The Cassandra Cat (Vojtech Jasný, 1963)

Cast: Jan Werich, Emília Vášáryová, Vlastimil Brodský, Jiří Sovák, Vladimír Menšík, Jiřina Bohdalová, Karel Effa, Vlasta Chramostová, Alena Kreuzmannová. Screenplay: Jirí Brdecka, Vojtech Jasný, Jan Werich. Cinematography: Jaroslav Kucera. Production design: Oldrich Bosák. Film editing: Jan Chaloupek. Music: Svatopluk Havelka. 

Sometimes you have to wonder how a movie came about. I mean, how did the premise underlying The Cassandra Cat --  a cat whose gaze makes people change colors, revealing their true selves -- emerge? It surely didn't come from spitballing in a story conference. Was it from someone nibbling on a funky mushroom while foraging in the Bohemian forest? And even granted that premise, how did it become the basis for a fable about hidebound authority stifling the creative imagination? Actually, that latter is pretty much standard for Eastern European filmmakers under Soviet rule, finding any way to poke at the oppressors without waking the censors. Whatever the origins, the resulting film is a sprightly creation, featuring an astonishingly docile cat. I mean, if anyone tried to put sunglasses on one of my cats, or trundle them about a village square with a gang of children, I'm sure the results would have been unpleasant. Still, The Cassandra Cat makes me wish the story had been turned over to one of the Czech masters of animation like Karel Zeman or Jiří Trnka rather than made into a live action film. The special effects in the movie are just clunky enough to be distracting, especially if your tolerance for the kind of whimsy prevalent in the film is low.   

Broken English (Zoe R. Cassavetes, 2007)

Gena Rowlands and Parker Posey in Broken English

Cast: Parker Posey, Melvil Poupaud, Drea de Matteo, Justin Theroux, Gena Rowlands, Peter Bogdanovich, Tim Guinee, Roy Thinnes, Dana Ivey, Bernadette Lafont, Thierry Hancisse. Screenplay: Zoe R. Cassavetes. Cinematography: John Pirozzi. Production design: Happy Massee. Film editing: Andrew Weisblum. Music: Scratch Massive. 

The ending of Broken English is a direct copy, down to the dialogue, of the ending of Richard Linklater's Before Sunset (2004), a movie about a fractured relationship that finds a satisfactory resolution. This similarity can only be an homage, but it shows up the comparative lack of originality in Zoe R. Cassavetes' film. In fact, the copy is so blatant, and the plotline of Broken English is so familiar that I hope Cassavetes' intention was to parody romantic comedies, especially those about young women who have trouble finding satisfactory men. Unfortunately, the parody doesn't go far enough to relieve the sense I have of a movie gone flat. Parker Posey plays Nora Wilder, a young woman with a good job who is anxious about her future without a steady relationship with a man. She has a failed fling with an actor (Justin Theroux) that leaves her more in the dumps, but then she meets a lanky, easy-going Frenchman (Melvil Poupaud) who manages to overcome her anxieties and defense mechanisms. But then he returns to France, leaving his cell number with her. It's a fine cast: Posey displays her exceptional gift for edgy humor and Drea de Matteo fits nicely into the familiar role of the best friend and confidante. The invaluable Gena Rowlands rises above her role as the stereotypical mother who wants her to get married. And Poupaud, smoking like a chimney, is a steady foil for Nora's jitteryness. But by the time the movie gets Nora to Paris and the city casts its patented romantic spell over things, including a stereotypical older Frenchman (Thierry Hancisse) who imparts his worldly wisdom, we get the feeling we've seen it all before.   

Threads (Mick Jackson, 1984)

Cast: Karen Meagher, Reece Dinsdale, David Brierly, Rita May, Nicholas Lane, Jane Hazlegrove, Henry Moxon, June Broughton, Sylvia Stoker, Harry Beeton, Ruth Holden, Ashley Barker, Michael O'Hagan, Phil Vaughan (voice). Screenplay: Barry Hines. Cinematography: Andrew Dunn, Paul Morris. Production design: Christopher Robilliard. Film editing: Donna Bickerstaff, Jim Latham. 

