Che: Part Two (Steven Soderbergh, 2008)

Benicio Del Toro in Che: Part Two

Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Demián Bichir, Franka Potente, Norman Santiago, Joaquim de Almeida, Lou Diamond Phillips, Jorge Perugorría, Rubén Ochandiano, Cristian Mercado, Carlos Acosta-Milian, Armando Riesco, Marisé Álvarez, Marc-André Grondin, Carlos Bardem, Yul Vazquez. Screenplay: Peter Buchman, Benjamin A. van der Veen. Cinematography: Steven Soderbergh. Production design: Antxón Gómez, Philip Messina. Film editing: Pablo Zumárraga. Music: Alberto Iglesias.

The continuation of Steven Soderbergh's epic portrait of Ernesto "Che" Guevara almost stands on its own as a film, focused as it is on Che's ill-fated attempt to stir revolution in Bolivia after the success in Cuba. Che: Part Two is subtitled "Guerrilla," and it deals largely with Che's illness -- he suffers from asthma -- and inability to control his troops before his final capture and execution. Soderbergh avoids an elegiac tone, concentrating instead on the details of guerrilla warfare.

Journey Into Fear (Norman Foster, 1943)

Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles in Journey Into Fear

Cast: Joseph Cotten, Dolores Del Rio, Everett Sloane, Ruth Warrick, Orson Welles, Agnes Moorehead, Jack Durant, Eustace Wyatt, Frank Readick, Edgar Barrier, Jack Moss, Hans Conried. Screenplay: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, based on a novel by Eric Ambler. Cinematography: Karl Struss. Art direction: Albert S. D'Agostino, Mark-Lee Kirk. Film editing: Mark Robson. Music: Roy Webb.

While they were working on The Magnificent Ambersons, Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten used some spare time to rewrite a screenplay by Richard Collins and Ben Hecht for a property owned by RKO, Eric Ambler's spy novel Journey Into Fear. Welles would have directed, but he was still tied up on Ambersons, so he assigned the job to Norman Foster, though he still had time to play the secondary role of Col. Haki, and as producer to see to it that many of the actors he had worked with -- Cotten, Dolores Del Rio, Everett Sloane, Ruth Warrick, and Agnes Moorehead -- played key roles. The result is a film whose complicated plot never quite resolves itself into clarity, but which abounds in Wellesian moments, such as the desperate struggle on the rainswept ledge of a hotel at the film's climax. Unfortunately, Welles's battle with RKO over the editing of Ambersons resulted in his firing, and the editing of Journey Into Fear was similarly taken out of his hands.

Che: Part One (Steven Soderbergh, 2008)

Benicio Del Toro and Demián Bichir in Che: Part One

Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Demián Bichir, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Rodrigo Santoro, Julia Ormond, Oscar Isaac, Ramon Fernandez, Yul Vazquez, Santiago Cabrera, Édgar Ramírez. Screenplay: Peter Buchman. Cinematography: Steven Soderbergh. Production design: Antxón Gómez. Film editing: Pablo Zumárraga. Music: Alberto Iglesias.

Subtitled "The Argentine," the first part of Steven Soderbergh's epic portrait of Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Benicio Del Toro) covers the revolutionary's life from his first meeting with Fidel Castro (Demián Bichir) in 1955 through the success of the campaign in Cuba to Che's address to the United Nations in 1964, proclaiming a "battle to the death" against American imperialism. With a less coherent narrative line than the one in Che: Part Two, the first film feels more scattered and just a little superficial, but it has a strong feeling of actuality in any given sequence.

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (Preston Sturges, 1943)

Diana Lynn, William Demarest, Betty Hutton, and Eddie Bracken
in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek

Cast: Betty Hutton, Eddie Bracken, William Demarest, Diana Lynn, Porter Hall, Emory Parnell, Al Bridge, Julius Tannen, Victor Potel, Brian Donlevy, Akim Tamiroff. Screenplay: Preston Sturges. Cinematography: John F. Seitz. Art direction: Hans Dreier, Ernst Fegté. Film editing: Stuart Gilmore. Music: Charles Bradshaw, Leo Shuken.

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek is one of the funniest films ever made, but it's my least favorite Preston Sturges movie. That's because it leans more heavily on wackiness than on wit. I have to admire how skillfully Sturges managed to hoodwink the censors -- could anyone else have managed to name a character, let alone one who mysteriously gets pregnant, Trudy Kockenlocker? The sheer audacity and the skill of the story's construction are breathtaking. But it's just a little too loud for my taste, which is partly the fault of casting Betty Hutton. Sturges was a director who could get astonishingly funny performances out of serious actresses like Barbara Stanwyck and Claudette Colbert, but casting the uninhibited Hutton as Trudy seems to kick the film up a notch too high. Still, the movie has one of my boyhood crushes, Diana Lynn, to bring a sly note to her role as Trudy's wisecracking kid sister, and every moment William Demarest is on the screen, steam coming out of his ears, is welcome.

Still Walking (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2008)

Cast: Hiroshi Abe, Yui Natsukawa, You, Kazuya Takahashi, Shohei Tanaka, Kirin Kiki, Yoshio Harada. Screenplay: Hirokazu Koreeda. Cinematography: Yutaka Yamazaki. Art direction: Toshihiro Isomi, Keiko Mitsumatsu. Film editing: Hirokazu Koreeda. Music: Gontiti.

