Fargo (Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 1996)

Frances McDormand and John Carroll Lynch in Fargo

Marge Gunderson: Frances McDormand
Jerry Lundegaard: William H. Macy
Carl Showalter: Steve Buscemi
Gaear Grimsrud: Peter Stormare
Wade Gustafson: Harve Presnell
Jean Lundegaard: Kristin Rudrüd
Norm Gunderson: John Carroll Lynch
Stan Grossman: Larry Brandenburg
Lou: Bruce Bohne
Mike Yanagita: Steve Park
Shep Proudfoot: Steve Reevis
Scotty Lundegaard: Tony Denman

Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Screenplay: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Cinematography: Roger Deakins
Production design: Rick Heinrichs
Film editing: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Music: Carter Burwell

Every time I watch Fargo, which has been a lot of times, I start out trying to figure how Joel and Ethan Coen bring off the film's unique tone, its shifts from extreme violence to almost benign humor. But then I get caught up in the film itself and forget to make notes. This time around, I found myself struck by Carter Burwell's score, which helps create the mood of the melancholy snow-swept landscape but also occasionally breaks into something like an Elizabethan mode -- think John Dowland or Thomas Tallis, for example -- which, set against the Muzak that pours from speakers in various interior scenes, makes for a strangely wistful effect. The sound ambience of Fargo -- boots crunching on snow, the pinging of open car door alerts, the whine of the wood-chipper that we hear well before we see it -- adds to the film's special capturing of a sense of place. There are a few critics who don't love Fargo, who think that it's snotty and condescending toward the people who live in places like the film's Brainerd and other outskirts of the Twin Cities -- the place where the Coens grew up -- but I think they miss the film's affection for people like the Gundersons, especially in the final scene in which Marge and Norm snuggle in bed and dream of the child they'll have in two months. This scene would be ickily sentimental in other contexts, but it feels just right: The Gundersons are survivors in a landscape that does all it can to drive people mad, a madness that manifests itself in Jerry Lundegaard's financial desperation, his father-in-law's meanness, the killers' disregard for human life, or just the sad fantasy world in which Mike Yanagita seems to exist. It takes a special kind of stoic acceptance tinged with hope to live there, which the Gundersons exhibit perfectly. 

Une Parisienne (Michel Boisrond, 1957)

Brigitte Bardot and Henri Vidal in Une Parisienne

Brigitte Laurier: Brigitte Bardot
Michel Legrand: Henri Vidal
President Alcide Laurier: André Luguier
Prince Charles: Charles Boyer
Monique Wilson: Madeleine Lebeau
Caroline Herblay: Claire Maurier
M. d'Herblay: Noël Roquevert
Queen Greta: Nadia Gray

Director: Michel Boisrond
Screenplay: Annette Wademant, Jean Aurel, Jacques Emmanuel, Michel Boisrond
Cinematography: Marcel Grignon
Production design: Jean André
Film editing: Claudine Bouché

Michel Boisrond's Une Parisienne is also known as La Parisienne. I don't know why the indefinite article used for the original release in France was later changed to a definite article, but I wonder if the thinking was something like that of the French censors when they made Jean-Luc Godard change the title of his 1964 film from La Femme Mariée (The Married Woman) to Une Femme Mariée (A Married Woman): They insisted that the definite article implied a kind of case study, that the adulterous wife of Godard's film became typical of all married women; changing the definite article to an indefinite one turned the film into the story of one and only one married woman. So maybe taking the reverse route, changing "a Parisian woman" into "the Parisian woman," was the producers' way of suggesting that all Parisian women were like Brigitte Bardot, then at her perky peak as an international sex symbol. Whatever the reason for the title change, Boisrond's film is a fairly banal sex farce, and the only reason to watch it is Bardot -- no one was ever more skilled at exploiting her own charms -- and some nice comic support from Henri Vidal and Charles Boyer, who gives himself over to this nonsense with his usual charm and professionalism.

