Night and Fog in Japan (Nagisa Oshima, 1960)

Cast: Fumio Watanabe, Miyuki Kuwano, Takao Yoshizawa, Akiko Koyama, Masahiko Tsugawa, Hiroshi Akutagawa, Kei Sato, Rokko Toura, Shinko Ujiie, Ichiro Hayami. Screenplay: Toshiro Ishido, Nagisa Oshima. Cinematography: Takashi Kawamata. Art direction: Koji Uno. Film editing: Keiichi Uraoka. Music: Riichiro Manabe.

The wedding of Nozawa (Fumio Watanabe) and Reiko (Miyuki Kuwano) is interrupted by protesters who denounce the couple for betraying the ideals of the Japanese student movement of the 1950s. Nagisa Oshima's Night and Fog in Japan is a heady portrait of ideological conflict filled with flashbacks as a variety of witnesses open old political wounds, but it's hard to follow especially for Westerners not well versed in the history of the period.

Bad Times at the El Royale (Drew Goddard, 2018)

Chris Hemsworth in Bad Times at the El Royale

Cast: Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson, Jon Hamm, Chris Hemsworth, Cailee Spaeny, Lewis Pullman. Screenplay: Drew Goddard. Cinematography: Seamus McGarvey. Production design: Martin Whist. Film editing: Lisa Lassek. Music: Michael Giacchino.

Giddy, bloody thriller that has been called "Tarantinoesque" for its blend of violence and humor, Bad Times at the El Royale runs too long at 141 minutes, but it has good performances, particularly from Jeff Bridges and Cynthia Erivo, and Chris Hemsworth (shirtless of course) as a sadistic villain. It feels like a cult film that hasn't yet found its cult the way, say, writer-director Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods (2011) did. 

The Witnesses (André Téchiné, 2007)

Johan Libéreau and Sami Bouajila in The Witnesses

Cast: Michel Blanc, Emmanuelle Béart, Sami Bouajila, Johan Libéreau, Julie Depardieu, Constance Dollé, Lorenzo Balducci, Alain Cauchi. Screenplay: André Téchiné, Laurent Guyot, Viviane Zingg. Cinematography: Julien Hirsch. Production design: Michèle Abbé-Vannier. Film editing: Martine Giordano. Music: Philippe Sarde.

The time is 1984, and AIDS has just begun to make its menace completely known in the small circle of friends who constitute André Téchiné's "witnesses." They include Sarah (Emmanuelle Béart) and Mehdi (Sami Bouajila), a married couple with a baby; Adrien (Michel Blanc), their middle-aged doctor friend; and Manu (Johan Libéreau), a gay man who is Adrien's protégé (i.e., he loves the young man but they don't have sex). Eventually, Manu will contract AIDS, complicating things because he and Mehdi have begun having sex. Téchiné works out all of these complications with a beautiful deftness that avoids sugarcoating the fatal epidemic but still manages to leave viewers with a satisfactory resolution.

Pale Flower (Masahiro Shinoda, 1964)

Mariko Kaga and Ryo Ikebe in Pale Flower

Cast: Ryo Ikebe, Mariko Kaga, Takashi Fujiki, Naoki Sugiura, Shin'ichiro Mikami, Isao Sasaki, Koji Nakahara, Chisako Hara, Saiji Miyaguchi, Eijiro Tono, Mikizo Hirata. Screenplay: Masaru Baba, Masahiro Shinoda, based on a novel by Shintaro Ishihara. Cinematography: Masao Kosugi. Art direction: Shigemasa Toda. Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara. Music: Yuji Takahashi, Toru Takemitsu.

Masahiro Shinoda does noir better than almost anybody in Pale Flower, a lush, brooding film about a middle-aged, burning-out yakuza and a beautiful but damned young woman, both played to perfection by, respectively, Ryo Ikebe and Mariko Kaga. Also near perfection: Masao Kosugi's chiaroscuro cinematography and Toru Takemitsu's nervous score. 

