The Gorge (Scott Derrickson, 2025)

Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy in The Gorge

Cast: Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sigourney Weaver, Sope Dirisu, William Houston. Screenplay: Zach Dean. Cinematography: Dan Laustsen. Production design: Rick Heinrichs. Film editing: Frédéric Thoroval. Music: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross. 

The Gorge is a horror/sci-fi thriller so formulaic that although it has a screenplay credited to Zach Dean, it could have been scripted by AI. The heroes are a couple of loners played by Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy, who predictably fall in love after being on the opposite sides of the titular chasm that separates them. The villain is the military-biotech industrial complex, personified by Sigourney Weaver, who seems to be making a late career out of movies about supersoldiers. None of it makes much sense, but if you want a movie that just chugs along filling time, you could do worse. 

Amadeus (Milos Forman, 1984)

Cast: F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, Roy Dotrice, Simon Callow, Christine Ebersole, Jeffrey Jones, Charles Kay, Kenneth McMillan, Richard Frank, Cynthia Nixon. Screenplay: Peter Shaffer, based on his play. Cinematography: Miroslav Ondricek. Production design: Patrizia von Brandenstein. Film editing: Michael Chandler, T.M. Christopher, Nena Danevic. Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; music editor: Mark Adler. 

Of all human phenomena, genius may be the most puzzling. What combination of heredity and environment produced a Shakespeare, a Leonardo, a Newton, a Mozart? For the Antonio Salieri of Peter Shaffer's play and the screenplay he based on it, the only answer has to be God. And his jealousy of Mozart leads him to a rejection of God and an attempt to destroy God's creation, whom he sees as a giggling, smutty-minded clown unworthy of the musical talent God has lavished on him. Amadeus is not a biopic; Shaffer called it a "fantasia" based on the lives and careers of Mozart and Salieri, and he plays fast and loose with the details of both. That has disturbed many who know the facts, but the sumptuous entertainment of the movie almost justifies the distortions and prevarications of the story it tells. That it's filled with Mozart's music is certainly most in its favor, and the performances of F. Murray Abraham as Salieri and Tom Hulce as Mozart add to it. Sometimes a beautiful lie is more satisfying than the truth. 

Planet of the Apes (Tim Burton, 2001)

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Helen Bonham Carter, Tim Roth, Michael Clarke Duncan, Paul Giamatti, Estella Warren, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, David Warner, Kris Kristofferson. Screenplay: William Broyles Jr., Lawrnece Konner, Mark Rosenthal, based on a novel by Pierre Boulle. Cinematography: Philippe Rousselot. Production design: Rick Heinrichs. Film editing: Chris Lebenzon. Music: Danny Elfman. 

I almost stopped watching Tim Burton's remake of Franklin J. Schaffner's 1968 classic Planet of the Apes when one character called another "the Homo sapien." Can we all get it into our heads that the taxonomic phrase "Homo sapiens" is singular? (If there were a plural it would be something like "Homines sapientes" -- Latinists may correct me if I'm wrong.) But pet peeves aside, I found Burton's version entertaining enough, with its sly references to the original film: One of the apes reverses a line spoken by Charlton Heston in the first film, saying "Get your stinking hands off me, you damn dirty human!" And Heston himself has an unbilled cameo as the dying father of Thade (Tim Roth), in which he reprises in a different context his line, "Damn them! Damn them all to hell!" The apes in the remake are more simian, with better ape-like behavior and movements. And the satiric edge feels sharper in an era in which government-sanctioned discrimination seems to be on the rise. But the narrative is a bit of a mess, especially the fudged-up ending, which could never have the impact of the revelation at the end of the 1968 film. It got a Razzie as the worst remake of the year and probably deserved it, but it's not unwatchable, thanks to some good performances, especially by Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Paul Giamatti, who never let the makeup do the acting for them.   

Green Fish (Lee Chang-dong, 1997)

Cast: Han Suk-kyu, Shim Hye-jin, Moon Sung-keun, Mung Gye-nam, Kim Yong-nam, Han Seon-kyu, Jung Jin-young, Oh Ji-hye, Son Young-soon, Song Kan-ho, Lee Moon-sik. Screenplay: Lee Chang-dong. Cinematography: Yong Kil-you. Film editing: Hyun Kim. Music: Lee Dong-jun. 

