Smile (Parker Finn, 2022)

Cast: Sosie Bacon, Kyle Gallner, Jessie T. Usher, Robin Weigert, Kal Penn, Rob Morgan, Gillian Zinser, Judy Reyes, Jack Sochet, Nick Arapoglu, Perry Strong, Matthew Lamb, Dora Kiss. Screenplay: Parker Finn. Cinematography: Charlie Saroff. Production design: Lester Cohen. Film editing: Elliot Greenberg. Music: Cristobal Tapia de Veer. 

The rictus that spreads across the faces of those who are about to kill or be killed is probably the scariest thing about Smile, a routine horror movie that has not much going for it other than some committed performances, particularly by Sosie Bacon as the psychiatrist being driven mad by a supernatural being. Horror movie fans accepted it despite a phony premise and some deep inconsistencies in the plotting, so it spawned the inevitable Smile 2, from the same writer-director, Parker Finn, in 2024. You know who you are and whether you want to watch it. 

All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia, 2024)

Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha in All We Imagine as Light

Cast: Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam, Hridhu Haroon, Azees Nedumangad, Anand Sami. Screenplay: Payal Kapadia, Himanshu Prajapati, Robin Joy, Naseem Azad. Cinematography: Ranabir Das. Production design: Piyusha Chalke, Shamim Khan, Yashasvi Sabharwal. Film editing: Clément Pinteaux. Music: Topshe. 

In a film at once delicate and gritty, Payal Kapadia paints a picture of urban loneliness in the lives of three women. Prabha (Kani Kusruti), a nurse in a Mumbai hospital, hasn't seen or heard from her husband for a year since he left to work in Germany. Anu (Divya Prabha), her younger roommate and fellow nurse, is under pressure from her family to accept an arranged marriage like Prabha's, but she's in love with a young Muslim, Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon). Their friend Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), a cook at the hospital, is being evicted from the apartment she shared with her late husband by the construction company that wants to tear it down. When they leave the teeming city to help Parvaty move to the village where she once lived, each of them begins to confront their emotional isolation. Kapaia's film deservedly won the Grand Prix at Cannes, but it failed to attract Oscar nominations, in part because it was produced by an international consortium of companies and the Indian film industry failed to submit it for the awards. 

Big Eden (Thomas Bezucha, 2000)

Cast: Arye Gross, Eric Schweig, Tim DeKay, Louise Fletcher, George Coe, Nan Martin, O'Neal Compton, Corinne Bohrer. Screenplay: Thomas Bezuch. Cinematography: Rob Sweeney. Production design: Stephanie Carroll. Film editing: Andrew London. Music: Joseph Conlan.

Big Eden is a queer romantic fantasy, or maybe daydream. You make it big in the city and return to the small town where you grew up in the closet, and you discover that everyone not only tolerates your queerness but is happy to facilitate it. And you find that your handsome best friend, on whom you had a crush, has returned too, and is now willing to make a go of it with you. But you turn him down because you realize that he's still straight. (Yeah, right.) And then, when you're about to return to the big city, you discover that an even better-looking man has been carrying the torch for you all these years but was too shy to make a move. Happy ending. This utter nonsense might have worked as a movie if writer-director Thomas Bezucha had found the right tone for it, but he meanders between moodiness and quirkiness, and is unable to come up with dialogue that strikes the right note and even sometimes to make sense. Moreover, he has miscast the central role with the otherwise capable character actor Arye Gross, who has none of the charisma that would make us believe that either the old friend (Tim DeKay) or the secret admirer (Eric Schweig) are pining for his affections. And what's a romance without sex and passion, which never show up on screen except in a couple of tepid kisses? The only thing Big Eden succeeds at is demonstrating that queer people can make romantic movies that are as improbable as the ones straight people make. 

Only the River Flows (Wei Shujun, 2023)

Zhu Yilong in Only the River Flows

Cast: Zhu Yilong, Chloe Maayan, Hou Tianlai, Tong Linkai, Kang Chunlei, Wang Jianyu, Zishi Moxi, Liu Baisha, Yang Cao, Zhou Qingyung. Screenplay: Kang Chunlei, Wei Shujun, based on a novel by Yu Hua. Cinematography: Zhiyuan Chengma. Art direction: Zhang Menglun. Film editing: Matthieu Laclau. 

Moody, absorbing, and sometimes enigmatic film about a detective (Zhu Yilong) haunted by a series of murders in a town in rural China. Wei Shujun's direction and Zhiyuan Chengma's cinematography make the most of the gloomy, oppressive setting. 

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.