Sing a Song of Sex (Nagisa Oshima, 1967)

Cast: Ichiro Araki, Kazuko Tajima, Juzo Itami, Akiko Koyama, Koji Iwabuchi, Kazuyoshi Kushida, Hiroshi Sato, Nobuko Miyamoto, Hiroko Masuda, Hideko Yoshida. Screenplay: Tsutomu Tamura, Mamoru Sasaki, Toshio Tajima, Nagisa Oshima. Cinematography: Akira Takada. Set decoration: Jusho Toda. Film editing: Keiichi Uraoka. Music: Hikaru Hayashi.

Politics and pornography intersect in Sing a Song of Sex, a film which, though it has four credited screenwriters, was largely improvised by its young cast. It's set at a time of political demonstrations, during which the teacher (Juzo Itami) of a group of young men preparing for their examinations tells them that bawdy songs -- the film's Japanese title has also been translated as A Treatise on Bawdy Songs -- are themselves a political statement, a way for the poorer classes to find release from oppression. And so the lines between fantasy and reality are blurred in the film as the young men act, if only in their imaginations, upon their desires, many of which focus on the pretty Mayuko (Kazuko Tajima), whom they depersonalize by referring to her by her seat number in class, 469. Often enigmatic, Sing a Song of Sex is the kind of film for which it's best that many of us just go along for the ride rather than to try to unravel its social and political implications, which are very much of a particular time and place.

Old Acquaintance (Vincent Sherman, 1943)

Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins in Old Acquaintance

Cast: Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins, John Loder, Gig Young, Dolores Moran, Phillip Reed, Roscoe Karnes, Anne Revere, Esther Dale. Screenplay: John Van Druten, Lenore J. Coffee, based on a play by John Van Druten. Cinematography: Sol Polito. Art direction: John Hughes. Film editing: Terry O. Morse. Music: Franz Waxman.

One of those actress pairings that you can't help being drawn to, no matter the quality of the movie: Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins. Fortunately, the movie, Old Acquaintance, is pretty good. (So was their earlier teaming in 1939, in William Goulding's The Old Maid, during which they are said to have had off-screen battles.) It's a story of two childhood friends who both grow up to be successful novelists, though Davis's Kit Marlowe is a critical darling while Hopkins's Millie Drake is a commercial success. They also grow up orbiting the same man, Preston Drake (John Loder), though Millie is the one who marries him and has a daughter with him. Eventually, Millie and Preston split, and the daughter, Dede, grows up to be played by Dolores Moran, and wouldn't you know it, to take Kit's much younger lover, Rudd Kendall (Gig Young), away from her. The central fact of the relationship between Kit and Millie, however, is that they represent opposite temperaments: Kit is solid and cynical, while Millie is high-strung and manic. All of this makes for some entertaining scenes, which is all that's needed in a Bette Davis movie, or a Miriam Hopkins one, for that matter.

Black Narcissus (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1947)

Cast: Deborah Kerr, David Farrar, Kathleen Byron, Flora Robson, Sabu, Jean Simmons, May Hallatt, Jenny Laird, Judith Furse, Esmond Knight, Eddie Whaley Jr. Screenplay: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, based on a novel by Rumer Godden. Cinematography: Jack Cardiff. Production design: Alfred Junge. Film editing: Reginald Mills. Music: Brian Easdale.

This much-loved film has so far escaped condemnation for its "orientalism," the brown-face performances of Jean Simmons, May Hallatt, and Esmond Knight, and its treatment in general of the Indian characters as mysterious and alien. And perhaps it's better to concentrate on the erotic instead of the exotic in Black Narcissus, to enjoy its stunning, Oscar-winning cinematography and production design. Who can forget the vertiginous moments at the precipice where the bell was rung -- even though those moments were sheer camera-trickery, accomplished in the Pinewood Studios with matte paintings? Or the erotic charge every time David Farrar walks shirtless among the nuns and Kathleen Byron gives him the eye?

