The Reader (Stephen Daldry, 2008)

The Reader (Stephen Daldry, 2008)

Cast: Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, David Kross, Bruno Ganz, Lena Olin, Matthias Habich, Hannah Herzsprung, Susanne Lothar. Screenplay: David Hare, based on a novel by Bernhard Schlink. Cinematography: Roger Deakins, Chris Menges. Production design: Brigitte Broch. Film editing: Claire Simpson. Music: Nico Muhly.

I haven't read the novel by Bernhard Schlink, but it seems to have presented the filmmakers with two problems they never quite solved. One is technical: How do you deal with the structuring of the story as the reminiscences of a middle-aged man about his youthful affair with an older woman? Do you cast one actor and make him younger or older with makeup? (Digital aging or de-aging, despite its use in films like Peyton Reed's 2015 film Ant-Man, in which Michael Douglas was "youthened," hasn't quite reached the level needed for a film like The Reader, in which Michael Berg ranges from his mid-teens to his 50s.) Or do you cast two actors, even though the audience knows that 18-year-old David Kross could never grow up to look like Ralph Fiennes? The solution reached by the producers of The Reader was to trust in an audience's suspension of disbelief and the skill of the actors. Thanks to the latter, it almost works. But a more serious obstacle is how to deal with the moral complexities presented by any story that involves the Holocaust. In The Reader, we're presented with the problem faced by Michael Berg: reacting to the revelation that the woman who provided his sexual initiation was a war criminal. On the page, such an ethical dilemma can be explored in many ways because the reader has time to reflect on its implications. But movies demand a more immediate and visceral reaction, and the film version of The Reader runs the risk of trivializing the moral issues it raises. Are we to excuse Hanna Schmitz's heinous actions because she was struggling with her own insecurities? Are we to think that literacy is a cure for moral blindness? David Hare's screenplay is too intelligent and Stephen Daldry's direction too sure-footed to keep us from veering off into such reductions to absurdity, but nevertheless the filmmakers seem to me to have bitten off more than they can chew in taking on a story that can't be summed up glibly. Fortunately, the acting is uniformly fine, and the film earned Kate Winslet the Oscar that had eluded her on five previous nominations. Kross is exceptionally good as well, convincingly moving from love-smitten adolescent to conscience-stricken young adult. Fiennes does what he can with the thankless role of vehicle for an extended flashback.

The Lost City of Z (James Gray, 2016)

The Lost City of Z (James Gray, 2016)

Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Sienna Miller, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Edward Ashley, Angus Macfadyen, Ian McDiarmid, Clive Francis, Pedro Coello, Franco Nero. Screenplay: James Gray, based on a book by David Grann. Cinematography: Darius Khondji. Production design: Jean-Vincent Puzos. Film editing: John Axelrad, Lee Haugen. Music: Christopher Spelman.

A New Yorker profile of James Gray, keyed to the release of his much-anticipated Ad Astra, sent me in search of his earlier films, none of which I had seen. I lighted first on The Lost City of Z, which I had earlier ignored, in large part because of its title: It sounded like one of those campy adventure movies spoofing the genre epitomized by King Solomon's Mines and pretty much done to death by the Indiana Jones series. I admit that the Z in the title also made me think it had something to do with zombies. Anyway, how can we take movies about explorations in the Amazon seriously after Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo (1982)? But The Lost City of Z turns out to be a pleasant surprise: an old-fashioned adventure story played straight and done well. I think it could have used an actor of more heft and charisma than Charlie Hunnam in the lead -- it was originally planned for Brad Pitt (who stayed on as producer after a schedule conflict) and then for Benedict Cumberbatch, either of whom might have filled the part of the obsessive explorer Percy Fawcett better. But Gray handles a sprawling story -- we get not only scenes of Amazonian hardship but also of the Battle of the Somme in World War I -- with finesse.

Susan and God (George Cukor, 1940)

Susan and God (George Cukor, 1940)

Cast: Joan Crawford, Fredric March, Ruth Hussey, John Carroll, Rita Hayworth, Nigel Bruce, Bruce Cabot, Rose Hobart, Rita Quigley, Constance Collier, Richard Crane, Norma Mitchell, Marjorie Main, Aldrich Bowker. Screenplay: Anita Loos, based on a play by Rachel Crothers. Cinematography: Robert H. Planck. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons, Randall Duell. Film editing: William H. Terhune. Music: Herbert Stothart.

