Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2017)

Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf in lady Bird

Lady Bird McPherson: Saoirse Ronan
Marion McPherson: Laurie Metcalf
Larry McPherson: Tracy Letts
Danny O'Neill: Lucas Hedges
Kyle Scheible: Timothée Chalamet
Beanie Feldstein: Julie Stefans
Sister Sarah Joan: Lois Smith
Father Leviatch: Stephen Henderson
Jenna Walton: Odeya Rush
Miguel McPherson: Jordan Rodrigues
Shelly Yuhan: Marielle Scott

Director: Greta Gerwig
Screenplay: Greta Gerwig
Cinematography: Sam Levy
Production design: Chris Jones
Film editing: Nick Houy
Music: Jon Brion

Maybe it's not the "female 400 Blows" that Greta Gerwig reportedly wanted to make, but it'll do until that comes along. We could only hope that Gerwig has something like François Truffaut's "Antoine Doinel cycle" in the works. It doesn't have to be the "Lady Bird McPherson" cycle, either, but just more sensitive, intelligent films about family and environment, capturing the essence that she caught of growing up in Sacramento. And I hope that if she does, she'll find more roles for the wonderful Laurie Metcalf, whose nuanced performance as Lady Bird's hard-working, hard-bitten mother, skeptical of anything that smacks of overreaching one's station in life, to my mind easily outshadows the performance that beat it for the supporting actress Oscar. Not that Allison Janney wasn't terrific in I, Tonya (Craig Gillespie), but her role was one-note when compared with the subtleties that the part of Marion McPherson demanded -- and Metcalf supplied. I also found myself thinking about a movie that stars Gerwig but which she didn't write or direct, Rebecca Miller's Maggie's Plan (2015), and realizing how movie formulas can either sustain or cripple a film that tries to reach beyond them. In Maggie's Plan, Miller tries to make a conventional domestic comedy rise above its conventions, to infuse its sometimes over-familiar comic situations with a bit of poignant realism. She fails because she's not willing to let her characters transcend the situations, to surprise us. Lady Bird is equally formulaic: It's essentially a coming-of-age teen comedy, something we've seen before. But Gerwig and her performers flesh out the characters into something more plausibly real than the genre demands.

Maggie's Plan (Rebecca Miller, 2015)

Travis Fimmel and Greta Gerwig in Maggie's Plan

Maggie: Greta Gerwig
John: Ethan Hawke
Georgette: Julianne Moore
Tony: Bill Hader
Felicia: Maya Rudolph
Guy: Travis Fimmel

Director: Rebecca Miller
Screenplay: Rebecca Miller
Based on a story by Karen Rinaldi
Cinematography: Sam Levy
Production design: Alexandra Schaller
Film editing: Sabine Hoffman
Music: Michael Rohatyn

Director-screenwriter Rebecca Miller keeps the comedy in Maggie's Plan in check, so that scenes that might have been hilarious wind up amusing, and scenes that might have been amusing take on an edge of melancholy. In the end, the film feels a bit overburdened by the necessity of working out the titular plan: a career woman who, in midlife crisis, decides to have a child with a sperm donor. That's the contemporary equivalent of the kind of formulaic dilemma that used to spin the plots of Doris Day's movies. As Maggie is going through her plan to inseminate herself with sperm donated by the agreeable, if somewhat oddball Guy, she manages to fall for a married man, John, who is at odds with his wife, Georgette. This leads to a comic scene that I don't think I've ever encountered in another film: Having just inseminated herself, Maggie hears the doorbell and crabwalks her way to answer it, only to have a rather messy accident when she stands up. It's John, of course, there to proclaim his love for her and to sleep with her. We jump ahead three years: John and Maggie are married and have a little girl. But as their marriage goes sour, and we realize that John and Georgette were really meant for each other after all, another plan is introduced: Georgette and Maggie plot to undo what has been done. Greta Gerwig, Ethan Hawke, and Julianne Moore are marvelous performers, of course. But there's something off about Miller's touch, so that the humor is lost in the mechanisms of the plot. The ending kicker, however, in which Maggie realizes that Guy, and not John, is the actual father of the child, is nicely done.