Was it because it was a "made-for-TV movie," a label that was once a byword for mediocrity, that I never saw Threads before now? Or was it that I knew what it was about and didn't need to put myself through watching a film that existed to tell me something I already knew: that nuclear war would be unspeakably horrible? But knowing is one thing and seeing is another. Threads is propaganda of the best kind, designed to disseminate truth rather than opinion. Its visceral but wholly credible horrors make criticism impotent, even though as a creative work it's not immune to criticism: There is some clunky dialogue; the narrative voiceover is awkwardly inserted and sometimes sententious; the evocation of a nativity scene near the end is too obvious. But the performances of the unknown actors, the skillful editing of stock footage into vividly staged scenes, and the unrestrained depiction of human suffering and degradation add up to a punch to the gut. Threads is a movie that has to be seen, or ought to be at least by anyone who holds a political or military position and needs to be have what it's trying to tell us engraved on their consciences. And that boils down to a demonstration of something often attributed to, of all people, Nikita Khrushchev: that in the aftermath of a nuclear war, the living would envy the dead.    

Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (Yasujiro Ozu, 1941)

Shin Saburi and Mieko Takamine in Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family

Cast: Mieko Takamine, Shin Saburi, Hideo Fujino, Ayako Katsuragi, Mitsuko Yoshikawa, Chishu Ryu, Masao Hayama, Tatsuo Saito, Kuniko Miyake, Michiko Kuwano. Screenplay: Tadao Ikeda, Yasujiro Ozu. Cinematography: Yuharu Atsuta. Art direction: Tatsuo Hamada. Film editing: Yoshiyasu Hamamura. Music: Senji Ito. 

Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family is an insular work like the novels of Jane Austen, which were written during the upheavals in Europe during the Napoleonic wars. Austen created her own world of domestic conflict while ignoring the larger world's conflicts, alluding to them only with incidental characters like the soldiers who delight the younger Bennet girls in Pride and Prejudice or the naval officers who appear in Persuasion. Similarly, Ozu creates a little island of family in the midst of Tokyo, and does so in the fateful year of 1941, when Japan's imperial ambitions would finally bring the United States and its allies into global war. The film focuses on family tensions following the death of the patriarch, Shintaro (Hideo Fujino), which reveals his bankruptcy and forces his widow (Ayako Katsuragi) and unmarried daughter Setsuko (Mieko Takamine) to depend on the other family members. The difficulties of living with Setsuko's siblings and in-laws form the plot of the film, until finally the two women go to live in a rundown family property by the sea. Meanwhile, the unmarried brother, Shojiro (Shin Saburi), is off running a business in the city of Tianjin, in China. When he returns for the anniversary of his father's death, Shojiro, who has always been somewhat at odds with his siblings, excoriates them for their neglect of their mother and sister, and invites the two women to come with him to China. There's a brief comic episode in which Shijoro arranges a marriage for Setsuko and she does likewise for him -- though the film ends with Shojiro shyly avoiding an encounter with the bride-to-be. What makes the insularity of Ozu's film so poignant is that Tianjin had been acquired by Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, and Japan ordered troops from Great Britain to leave in 1940 and followed with an expulsion of American Marines stationed there in November 1941, just weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was clearly not a peaceful place to do business, let alone to bring one's wife and mother to. Censorship would have forbidden Ozu from acknowledging any of this, but history has a way of imposing irony where none would have been intended.  

Altered States (Ken Russell, 1980)

William Hurt in Altered States

Cast: William Hurt, Blair Brown, Bob Balaban, Charles Haid, Thaao Penghlis, Miguel Godreau, Dori Brenner, Peter Brandon, Charles White-Eagle, Drew Barrymore, Megan Jeffers. Screenplay: Paddy Chayefsky, based on his novel. Cinematography: Jordan Cronenweth. Production design: Richard Macdonald. Film editing: Eric Jenkins. Music: John Corigliano. 

In theory, choosing Ken Russell to direct Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay based on his novel, an updating of Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to the psychedelic era, had some potential. Russell is known for his flamboyant visuals and Chayefsky for his talky screenplays like the Oscar-winning Marty (Delbert Mann, 1955), The Hospital (Arthur Hiller, 1971), and Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976). Perhaps the visuals would moderate the verbosity, or vice versa. Unfortunately, Altered States wound up something of a mess -- a watchable mess, but still not a satisfying film. Chayefsky was so upset with the movie he took his name off the credits and substituted a pseudonym, Sidney Aaron. But the problem is inherent in the premise: that a potion can alter not only the mental state of the person who takes it but also the physical state -- that matter itself, the human body, can be changed by drinking a mixture of blood and hallucinogenic mushrooms. It's the stuff of fairy tales, not science. So when Dr. Jessup (William Hurt in his film debut), a respected physician researching the causes of schizophrenia, drinks the concoction, he reverts to his primordial self: a small, aggressive carnivorous simian. Good enough for a horror-movie setup, but not quite what Chayefsky had in mind when he wrote lines like these: "It is the Self, the individual mind, that contains immortality and ultimate truth....  Ever since we dispensed with God we've got nothing but ourselves to explain this meaningless horror of life." Chayefsky's existential conundrums go missing in a welter of special effects. And ultimately, the film collapses in bathos, with a plot resolution in which love conquers all after Jessup's experiments go calamitously awry. Hurt and Blair Brown as Jessup's wife do what they can with the material, giving controlled performances, but Russell, that connoisseur of excess, lets Charles Haid overplay his role as Dr. Parrish, the supposed skeptic about Jessup's research who seems like a nutcase himself.   