I have no hesitation in calling Joan Crawford one of the greatest film actresses of the studio era, and there's a moment in Susan and God that fully justifies my opinion. It comes at the turning point when Crawford's character, Susan Trexel, realizes how much harm her giddy self-absorption has done to her husband and daughter. In only a few seconds, surprise, guilt, and shame cross her face, and without mugging or emoting, Crawford gives each thought and emotion its due. But the moment also reveals how out of place in this sentimental comedy Crawford is: She was made for melodrama, not for frivolity, which is what the role chiefly calls upon her for. Through much of the movie, Crawford seems to be copying Rosalind Russell's performance in The Women, the movie she made with Russell and director George Cukor a year before Susan and God. In The Women, Russell played the nitwit socialite that Crawford is expected to play in Susan and God. But Susan Trexel lies outside of Crawford's established tough-as-nails persona -- which she played on to perfection in The Women -- and the later film suffers from it. It also suffers from a rather scattered script, too stuffed with secondary characters, and from a general confusion about exactly what kind of "god" Susan has found -- apparently a kind of self-help feel-good cult. Cukor keeps things moving nicely, and there are good moments from supporting players like Ruth Hussey and Marjorie Main, but it's easy to see why the film was a flop at the box office.

Cold Water (Olivier Assayas, 1994)

Cyprien Fouquet and Virginie Ledoyen in Cold Water

Cast: Virginie Ledoyen, Cyprien Fouquet, László Szabó, Jean-Pierre Darrousin, Dominique Faysse, Smaïl Mekki, Jackie Berroyer, Jean-Christophe Bouvet. Screenplay: Olivier Assayas. Cinematography: Denis Lenoir. Production design: Gilbert Gagneux. Film editing: Luc Barnier.

Olivier Assayas's semi-autobiographical film is set in the 1970s and follows two teenagers, Gilles (Cyprien Fouquet) and Christine (Virginie Ledoyen), as they split from their messed-up families and set out to join a commune. They filch things from stores, experiment with drugs, and attend a wild party with other teenagers in an abandoned house that they eventually set fire to. It's a flashback to the rebellious youth movies of the 1960s and '70s, but given freshness by the performances and by the contemporary awareness of how sourly the freewheeling era of sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll ended.

My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan, 1989)

Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Benda Fricker, Ray McAnally, Fiona Shaw, Ruth McCabe, Hugh O'Conor, Cyril Cusack. Screenplay: Shane Connaughton, Jim Sheridan, based on a book by Christy Brown. Cinematography: Jack Conroy. Production design: Austen Spriggs. Film editing: J. Patrick Duffner. Music: Elmer Bernstein.

Daniel Day-Lewis won his first Oscar for My Left Foot, with a tour-de-force performance that almost guaranteed him the award. As Christy Brown, limited by cerebral palsy to the creative and expressive use of only his left foot, he struggles for the kind of acceptance by the outer world that he finds in his large working-class Irish family, finding it finally through painting and writing. It's the kind of film that's usually called "inspiring," but Day-Lewis makes it clear that Brown was something of a handful to deal with -- a human figure, not an object of sentimental concern or pity. It's easy to overlook, in all the attention given to Day-Lewis, the performance of Hugh O'Conor as the young Christy.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman, 2018)

Cast: voices of Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Brian Tyree Henry, Lily Tomlin, Luna Lauren Velez, Zoë Kravitz, John Mulaney, Kimiko Glenn, Nicolas Cage, Kathryn Hahn, Liev Schreiber, Chris Pine. Screenplay: Phil Lord, Rodney Rothman. Production design: Justin K. Thompson. Film editing: Robert Fisher Jr. Music: Daniel Pemberton.