Thor: Ragnarok (Taika Waititi, 2017)

Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo in Thor: Ragnarok

Thor: Chris Hemsworth
Loki: Tom Hiddleston
Hela: Cate Blanchett
Heimdall: Idris Elba
Grandmaster: Jeff Goldblum
Valkyrie: Tessa Thompson
Skurge: Karl Urban
Bruce Banner / Hulk: Mark Ruffalo
Odin: Anthony Hopkins
Doctor Strange: Benedict Cumberbatch
Korg (voice): Taika Waititi
Topaz: Rachel House
Actor Thor: Luke Hemsworth
Actor Odin: Sam Neill
Actor Loki: Matt Damon

Director: Taika Waititi
Screenplay: Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost
Cinematography: Javier Aguirresarobe
Production design: Dan Hennah, Ra Vincent
Film editing: Zene Baker, Joel Negron
Music: Mark Mothersbaugh

Much fun, thanks to director Taika Waititi's irreverence toward the material he was given to bring to the screen: yet another superhero comic book adventure. But the Marvel people have learned a lot about their audience, something it seems the DC people haven't fully apprised, given the failure of some of their Superman and Batman movies to capture audiences. (The blissful exception, of course, is Patty Jenkins's Wonder Woman, which vies with Thor: Ragnarok as 2017's best comic book movie.) The trick is to take nothing too seriously and to load your films with the best performers you can find. From the start, Chris Hemsworth was an ideal Thor: a gorgeous god, to be sure, but also a bit of a goof, easily outwitted by his clever brother Loki but able to survive in the end through sheer affability. If there's a flaw to Thor: Ragnarok it's that the stakes don't really seem that high: Asgard is a nice place, but none of us is ever going to visit there, so its destruction doesn't feel so much like a threat as the ones to Earth in the other Marvel adventures. The compensation is that unlike a lot of films with prestigious actors of the caliber of Cate Blanchett, Anthony Hopkins, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Tom Hiddleston -- people who could be off doing Shakespeare somewhere -- nobody involved seems to be going through the paces just for the paycheck. Everyone seems to be having fun, thanks to Waititi and other cutups like Hemsworth and Jeff Goldblum. It's not Hamlet, to be sure, although there's a play within a play with Chris's brother Luke, Sam Neill, and Matt Damon spoofing the "real" Thor, Odin, and Loki. Marvel has gone the jokey road before with the two Guardians of the Galaxy movies (James Gunn, 2014 and 2017), but those were exposition-heavy and overburdened with effects in comparison to Waititi's lighter, larkier approach.

The Housemaid (Kim Ki-young, 1960)

Kim Jin Kyu and Lee Eun-shim in The Housemaid

Kim Dong-sik: Kim Jin Kyu
Mrs. Kim: Ju Jeung-nyeo
Myung-sook: Lee Eun-shim
Cho Kyung-hee: Eom Aeng-ran
Kwak Seon-young: Ko Seon-ae
Kim Chang-soon: Ahn Sung-ki
Kim Ae-soon: Lee Yoo-ri

Director: Kim Ki-young
Screenplay: Kim Ki-young
Cinematography: Kim Deok-jin
Art direction: Park Seok-in
Film editing: Oh Young-Keun
Music: Han Sang-gi

Extraordinarily creepy. This landmark Korean film about sexual obsession and social class, made during the dark days of military dictatorship, pulls out all the stops: moody expressionistic lighting, oddly grotesque sets, performances sometimes on the edge of hysteria, and a nerve-jangling modern score. And then, at the end, it backs off and distances itself from the story with a moralizing segment addressed to the camera. The Housemaid teeters from naïveté to sophistication, but this makes it all the more fascinating to watch, even though sometimes the action seems to be taking place underwater: Two reels of the film negative were missing and in the restoration they were supplemented by prints that had hand-drawn English subtitles. Removing these overlarge subtitles was a laborious process and it left a kind of rippling effect on the images. Still, it's a remarkable foreshadowing of what Korean cinema would become in the age of directors like Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho, who have skewed visions of the world that feel a lot like they were influenced by Kim Ki-young.