A young man (Han Suk-kyu) finishes his military service and returns home, but on the way there he gets involved with a beautiful woman (Shim Hye-jin) with underworld ties. Fine performances and razor-keen editing animate this fascinating noir drama leavened with dark humor and superbly atmospheric cinematography and music. 

 

Napoleon Dynamite (Jared Hess, 2004)

Cast: Jon Heder, Jon Griess, Aaron Ruell, Efren Ramirez, Diedrich Bader, Tina Majorina, Sandy Martin, Hylie Duff, Trevor Snarr, Shondrella Avery. Screenplay: Jared Hess, Jerusha Hess. Cinematography: Munn Powell. Production design: Cory Lorenzen. Film editing: Jeremy Coon. Music: John Swihart. 

Napoleon Dynamite, a sleeper hit that became a cult film, is as deadpan and droll as a Wes Anderson movie. Is it a postmodern parody of a coming-of-age story, a John Hughes movie for millennials? Or is it just silliness? Or all of the above? 

Glengarry Glen Ross (James Foley, 1992)

Cast: Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey, Jonathan Pryce, Bruce Altman, Jude Ciccolella, Paul Butler. Screenplay: David Mamet, based on his play. Cinematography: Juan Ruiz Anchía. Production design: Jane Musky. Film editing: Howard E. Smith. Music: James Newton Howard. 

David Mamet's play about a group of real estate salesmen won the Pulitzer Prize, and Mamet did a fine job of adapting it for the screen, even adding an opening scene in which Alec Baldwin's hyper sales executive presents the group with an ultimatum: close sales on the leads provided them or get fired. It's a play that demands a top notch ensemble, and it gets one on film. Unfortunately, what works for Mamet on stage doesn't work as well on screen. He has a superb ear for the way people talk, the repetitions, non sequiturs, and idiosyncrasies of common speech. On stage, Mamet's verbal rhythms, repetitions, pauses, tics, spasms, and obscenities -- the play has been called "Death of a Fuckin' Salesman" -- become hypnotic. But they lose their coherence in a film, from which we demand visual as well as verbal gratification. The cutting from set to set and from character to character chops up the flow of language and reveals that what these guys have to say to and about each other lacks substance. Even the most sympathetic of the group, Jack Lemmon's aging loser, begins to grate on us. Still, as a portrait of men caught in the rat race of capitalism and awash in toxic masculinity, it has some value. 

Port of Shadows (Marcel Carné, 1938)

Jean Gabin and Michèle Morgan in Port of Shadows

Cast: Jean Gabin, Michel Simon, Michèle Morgan, Pierre Brasseur, Édouard Delmont, Raymond Aimos, Robert Le Vigan, René Génin, Marcel Pérès, Jenny Burnay, Roger Legris, Martial Rèbe. Screenplay: Jacques Prévert, based on a novel by Pierre Mac Orlan. Cinematography: Eugen Schüfftan. Production design: Alexandre Trauner. Film editing: René Le Hénaff. Music: Maurice Jaubert. 

Marcel Carné's Port of Shadows is a variation on the old trope of the stranger come to town. In this case, the stranger is an army deserter named Jean (Jean Gabin) and the town is Le Havre, where he hopes to hop a freighter and leave the country. Instead, he gets involved with a beautiful young woman named Nelly (Michèle Morgan) and finds himself depending on the kindness of strangers, one of whom is so kind as to commit suicide and leave him with a suit of clothes, an ID card, and some money. Others, including Nelly's guardian, Zabel (Michel Simon), and his gangster associates, are not so kind. It's a movie that goes a long way on the atmosphere created by Eugen Schüfftan's cinematography, Alexandre Trauner's set designs, and the slangy poetry of Jacques Prévert's dialogue. Oh, and there's a cute little dog who falls in love with Jean, too. Maybe the quintessential French film, the way Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) is the quintessential American movie, Port of Shadows has plenty of admirers, but a good many people also think its Gallic Weltschmerz takes it well past the point of self-parody.  

Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood, 2024)

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, J.K. Simmons, Chris Messina, Gabriel Basso, Zoey Deutch, Cedric Yarbrough, Leslie Bibb, Kiefer Sutherland, Amy Aquino, Adrienne C. Moore, Chieko Fukuyama. Screenplay: Jonathan A. Abrams. Cinematography: Yves Bélanger. Production design: Ronald R. Reiss. Film editing: David S. Cox, Joel Cox. Music: Mark Mancina. 

Clint Eastwood's Juror #2 is the kind of courtroom drama that could have been made any time in the history of American movies, including when the Production Code was most sternly in effect. Which is to say that it's a throwback to an era in which audiences were not expected to question its obvious inconsistencies and falsifications but just sit back and be entertained by the predicament into which its protagonist is cast and expect it to be resolved satisfactorily. The premise is this: A man named Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) finds himself on a jury in a murder case but gradually realizes that he may be the one who killed the victim and has in his hands the fate of the man (Gabriel Basso) accused of the crime. Meanwhile, his wife, Allison (Zoey Deutch), is in the seventh month of pregnancy, having miscarried before. And the prosecuting attorney, Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette), is in the midst of a campaign for D.A., and wants to secure a conviction no matter what. Add to this the unsavory background of the accused, a group of witnesses to an altercation between the accused and the victim in a bar, and a man who claims that he witnessed the murder, things look pretty solid for the prosecutor. But Justin's conscience won't let him vote for conviction. At least not yet. It's a movie in which suspense is more important than coherence, drama more significant than actuality. Eastwood's no-nonsense filmmaking obscures the nonsense of the story, and the performances give it a specious emotional credibility. (Though I could have done without the sore-thumb obviousness of Collette's Southern accent, when no one else the cast was attempting it.)

Shockproof (Douglas Sirk, 1949)

Patricia Knight and Cornel Wilde in Shockproof

Cast: Cornel Wilde, Patricia Knight, John Baragrey, Esther Minciotti, Howard St. John, Russell Collins, Charles Bates. Screenplay: Helen Deutsch, Samuel Fuller. Cinematography: Charles Lawton Jr. Art direction: Carl Anderson. Film editing: Gene Havlick. Music: George Duning. 

Two great stylists of film, Douglas Sirk and Samuel Fuller, met on Shockproof and collided with the Hollywood studio system. The movie, about a by-the-book parole officer who falls for a sexy parolee, was supposed to end with the officer (Cornel Wilde) going rogue for love of the parolee (Patricia Knight), which he does for a while until the movie fizzles into a wholly unconvincing upbeat ending. It's a "curate's egg" of a movie: Some of it is very good -- the noirish parts written by Fuller, and the touches of Sirkian melodrama -- but on the whole it stinks.  

Monkey Man (Dev Patel, 2024)

Cast: Dev Patel, Pitobash, Jatin Malik, Sikandar Kher, Sobhita Dhulipala, Makrand Deshpande, Ashwini Kalsekar, Vipin Sharma, Adithi Kalkunte, Jomon Thomas, Pehan Abdul, Sharlto Copley, Zakir Hussain. Screenplay: Dev Patel, Paul Angunwela, John Collee. Cinematography: Sharone Meir. Production design: Pawas Sawatchaiyamet. Film editing: Joe Galdo, Dávid Jancsó, Tim Murrell. Music: Jed Kurzel. 

Producer-writer-director-star Dev Patel's Monkey Man is so obviously modeled on Chad Stahelski's John Wick (2014) and its sequels, that it's no surprise when a character  in the movie name-checks it. Monkey Man has the same energy, the same world-building ambiance, and in Patel a hero with much the same kind of low-key charisma that Keanu Reeves's Wick possesses. There's even a dog that befriends the hero. Which is not to say that Patel's hyperviolent knock-off isn't a worthy successor to its predecessor. If action movies with a lot of clear-cut villains that get their bloody comeuppance after making the hero's life hell are your thing, Monkey Man will do the job better than most.