Wildcat (Ethan Hawke, 2023)

Cast: Maya Hawke, Laura Linney, Philip Ettinger, Rafael Casal, David Towne, Cooper Hoffman, Steve Zahn, Nik Pajic, Willa Fitzgerald, Alessandro Nivola, Liam Neeson. Screenplay: Shelby Gaines, Ethan Hawke, based on stories by Flannery O'Connor. Cinematography: Steve Cosens. Production design: Sarah Young. Film editing: Barry Poltermann. Music: Latham Gaines, Shelby Gaines.

I wish there were more movies like Wildcat. Not that it's particularly good: Except for the acting, not much about it in conception and execution works very well. But it's made from the heart by someone with the status and income to see that it got made in an era when money (or lack of it) usually trumps love. It was born from Ethan Hawke's love for the stories of Flannery O'Connor, and maybe from the love for his daughter, Maya, who gives a fine performance as not only O'Connor but also some of the characters from her stories. It's this intermingling of O'Connor's life and fiction that proves to be the undoing of Wildcat, a brave idea undone by some bad ideas, like having Maya play a male character, Julian, in a section drawn from the story "Everything That Rises Must Converge." An unbilled cameo by Liam Neeson as a priest also stands out as a too-showy moment. But bravo to the Hawkes for a worthy effort. 

Flow (Gints Zilbalodis, 2024)

Screenplay: Gints Zilbalodis, Matiss Kaza, Ron Dyens. Cinematography: Gints Zilbalodis. Art direction: Gints Zilbalodis. Film editing: Gints Zilbalodis. Music: Rihards Zalupe, Gints Zilbalodis. 

Lovely, wordless animated fable about a small gray cat who survives a catastrophic flood with the aid of a dog, a capybara, a ring-tailed lemur, and a secretary bird. Clearly a labor of love for its Latvian writer-director-cinematographer-editor-composer Gints Zilbalodis. Its digital animation lacks the finesse of fur and feathers we're used to in slicker, more sophisticated movies from the established studio animation factories, but it makes up for it in imagination and heart. 

Down With Love (Peyton Reed, 2003)

Cast: Renée Zellweger, Ewan McGregor, Sarah Paulson, David Hyde Pierce, Rachel Dratch, Jack Plotnick, Tony Randall, John Aylward, John Munson, Matt Ross, Michael Ensign, Timothy Omundson, Jeri Ryan. Screenplay: Eve Ahlert, Dennis Drake. Cinematography: Jeff Cronenweth. Production design: Andrew Laws. Film editing: Larry Bock. Music: Marc Shaiman.

From its retro opening credits to its boy/girl gets girl/boy finale, Down With Love is a spot-on parody of 1960s rom-coms, specifically the Doris Day-Rock Hudson movies epitomized by Pillow Talk (Michael Gordon, 1959). Its aim is to spotlight modern attitudes toward sex, romance, and marriage by showing us the way we were only 40 years earlier -- which means, too, that the parody itself looks a little dated 20-some years after its release. Critics liked Down With Love, audiences not so much, perhaps because you had to be steeped in those '60s movies to fully appreciate some of its gags. Like the original films, it's full of double entendres, including the split-screen effect that in Pillow Talk had Doris and Rock on screen in their separate apartment bathtubs, so that at one point it looked like the two of them were playing footsie. Down With Love's verbal and visual double entendres are, naturally, much raunchier than Pillow Talk's, which now seem quaintly innocent. The parody goes on for too long,  so that some fatigue has set in by the time the film reaches its cleverest point, a denouement that consists of an extended speech delivered by Renée Zellweger's character that both recaps and upends everything we've seen. Zellweger and Ewan McGregor don't have the chemistry that Day and Hudson have, but it doesn't matter, because we're not supposed to take their attraction seriously. David Hyde Pierce gets the Tony Randall role in the film, the neurotic sidekick to McGregor's character, but an appearance by Randall himself in a cameo role unfortunately reveals how much better in the part he was. 