Three Strangers (Jean Negulesco, 1946)

Geraldine Fitzgerald and Sydney Greenstreet in Three Strangers

Jerome K. Arbutny: Sydney Greenstreet
Crystal Shackleford: Geraldine Fitzgerald
Johnny West: Peter Lorre
Icey Crane: Joan Lorring
Bertram Fallon: Robert Shayne
Janet Elliott: Marjorie Riordan
Prosecutor: Arthur Shields
Lady Rhea Belladon: Rosalind Ivan
Junior Clerk: John Alvin
Gabby: Peter Whitney
David Shackleford: Alan Napier

Director: Jean Negulesco
Screenplay: John Huston, Howard Koch
Cinematography: Arthur Edeson
Art direction: Ted Smith
Film editing: George Amy
Music: Adolph Deutsch

This is the movie in which Peter Lorre gets the girl, though not the leading lady played by Geraldine Fitzgerald. Instead, Lorre's Johnny West winds up with Icey, the woman who adores him and even perjures herself to save him from being hanged. It's all the result of a rather charmingly tangled and entirely improbable plot cooked up by John Huston with the aid of Howard Koch and kicked around Warner Bros. for years until it finally settled in the hands of director Jean Negulesco. Like The Maltese Falcon (Huston, 1941) it teams Lorre with Sydney Greenstreet and features a mysterious artifact as something of a MacGuffin. Instead of a priceless black bird, the artifact in Three Strangers is a statue of the Chinese goddess Kwan Yin. Legend has it that if three people, strangers to one another, make a wish on the statue at the lunar New Year, the wish will come true. So Fitzgerald's character, Crystal Shackleford, lures the solicitor Jerome K. Arbutny and the down-on-his-luck Johnny to her flat, and the three agree that the only thing that will solve their problems -- she wants to win the love of her husband from whom she's separated, Arbutny wants to become a barrister, and Johnny just wants to own a bar -- is money. so they place their bets on a sweepstakes ticket. Sure enough, despite the skepticism of Arbutny and the comparative indifference of Johnny, Kwan Yin comes through. And equally sure enough, nothing goes right for the trio, with the possible exception of Johnny, who does, as we said, get the girl. Alfred Hitchcock had once expressed interest in the screenplay, and we might have gotten something great if he had settled on it, but Negulesco doesn't put much of an interesting spin on the material. But Lorre and Greenstreet, together or apart, are always fun to watch.

Land of Mine (Martin Zandvliet, 2015)

Emil Belton and Zoe Zandvliet in Land of Mine

Sgt. Carl Rasmussen: Roland Møller
Sebastian Schumann: Louis Hofmann
Helmut Morbach: Joel Basman
Lt. Ebbe Jensen: Mikkel Boe Følsgaard
Peter: Mads Riisom
Ludwig Haffke: Oskar Bökelmann
Ernst Lessner: Emil Belton
Werner Lessner: Oskar Belton
Karin: Laura Bro
Elisabeth: Zoe Zandvliet

Director: Martin Zandvliet
Screenplay: Martin Zandvliet
Cinematography: Camilla Hjelm
Production design: Gitta Malling
Film editing: Per Sandholt, Molly Malene Stensgaard
Music: Sune Martin

The English title, Land of Mine, is an unfortunate but perhaps irresistible pun. The original Danish title was Under Sandet -- "Under the Sand" -- which lacks resonance with its central theme: the cruelty inflicted by victors on the vanquished. Land of Mine at least picks up on that theme, the patriotic urge to revenge one's country on those who attacked it, as well as indicating the action of the film, the defusing and disposal of land mines planted by the Germans along the Danish coast during World War II. It focuses on the Danish Sgt. Carl Rasmussen, tasked with training and supervising a company of German prisoners of war who are the ones who do the terrifying work of locating unexploded mines along the seashore. When we meet Rasmussen, he is brutally beating a German soldier who has had the audacity to pick up a Danish flag as a souvenir, so the officers in charge of the land mine detail are fairly certain that he will be no softy when it comes to handing the POWs. It turns out that the prisoners are very young -- barely out of their teens, late conscripts into the German army in the waning days of the war. Rasmussen and the POWs are billeted on a woman who has a small farm near the shore, and who shares his hatred for the Germans, stinting on the food she is supposed to provide the young men. She also has a young daughter, who in her innocence bears no grudge against the men and happily plays with one of them until her mother sends him away. It's a situation full of suspense, of course, but writer-director Martin Zandvliet can't seem to stay away from the obvious plotting clichés. We know that there will be some sort of rapprochement between Rasmussen and his fresh-faced charges. When we see that two of the young men are twins, who have dreams of returning to Germany and using their bricklaying skills to help rebuild their country, we're pretty sure that one or both of them will have to die. The hard-bitten sergeant shows no affection to anyone except his dog, so we're certain that the dog's a goner. We're not surprised when the little girl wanders off into the minefield and has to be rescued by the Germans, causing a change of heart in the girl's mother. And so on to the end of the film, which is supposed to be heartwarming but really feels like a foregone conclusion, a working-out of the movie's moral vision. Forgiveness is a fine and necessary thing, but Land of Mine too often sacrifices the drama for the sermon, just as the intrinsic facetiousness of the titular pun undercuts the seriousness of the film's intent.

The Disaster Artist (James Franco, 2017)

Dave Franco and James Franco in The Disaster Artist

Greg Sestero: Dave Franco
Tommy Wiseau: James Franco
Sandy: Seth Rogen
Juliette: Ari Graynor
Amber: Alison Brie
Carolyn: Jacki Weaver
Raphael: Paul Scheer
Dan / Chris-R: Zac Efron
Philip / Denny: Josh Hutcherson
Robin: June Diane Raphael
Mrs. Sestero: Megan Mullally
Iris Burton: Sharon Stone
Jean Shelton: Melanie Griffith

Director: James Franco
Screenplay: Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber
Based on a book by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell
Cinematography: Brandon Trost
Production design: Chris L. Spellman
Film editing: Stacey Schroeder
Music: Dave Porter

The title, The Disaster Artist, doesn't refer directly to James Franco, but it sometimes seems as if it should. In a year full of men stepping on their own genitalia, Franco's misstep was particularly painful. Just as the raves were coming in not only for his directing and acting in The Disaster Artist but also for his work in a dual role on HBO's The Deuce, there came a series of allegations of sexual misconduct dating back to 2014. Franco had been thought to be a strong contender for Oscar nominations for both directing and acting, but was shut out of those categories: The Disaster Artist received only one nomination, for the screenplay by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. We're not at the point yet where recent filmmakers' work can be judged independently of their personal lives -- the way, say, we appreciate the work of past artists without referring to the less admirable sides of their lives. To the extent that I can shut out Franco's alleged misconduct from any consideration of his movie, I have to say that it's a delight, a witty, observant portrait of a grandly mysterious eccentric whose age, country of origin, and source of income have still never been fully documented. It's also a film about the movies, about the joy and pain of making them, exhilarating even when the product, Tommy Wiseau's The Room (2003), is widely derided as one of the worst movies ever made. Franco's performance is a great gallery of mannerisms into which the actor himself fully disappears -- although there are some who would say that Franco's own reputation for ego-tripping is an essential jumping-off point for the character. But the film is also a directorial showcase, in which Franco shows skill that his other work hadn't previously manifested. The Disaster Artist is full of tasty bits, such as Melanie Griffith's cameo as an acting teacher and Sharon Stone's as an agent. As Greg Sestero, Dave Franco serves to keep the wacked-out narrative on course, and it's fun to watch the brothers play off of each other.

I, Tonya (Craig Gillespie, 2017)

Margot Robbie in I, Tonya

Tonya Harding: Margot Robbie
Jeff Gillooly: Sebastian Stan
LaVona Harding: Allison Janney
Diane Rawlinson: Julianne Nicholson
Shawn: Paul Walter Hauser
Martin Maddox: Bobby Cannavale
Dody Teachman: Bojana Novakovic
Nancy Kerrigan: Caitlin Carver

Director: Craig Gillespie
Screenplay: Steven Rogers
Cinematography: Nicolas Karakatsanis
Production design: Jade Healy
Film editing: Tatiana S. Riegel
Music: Peter Nashel

