Air Force (Howard Hawks, 1943)

John Garfield, George Tobias, and Harry Carey in Air Force

Capt. Quincannon: John Ridgely
Lt. Williams: Gig Young
Lt. McMartin: Arthur Kennedy
Lt. Hauser: Charles Drake
Sgt. White: Harry Carey
Cpl. Weinberg: George Tobias
Cpl. Peterson: Ward Wood
Pvt. Chester: Ray Montgomery
Sgt. Winocki: John Garfield
Lt. "Tex" Rader: James Brown
Maj. Mallory: Stanley Ridges
Col. Blake: Moroni Olsen
Susan McMartin: Faye Emerson

Director: Howard Hawks
Screenplay: Dudley Nichols
Cinematography: James Wong Howe
Art direction: John Hughes
Film editing: George Amy
Music: Franz Waxman

"Fried Jap coming down!" crows gunner Weinberg as a Japanese fighter pilot and his plane attacking the Mary-Ann are consumed in flames. It's a much-quoted and much-parodied line that puts Howard Hawks's Air Force squarely where it belongs: in the wounded jingoism of the period immediately post Pearl Harbor. We wince at the line today, but Air Force has endured not so much because it's a period piece as because it's a tremendously effective piece of filmmaking. Hawks, who was a licensed pilot and had served in the Army Air Corps during World War I, was the exactly right person to make the film, which producer Hal B. Wallis put into production shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and which he wanted to release on the first anniversary of the attack in 1942. Hawks was too savvy and persistent a craftsman to allow anything like an arbitrary deadline to hinder him, and his failure to adhere to Wallis's schedule led to a brief replacement as director by Vincent Sherman. Wallis was exasperated in particular by Hawks's constant departure from the producer-approved screenplay, particularly the dialogue. Nevertheless, Hawks persisted, and called in William Faulkner to rewrite Concannon's death scene, which the director found too saccharine. The result is one of the most affecting moments of the film. The rest is pretty much razzle-dazzle heroism and entertaining male-bonding: There's no Hawksian woman in the movie to take the guys down a peg, although Faye Emerson's bit as McMartin's sister and Williams's girlfriend has a good deal of the Hawksian tough cookie about her. Hawks wanted the film to be a wartime version of his great movie about pilots, Only Angels Have Wings (1939), but the propagandist pressures to support the war effort, and probably a good deal of meddling from Wallis and Warner Bros., kept him from achieving that goal. Still, the action is exciting and the performances are good, especially John Garfield as the reluctantly heroic Winocki and Harry Carey as the oldtimer mechanic -- though Carey, in his mid-60s, was probably more of an oldtimer than the role strictly calls for.

Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)

Charles Bronson in Once Upon a Time in the West

Jill McBain: Claudia Cardinale
Frank: Henry Fonda
Manuel "Cheyenne" Guitiérrez: Jason Robards
Harmonica: Charles Bronson
Morton: Gabriele Ferzetti
Stony; Woody Strode
Snaky: Jack Elam
Sam: Paolo Stoppa
Sheriff: Keenan Wynn
Brett McBain: Frank Wolff
Barman: Lionel Stander

Director: Sergio Leone
Screenplay: Sergio Donati, Sergio Leone, Dario Argento, Bernardo Bertolucci
Cinematography: Tonino Delli Colli
Art direction: Carlo Simi
Film editing: Nino Baragli
Music: Ennio Morricone

An acknowledged genre classic, Once Upon a Time in the West is also a rather self-conscious product of European filmmakers tipping their hats to the American masters of the Western movie, particularly John Ford, whose favorite setting, Monument Valley, plays almost a cameo role in the film. Ford would never have made anything quite so slowly paced, however. Director Sergio Leone's film is full of stylish gestures that make it immensely watchable, but draw attention to themselves rather than the story being told -- a pitfall that the great Western moviemakers like Ford or Howard Hawks or Sam Peckinpah never let themselves stumble into.