Crossing Delancey (Joan Micklin Silver, 1988)

Cast: Amy Irving, Peter Riegert, Jeroen Krabbé, Reizl Bozyk, Sylvia Miles, George Martin, John Bedford Lloyd, Claudia Silver, David Hyde Pierce, Rosemary Harris, Suzzy Roche, Amy Wright, Faye Grant. Screenplay: Susan Sandler, based on her play. Cinematography: Theo van de Sande. Production design: Dan Leigh. Film editing: Rick Shaine. Music: Paul Chihara. 

Crossing Delancey is a likable ethnic-flavored romantic comedy whose plot hinges on whether the protagonist (Amy Irving) will choose between a phony (Jeroen Krabbé) and a mensch (Peter Riegert). What do you think? As usual in films with a foregone conclusion, enjoyment depends on lively performances and amusing situations. There are many of the latter, including the reactions of people attending a bris and the pretensions of people at a literary soirée. Reizl Bozyk is the film's standout performer as the grandmother of the protagonist, Isabelle. This was the only screen role for Bozyk, a mainstay of the Yiddish theater, and she infuses the busybody Bubbe with warmth. Her desire to see her granddaughter married leads her to enlist a flamboyant matchmaker, somewhat overplayed by Sylvia Miles. Thus Isabelle, who works in a bookstore and might seem a better fit with the handsome novelist played by Krabbé, finds herself in the company of Sam, the pickle merchant played by Riegert. But even if he has to cover up the pickle smell by soaking his hands in milk and vanilla extract, Sam has more to recommend him than just being an eligible Jewish suitor. The worlds-colliding situations are a little obvious, and the theatrical origins of the film show, but director Joan Micklin Silver has a sure hand throughout the film. 

John Wick: Chapter 2 (Chad Stahelski, 2017)

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Riccardo Scamarcio, Ian McShane, Ruby Rose, Common, Claudia Gerini, Lance Reddick, Laurence Fishburne, Tobias Segal, John Leguizamo, Bridget Moynahan, Franco Nero, Peter Stormare. Screenplay: Derek Kolstad. Cinematography: Don Laustsen. Production design: Kevin Kavanaugh. Film editing: Evan Schiff. Music: Tyler Bates, Joel J. Richard. 

"You've got a beautiful house, John," the villain (Riccardo Scamarcio) says to the hero (Keanu Reeves), and we silently think the rest: "Too bad if something happened to it." It does, of course, and we are back in the world of John Wick. Grimly stoic as usual, the protagonist takes a licking and keeps on John Wicking.  Wickworld is a place with its own peculiar laws, one in which extremely violent things happen, from automobile demolition derbies to shootouts in the subway, and no authorities seem to intervene and passersby often don't even take notice. The choreographed violence becomes tolerable -- it's part ballet and part animated cartoon. In the extended fight between Wick and Cassian (Common), there's no sound but gunshots, blows landing, and combatants grunting, a kind of percussive duet that's as rhythmically compelling as Gene Krupa's drum solo on Benny Goodman's "Sing, Sing, Sing." 

The Sisters Brothers (Jacques Audiard, 2018)

Cast: John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed, Rebecca Root, Allison Tolman, Rutger Hauer, Carol Kane. Screenplay: Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, based on a novel by Patrick DeWitt. Cinematography: Benoît Debie. Production design: Michel Barthélémy. Film editing: Juliette Welfling. Music: Alexandre Desplat. 

An American Western filtered through Gallic sensibilities, The Sisters Brothers was a box-office flop, but it remains one of the more intriguing movies of recent years. To its credit, it gives John C. Reilly another chance to show what a remarkable actor he is when he's given more than just a backup role to play; he somehow sends even such charismatic performers as Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Riz Ahmed into the background when he's on screen. Full of quirky dialogue and unexpected situations, the movie's chief flaws are that it feels a little longer than necessary and the narrative is occasionally more elliptical than necessary.    

