Cleopatra (Charles L. Gaskill, 1912)

Cleopatra (Charles L. Gaskill, 1912)

Cast: Helen Gardner, Charles Sindelar, Mr. Howard, Pearl Sindelar, Miss Fielding, Miss Robson, Helene Costello, James R. Waite, Mr. Osborne, Harry Knowles, Mr. Paul, Mr. Brady, Mr. Corker. Screenplay: Charles L. Gaskill, based on a play by Victorien Sardou. Cinematography: Lucien Tainguy. Art direction: Arthur Courbault. Film editing: Helen Gardner.

D.W. Giffith's The Birth of a Nation is, judged by its racism, an odious film, but to appreciate why it's also a cinematic landmark you have to see films like the 1912 Cleopatra, produced by its star, Helen Gardner. Although Cleopatra tells its familiar story well, it never comes off the screen the way Griffith's did. Where The Birth of a Nation is fill of action and movement and suspenseful cutting, Cleopatra is static: When her ship arrives at Actium, it's a stage ship pulled into frame from stage left, and when it departs it moves off stage right. There is a rudimentary attempt at montage late in the film to serve as an account of the defeat of Mark Antony by Octavius, but for the most part Cleopatra is a series of tableaus in which the actors gather in cramped compositions around its star. Gardner was in her late 20s when the film was made, but she's a rather matronly Cleopatra, owing in part to the costumes that fail to provide her with a waist. She brings a set of stock gestures from her work on the stage, throwing her arms into the air to express every emotion from desire to dismay. Since most of their loving takes place without benefit of closeups, there's no chemistry to be found in her scenes with her handsome but wooden Antony, Charles Sindelar. Nevertheless, Cleopatra deserves to be regarded a landmark, too, as one of the first feature-length films made in America. Gardner was also a pioneer, apparently the first woman to form her own production company, thereby paving the way for stars like Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson.

Near Dark (Kathryn Bigelow, 1987)

Near Dark (Kathryn Bigelow, 1987)

Cast: Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein, Tim Thomerson, Joshua John Miller, Marcie Leeds. Screenplay: Kathryn Bigelow, Eric Red. Cinematography: Adam Greenberg. Production design: Stephen Altman. Film editing: Howard E. Smith. Music: Tangerine Dream.

I didn't think I ever wanted to see another vampire movie. And after No Country for Old Men (Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 2007) and Hell or High Water (David Mackenzie, 2016), I was feeling a little burned out on the neo-Western genre. So a film like Near Dark that combines both was a little out of my range of immediate interests. But Kathryn Bigelow's name drew me in, and it was also a chance to see a performance I had missed by one of my favorite actors, the late and very lamented Bill Paxton. I wasn't disappointed. Bigelow has a way of making even the most generic subjects interesting. She's a little like Hitchcock in her ability to keep you on edge and to create characters that make you root against your own interests. Her vampires are objectively a vicious, grungy lot, and yet you almost root for them when they're under siege, in danger of being forced into the lethal sunlight, just as you somehow sympathetically root for Hitchcock's villains like Norman Bates to get away with it. It's also a well-cast movie, with a young and very pretty Adrian Pasdar as the imperiled mortal, and Paxton doing his showboating best as the most flamboyant vampire. This was in a period when Bigelow was involved with James Cameron, so Paxton, Lance Henriksen, and Jenette Goldstein came over from the cast of his Aliens, released a year earlier and given a plug on a theater marquee in the background of one shot.

The Outlaw (Howard Hughes, 1943)

The Outlaw (Howard Hughes, 1943)

Cast: Jack Buetel, Jane Russell, Thomas Mitchell, Walter Huston, Mimi Aguglia, Joe Sawyer, Gene Rizzi. Screenplay: Jules Furthman. Cinematography: Gregg Toland. Art direction: Perry Ferguson. Film editing: Wallace Grissell. Music: Victor Young.

