Piaffe (Ann Oren, 2022)

Cast: Simone Bucio, Sebastian Rudolph, Simon Jaikiriuma Paetau, Björn Melhus, Lea Draeger. Screenplay: Thais Guisasola, Ann Oren. Cinematography: Carlos Vasquez. Production design: Ilaria Di Carlo. Film editing: Ann Oren, Haim Tabakman.  

Victims of Sin (Emilio Fernández, 1951)

Cast: Ninón Sevilla, Tito Junco, Rodolfo Acosta, Rita Montaner, Ismael Pérez, Margarita Ceballos, Arturo Soto Rangel, Francisco Reiguera, Lupe Carilles, Jorge Treviño, Pedro Vargas. Screenplay: Emilio Fernández, Mauricio Magdalena. Cinematography: Gabriel Figueroa. Production design: Manuel Fontanals. Film editing: Gloria Schoemann. Music: Antonio Díaz Conde.  

Melvin Goes to Dinner (Bob Odenkirk, 2003)

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Cast: Michael Blieden, Stephanie Courtney, Matt Price, Annabelle Gurwitch, Kathleen Roll, Maura Tierney, Jenna Fischer, Fred Armisen, David Cross, Bob Odenkirk, Scott Adsit, Jack Black. Screenplay: Michael Blieden, based on his play. Cinematography: Alex Vendler. Production design: Michael Krantz. Film editing: Michael Blieden. Music: Michael Penn. 

Shopworn (Nick Grinde, 1932)

Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Regis Toomey, Clara Blandick, Zasu Pitts, Lucien Littlefield, LeRoy Mason, Oscar Apfel, Maude Turner Gordon, Albert Conti, James Durkin. Screenplay: Sarah Y. Mason, Jo Swerling, Robert Riskin. Cinematography: Joseph Walker. Film editing: Gene Havlick. 

Polyester (John Waters, 1981)

Cast: Divine, Tab Hunter, Edith Massey, David Samson, Mary Garlington, Ken King, Mink Stole, Joni Ruth White, Hans Kramm, Stiv Bators, Rick Breitenfeld. Screenplay: John Waters. Cinematography: Dave Insley. Art direction: Vincent Peranio. Film editing: Charles Roggero. Music: Michael Kamen. 

Not a Pretty Picture (Martha Coolidge, 1976)

Cast: Michele Manenti, Martha Coolidge, James Carrington, Anne Mundstuk, Reed Birney, John Fedinatz, Diana Gold, Stephen Launer, Lilah McCarthy, Janet Morrison, Melissa Murdock, Hal Studer, Amy Wright. Screenplay: Martha Coolidge. Cinematography: Don Lenzer, Fred Murphy. Film editing: Martha Coolidge, Suzanne Pettit. Music: Tom Griffith. 

Girlfight (Karyn Kusama, 2000)

Michelle Rodriguez in Girlfight

Cast: Michelle Rodriguez, Jamie Tirelli, Paul Calderon, Douglas Santiago, Ray Santiago, Victor Sierra, Elisa Bocanegra, Shannon Walker Williams. Screenplay: Karyn Kusama. Cinematography: Patrick Cady. Production design: Stephen Beatrice. Film editing: Plummy Tucker. Music: Gene McDaniels, Theodore Shapiro. 

An attractive cast and intelligent camerawork and editing help make Girlfight watchable even for someone who dislikes boxing and finds sport movies boringly predictable. And yes, Girlfight is predictable. The protagonist is Diana Guzman (Michelle Rodriguez), who lives in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood with her father, Sandro (Paul Calderon), and brother, Tiny (Ray Santiago). Sandro is a macho bully whom Diana suspects of abusing her mother, who committed suicide. He takes little interest in her, putting his hopes on Tiny, whom he forces to train as a boxer, even though Tiny really wants to be an artist. After getting in trouble for fighting at school, Diana thinks that she might want to try to learn to box, too, so she persuades her brother's coach, Hector (Jamie Tirelli), to coach her. When she turns out to be good at it, Hector sets her up with a sparring partner, a guy named Adrian (Douglas Santiago), who wants to be a professional boxer. And of course Diana and Adrian fall in love, which presents a problem when through a series of plot contrivances they find themselves fighting each other in an important amateur competition. With the help of solid performances, writer-director Karyn Kusama makes all of this more interesting than it sounds in summary. That she named a character Adrian and has someone comment that it's usually a girl's name shows that she knows her sports movies and doesn't mind the comparisons. 

The Love Witch (Anna Biller, 2015)

Samantha Robinson and Gian Keys in The Love Witch

Laura Waddell and Samantha Robinson in The Love Witch

Cast: Samantha Robinson, Gian Keys, Laura Waddell, Jeffrey Vincent Parise, Jared Sanford, Robert Seeley, Jennifer Ingrum, Randy Evans, Clive Ashborn, Lily Holliman, Jennifer Couch, Stephen Wozniak. Screenplay: Anna Biller. Cinematography: M. David Mullen. Production design: Anna Biller. Film editing: Anna Biller. Music: Anna Biller. 

