Black Caesar (Larry Cohen, 1973)

Fred Williamson in Black Caesar

Cast: Fred Williamson, Gloria Hendry, Art Lund, D'Urville Martin, Julius Harris, Minnie Gentry, Philip Roye, William Wellman Jr., James Dixon, Val Avery. Screenplay: Larry Cohen. Cinematography: Fenton Hamilton. Production design: Larry Lurin. Film editing: George Folsey Jr. Music: James Brown. 

Larry Cohen's Black Caesar is often clumsily put together, as in the big scene in which the protagonist, Tommy Gibbs (Fred Williamson), is shot on the streets of New York, stumbles for several blocks, commandeers a taxi that he somehow forces to drive on the sidewalks, goes several places for help, and even rides the subway, without showing any signs that he's bleeding from the wound. Some of the dialogue and acting are inept and many of its scenes are derivative and even laughable. But it's also immensely watchable, thanks in large part to Williamson's charisma and the rawness of its unabashed treatment of racism -- every taboo epithet for several ethnic groups is spoken at some point in the movie. The title, of course, is an homage to Mervyn LeRoy's 1931 classic Little Caesar, about the rise and fall of a gangster. The movie views that 1930s melodrama through a Blaxploitation lens, much the way Brian De Palma's Scarface (1983) filtered Howard Hawks's 1932 classic through the experience of Cuban expatriates in Miami, though more successfully. 

Ash Is Purest White (Jia Zhang-ke, 2018)

Zhao Tao in Ash Is Purest White

Cast: Zhao Tao, Liao Fan, Feng Xiogang, Xu Zheng, Zhang Yibai, Casper Liang. Screenplay: Jia Zhang-ke. Cinematography: Eric Gautier. Art direction: Liu Weixin. Film editing: Matthieu Laclau, Lin Xudong. Music: Lim Giong. 

Like many of Jia Zhang-ke's films, the real protagonist of Ash Is Purest White is China itself, undergoing its own character arc in tandem with the people depicted in the movie. It this case, the focus is on Qiao (Zhao Tao), the mistress of the gangster Bin (Liao Fan). When we first meet them, they are partying and Bin is muscling his mob. But that soon comes to a violent halt when Bin is almost beaten to death by rival gang members, saved only by Qiao's firing an illegal gun, which lands her in prison for five years. After her release, she devotes herself to reuniting with Bin, whose own life has taken a mostly downward course. And through Qiao's peregrinations we get a view of China across almost two decades of change. It's an absorbing, sometimes enigmatic film, held together by a magnetic performance by Zhao, Jia's favorite actress. 

Across 110th Street (Barry Shear, 1972)

Anthony Quinn and Yaphet Kotto in Across 110th Street

Cast: Anthony Quinn, Yaphet Kotto, Anthony Franciosa, Paul Benjamin, Ed Bernard, Richard Ward, Antonio Fargas, Nora Donaldson, Gilbert Lewis, Marlene Warfield, Nat Polen, Tim O'Connor, Gloria Hendry, Burt Young. Screenplay: Luther Davis, based on a novel by Wally Ferris. Cinematography: Jack Priestley. Art direction: Perry Watkins. Film editing: Byron "Buzz" Brandt, Carl Pingitore. Music: J.J. Johnson. 

Hard, unforgiving, and extremely violent, Across 110th Street sometimes feels like director Barry Shear tried to turn it up to 11. Even the reliably volatile Anthony Quinn sometimes feels like he's holding back in comparison with the hyped-up performances of Anthony Franciosa as a mob boss and Paul Benjamin an ex-con who tries to rip off the mob. The film exploits the hair-trigger racial tensions of New York City in the '70s by pairing Quinn as an aging police captain forced -- for "political reasons"-- to work with a young Black lieutenant (Yaphet Kotto). Almost every character in the movie is unlikable, although the movie manages to elicit some sympathy for the three men whose attempt to steal the haul from the numbers racket ends in a shootout in which both mobsters and cops are killed. Caught between the police and the mob in their attempt to get away with the loot, the robbers meet gruesome ends. Critics were hard on the film when it was released, but it has gained some stature with time as an unvarnished portrait of a dark era in the city's history.  

When the Tenth Month Comes (Dang Nhat Minh, 1984)

Le Van in When the Tenth Month Comes

 Cast: Le Van, Nguyen Huu Muoi, Nguyen Minh Vuong, Lai Phu Cuong, Trinh Le Phong. Screenplay: Dang Nhat Minh. Cinematography: Nguyen Manh Lan, Pham Phuc Dat. Film editing: Hien Luong. Music: Phu Quang. 

Dang Nhat Minh's When the Tenth Month Comes is a lovely, poignant film about village life in Vietnam after the end of the war with the Americans, but while war was still being waged along the border with Laos. A young woman, Duyen (Le Van), learns that her husband has been killed in conflict with the Khmer Rouge, but decides to keep it a secret from her aging father-in-law and her young son. When she finds it difficult to maintain the illusion that her husband is still alive, she persuades the village schoolteacher, Khang (Nguyen Huu Muoi), to forge a letter from him to her father-in-law. Khang's attraction to the beautiful Duyen causes village gossip. When Duyen, who has been an actress, is persuaded to perform in a scene from an opera about a woman whose husband is leaving to go to war, the similarity to her own life overcomes her and she flees the stage, causing more talk. Dang effectively blends elements of the fantastic into Duyen's story, connecting its contemporary reality to the mythic traditions of rural Vietnam. 

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008)

Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem in Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Cast: Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson, Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Chris Messina, Patricia Clarkson, Kevin Dunn, Christopher Evan Welch (voice). Screenplay: Woody Allen. Cinematography: Javier Aguiressarobe. Production design: Alain Bainée. Film editing: Alisa Lepselter. 