Personal Velocity: Three Portraits (Rebecca Miller, 2002)

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The Swimmer (Frank Perry, 1968)

Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer

Cast: Burt Lancaster, Janet Langford, Janice Rule, Joan Rivers, Tony Bickley, Marge Champion, Kim Hunter, Bill Fiore, Rose Gregorio, Charles Drake, House Jameson, Nancy Cushman, Bernie Hamilton. Screenplay: Eleanor Perry, based on a short story by John Cheever. Cinematography: David L. Quaid. Art direction: Peter Dohanos. Film editing: Sidney Katz, Carl Lerner, Pat Somerset. Music: Marvin Hamlisch.

The Swimmer evokes that common anxiety dream in which you're naked or in your underwear in a familiar place like work or school. The people around you don't seem to notice, but you suspect that they're secretly laughing at you. The dream is produced, of course, by something that you don't want other people to know about you. Ned Merrill (Burt Lancaster) isn't naked, but he's exposed, wearing swim trunks and barefoot, when we first see him walking through the woods. He comes upon a group of his neighbors gathered around their swimming pool. They greet him heartily, commenting on how long it's been since they got together, serving drinks and making small talk. Ned suddenly has an idea: All of his neighbors have pools. Why couldn't he swim his way home, moving from pool to pool until he reaches his destination? The group cheers him on. Ned is an athletic middle-aged man (Lancaster was in his mid-50s when the film was made, but looked perhaps ten years younger), and the day is sunny and warm. But as he continues his pool-hopping, he injures himself slightly and the day gets darker and chillier, and so does the reception of the pool-owners he encounters. We begin to discover that Ned is in financial trouble and that the marriage he initially portrayed as happy has fallen apart. The John Cheever story on which the film is based is often read as a fable about suburban hypocrisy and male anxiety, and the movie supports those and other interpretations. Lancaster is perfect casting, not only because of his physical fitness but also because of the signs of aging that the camera inevitably reveals -- camera angles, for example, sometimes show the thinning of the hair at the crown of his head. But the film version lacks the Everyman quality of Cheever's story, missing some of the shock of recognition by the reader, an inevitability in its translation to a visual medium. It also ran into some trouble with producer Sam Spiegel, who had many scenes recast and reshot, firing director Frank Perry and replacing him with Sydney Pollack. It was not a success at the box office, being a little too oblique for audiences and some critics, but it has gained stature with time. 

Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese, 2023)

Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Cara Jade Myers, Jenae Collins, Jillian Dion, Jason Isbell, William Belleau, Louis Cancelmi, Scott Shepherd, Everett Waller, Talee Redcorn, Yancey Red Corn, Tatanka Means. Screenplay: Eric Roth, Martin Scorsese, based on a book by David Gran. Cinematography: Rodrigo Prieto. Production design: Jack Fisk. Film editing: Thelma Schoonmaker. Music: Robbie Robertson.