The theory in physics that there are multiple universes has also entered the realm of works derived from the imagination. So far, it's largely used in talking about science fiction and comic books -- that is, we haven't yet begun to talk about the Shakespeareverse, the Dickensverse, or the Faulknerverse, among other potential realms of fiction -- but it's now commonplace to refer to shared fictional universes like the "Marvel Universe" or DC's "Arrowverse," in which all the various comics, TV shows, and movies are assumed to coexist. Hence the emergence of a "Spider-Verse" in the Oscar-winning animated movie in which various avatars of the webslinger created in 1962 by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko appear together. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a colorful, hyperactive movie that may cause some of us not steeped in the lore of comic books confusion and headaches. But it's pulled off with a good deal of verve and wit.

Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997)

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, William H. Macy, Heather Graham, Don Cheadle, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzmán, Joanna Gleason, Ricky Jay, Philip Baker Hall, Alfred Molina, Thomas Jane, Michael Penn. Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson. Cinematography: Robert Elswit. Production design: Bob Ziembicki. Film editing: Dylan Tichenor. Music: Michael Penn.

Paul Thomas Anderson's breakthrough film is a reworking at feature length of a short film he made in 1988, and it has the earmarks of what was to come from him as writer-director: complex narratives with large casts, featuring some of the same actors from film to film. It also launched Mark Wahlberg out of his career as a rapper and underwear model into success as a film actor and producer. Wahlberg plays a naïve layabout who gets into the porn business under the screen name Dirk Diggler. He is mentored by the filmmaker Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) and by the actress Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), who acts as a kind of den mother for the various porn stars under Horner's aegis. The camaraderie of this little company is tested by the passage of time, as the feel-good 1970s turn into the anxious 1980s.

I Married a Witch (René Clair, 1942)

Cast: Fredric March, Veronica Lake, Robert Benchley, Cecil Kellaway, Susan Hayward, Elizabeth Patterson, Robert Warwick. Screenplay: Robert Pirosh, Marc Connelly, based on a novel by Thorne Smith and Norman Matson. Cinematography: Ted Tetzlaff. Art direction: Hans Dreier, Ernst Fegté. Film editing: Eda Warren. Music: Roy Webb.

This somewhat over-frantic supernatural romantic comedy was the product of much friction during its preparation and filming, and it shows. At various points, Preston Sturges (as producer), Dalton Trumbo (as screenwriter), and Joel McCrea (as the male lead) were involved with it and left because of conflicts with director René Clair and actress Veronica Lake (who also fought with Fredric March after he took over the lead from McCrea, who had hated working with her a year earlier on Sturges's Sullivan's Travels). The premise is that two witches, Jennifer (Lake) and her father, Daniel (Cecil Kellaway), burned at the stake in 17th century Salem, have returned from the dead to haunt the descendant of the man who had them burned. He happens to be a gubernatorial candidate in Massachusetts, Wallace Wooley (March), who is also on the verge of marrying a shrewish snob played by Susan Hayward. Daniel casts a spell to give Jennifer a mortal form, whereupon she puts an end to the wedding but also falls in love with Wallace. Complications ensue in a brittle and occasionally rather cruel comedy in which no one either in front of or behind the camera seems to be working at top form.

The Virginian (Victor Fleming, 1929)

Mary Brian and Gary Cooper in The Virginian (Victor Fleming, 1929)

Cast: Gary Cooper, Walter Huston, Mary Brian, Richard Arlen, Helen Ware, Chester Conklin, Eugene Pallette, Victor Potel, E.H. Calvert. Screenplay: Howard Estabrook, Grover Jones, Keene Thompson, Edward E. Paramore Jr., based on a novel by Owen Wister and the play adapted from it by Wister and Keene Thompson. Cinematography: J. Roy Hunt, Edward Cronjager. Film editing: William Shea. Music: Karl Hajos.

This early talkie is most famous for the response of the Virginian (Gary Cooper) to an insult from Trampas (Walter Huston): "If you wanna call me that, smile," and for the crisis that comes when the Virginian (the only name by which he is known, at least in the film) is forced to hang his best friend, Steve (Richard Arlen), who falls in with Trampas's gang of cattle rustlers. But much of it is taken up with the on-again, off-again romance of the Virginian and the new shoolmarm, Molly (Mary Brian). Owen Wister's 1901 novel and subsequent stage play were so popular that it had been filmed twice as a silent, and this version established Cooper as a major star and a Western icon. It also spawned a 1960s TV series.