Letter Never Sent (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1960)

Sabinin: Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy
Tanya: Tatyana Samoylova
Andrey: Vasiliy Livanov
Sergey: Evgeniy Urbanskiy
Vera: Galina Kozhakina

Director: Mikhail Kalatozov
Screenplay: Grigoriy Koltunov, Valeri Osipov, Viktor Rozov
Cinematography: Sergey Urusevskiy
Production design: David Vinitsky
Film editing: N. Anikina
Music: Nikolai Kryukov

Letter Never Sent tells the story of a team of Soviet prospectors and geologists searching for diamonds in the Siberian wilderness who are trapped when a forest fire breaks out. A beautifully filmed adventure story, it's also overlaid with Soviet patriotism, from an opening title sequence that lauds the heroic pioneers of Soviet exploration and the space program, to occasional interpolated speeches in which the characters extol the country's shining future. The diamonds, it seems, are not bourgeois capitalist gemstones but minerals essential to the advancement of Soviet industry. Fortunately, the adventure story overwhelms the propaganda.

A Monster Calls (J.A. Bayona, 2016)

Lewis MacDougall in A Monster Calls

Conor: Lewis MacDougall
Grandma: Sigourney Weaver
Mum: Felicity Jones
Dad: Toby Kebbell
The Monster (voice): Liam Neeson
Harry: James Melville
The Head Teacher: Geraldine Chaplin

Director: J.A. Bayona
Screenplay: Patrick Ness
Based on a novel by Patrick Ness from an original idea by Siobhan Dowd
Cinematography: Oscar Faura
Production design: Eugenio Caballero
Film editing: Jaume Martí, Bernat Vilaplana
Music: Fernando Velázquez

The fable of A Monster Calls is the intertwining of grief and guilt. Young Conor, mourning his mother, who died of cancer, is haunted by nightmares in which he tries and fails to save her as the earth crumbles beneath their feet. The nightmares cause him to be dysfunctional at school and in the home of his grandmother, with whom he has gone to live.  Eventually, the nightmares come to life in the shape of a giant monster yew tree that gives him parables which reveal to Conor something more terrible: that he wanted his mother to die. But the revelation also makes him aware that his wish for her death was the product of his wanting her to be released from suffering. The psychological complexity of the fable is richly imagined, but its subtlety tends to get overwhelmed by the impressive special effects -- yet another lesson that film is not always the best narrative vehicle for complex ideas.

Gladiator (Ridley Scott, 2000)

Richard Harris and Russell Crowe in Gladiator

Maximus: Russell Crowe
Commodus: Joaquin Phoenix
Lucilla: Connie Nielsen
Proximo: Oliver Reed
Marcus Aurelius: Richard Harris
Gracchus: Derek Jacobi
Juba: Djimon Hounsou
Falco: David Schofield
Gaius: John Shrapnel
Quintus: Thomas Arana
Hagen: Ralf Moeller
Lucius: Spencer Treat Clark
Cassius: David Hemmings
Cicero: Tommy Flanagan
Tigris: Sven-Ole Thorsen
Slave Trader: Omid Djalili

Director: Ridley Scott
Screenplay: David Franzoni, John Logan, William Nicholson
Cinematography: John Mathieson
Production design: Arthur Max
Film editing: Pietro Scalia
Music: Lisa Gerrard, Hans Zimmer

"Are you not entertained?" Well, to answer the question Maximus bellows at the crowd: No, not very much.

Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (Ernst Lubitsch, 1938)

David Niven, Gary Cooper, and Claudette Colbert in Bluebeard's Eighth Wife

Nicole De Loiselle: Claudette Colbert
Michael Brandon: Gary Cooper
The Marquis De Loiselle: Edward Everett Horton
Albert De Regnier: David Niven
Aunt Hedwige: Elizabeth Patterson
M. Pepinard: Herman Bing
Kid Mulligan: Warren Hymer
Assistant Hotel Manager: Franklin Pangborn

Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Screenplay: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder
Based on a play by Alfred Savoir and its English adaptation by Charlton Andrews
Cinematography: Leo Tover
Art direction: Hans Dreier, Robert Usher
Film editing: William Shea
Music: Werner R. Heymann, Friedrich Hollaender