Any list of great bad movies that doesn't include The Outlaw is not to be trusted. Because it is certainly bad, with a callow performance by Jack Buetel as Billy the Kid, a one-note (sultry pouting) performance by Jane Russell as Rio, and disappointing ones from old pros Thomas Mitchell and Walter Huston. It's ineptly directed by Howard Hughes, with awkward blocking and an abundance of scenes that don't go much of anywhere. It was weakened by Hughes's battles with the censors over Russell's cleavage and over the sexual innuendos -- an inept explanation that Rio and Billy were married while he was in a coma serves to legitimate the fact that they are sleeping together after he revives. It also implies that Billy rapes Rio, but she falls in love with him anyway. It's laden with a gay subtext, suggesting that Pat Garrett and Doc Holliday are in love with Billy -- and with each other. It's full of Western clichés and one of the corniest music tracks ever provided by a major film composer: Victor Young shamelessly borrows a theme from Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 as a love motif for Rio and Billy, falls back on "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie" at dramatic moments, and "mickey mouses" a lot of the action, including bassoons and "wah-wah" sounds from the trumpets to punch up comic moments. And yet, it's kind of a great bad movie for all of these reasons, and because it reflects its producer-director's megalomania, resulting in countless stories about his behind-the-scenes manipulation, his hyped-up "talent search" for stars that produced Russell (who became one) and Buetel (who didn't), and most famously, his use of his engineering talents to construct a brassiere for Russell that would perk up her breasts the way he wanted. (Russell apparently found it so uncomfortable that she secretly ditched it and adjusted her own bra to his specifications.)

The Third Murder (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2017)

The Third Murder (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2017)

Cast: Masaharu Fukuyama, Koji Yakusho, Shinnosuke Mitsushima, Mikako Ichikawa, Izumi Matsuoka, Suzu Hirose, Isao Hashizume. Screenplay: Hirokazu Koreeda. Cinematography: Mikiya Takimoto. Production design: Yohei Taneda. Film editing: Hirokazu Koreeda. Music: Ludovico Einaudi.

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." Oscar Wilde's pronouncement could stand as an epigraph for The Third Murder, which could be just a murder mystery in which the defense attorney, Shigemori, serves as detective as well, but tries to make serious points about the relationship between truth and justice. Shigemori is faced with defending Misumi, who has apparently committed his third murder. Moreover, his trial for the first two, a double murder, was presided over by Shigemori's father, who now feels that he was too lenient in not sentencing Misumi to death that time. Shigemori's defense of Misumi is also complicated by the fact that Misumi confessed to the killing. So it seems that the best Shigemori can do is to try to get the man sentenced to life imprisonment instead of death. Things begin to get complicated when Shigemori encounters Sakie, the daughter of Misumi's victim, at the site of the murder. She is the same age, 14, as Shigemori's own daughter, from whom he has been separated by divorce and by his addiction to his work. The growing relationship between lawyer and client is visually manifested in the gradual merging of their two faces, which are reflected in the glass panel that separates them in their conferences at the prison. Shigemori is drawn much deeper into the case than he expected, and the film becomes laden (if not overburdened) with revelations about why Misumi murdered Sakie's father -- if in fact he did. It's an absorbing story, even if it doesn't quite fulfill its intellectual and moral ambitions, and the film is strengthened by beautifully subtle performances by Masaharu Fukuyama as Shigemori and Koji Yakusho as Misumi.

The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)

The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)

Cast: Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood, Cecil Parker, Michael Gough, Ernest Thesiger, Howard Marion-Crawford, Henry Morrison, Vida Hope. Screenplay: Roger MacDougall, John Dighton, Alexander Mackendrick. Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe. Art direction: Jim Morahan. Film editing: Bernard Gribble.
Music: Benjamin Frankel.

When I first saw The Man in the White Suit many years ago, I thought it was a satire on the short-sightedness of those who resist scientific and technological progress. But now, after having worked in an industry threatened with obsolescence by technology, I have much greater sympathy for the film's ostensible villains, capital and labor, who try to suppress the innovation discovered by Alec Guinness's Sidney Stratton. He develops a "miracle fabric" that repels dirt and is seemingly indestructible. At first, the idea is welcomed by textile manufacturers who hope to obliterate the competition with the product. But it doesn't take long for the manufacturers to realize that an indestructible fabric would eventually put them out of business. At the same time, the labor unions realize that it would also put them out of work. It's not hard to see the parallels to our own experiences after the revolution brought about by computer technology, but in 1951 that was nothing more than a glimmer in the eyes of the fathers of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. So be careful about what's funny today. It may be your nightmare tomorrow.