Anna Biller's The Love Witch is regarded as a feminist spoof or hommage to horror movies of the 1960s, but it's so uncannily straight-faced and precise in its recapturing of their style and mood that it's hard to tell that you're watching a movie made in the 21st century. It mimics the sources' wooden acting and leaden dialogue -- characters often address one another by name: "What do you think, Steve?" "I don't know, Griff!" It needles their male-gaze attitude toward women and recaptures their often flamboyant Technicolor sets and costumes: There's a scene at a celebration of the summer solstice with luscious primary colors not often seen outside of a candy shop or an MGM musical. It throws in some casual frontal nudity to remind us that the style lingered into the more permissive 1970s. Samantha Robinson plays Elaine, a beautiful, chain-smoking witch who comes to a California town in search of love and makes life first grand and then miserable for college professor Wayne (Jeffrey Vincent Parise), her friend Trish's (Laura Waddell) husband, Richard (Robert Seeley), and local police officer Griff (Gian Keys). Biller wrote, directed, edited, designed the sets and costumes, and even composed some of the music that isn't borrowed from Ennio Morricone's scores for Italian horror movies of the 1970s. The Love Witch probably works best if you're steeped in the source material, but it's undeniably watchable.  

Conclave (Edward Berger, 2024)

Ralph Fiennes in Conclave

Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini, Lucian Msamati, Sergio Castellito, Carlos Diehz. Screenplay: Peter Straughan, based on a novel by Robert Harris. Cinematography: Stéphane Fontaine. Production design: Suzie Davies. Film editing: Nick Emerson. Music: Volker Bertelmann. 

Conclave is an intelligently written, superbly acted film that has "Oscar contender" written all over it. Which also means that it has that middlebrow earnestness that dooms many good movies to temporary fame: just good enough to enjoy a period of enthusiasm and then be forgotten. It resorts to a few easy tricks to make the audience think they've seen something worthwhile, chiefly a denouement that happens only in the movies: a conflict settled by a Big Speech. It's a good Big Speech, full of irreproachable ideas, and the actor who gives it does so with admirably quiet conviction. But that it should so easily resolve a heated ideological conflict is scarcely credible. There's also a twist ending that does nothing but drag a contemporary issue into the concerns of an aging institution, and feels like the beginning of a story rather than the end of one. Still, if you want a movie that entertains by making you feel like you've seen something of substance, Conclave will do as well as any.  

The Light That Failed (William A. Wellman, 1939)

Ida Lupino and Ronald Colman in The Light That Failed

Cast: Ronald Colman, Walter Huston, Muriel Angelus, Ida Lupino, Dudley Digges, Ernest Cossart, Ferike Boros, Pedro de Cordoba, Colin Tapley, Ronald Sinclair, Sarita Wooton, Halliwell Hobbes. Screenplay: Robert Carson, based on a novel by Rudyard Kipling. Cinematography: Theodor Sparkuhl. Art direction: Hans Dreier, Robert Odell. Film editing: Thomas Scott. Music: Victor Young. 

Screenwriter Robert Carson and director William A. Wellman do an efficient job of condensing Rudyard Kipling's 1891 novel The Light That Failed, leaving in not only the source's colonialism and resentment at the commercialization of art but also the hints of a queer subtext. For like most writers who choose war and adventure as their subject, Kipling tended to focus more on male bonding than on heterosexual relationships. Dick Heldar (Ronald Colman) is an artist who shares lodgings with a war correspondent named Torpenow (Walter Huston); they met in Sudan, where Heldar was wounded while saving Torpenow's life. His paintings based on his wartime sketches earn Heldar some wealth and celebrity, but he wants to be a "real" artist. He meets a childhood friend, Maisie (Muriel Angelus), who is also an artist, but whose career had not taken off as Heldar's had done. They have a platonic relationship that Heldar is interested in developing into something more, but she goes back to her studies in Paris. One night, Torpenow finds a streetwalker named Bessie Broke (Ida Lupino) who collapsed from hunger on the street and brings her back to the flat. Bessie makes a play for Torpenow, offering to keep house for him, but Heldar nixes it, angering her. Still, she agrees to model for Heldar, who finds her face interesting. He paints a portrait that blends her expression with Maisie's face, and is convinced that it will make his reputation as a serious artist, but just as he completes it, he goes blind, a consequence of the wound he received in Sudan. Despite some strain at stuffing all of this exposition and its fateful consequences, along with somewhat eccentric character relationships, into a 99-minute movie, The Light That Failed is a solid melodrama and an early triumph for Lupino, who makes the most of a role she eagerly sought. Colman wanted Vivien Leigh to play Bessie and didn't get along at all with Wellman, so he reportedly displayed some pique during the filming.