A family gathers for an annual ritual: mourning the eldest son, who drowned 12 years earlier while saving the life of another boy. Hirokazu Koreeda's film earned the expected but appropriate comparison to Yasujiro Ozu's films that explored family tensions, as the surviving son, Ryota (Hiroshi Abe), struggles with his resentment of the parents' devotion to their dead son and their disappointment with and disapproval of the course his life has taken.

The Big Steal (Don Siegel, 1949)

Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Patric Knowles, John Qualen, and William Bendix in The Big Steal

Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, William Bendix, Patric Knowles, Ramon Novarro, Don Alvorado, John Qualen, Pascual García Peña. Screenplay: Daniel Mainwaring, Gerald Drayson Adams, based on a story by Richard Wormser. Cinematography: Harry J. Wild. Art direction: Ralph Berger, Albert S. D'Agostino. Film editing: Samuel E. Beetley. Music: Leigh Harline.

Can film noir be funny? The Big Steal is unquestionably noirish, reteaming as it does the pair from the über-noir Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947), Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer, and involving a lot of twists and turns in its plot centered on a payroll heist. But director Don Siegel and his cast give it a lightness and wit that elicits as much amusement as suspense. Ramon Novarro has some droll moments as a Mexican police inspector.

Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle, 1958)

Maurice Ronet in Elevator to the Gallows

Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Georges Poujouly, Yori Bertin, Jean Wall, Iván Petrovich, Elga Andersen, Lino Ventura. Screenplay: Roger Nimier, Louis Malle, based on a novel by Noël Calef. Cinematography: Henri Decaë. Art direction: Jean Mandaroux, Rino Mondellini. Film editing: Léonide Azar. Music: Miles Davis.

Crime doesn't pay, we're often told, and if any movie seemed designed to make that point it's Louis Malle's first non-documentary feature Elevator to the Gallows which is about two intersecting crimes that both go wrong. The first is the plot by Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet) to kill his boss, Simon Carala, whose wife, Florence (Jeanne Moreau), is Julien's mistress. Things begin to go wrong when Julien's car is stolen during the carefully plotted murder and Julien finds himself trapped overnight in an elevator. Then the car thief, Louis (Georges Poujouly), and his girlfriend, Véronique (Yori Bertin), go for a joy ride, during which Florence spots the car with Véronique in it and thinks Julien has abandoned her. Meanwhile, the joyriders find Julien's identification in the car they have stolen and check in under his name in a motel on the outskirts of Paris. They wind up partying with a German couple, taking pictures of the group that Véronique leaves for developing. But Louis murders the German couple when he tries to steal their Mercedes so he can abandon Julien's car. Oh, murder will out, too. Moreau was already well known in France as a stage actress, but her performance in Elevator to the Gallows made her a movie star, especially after Malle cast her in his next film, The Lovers (1958). The engaging twists of the film are given a melancholy cast by Miles Davis's evocative score.

Amélie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001)

Cast: Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus, Lorella Cravotta, Serge Merlin, Jamel Debbouze, Clotilde Mollet, Claire Maurier, Isabelle Nanty, Dominique Pinon, Artus de Penguern, Yolande Moreau, Urbain Canceller, Maurice Bénichou, Michel Robin. Screenplay: Guillaume Laurant, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Cinematography: Bruno Delbonnel. Production design: Aline Bonetto. Film editing: Hervé Schneid. Music: Yann Tiersen.

Amélie is a charming film, but I have to admit that I'm immune to its charms, finding it a bit self-conscious and much too aggressive in thrusting them upon us. It was a huge international hit, however, and remains a favorite of a lot of people whose taste I trust. Chacun à son goût.

Empire of Passion (Nagisa Oshima, 1978)

Kazuo Yoshiyuki and Tatsuya Fuji in Empire of Passion

Cast: Tatsuya Fuji, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Takahiro Tamura, Takuzo Kawatani, Akiko Koyama, Taiji Tonoyama, Sumie Sasaki, Eizo Kitamura, Masami Hasegawa, Kenzo Kawarasaki. Screenplay: Nagisa Oshima, based on a story by Itoko Nakamura. Cinematography: Yoshio Miyajima. Set decoration: Jusho Toda. Film editing: Keiichi Uraoka. Music: Toru Takemitsu.

A fine, creepy ghost story set in Edo period Japan. A man and woman plot to murder her husband and throw his body in a well. But as their passion cools, they become the subject of gossip and rumor, driving them apart. And then the murdered man's ghost begins appearing and the police decide to investigate. Handled with Oshima's characteristic take on sexual obsession.

Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick, 1987)

Vincent D'Onofrio in Full Metal Jacket

Cast: Matthew Modine, Vincent D'Onofrio, R. Lee Ermey, Adam Baldwin, Dorian Harewood, Kevyn Major Howard, Arliss Howard, Ngoc Lee, Papillon Soo. Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr, Gustav Hosford, based on a novel by Gustav Hosford. Cinematography: Douglas Milsome. Production design: Anton Furst. Film editing: Martin Hunter. Music: Vivian Kubrick. 

Is Full Metal Jacket one movie or two? That debate continues to rage, with a lot of us preferring the first half of the film, about the Marine boot camp, to the second, which follows some of the trainees into combat in Vietnam. Certainly the first half is dominated by the two most memorable performances in the movie, R. Lee Ermey as the drill sergeant and Vincent D'Onofrio as the private driven to madness by the former's training techniques. That inevitably leads to some dissatisfaction with the more conventional nature of the combat sequences, which, though often shot thrillingly, making use of various locations in, of all places, England, sometimes have a war movie familiarity that even a director like Stanley Kubrick can't overcome.