Almost anything goes in screwball comedy, but why does Bluebeard's Eighth Wife feel just a tad off the mark? It has everything going for it: director, screenwriters, stars and supporting cast. But something seems to be missing. There are those who think Gary Cooper is miscast, but Cooper pulled off similar roles -- lovable eccentrics like Longfellow Deeds in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra, 1936) and Bertram Potts in Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941) -- and director Ernst Lubitsch had established Cooper's gift for sophisticated comedy in Design for Living (1933). There is a certain lack of spark between Cooper and his costar, Claudette Colbert, but that's partly because their characters are not supposed to spark but rather flare. I think the fault lies mainly in the script, which springs Michael Brandon's many previous marriages on us as a surprise and never makes us feel that they're integral to his character. I suspect that the Production Code, which was administered with a heavy hand by Catholic laymen like Joseph I. Breen, blue-penciled so much of the humor surrounding Brandon's divorces that they no longer get the attention they deserve. Still, Cooper and Colbert et al. are fun to watch, and it may be that they are so much more fun to watch in other movies that Bluebeard's Eighth Wife simply suffers by comparison.

Cléo From 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962)

Antoine Bourseiller and Corinne Marchand in Cléo From 5 to 7

Florence "Cléo" Victoire: Corinne Marchand
Antoine: Antoine Bourseiller
Angèle: Dominique Davray
Dorothée: Dorothée Blanck
Bob the Pianist: Michel Legrand
The Lover: José Luis de Vilallonga
Irma, the Fortune-Teller: Loye Payen
The Taxi Driver: Lucienne Marchand
Plumitif, the Lyricist: Serge Korber

Director: Agnès Varda
Screenplay: Agnès Varda
Cinematography: Paul Bonis, Alain Levent, Jean Rabier
Production design: Jean-François Adam
Film editing: Pascale Laverrière, Janine Verneau
Music: Michel Legrand

Has any director ever so successfully combined the keen editorial eye of the documentary filmmaker with the storytelling gifts of the creator of fictional films as Agnès Varda? From the beginning, with the vivid setting of the small Mediterranean fishing community of La Pointe Courte (1955) serving as background and correlative for the troubles of a married couple, Varda has known how to reverse Marianne Moore's formula of "imaginary gardens with real toads in them" and tell stories about imaginary people in real places. The real place in Cléo From 5 to 7 is the city of Paris, where Varda continually finds ways to enhance her slice-of-life story of pop-singer Cléo, waiting out the results of a medical test that she is sure will doom her to death from cancer. When her protagonist leaves the sanctuary of her apartment and wanders the streets of the city, Varda continually finds little bits of memento mori to insert into the frame, such as the Pompes Funèbres sign on a mortician's place of business that we glimpse from the windows of the bus in which Cléo is riding. It's not done with a heavy hand, but rather with a slyly macabre irony, for Cléo is as much a target of Varda's wry humor as she is an object of concern. We glimpse her vanity and frivolity and superstition while we also feel sympathy with her anxiety and fear of death.

The Scandalous Adventures of Buraikan (Masahiro Shinoda, 1970)

Tatsuya Nakadai in The Scandalous Adventures of Buraikan

Naojiro Kataoka: Tatsuya Nakadai
Michitose: Shima Iwashita
Soshun Kochiyama: Tetsuro Tanba
Ushimatsu: Shoichi Ozawa
Moritaya Seizo: Fumio Watanabe
Okuna, Naojiro's Mother: Suisen Ichikawa
Kaneko Ichinojo: Masakane Yonekura
Kanoke-boshi: Jun Hamamura

Director: Masahiro Shinoda
Screenplay: Shuji Terayama
Based on a play by Mokuami Kawatake
Cinematography: Kozo Okazaki
Art direction: Shigemasa Toda
Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara
Music: Masaru Sato

I think I was culturally ill-equipped for The Scandalous Adventures of Buraikan, a wittily stylized film that presupposes an acquaintance with Japanese history and culture that I don't possess. From my own culture, I bring a knowledge of 18th-century portrayals of London lowlife, such as the pictures of Hogarth and the satire in John Gay's The Beggar's Opera. Buraikan has echoes for me of those, as well as, in its portrayal of the puritanical reformer's zeal, Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. But for much of the film I felt at sea.

Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg, 1971)

Girl: Jenny Agutter
White Boy: Luc Roeg
Black Boy: David Gulpilil
Father: John Mellon

Director: Nicolas Roeg
Screenplay: Edward Bond
Based on a novel by James Vance Marshall
Cinematography: Nicolas Roeg
Production design: Brian Eatwell
Film editing: Antony Gibbs, Alan Pattillo
Music: John Barry

Walkabout is both provocative and provoking. It stimulates thoughts about humankind's relationship to nature, about the fragility and even perniciousness of civilization, and about what happens to everyone as they grow up and learn to "fit in" to societal expectations. It's a film in which brutality jostles beauty. But it's as provoking, as annoying in its way, as a 3-year-old's constantly questioning "Why?" You start out trying to answer, but eventually realize that there's no end to the game. Nicolas Roeg has so loaded the familiar tale of the clash of civilization and the primitive with images and narrative incidentals that defy explanation. We begin with trying to understand the film's initial shock, in which the Father drives his children into the desert for a picnic and then tries to kill them before setting fire to the auto and turning the gun on himself. We want to know what brought him to such a terrible moment, but Roeg has no interest in giving us an answer. We want to know why the Girl so stoically accepts this horror, in the face of which most children would break down. Later in the film, we want to explain interpolated scenes like the one of the scientific crew in the outback -- what are they doing, and why is the one female in the crew so provocatively sexy? And the ending, in which we see the now-grown and -married Girl preparing dinner for her husband, who is crowing about his job advancement, juxtaposed with a scene of the three children playing naked in a pond, has a heavy-handed voiceover quoting A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad:

Into my heart on air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
 I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

It feels oddly false and sentimental, an evocation of something untrue to the events shown in the film.  Does Roeg intend this ironic jolt, this disjunction of reality and sentiment? If so, he does little to prepare us for it. It's a fascinating film, but it feels incoherent.

A Woman of Paris (Charles Chaplin, 1923)

Adolphe Menjou and Edna Purviance in A Woman of Paris

Marie St. Clair: Edna Purviance
Jean Millet: Carl Miller
Pierre Revel: Adolphe Menjou
Jean's Mother: Lydia Knott
Jean's Father: Charles K. French
Marie's Stepfather: Clarence Geldart
Fifi: Betty Morrissey
Paulette: Malvina Polo

Director: Charles Chaplin
Screenplay: Charles Chaplin
Cinematography: Roland Totheroh, Jack Wilson
Art direction: Arthur Stibolt
Film editing: Monta Bell, Charles Chaplin
Music (1976 re-release): Charles Chaplin

Was it Charles Chaplin's great ego that kept him onscreen for almost his entire career as a director? Because on the evidence of A Woman of Paris, his only "serious" film and the only one aside from A Countess From Hong Kong (1967) in which he doesn't appear onscreen (except for blink-and-you'll-miss-him cameos), he was a considerable director of other people. He also had a deftly light touch, not unlike that of Ernst Lubitsch, for livening up a scene with a surprising angle -- such as the way he comments on the frivolity of the Parisian demimonde by concentrating on the somewhat disgusted face of a masseuse as she works on the pampered body of Marie St. Clair and listens to the gossip of Marie's friends. A Woman of Paris is weighed down a bit by the built-in moral assumptions that Marie is to be scorned for allowing herself to become the mistress of Pierre Revel, but Adolphe Menjou's performance as Revel has such gusto that he we understand why Marie is taken with him -- just as we don't understand what she ever saw in the dour, hawk-faced Carl Miller's Jean Millet. A Woman of Paris is a more sophisticated film than it has any right to be, given the melodramatic framework. I like the way Chaplin makes a smart time jump from Marie's departure for Paris to her establishment as Pierre's kept woman. We don't need to know how she got there, just that she did. And the ending, with the obligatory self-sacrifice, is not as saccharine as it could have been: There's wit in the final montage, in which Pierre's automobile passes the wagon in which Marie and one of the orphans she tends are sitting. Pierre's car disappearing into the distance is almost a parody of the endings of Chaplin's "Little Tramp" comedies, in which the Tramp saunters off into the sunset.