There are no surprises in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona. It's the oft-told tale of Americans abroad, experiencing culture shock when their preconceptions about life don't mesh with those in other parts of the world. In this case, it's two young women, Rebecca Hall's somewhat uptight Vicky and Scarlett Johansson's more free-spirited Cristina, who get caught up in the relationship between a sexy Spanish painter, Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), and his volatile ex-wife, Maria Elena (Penélope Cruz). Triangles and even quadrangles form among them. Allen supplies a narrator (Christopher Evan Welch) who sounds very much like Woody Allen, but he's not really necessary unless you've never seen one of his movies before. It's late-career Allen, and one of the few to be both critically and commercially successful, winning an Oscar for Cruz's vivid performance. 

Eye of God (Tim Blake Nelson, 1997)

Nick Stahl in Eye of God

Cast: Martha Plimpton, Kevin Anderson, Nick Stahl, Richard Jenkins, Margo Martindale, Mary Kay Place, Hal Holbrook. Screenplay: Tim Blake Nelson. Cinematography: Russell Lee Fine. Production design: Patrick Geary. Film editing: Kate Sanford. Music: David Van Tieghem. 

A solid drama about a crime in a small Oklahoma town, Tim Blake Nelson's debut as a feature film director, Eye of God, is among other things a piercing look into Bible Belt religiosity. Martha Plimpton plays Ainsley, a waitress in the barely there town of Kingfisher, who has struck up a correspondence with a man in the state prison, Jack Stillings (Kevin Anderson). When he's released he heads for Kingfisher, where he's soon married to Ainsley. While in prison, he got religion, and is bent on making her go to church with him. She doesn't care for it, and before long his insistence on having his way drives them apart: When she gets pregnant he insists that she not leave the house. Then she befriends 14-year-old Tom Spencer (Nick Stahl), a shy loner, and their lives intersect in calamitous fashion. But in the film this narrative line is fragmented into flashbacks from the moment police find Tom, covered in blood, wandering alone on a road at night. The nature of the crime and the identity of the victim are cleverly withheld until all the pieces of the story are assembled. But the real strength of the film lies in the performances, not only of Plimpton, Anderson, and Stahl, but of such estimable character actors as Richard Jenkins, Margo Martindale, and Hal Holbrook, playing people who have their own problems that color their responses to the crime. 

Leila and the Wolves (Heiny Srour, 1984)

Cast: Nabila Zeitouni, Rafik Ali Ahmad, Raja Nehme, Sabah Obeid, Samar Samy. Emilia Fowad, Ferial Abillamah. Screenplay: Heiny Srour. Cinematography: Curtis Clark, Charlet Recors. Film editing: Eva Houdova. Music: Bachir Mounir, Laki Nassif. 

Lebanese filmmaker Heiny Srour's Leila and the Wolves is a fascinating journey into the 20th century history of the conflict in Lebanon and Palestine. Nabila Zeitouni plays Leila, who is mounting an exhibition in London on the role of women in the heavily male-dominated struggle. She imagines herself, wearing the same white dress she wears to the opening of the exhibition, wandering through time and space as events in the conflict unfold through the eyes of women contributing however they can to the liberation of the Palestinians. In one scene, the women throw flowerpots and pour boiling water onto the enemy troops as their run beneath their balconies. In another, they take an active role by staging a mock wedding that allows them to smuggle weapons and ammunition to the men doing the fighting. Finally, young women emerge as actual combatants. Srour's film is a collage of newsreel footage and reenacted scenes, with symbolic touches such as a crowd of women shrouded and veiled and seated on a beach as a kind of silent chorus on the action.  

24 City (Jia Zhang-ke, 2008)

Joan Chen in 24 City

Cast: Jianbin Chen, Joan Chen, Liping Lü, Tao Zhao. Screenplay: Yongming Zhai, Jia Zhang-ke. Cinematography: Yu Wang, Nelson Lik-wai Yu. Production design: Qiang Liu. Film editing: Kong Jinglei, Xudong Lin. Music: Yoshihiro Hanno, Giong Lim. 

Jia Zhang-ke's 24 City takes a docufictional approach to the history of modern China, telling the story of the conversion of a former aircraft parts factory into a planned community, and by extension commenting on the past, present, and implied future of the country and its people. Jia mixes scenes in which actors impersonate factory workers and members of their families with scenes in which the actual workers appear before the camera. The stories are sometimes painful, as in the one in which a woman tells how she was separated from her little boy during the war and never saw him again, and sometimes poignant, such as the narrative of a smartly dressed, contemporary young woman who was shocked to witness the unpleasant conditions in which her mother worked. Their narratives are interspersed with musical sequences and snippets of poetry, including some lines by W.B. Yeats that prove oddly resonant. The result is an absorbing journey into a world unfamiliar to most of us. 

Chain (Jem Cohen, 2004)

 Cast: Miho Nikaido, Mira Billotte. Screenplay: Jem Cohen. Cinematography: Jem Cohen. Film editing: Jem Cohen, Davey Frankel. 

Look at something familiar -- a word, a face, a tree, a building -- long enough and it becomes something alien, an arrangement of shapes and lines. Look at it for a while longer, and it can begin to take on a significance you've never found in the object before. That's what Jem Cohen's Chain does to one of the most familiar and banal of American institutions: the shopping mall. For some it's a place of comfort and convenience, while for others it's an emblem of consumer capitalism. For the two very different women who are the focus (not the protagonists, certainly not the heroines) of the film, it's a bit of both. Tamiko (Miho Nikaido) is a Japanese businesswoman who sees the shopping mall as a place to be exploited for the profits of the company she works for. