Land of the Pharaohs (Howard Hawks, 1955)

Joan Collins in Land of the Pharaohs

Cast: Jack Hawkins, Joan Collins, Dewey Martin, Alexis Minotis, James Robertson Justice, Luisella Boni, Sydney Chaplin, James Hayter, Kerima, Piero Giagnoni. Screenplay: William Faulkner, Harry Kurnitz, Harold Jack Bloom. Cinematography: Lee Garmes, Russell Harlan. Art direction: Alexandre Trauner. Film editing: Vladimir Sagovsky. Music: Dimitri Tiomkin.    

Why has there never been a really good movie about ancient Egypt? Is it that we can't imagine those ancient peoples in any other terms than the sideways-walking figures on old walls? Archaeologists have uncovered enough about their daily lives, their customs and their religion, that it might be possible to put together a plausible story set in those times, but eventually filmmakers turn to spectacle, with lots of crowds and opulently fitted palaces inhabited by kings and courtiers wearing lots of gold and jewels. Land of the Pharaohs was an attempt by one of the great producer-directors of his day, Howard Hawks, enlisting none other than William Faulkner as a screenwriter. It, too, laid on the usual ancient frippery and a cast of thousands, and it was a box-office bomb, eliciting some critical sneers. More recently, it has attracted some admirers, including Martin Scorsese, though only as a "guilty pleasure." Hawks himself admitted that one of the problems he and the writers faced was that they "didn't know how a pharaoh talked," and Hawks was always a master of movies with good talk. So while it's impossible to take seriously, Land of the Pharaohs provides a good deal of entertainment, even if only of the sort derived from making fun of the movie. Though it's not ineptly made, it's also impossible to take seriously, especially when Joan Collins is vamping around. 

All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, 1999)

Toni Cantó and Cecilia Roth in All About My Mother

Cast: Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Candela Peña, Antonia San Juan, Penélope Cruz, Rosa Maria Sardà, Fernando Fernán Gómez, Toni Cantó, Eloy Azorín. Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar. Cinematography: Affonso Beato. Production design: Antxón Gómez. Film editing: José Salcedo. Music: Alberto Iglesias.

Fascinatingly complex melodrama that's part hommage to movies like Douglas Sirk's and part exploration of contemporary views on gender and sexuality, but mostly one of Pedro Almodóvar's most searching and honest films. It won the Oscar for best foreign language film.

The Barbarian (Sam Wood, 1933)

Cast: Ramon Novarro, Myrna Loy, Reginald Denny, Louise Closser Hale, C. Aubrey Smith, Edward Arnold, Blanche Friderici, Marcel Corday, Hedda Hopper, Leni Stengel. Screenplay: Anita Loos, Elmer Harris, based on a story by Edgar Selwyn. Cinematography: Harold Rosson. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Tom Held. Music: Herbert Stothart.

Orientalist fiddle-faddle with Ramon Novarro as an Egyptian prince disguised as a translator and tour director wooing a wealthy American tourist played by Myrna Loy. Novarro is dashing and handsome, but not quite a match for Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik (George Melford, 1921), the classic film in this dubious genre. Loy is still emerging from her "exotic" phase, playing the sultry woman of the world -- she's supposedly half Egyptian on her mother's side.

White Material (Claire Denis, 2009)

White Material (Claire Denis, 2009)

Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Christopher Lambert, Nicolas Devauchelle, William Nadylam, Michel Subor, Isaach De Bankolé, Adèle Ado, Ali Barkai. Screenplay: Claire Denis, Marie N'Diaye, Lucie Borleteau. Cinematography: Yves Cape. Production design: Abiassi Saint-Père. Film editing: Guy Lecorne. Music: Stuart Staples. 

Isabelle Huppert is an almost routinely extraordinary actress, and she gives one of her most striking performances in White Material, about the French owner of a coffee plantation in Africa. This is a far cry from Sydney Pollack's Out of Africa (1987), the glossy Oscar winner. Huppert's Maria Vial is a woman determined to the point of madness to get out her coffee crop during a civil war, even though the authorities have insisted she and her family should leave. Her husband, André (Christopher Lambert), is ready to flee, but she persists, even after their lazy, self-indulgent son, Manuel (Nicolas Duvauchelle), is captured by young rebel soldiers, abused, and possibly raped. Things continue to escalate in ever more complex and chaotic ways. It's an often harrowing film, held together in large part by Huppert's magnetism. 

I Know Where I'm Going! (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1945)

Cast: Wendy Hiller, Roger Livesey, Duncan MacKechnie, Finlay Currie, Pamela Brown, Murdo Morrison, Margot Fitzsimons, Catherine Lacey, Valentine Dyall, Petula Clark. Screenplay: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger. Cinematography: Erwin Hillier. Production design: Alfred Junge. Film editing: John Seabourne Sr. Music: Allan Gray.

