Diary of a Chambermaid (Luis Buñuel, 1964)

Jeanne Moreau and Michel Piccoli in Diary of a Chambermaid

Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Georges Géret, Daniel Ivernel, Françoise Lugagne, Muni, Jean Ozenne, Michel Piccoli. Screenplay: Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carrière, based on a novel by Octave Mirbeau. Cinematography: Roger Fellous. Production design: Georges Wakhévitch. Film editing: Louisette Hautecoeur.

Jeanne Moreau's aura of knowingness serves as a filter through which we view the Monteil household in Luis Buñuel's sharp-edged satire on wealth and privilege.

Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

Cast: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Sydney Pollack, Todd Field, Marie Richardson, Thomas Gibson, Julienne Davis, Vinessa Shaw, Rade Serbedzija, Leelee Sobieski, Alan Cumming. Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick, Frederic Raphael, based on a story by Arthur Schnitzler. Cinematography: Larry Smith. Production design: Leslie Tomkins, Roy Walker. Film editing: Nigel Galt. Music: Jocelyn Pook.

Some people think Eyes Wide Shut is a masterpiece; others think it's pretentious hooey. While I incline toward the latter opinion, I have to wonder if Stanley Kubrick had lived to see it fully through its postproduction stage -- he died shortly after submitting a final cut to the studio -- he would have tinkered it into something that inspired less ambivalence. I also wonder if he hadn't yielded to studio pressure to cast movie stars in the lead roles, we wouldn't have found the characters played by Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman less glossy and more interesting. And then there are the orgy scenes, too choreographed to be real, although movie orgies are rarely titillating even when they're not digitally altered as the ones in the original release of the film were to avoid an NC-17 rating. The main thing for me, however, is that every time I see the movie I can't remember a few days later what it was all about. Which makes me wonder if it's about anything. 

The Tale of Zatoichi (Kenji Misumi, 1962)

Shintaro Katsu in The Tale of Zatoichi

Cast: Shintaro Katsu, Masayo Banri, Ryuzo Shimada, Hajime Mitamura, Shiguro Amachi, Michiro Minami, Eijiro Yanagi, Toshio Chiba, Manabu Morita. Screenplay: Minoru Inazaka, based on a story by Kan Shimozawa. Cinematography: Chikashi Makiura. Production design: Akira Naito. Film editing: Kanji Suganuma. Music: Akira Ifukube.

Shintaro Katsu's performance in The Tale of Zatoichi as the blind masseur who happens to be a brilliant swordsman launched a string of sequels as well as a long-running Japanese TV series in which he starred.

Cousin Cousine (Jean-Charles Tacchella, 1975)

Victor Lanoux and Marie-Christine Barrault in Cousin Cousine

Cast: Marie-Christine Barrault, Victor Lanoux, Marie-France Pisier, Guy Marchand, Ginette Garcin, Sybil Maas, Popeck, Pierre Plessis, Catherine Verlor. Screenplay: Jean-Charles Tacchella, Danièle Thompson. Cinematography: Eric Faucherre, Georges Lendi, Michel Thiriet. Film editing: Marie-Aimée Debril, Agnès Guillemot, Juliette Welfing. Music: Gérard Anfosso.

A pleasant romantic comedy about the ideal couple, Karine (Marie-Christine Barrault) and Ludovic (Victor Lanoux), who can't seem to get around to coupling, even though their spouses are having it off with each other. A bright international hit that was less brightly remade in 1989 as Cousins by Joel Schumacher with Ted Danson and Isabella Rossellini. It seems to need the French touch to bring its events and its off-beat characters to life.

Matador (Pedro Almodóvar, 1986)

Nacho Martínez and Assumpta Serna in Matador

Cast: Assumpta Serna, Antonio Banderas, Nacho Martínez, Eva Cobo, Julieta Serrano, Chus Lampreave, Carmen Maura, Eusebio Poncela. Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar, Jesús Ferrero. Cinematography: Ángel Luis Fernández. Production design: Fernando Sánchez. Film editing: José Salcedo. Music: Andrés Vicente Gómez.

Pedro Almodóvar was just getting established as a major filmmaker -- his big breakthrough, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, would come in 1988 -- when he released Matador, a film whose spicy stew of eccentrically transgressive characters, sex, and violence, all treated with a comic vision, led critics to compare him to Luis Buñuel. It has become more clear that Almodóvar is his own man, whatever the influences may have been. 

Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945)

Ann Savage and Tom Neal in Detour

Cast: Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald, Tim Ryan, Esther Howard, Pat Gleason. Screenplay: Martin Goldsmith, based on his novel. Cinematography: Edmund H. Kline. Art direction: Edward C. Jewell. Film editing: George McGuire. Music: Leo Erdody. 

If you ever want to discourage someone from hitchhiking, show them Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour. It's a classic B-movie noir with some astonishing twists and one of the most fascinatingly snake-like performances by a woman -- Ann Savage -- ever put on film. 

A River Called Titas (Ritwik Ghatak, 1973)

Cast: Prabir Mitra, Rosy Samad, Kabori Sarwar, Rawshan Jamil, Rani Sarkar, Sufia Rastam, Bonani Choudury, Golam Mustafa, Shafikul Islam. Screenplay: Ritwik Ghatak, based on a story by Advaita Malla Burman. Cinematography: Baby Islam. Film editing: Bashir Hossain. Music: Ustad Bahadur Khan.

The river, and the villages past which it flows, really does seem to be the central character in A River Called Titas, a film tinged by the turbulent history of Bangladesh. Although it weaves together many narrative threads, the central one is of the arranged marriage of Kishore (Prabar Mitra) and Rajar (Kabori Sarwar), which lasts only one night before Rajar is abducted. So brief is their marriage that she doesn't know his name, and after surviving the kidnapping and giving birth to the child they had conceived, spends much of her life searching for the boy's father, who went mad after the attack. The old-fashioned melodramatic fable blends with the realistic portrait of lives along the river.

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.