Cluny Brown (Ernst Lubitsch, 1946)

Charles Boyer, Jennifer Jones, and Richard Haydn in Cluny Brown

Adam Belinski: Charles Boyer
Cluny Brown: Jennifer Jones
Andrew Carmel: Peter Lawford
Betty Cream: Helen Walker
Hilary Ames: Reginald Gardiner
Sir Henry Carmel: Reginald Owen
Col. Charles Duff Graham: C. Aubrey Smith
Jonathan Wilson: Richard Haydn
Lady Alice Carmel: Margaret Bannerman
Mrs. Maile: Sara Allgood
Syrette: Ernest Cossart
Mrs. Wilson: Una O'Connor
Dowager at Ames's Party: Florence Bates
Uncle Arn: Billy Bevan

Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Screenplay: Samuel Hoffenstein, Elizabeth Reinhardt
Based on a novel by Margery Sharp
Cinematography: Joseph LaShelle
Art direction: J. Russell Spencer, Lyle R. Wheeler
Film editing: Dorothy Spencer
Music: Cyril J. Mockridge

Ernst Lubitsch's celebrated "touch" was mostly a good-humored, occasionally naughty irony and a flair for pulling off sly sight gags such as the one that ends Cluny Brown: Cluny and Belinski are viewing his book in a shop window when she's suddenly taken faint, followed by a cut to the shop widow in which a sequel to Belinski's book is now displayed. The gag works only if you've caught the set-up, a joke I needn't spoil, but it's a reminder that Lubitsch, like so many of the great directors of the '30s and '40s, learned his trade in silent films. Which makes it all the more amazing that he was so deft with dialogue. Cluny Brown is also a great showcase for its stars, Charles Boyer and Jennifer Jones, who were never quite so charming in any of their other films. Especially Jones, who was manipulated by David O. Selznick into so many roles that she had no business playing, such as the supposedly sultry but really campy part of Pearl Chavez in Duel in the Sun, a film that appeared the same year as Cluny Brown, but seems to be taking place in another galaxy. That Jones could move from Pearl to Cluny with such grace suggests that she was a finer actress than Selznick ever let her be. Cluny also showcases some wonderful character actors, especially the always welcome Richard Haydn as Cluny's unsuitably prissy would-be fiancé and Una O'Connor as his mother, whose "dialogue" consists of clearing her throat. But mostly the Lubitsch finesse is what saves Cluny Brown from turning into the twee horror it might have been with its gallery of talkative eccentrics and off-beat situations. Instead, it's a refreshingly delicate comedy shadowed only by the fact that it was to be its director's last completed film, a reminder of the exchange that took place at Lubitsch's funeral when Billy Wilder sighed, "No more Lubitsch," and William Wyler replied, "Worst than that. No more Lubitsch pictures."

Sex, Lies, and Videotape (Steven Soderbergh, 1989)

Peter Gallagher and Andie MacDowell in Sex, Lies, and Videotape

Graham Dalton: James Spader
Ann Bishop Mullany: Andie MacDowell
John Mullany: Peter Gallagher
Cynthia Patrice Bishop: Laura San Giacomo
Therapist: Ron Vawter
Barfly: Steven Brill
Girl on Tape: Alexandra Root
Landlord: Earl R. Taylor
John's Colleague: David Foil

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Screenplay: Steven Soderbergh
Cinematography: Walt Lloyd
Art direction: Joanne Schmidt
Film editing: Steven Soderbergh
Music: Cliff Martinez

Steven Soderbergh's dialogue for his very first feature, Sex, Lies, and Videotape had wit, candor, and originality, and his sharply drawn characters were beautifully played by a quartet of up-and-coming actors, winning him the Palme d'Or at Cannes and launching a major career. Sex and lies are still very much with us -- videotape not so much -- so it's no surprise that this deftly accomplished film still feels fresh going on 30 years later. My only reservation about the film has to do with its ending, which feels a little pat and formulaic, almost as if Soderbergh didn't know how to stop without tacking on a moral. So Graham, whose addiction to sex and lying is the most egregious of the four, gets punished by losing his job -- or so we surmise, since we never see him after he's been summoned to the office of the head of his law firm. Ann reconciles with Cynthia, which feels a little pat, considering that she broke up Ann's marriage, though on the other hand it wasn't much of a marriage to begin with and they are sisters, so she might as well make future Thanksgiving dinners less of an ordeal. But why do we get the pairing of Graham and Ann? Are we expected to believe that the various revelations and the destruction of his video collection has cured him of his voyeurism and impotence and her of her frigidity? There's a kind of obligatory quality to the ending -- movies have to round things out -- that feels at odds with the otherwise sharp exploration of the hangups of its characters.