The girly-girl character of women's figure skating has always been something of the sport's mainstay, attracting little girls with dreams of becoming ice princesses into what can be a brutal business. I think that one of the failings of I, Tonya is that it doesn't deal sharply enough with this aspect of the sport: the training and marketing. Sure, it glances at it severely, but because the film is made from the point of view of Tonya Harding, the blue-collar interloper into a mostly affluent suburban world, we don't get enough of the Nancy Kerrigan side of it: the girl shoved through adolescence into womanhood by the Big Sports machine. On the other hand, that would be another film entirely, and one that still needs to be made. So we should be grateful for what we get: an often witty and entertaining movie with some star performances by Margot Robbie and Allison Janney.

Farewell to Spring (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1959)

Yusuke Kawazu and Mashiko Tsugawa in Farewell to Spring

Eitaro Makita: Keiji Sada
Midori: Ineko Arima
Yasuo Makita: Masahiko Tsugawa
Kozo Teshirogi: Akira Ishihama
Akira Masugi: Toyozo Yamamoto
Takya Minimura: Kazuya Kosaka
Naoji Iwagaki: Yusuke Kawazu
Yoko Momozawa: Yukiko Toake

Director: Keisuke Kinoshita
Screenplay: Keisuke Kinoshita
Cinematography: Hiroshi Kusuda
Art direction: Chiyoo Umeda
Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara
Music: Chuji Kinoshita

The homoerotic edge of Farewell to Spring is obvious from the outset as five old friends reunite to discover the ways in which life has changed them: The young men seem more touch-feely than is usual in movies, especially Japanese ones. But director-writer Keisuke Kinoshita, who was himself as openly gay as possible in the Japan of his day, doesn't develop or exploit this bit of queerness. Instead, he's intent on exploring moral questions and social relationships: arranged marriages, the weight of Japanese history, political and economic change, and the choice whether to rat upon an old friend when it turns out that the friend has gone bad. Like many of Kinoshita's films, it ladles on emotion in the form of music -- some of it composed by his brother, Chuji -- rather than letting the story carry the emotional freight.

Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg, 1932)

Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express

Shanghai Lily: Marlene Dietrich
Capt. Donald Harvey: Clive Brook
Hui Fei: Anna May Wong
Henry Chang: Warner Oland
Sam Salt: Eugene Pallette
Carmichael: Lawrence Grant
Mrs. Haggerty: Louise Closser Hale
Eric Baum: Gustav von Seyffertitz
Maj. Lenard: Emile Chautard

Director: Josef von Sternberg
Screenplay: Jules Furthman
Based on a story by Harry Hervey
Cinematography: Lee Garmes
Art direction: Hans Dreier
Film editing: Frank Sullivan
Music: W. Franke Harling

There's something claustrophobic about Shanghai Express: Its characters are always enclosed -- in train cabins, in interrogation rooms, even in crowds of other people. Even the titular train gets itself into a tight spot, navigating the narrow passage through the streets of what the film calls "Peking." Which makes it all the better for Lee Garmes's camera, tasked as it is with making the most of Marlene Dietrich's face. Garmes (with director Josef von Sternberg looking over his shoulder) always finds ways to frame that face with veils and feathers and furs, with the actress's own hands, with misted windows, and when nothing else will do, a simple shaft of light caressing those eyelids, cheekbones, and lips. Fortunately, the movie is more than glamorous poses: There's a good deal of snappy dialogue and some wily character acting from the likes of Eugene Pallette, Louise Closser Hale, and -- in a role that seems to have been a kind of audition for his most famous one, Charlie Chan -- Warner Oland. I only wish that a leading man more attractive, or less plummily British, than Clive Brook had been provided for Dietrich. The story is nonsense, of course, and it verges dangerously on colonialist poppycock in its treatment of the Chinese, though even there it pulls back somewhat by turning Anna May Wong's Hui Fei from a stereotypical dragon lady into a genuinely heroic figure. It must also be said that Shanghai Express was made at the right time: A couple of years later, the sexual adventurism of its women would have been taboo under the Production Code and Hui Fei would have been made to pay for murdering her rapist.