Westward Passage (Robert Milton, 1932)

Laurence Olivier and Ann Harding in Westward Passage

Cast: Ann Harding, Laurence Olivier, Irving Pichel, Zasu Pitts, Juliette Compton, Irene Purcell, Emmett King, Florence Roberts, Ethel Griffies, Don Alvarado, Bonita Granville, Florence Lake, Edgar Kennedy, Herman Bing. Screenplay: Margaret Ayer Barnes, Bradley King, Humphrey Pearson. Cinematography: Lucien N. Andriot. Art direction: Carroll Clark. Film editing: Charles Craft. Music: Bernhard Kaun. 

Laurence Olivier made an early try at American movie stardom with this creaky marital drama, and its failure sent him back to England and success on the stage. He plays an egotistical would-be writer, Nick Allen, who makes things hard for his wife, Olivia (Ann Harding), and their small daughter. After trying to make a go of it, they divorce and she re-marries. Both find success, she in marriage and he in writing, but when they meet again on a ship bound for America from Europe, he tries to rekindle their relationship. It's a fairly flimsy movie, and Olivier looks alarmingly skinny and lupine.

Divorce Italian Style (Pietro Germi, 1961)

Marcello Mastroianni in Divorce Italian Style

Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Daniela Rocca, Stefania Sandrelli, Leopoldo Trieste, Odoardo Spadaro, Margherita Girelli, Angela Cardile, Lando Buzzanca, Pietro Tordi, Ugo Torrente, Antonio Acqua, Bianca Castagnetta, Giovanni Fassiolo. Screenplay: Alfredo Giannetti, Ennio De Concini, Pietro Germi. Cinematography: Leonida Barboni, Carlo Di Palma. Production design: Carlo Egidi. Film editing: Roberto Cinquini. Music: Carlo Rustichelli.

American movies were still trying to shrug off the morality enforced by the Production Code when Italy sent us the brilliant comedy about adultery and murder called Divorce Italian Style. And how ready Hollywood was to jettison that morality can be gauged by the fact that the film's screenplay won an Oscar, and that its director and star, Pietro Germi and Marcello Mastroianni, were nominated as well. The irony here is that Divorce Italian Style is about the consequences of a hidebound moral code, one in which murder could be condoned but divorce was forbidden. Germi and his co-screenwriters make the most of this irony, providing ingenious twists as Mastroianni's Ferdinando encounters multiple obstacles to his plans to rid himself of his wife, Rosalia (Daniela Rocca), and marry the lovely Angela (Stefania Sandrelli). It's one of Mastroianni's greatest performances, made even more striking by the inclusion of a screening of La Dolce Vita, the 1960 Federico Fellini film that made Mastroianni into an international star, in the Sicilian town that is the setting of Germi's film. 

Say Anything.... (Cameron Crowe, 1989)

John Cusack in Say Anything....

Cast: John Cusack, Ione Skye, John Mahoney, Lili Taylor, Amy Brooks, Pamela Adlon, Joan Cusack, Jason Gould, Loren Dean, Jeremy Piven, Bebe Neuwirth, Eric Stoltz, Philip Baker Hall. Screenplay: Cameron Crowe. Cinematography: Lásló Kovács. Production design: Mark W. Mansbridge. Film editing: Richard Marks. Music: Anne Dudley, Richard Gibbs.

No teen comedy is more full of memorable moments and lines than Cameron Crowe's Say Anything.... "I gave her my heart and she gave me a pen." "I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed.'' And even today, John Cusack's Lloyd Dobler holding up a boom box playing Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" remains one of the definitive movie images, long after boom boxes became obsolete. Crowe managed to overcome the banality of the misfit romance trope -- slacker and high achiever fall in love -- with the help of an enormously talented cast.