Midnight Express (Alan Parker, 1978)

Randy Quaid, John Hurt, and Brad Davis in Midnight Express

Billy Hayes: Brad Davis
Susan: Irene Miracle
Tex: Bo Hopkins
Rifki: Paolo Bonicelli
Hamidou: Paul L. Smith
Jimmy Booth: Randy Quaid
Erich: Norbert Weisser
Max: John Hurt
Mr. Hayes: Mike Kellin
Yesil: Franco Diogene
Stanley Daniels: Michael Ensign
Chief Judge: Gigi Ballista
Prosecutor: Kevork Malikyan
Ahmet: Peter Jeffrey

Director: Alan Parker
Screenplay: Oliver Stone
Based on a book by William Hayes and William Hoffer
Cinematography: Michael Seresin
Production design: Geoffrey Kirkland
Film editing: Gerry Hambling
Music: Giorgio Moroder

Late in Midnight Express there's a line that suggests the reason Billy Hayes was confined so long in Turkish prisons is that he became a pawn in the negotiations between the Nixon administration and the government of Turkey over the cultivation of opium poppies. If true, that's a much more interesting story than the one the film tells, which is hardly a story at all, but just a grim sadomasochistic slog through the degrading experiences of Hayes, tinged with a bit of homoeroticism. Oliver Stone won an Oscar for his screenplay, which was only a foreshadowing of more of the same to come from Stone as he worked out his darker impulses on screen. The absence of anything more than a hint of what was going on to try to extract Hayes from his predicament, even to explain how he got into it (who, for example, is the shadowy American called Tex, who is "something like" a consular official?) turns the film into one long wallow in misery and a rather devastating one-sided portrait of the country of Turkey.

The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014)

Essie Davis and Noah Wiseman in The Babadook

Amelia: Essie Davis
Samuel: Noah Wiseman
Claire: Hayley McElhinney
Robbie: Daniel Henshall
Mrs. Roach: Barbara West
Oskar: Benjamin Winspear

Director: Jennifer Kent
Screenplay: Jennifer Kent
Cinematography: Radek Ladczuk
Production design: Alex Holmes
Film editing: Simon Njoo
Music: Jed Kurzel

As a horror movie, The Babadook often feels derivative and somewhat overloaded with shocks. But as a fable about the psychology of stress and grief, it's a remarkably effective film. There is more to Amelia, brilliantly played by Essie Davis, than just a victim of malevolence. She is a woman under stress, not only suffering the aftereffects of grief but also lost in a world with which she can't connect. Parenting is something one goes through alone, the film seems to be saying, and some of us, especially those cut adrift by the terrible accident that deprives Amelia of the support of her husband, are not fully equipped to handle the stress of a somewhat hyperactive child, an uncomprehending sister, a depressing workplace, unresponsive doctors, rigid schools, suspicious police, and bureaucratic social workers. The only person to whom Amelia has to turn is an elderly neighbor suffering from Parkinson's. I think Kent has loaded the dice against Amelia a bit too much if she wants us to take The Babadook seriously as a portrait of a parent in extremis, and I wish she hadn't staged her film in the cliché Old Dark House -- the horrors Amelia and Samuel encounter would have been even more telling if they'd appeared in a nondescript suburban home. But there's much to ponder in Kent's unsettling fable. 

Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)

Greta Garbo and Bela Lugosi in Ninotchka

Nina Ivanova Yakushova: Greta Garbo
Count Leon d'Algout: Melvyn Douglas
Grand Duchess Swana: Ina Claire
Iranoff: Sig Ruman
Buljanoff: Felix Bressart
Kopalski: Alexander Granach
Commissar Razinin: Bela Lugosi
Count Alexis Rakonin: Gregory Gaye
Hotel Manager: Rolfe Sedan
Mercier: Edwin Maxwell
Gaston: Richard Carle

Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Screenplay: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, Walter Reisch, Melchior Lengyel
Cinematography: William H. Daniels
Art direction: Cedric Gibbons, Randall Duell
Film editing: Gene Ruggiero
Costume design: Adrian
Music: Werner R. Heymann

I had forgotten how audacious Ninotchka is when viewed in the context of the volatile international politics of 1939, a year teetering on the brink of a world war that had already begun in Britain when the film was released in November. All of the jokes about Stalin's show trials ("There are going to be fewer but better Russians"), about the ineffectual economic planning ("I've been fascinated by your five-year plan for the past 15 years"), and about the deprivations suffered by the Soviet people feel edgy, even a little sour, when we remember that almost everyone was just about to embrace the Soviets as a valued ally against the Third Reich. It's a film that shows a bit less of the "Lubitsch touch" than of the cynicism of Billy Wilder, who co-wrote the screenplay. That it transcends its era and still feels vital and funny today has mostly to do with Greta Garbo, whose shift from the Party-line drone to the vital and glamorous convert to capitalism, along with the delicate way she retains elements of the latter on her return to Moscow, is beautifully delineated. That it was her penultimate film is regrettable, but except for her definitive Camille I think it's her greatest performance.

The Informant! (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

Matt Damon and Tony Hale in The Informant!

Mark Whitacre: Matt Damon
Ginger Whitacre: Melanie Lynskey
FBI Special Agent Brian Shepard: Scott Bakula
FBI Special Agent Robert Herndon: Joel McHale
Mark Cheviron: Thomas F. Wilson
Mick Andreas: Tom Papa
Terry Wilson: Rick Overton
James Epstein: Tony Hale

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Screenplay: Scott Z. Burns
Based on a book by Kurt Eichenwald
Cinematography: Steven Soderbergh
Production design: Doug J. Meerdink
Film editing: Stephen Mirrione
Çomposer: Marvin Hamlisch

Both Erin Brockovich (Steven Soderbergh, 2000) and The Informant! are based on true stories about people who exposed corporate malfeasance. But while the former movie was a solid piece of entertainment showcasing a star turn for Julia Roberts, it was also one that could have been made by any good director. The Informant! is the work of an auteur, a director with a distinct, even idiosyncratic style and a clear point of view, a measure of how Steven Soderbergh has grown in technique and confidence. You can sense that from the gratuitous exclamation point appended to the title and the clunky font, redolent of rock posters from the psychedelic era, that has been imposed on the screen credits. Soderbergh is out to play with our expectations of what a film about a whistleblower cooperating with the FBI should be like. The cast is full of comedians and actors who usually play comedy, such as Joel McHale, Tony Hale, Scott Adsit, Patton Oswalt, Paul F. Tompkins, and both Smothers Brothers -- Tom is a senior executive at Archer Daniels Midland and Dick is a judge -- all of them playing it straight. Their presence creates a kind of tension in the film: We keep expecting them to break out into familiar comic shtick -- for Tony Hale, for example, as Mark Whitacre's continually surprised lawyer to turn into the busybody political factotum he plays on Veep -- but they don't. Soderbergh's ironic tone is designed to fit the facts: Mark Whitacre may have been out to expose the crookedness rife at ADM by cooperating with the FBI, but he was a crook himself. We begin to sense that Whitacre may be a little bit off when we start hearing his thoughts in voiceover, meditations on polar bears and butterflies and anything else that crosses his mind, a delicious stream of consciousness that doesn't begin to hint at the complications of the character. Matt Damon gives one of his best performances as the chubby, cheerful, and morally unhinged Whitacre, and Scott Z. Burns, who had previously written a very different character for Damon in The Bourne Ultimatum (Paul Greengrass, 2007), gives him wonderful things to say and do. Under his pseudonym, Peter Andrews, Soderbergh is his own cinematographer for The Informant! and he chooses slightly faded colors and casts a soft haze over many scenes, creating a subtly dated atmosphere for a film set in the early '90s, the era before ubiquitous cell phones and laptops. This is a sleeper of a film that almost went under my radar.