A stubborn young Englishwoman travels to the Hebrides to marry a man who lives on a remote island, but her journey there is interrupted by bad weather. Stuck on the Isle of Mull, she finds herself falling in love with another man, a naval officer who also plans to journey to the island on shore leave. Lo and behold, she and the officer begin to fall in love, which only makes her more desperate to complete her journey. Complicating things, there's an ancient curse on the naval officer. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's film manages to overcome some dodgy psychology and hokey superstition with the aid of fine performances by Wendy Hiller as Joan, the stubborn young woman, and Roger Livesey as the officer under the weight of the curse, making their characters persuasive and credible. Erwin Hillier's cinematography is superbly atmospheric, and incidentally overcomes an unusual handicap: Although much of the film is shot on the Isle of Mull, Livesey never went there because he was performing in a play in London. His scenes were all filmed in the studio and a double was used in the location shots. 

L'Humanité (Bruno Dumont, 1999)

Cast: Emmanuel Schotté, Séverine Caneele, Philippe Tullier, Ghislain Ghesquère, Ginette Allègre. Screenplay: Bruno Dumont. Cinematography: Yves Cape. Production design: Marc-Philippe Guerig. Film editing: Guy Lecorne. Music: Richard Cuvillier.

Emmanuel Schotté's performance as an unlikely police detective in L'Humanité won the best actor award at Cannes. The film, about the detective's efforts to solve a case involving the rape and murder of a little girl,  is full of enigmatic moments and even paranormal events that test a viewer's credulity, but it winds up exerting a kind of exasperated fascination.

Dance, Girl, Dance (Dorothy Arzner, 1940)

Lucille Ball, Maureen O'Hara, and Virginia Field in Dance, Girl, Dance

Cast: Maureen O'Hara, Louis Hayward, Lucille Ball, Virginia Field, Ralph Bellamy, Maria Ouspenskaya, Mary Carlisle, Katharine Alexander, Edward Brophy, Walter Abel. Screenplay: Tess Slesinger, Frank Davis, based on a story by Vicki Baum. Cinematography: Russell Metty. Art direction: Van Nest Polglase, Alfred Herman. Film editing: Robert Wise. Music: Edward Ward.

Dorothy Arzner's film about chorus girls struggling to make lives for themselves in a milieu dominated by males and their gaze earned its place in the National Film Registry by being one of the few movies of the era to take the women's point of view seriously. It has its melodramatic excesses, but it steadily keeps its focus on the characters played by Lucille Ball and Maureen O'Hara instead of yielding time to its male leads, Louis Hayward and Ralph Bellamy. 

La Ciénaga (Lucrecia Martel, 2001)

Cast: Mercedes Morán, Graciela Borges, Martín Adjemián, Leonora Balcarce, Silvia Baylé, Sofia Bertolotto, Juan Cruz Bordeu, Noelia Bravo Herrera, Andrea López, Sebastián Montagna, Daniel Valenzuela, Franco Veneranda, Fabio Villafane, Diego Baenas. Screenplay: Lucrecia Martel. Cinematography: Hugo Colace. Production design: Graciela Oderigo. Film editing: Santiago Ricci. 

The members of an upper-middle-class Argentine family torment one another during the course of a sweltering summer spent at their country house. Lucrecia Martel established herself as one of the premier Latin American filmmakers with this, her first feature. 

Nobody Lives Forever (Jean Negulesco, 1946)

Cast: John Garfield, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Walter Brennan, Faye Emerson, George Coulouris, George Tobias, Robert Shayne, Richard Gaines, Richard Erdman. Screenplay: W.R. Burnett, based on his novel. Cinematography: Arthur Edeson. Art direction: Hugh Reticker, Max Parker. Film editing: Rudi Fehr. Music: Adolph Deutsch.

Changes of heart are always risky, especially in film noir, so when Nick Blake (John Garfield) falls in love with the rich widow Gladys Halvorsen (Geraldine Fitzgerald), who has been chosen as the mark in a con game, things get a little screwed up. Originally planned as a vehicle for Humphrey Bogart, Nobody Lives Forever benefits from Garfield's good looks, making the romantic twist a little more interesting. Jean Negulesco, better known for glossy romance than for noir, handles the material well, especially the climactic shootout.

Time Bandits (Terry Gilliam, 1981)

Craig Warnock and Sean Connery in Time Bandits

Cast: John Cleese, Sean Connery, Shelley Duvall, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Michael Palin, Ralph Richardson, Peter Vaughan, David Warner, Craig Warnock, David Rappaport, Kenny Baker, Malcolm Dixon, Mike Edmonds, Jack Purvis, Tiny Ross, Jim Broadbent, David Daker, Sheila Fearn. Screenplay: Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam. Cinematography: Peter Biziou. Production design: Milly Burns. Film editing: Julian Doyle. Music: Mike Moran. 

A film with many admirers, but I find it too much a kids' movie -- noisy and sometimes silly -- with not enough genuine wit to please grownups. What works best for me in it are the star performers -- Sean Connery, Ralph Richardson, Ian Holm -- letting themselves go.