Like everyone who knows anything about movies, I admire Martin Scorsese. He's an acknowledged master storyteller, able to elicit fine performances and to find just the way to place and move the camera. But why does Killers of the Flower Moon, like so many of his films, leave me cold? The treatment of the indigenous people of this country will always be an urgent American subject, and Scorsese has found a story with vivid characters, both about the exploited and the exploiters. The film has sweep and texture, which is exactly what it needs. But the moment Leonardo DiCaprio appeared on screen, looking puffy and thick-headed in contrast to his usual bright, handsome persona, turning his mouth down at the corners so he looks a little like Robert De Niro, who plays his uncle, I felt something was off. He gives a good performance as the somewhat slow Ernest Burkhart, who is roped by his uncle William Hale into a scheme to defraud the newly oil-rich members of the Osage tribe of their money. But that's what it is: a performance. And when Jesse Plemons comes on screen as the federal agent investigating the scheme, I knew what was wrong: DiCaprio was originally slated to play the fed, which would have been consistent with his acting persona, but he asked Scorsese if he could play Burkhart instead, knowing that it was the more complex role. Scorsese yielded to the star who has been the lead in six of his films, starting with Gangs of New York (2002). So instead of feeling the urgency of the story, I felt I was watching an actor try out something new. Would Killers of the Flower Moon have been a better movie if, say, DiCaprio took the intended role and let Plemons play Burkhart, casting that would have been a better fit? I don't know, because the other thing about the movie that bothers me is more fundamental: It's a story told from the white man's point of view. All of the bad guys in the film are fully characterized, but of the Osage characters, only Mollie (Lily Gladstone), whose marriage to Burkhart sets the plot in motion, comes alive as a real person, thanks in large part to Gladstone's fine performance but also to Scorsese for giving the role substance. I kept wanting the Osages to break out of movie stereotypes of Native Americans -- the way, for example, the characters in the great TV series Reservoir Dogs did. Instead we get the usual victimization and swoony nature mysticism that afflict even well-meaning films dealing with indigenous people. Killers of the Flower Moon is often a very good movie, but something is lacking at its core.      

Blast of Silence (Allen Baron, 1961)

Allen Baron in Blast of Silence 

Cast: Allen Baron, Mollie McCarthy, Larry Tucker, Peter Clune, Danny Meehan, Howard Mann, Lionel Stander (voice). Screenplay: Allen Baron, Waldo Salt (voiceover narration). Cinematography: Merrill S. Brody. Art direction: Charles Rosen. Film editing: Merrill S. Brody, Peggy Lawson. Music: Meyer Kupferman. 

A very late film noir, Blast of Silence strips the genre to its bleak essence. A hitman (Allen Baron) comes to New York at Christmastime to whack a guy, falls in love, carries out his job, and pays the consequences for his decision that this would be his last hit. Made on a shoestring with equipment that had been smuggled out of Cuba after Baron appeared in Errol Flynn's last movie, Cuban Rebel Girls (Barry Mahon, 1959), it's a tightly assembled sleeper of a movie that wonderfully milks its New York location and ends with a memorable scene shot on Long Island during Hurricane Donna. Baron had wanted his friend Peter Falk to play the melancholy gunman, but took over the role himself when Falk was unavailable. It's a great one-off of a performance: Baron has no other acting credits besides this one and the Flynn movie, and his directing credits were mostly in TV on shows ranging from Surfside 6 to The Love Boat. The atmosphere of New York in the late 1950s and early '60s is wonderfully captured: That beatnik-era accoutrement the bongo drum makes its appearance at a party and again as the accompaniment to some mopey ballads with titles like "Dressed in Black" and "Torrid Town," sung by Dean Sheldon at the Village Gate nightclub. A voiceover narrative, written by Waldo Salt under his nom de blacklist "Mel Davenport" and read by uncredited fellow blacklistee Lionel Stander, was added after the film was assembled to cover some expository gaps. It's more effective than most voiceovers are at setting the mood and tone of the film, although I find it occasionally too portentous.  

How to Get Ahead in Advertising (Bruce Robinson, 1989)

Richard E. Grant in How to Get Ahead in Advertising

Cast: Richard E. Grant, Rachel Ward, Richard Wilson, Jacqueline Tong, John Shrapnel, Susan Wooldridge. Screenplay: Bruce Robinson. Cinematography: Peter Hannan. Production design: Michael Pickwoad. Film editing: Alan Strachan. Music: David Dundas, Rick Wentworth. 

The satire in How to Get Ahead in Advertising is as obvious as the pun in its title. Denis Bagley (Richard E. Grant), a Type A advertising executive, has a breakdown under the stress of coming up with a campaign for an acne medicine. He suddenly realizes the venality of his profession: trying to sell things to people that they don't need and which probably don't work. He quits his job and in a fit of manic behavior almost destroys his house. What's more, he develops a boil on his neck, and in a few days the boil comes to a head -- quite literally -- and begins to talk to him, muttering the advertising slogans and clichés he is determined to put behind him. His distressed wife, Julia (Rachel Ward), tries to help him and sends him to a psychiatrist (John Shrapnel), but things only get worse when a medical accident turns the second head into the primary one. Borrowing from "body horror" movies, Bruce Robinson's screenplay sets up a promising situation, but doesn't have a way of resolving it successfully. Only Grant's terrifically frantic performance, as both Denis and his pustular alter ego, keeps the film going, but the hilarity feels a bit strained toward the end.