Erin Brockovich (Steven Soderbergh, 2000)

Albert Finney and Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich

Erin Brockovich: Julia Roberts
Ed Masry: Albert Finney
George: Aaron Eckhart
Brenda: Conchata Ferrell
Donna Jensen: Marg Helgenberger
Pete Jensen: Michael Harney
Pamela Duncan: Cherry Jones
Charles Embry: Tracey Walter
Kurt Potter: Peter Coyote
David Foil: T.J. Thyne
Theresa Dallavale: Veanne Cox

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Screenplay: Susannah Grant
Cinematography: Edward Lachman
Production design: Philip Messina
Film editing: Anne V. Coates
Music: Thomas Newman

Any film that purports to be what the title character of Erin Brockovich calls a "David and what's-his-name" story is bound to be somewhat formulaic. But I can forgive Steven Soderbergh's movie for its clichés, such as the hunky next-door neighbor who provides Erin with sex and babysitting, or the starchy, tightly wound female lawyer who tries and fails to do the kind of work in signing up participants in the lawsuit that comes so naturally to Erin. We're asked to swallow a lot of narrative shortcutting in the relationship that she builds with Ed Masry, too. But it's to Julia Roberts's great Oscar-winning credit that she makes this fictionalized version of a real person (whom we see early in the film in the role of a waitress) as believable as she does, with the considerable help of the invaluable (but never Oscar-winning) Albert Finney. I've always thought that Soderbergh is undermined by his choice of material: Traffic, which came out the same year as Erin Brockovich and won an Oscar for Soderbergh, is weakened by the difficulty of cramming so many interlocking stories into the confines of a feature film, and it too suffers from some formulaic plotting. But Erin Brockovich makes the case for the feel-good movie with its director's obvious delight in providing a showcase for such skilled actors. This is what makes his Ocean's movies (20001, 2004, 2007) and Magic Mike (2012) so entertaining. Would a grittier approach with less charismatic stars have done a better job of telling the story of Brockovich and Masry's fight with PG&E? Yes, probably. But there's something to be said for good things in glossy packages.

The Sheik (George Melford, 1921)

Ahmed Ben Hassan: Rudolph Valentino
Lady Diana Mayo: Agnes Ayres
Dr. Raoul de St. Hubert: Adolphe Menjou
Omair: Walter Long
Gaston: Lucien Littlefield
Mustapha Ali: Charles Brinley
Sir Aubrey Mayo: Frank Butler
Zilah: Ruth Miller
Yousaef: George Waggner

Director: George Melford
Screenplay: Monte M. Katterjohn
Based on a novel by Edith Maude Hull
Cinematography: William Marshall

Today The Sheik looks more like a classic demonstration of the kind of colonialist condescension toward non-European cultures described in Edward W. Said's book Orientalism than like the campy bodice-ripping romance that both titillated audiences and inspired parodies. It's likely that nobody ever took it seriously until critics like Said made us realize how much its imperialist attitudes had infected our social and political discourse. The key moment comes when St. Hubert reveals to Lady Diana that the man who had abducted her was not an Arab but the son of an Englishman and a Frenchwoman -- thereby making his otherness safe. It provides a kind of wish-fulfillment: kicking off the traces of civilization (as defined by the West) and going "primitive." Setting all that aside (as if we could or should), The Sheik is a still-potent demonstration of the star appeal of Rudolph Valentino, whose eye-popping, teeth-baring, and nostril-flaring have gone out of style, but not his brand of boyish sex appeal. Agnes Ayres, on the other hand, is a rather dowdy heroine.