Daughters of Darkness (Harry Kümel, 1971)

 

Cast: Delphine Seyrig, John Karlen, Danielle Ouimet, Andrea Rau, Paul Esser, Georges Jamin, Joris Collet, Fons Rademakers. Screenplay: Pierre Drouot, Harry Kümel. Cinematography: Eduard van der Enden. Art direction: Françoise Hardy. Film editing: Denis Bonan, August Verschueren. Music: François de Roubaix. 

Daughters of Darkness is a horror movie loaded with style, featuring Delphine Seyrig in what feels a bit like a camp sendup of her mysterious woman in Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961). It’s about a couple of newlyweds who come under the spell of a woman who claims to be the Countess Elizabeth Báthory, the 17th-century Hungarian serial killer whose story became a staple of vampire lore. Seyrig is a treat as the undead countess, slinking about in a variety of outfits that include a silver-lamé dress which cinematographer Eduard van der Enden films with a star filter to jazz up its dazzle. It’s all very creepy and over-the-top, but unfortunately, it also leans heavily on the old trope of queerness as decadence, a too-common feature of films from its era. The husband, Stefan (John Karlen), seems to be the boy toy of a man he calls “Mother,” which causes some tension with Valerie, his new wife (Danielle Ouimet), who keeps insisting that he call his mother to tell her that they’re coming for a visit. Stefan turns out to be a bit of a sadist, driving Valerie into the arms of the countess. Karlen seems to have landed the role of Stefan in part because he was already known from another vampire story, the TV series Dark Shadows. Today, he’s probably mostly remembered as Harvey, the husband of Tyne Daly’s Lacey, on the series Cagney & Lacey. 

Raya and the Last Dragon (Don Hall, Carlos López Estrada, Paul Briggs, John Ripa, 2021)

 

Voice cast: Kelly Marie Tran, Awkwafina, Izaac Wang, Gemma Chan, Daniel Dae Kim, Benedict Wong, Jona Xiao, Sandra Oh, Thalia Tran, Lucille Soong, Alan Tudyk. Screenplay: Qui Nguyen, Adele Lim. Cinematography: Rob Dressel. Production design: Helen Mingjue Chen, Paul A. Felix, Cory Loftis. Film editing: Fabienne Rawley, Shannon Stein. Music: James Newton Howard. 

Raya and the Last Dragon is an engagingly fantastic journey into a world that might be called “Asian-ish.” With its blend of elements from various Southeast Asian cultures it risks falling into the trap of Orientalism, but it’s too beautifully busy to be stamped with such a label. It succeeds because of its varied and often elegant visuals and also because of a gifted voice cast, with Awkwafina as the standout as the voice of the sometimes giddy, sometimes wise dragon Sisu. Where it doesn’t quite work is as a fable about trust, an always dicey virtue, the mention of which carries the echo of Ronald Reagan's “Trust but verify.”  

Poison (Todd Haynes, 1991)

 

 

Cast: Edith Meeks, Millie White, Buck Smith, Anne Giotta, Larry Maxwell, Susan Norman, Scott Renderer, James Lyons, John R. Lombardi. Screenplay: Todd Haynes, based on novels by Jean Genet. Cinematography: Maryse Alberti. Production design: Sarah Stollman. Film editing: Todd Haynes, James Lyons. Music: James Bennett. 

Parody is often the sincerest form of appreciation, especially in the sections of Poison  labeled (in the end credits) “Hero” and “Horror.” The former takes on the true-crime documentary to tell the story of a boy who kills his father and then disappears; the latter smartly adopts the look and feel of old black-and-white horror movies in its account of a scientist’s experiment gone awry. The third segment, “Homo,” is less parodic in nature, although it draws elements from prison movies to tell its story of an inmate’s obsession with another man whom he had known in a previous incarceration. If you’re used to the finesse Todd Haynes brings to his later films with big budgets and major stars, such as Far From Heaven (2002) and Carol (2015), the roughness of Poison may be a shock. But it’s still a compelling and often disturbing movie. 

Radio On (Christopher Petit, 1979)

 

Cast: David Beames, Lisa Kreuzer, Sandy Ratcliff, Andrew Byatt, Sue Jones-Davies, Sting, Sabina Michael, Katja Kersten, Paul Hollywood. Screenplay: Christopher Petit. Cinematography: Martin Schäfer. Art direction: Susannah Buxton. Film editing: Anthony Sloman.

The road movie is a modern version of the quest romance, tales whose protagonists set out in search of something and wind up discovering much about themselves and their world. The protagonist of Radio On is Robert, a radio disc jockey who sets out from London in his somewhat unreliable car on a journey to Bristol to find out the truth about his brother’s recent death. Along the way he encounters various people in various states of alienation, including a deserter from the British army, an aspiring musician, and a German woman whose husband has left her, taking their 5-year-old daughter with him to England. Robert’s trip is underscored by music on the radio, including such ‘70s artists as David Bowie, Kraftwerk, and Devo, but also by the news, which tells of a Britain plagued with labor problems and the unrest in Northern Ireland. The film owes much to the road movies of Wim Wenders, like Alice in the Cities (1974) and Kings of the Road (1976), which isn’t surprising, since Wenders is credited as an associate producer and Martin Schäfer, who was an assistant cameraman on those films, is the cinematographer for Radio On. The film is a melancholy treat for those willing to absorb the essence of a period when the world seemed to be coming apart at the seams. In the end, Robert abandons his quest and his car, taking the train back to London. As Pogo might put it, He has met the anomie and it is his.

I’m Your Man (Maria Schrader, 2021)

 

Cast: Maren Eggert, Dan Stevens, Sandra Hüller, Jürgen Tarrach, Karolin Oesterling, Marlene-Sophie Haagen, Victor Pape-Thies, Falilou Seck, Hans Löw, Inga Busch, Wolfgang Hübsch. Screenplay: Jan Schomburg, Maria Schrader, based on a story by Emma Braslavsky. Cinematography: Benedict Neuenfels. Production design: Cora Pratz. Film editing: Hansjörg Weißbrich. Music: Tobias Wagner. 

Leaving a hit TV show is not always a good career move – just ask David Caruso. But since he asked out of Downton Abbey, Dan Stevens has gone on to demonstrate that he’s one of the most versatile actors around. Still, I was surprised to find him speaking German – albeit with an English accent, as one character notes – throughout I’m Your Man. He plays an android with a kind of charm that turns from artificial to genuine as the story progresses. (The accent is explained as his programmer’s attempt to introduce a note of the foreign that German women find appealing.) The problem is that he’s an experimental model whose producers are testing on a volunteer: a middle-aged divorced anthropologist (Maren Eggert) who’s skeptical of their attempt to market a model life companion for lonely people. It’s a romcom setup, an odd coupling filled with awkward moments leading to an inevitable breakup and a just as inevitable reconciliation. But it works, largely because Stevens and Eggert are so skillful at the task. Stevens’s Tom has the wide-eyed naïveté and the somewhat birdlike movements of Star Trek’s Data, but he’s also able to project warmth and vulnerability. Eggert perfectly brings out Alma’s conflicted approach to the relationship, balancing skepticism with neediness.