Shoichi Ozawa
Katsuyo: Yoko Minimida
Kikuo: Hideo Sato
Kan'ichi: Eijiro Tono
Sakiyama: Akira Yamauchi
Hiromi: Sanae Nakahara
Haruko's Mother: Kin Sugai
Harukoma: Bumon Kahara

Director: Shohei Imamura
Screenplay: Hisashi Yamanouchi, Gisashi Yamauchi
Based on a novel by Kazu Otsuka
Cinematography: Shinsaku Himeda
Art direction: Kimihiko Nakamura
Film editing: Mutsuo Tanji
Music: Toshiro Mayuzumi

It seems to be common in critiques of Shohei Imamura's work to contrast him with his mentor, Yasujiro Ozu. The world of Ozu's films is that of the settled middle class families, with their marriageable daughters and salarymen breadwinners, filmed in the stately, low camera angle style that almost immediately identifies Ozu's work. Imamura's films are full of low-lifes, people struggling to get along by any means necessary, and are full of flamboyant camerawork, such as the spectacularly crowded widescreen compositions in Pigs and Battleships. A contrast of Ozu and Imamura is rather like a contrast of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens: Both do things with radically different means, the one with a raucous, satiric assortment of colorful characters, the other with a quiet, ironic examination of manners and mores. But both Ozu and Imamura share something: an admiration for strong women. In the case of Pigs and Battleships, it's Haruko, struggling to find herself in the hurlyburly of Yokosuka, the port city infested with American sailors. She has had the misfortune to fall in love with the goofball Kinta, who wants to make his name as a yakuza, getting involved with the gang's pig-raising scheme. Hiroyuki Nagato gives a hilariously loosey-goosey performance as Kinta, mugging like Jerry Lewis when he really wants to be Humphrey Bogart. It's not entirely clear what Jitsuko Yoshimura's Haruko really sees in Kinta, but the performance of the two actors together is highly entertaining. Although the film plays mostly for comedy, culminating in the destruction of much of the red-light district by a stampede of pigs, it features several murders and the rape of Haruko by three American sailors, with the result that it's dominated by a kind of Swiftian satiric tone.

Marketa Lazarová (Frantisek Vlácil, 1967)

Magda Vásáryová in Marketa Lasarová 

Kozlik: Josef Kemr
Marketa Lazarová: Magda Vásáryová
Mikolás: Frantisek Velecký
Adam: Ivan Palúch
Alexandra: Pavla Polásková
Lazar: Michal Kozuch
Old Count Kristián: Harry Studt
Young Count Kristián: Vlastimil Harapes
Captain "Beer": Zdenek Kryzánek
Bernard: Vladimir Mensik
Sovicka: Zdenek Rehor

Director: Frantisek Vlácil
Screenplay: Frantisek Pavlícek, Frantisek Vlácil
Based on a novel by Vladislav Vancura
Cinematography: Bedrich Batka
Art direction: Oldrich Okác
Film editing: Miroslav Hájek
Music: Zdenek Liska

I am grateful to Tom Gunning's Criterion Collection essay on Marketa Lazarová not only for the many insights into the film, including a concise summary of the story it tells, but also for citing another film scholar's comparison of it to Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev (1966). My viewing of Frantisek Vlácil's film was very much like my first viewing of Tarkovsky's: It left me with a feeling that I had seen something extraordinary that I didn't quite understand. I've seen Andre Rublev again, and while I can't say I understand it, I recognize it as the extraordinary cinema masterpiece that it is. It's entirely possible that another viewing of Marketa Lazarová might leave me with a similar impression. Both films are immersive experiences, throwing the viewers into an era strange to them and giving them only a few guideposts to help them sort out even such matters as who's doing what to whom and why. Marketa Lazarová has been voted the greatest Czech film by Czech critics and filmmakers, and I have no doubt that it deserves the accolade. But it will take me another viewing simply to get my bearings on it. It's beautifully filmed, and it does some daring things with sound -- the voices were dubbed later, sometimes with actors other than the ones we see on screen. Every film in a language foreign to me is a cultural challenge, though one I welcome, so much kudos to TCM for programming Marketa Lazarová.