Petite Solange (Axelle Ropert, 2021)

Cast: Jade Springer, Léa Drucker, Philippe Katerine, Grégoire Montana, Chloé Astor. Screenplay: Axelle Ropert. Cinematography: Sébastien Buchmann. Production design: Valentine Gauthier. Film editing: Héloise Pelloquet. Music: Benjamin Esdraffo. 

Young Jade Springer gives a fine, sensitive performance in the title role, a 13-year-old girl torn apart by her parents' divorce, but the film gives us no fresh insight into a common family crisis. 

Argylle (Matthew Vaughn, 2024)

Cast: Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O'Hara, Henry Cavill, John Cena, Dua Lipa, Samuel L. Jackson, Ariana DeBose, Sofia Boutella, Richard E. Grant. Screenplay: Jason Fuchs. Cinematography: George Richmond. Production design: Russell De Rozario, Daniel Taylor, Film editing: Col Goudie, Tom Harrison-Read, Lee Smith. Music: Lorne Balfe. 

A time- and talent-wasting spy spoof that was a perhaps well-deserved box office flop (which probably means it will emerge as a cult film someday), Argylle features Bryce Dallas Howard as Elly Conway, the author of a series of spy thrillers that have a way of predicting actual occurrences in the world of secret intelligence. She's tipped off to the peril this puts her in by Aidan Wilde (Sam Rockwell), a real-life espionage agent, and a manic series of revelations and counter-revelations ensues. Henry Cavill plays the title character, a James Bond clone with a flat-top haircut that would have offended Ian Fleming's Bond as much as a stirred martini. 

One Way or Another (Sara Gómez, 1975)

Cast: Mario Balmaseda, Yolanda Cuéllar, Mario Limonta, Isaura Mendoza, Bobby Carcases, Sarita Reyes, Guillermo Díaz. Screenplay: Julio García Espinosa, Tomás González Péres, Tomás Guitérrez Alea, Sara Gómez. Cinematography: Luis García.  Art direction: Roberto Larrabure. Film editing: Iván Arocha. Music: Sergio Vitier. 

Sara Gómez's One Way or Another is a clear-sighted docudrama that personifies the attempts of postrevolutionary Cuba to establish a stable, egalitarian state by focusing on a young couple: Yolanda (Yolanda Cuéllar), a schoolteacher, and Mario (Mario Balmaseda), a laborer. Old ways and old attitudes die hard, and Gómez resorts to a wrecking ball smashing into slum buildings as a visual metaphor throughout the film. Though it ends with Yolanda and Mario walking away from the camera arguing, a measure of hope for the couple, and by implication for Cuba, remains. It's a propaganda film with a heart, though the chilly speech and manner of the authorities trying to engineer a new society contrasts sharply with the messy vitality of the daily lives of the Cuban people. 

 

The Help (Tate Taylor, 2011)

Viola Davis in The Help

Cast: Viola Davis, Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jessica Chastain, Ahna O'Reilly, Alison Janney, Cicely Tyson, Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen, David Oyelowo. Screenplay: Tate Taylor, based on a novel by Kathryn Stockett. Cinematography: Stephen Goldblatt. Production design: Mark Ricker. Film editing: Hughes Winborn. Music: Thomas Newman. 

The Help is Gone With the Wind for white liberals, as a line in the film suggests. Glossy and superficial, its treatment of race and class annoyed me, though not quite as much or as deservedly so as it annoyed its star, Viola Davis, who has expressed her regret that she appeared in the movie. I lived through the time and pretty much in the place it depicts, and while I can vouch for the accuracy of much of its portrayal of the racial and social attitudes in the movie, it's the point of view that brings the movie crashing down into mediocrity and irrelevance. Both the writer-director Tate Taylor and the novelist Kathryn Stockett, whose work he adapted, were born in Jackson, Miss., in 1969, too late and too white to give a more informed and nuanced look at the subject they treat. While their hearts and minds are in the right place, they rely on tired tropes like the Magical Negro and the White Savior to tell their story. The result is a soothing reassurance that all of this took place in the past and things are not as they were as far as racism in America is concerned, an attitude at odds with every day's headlines.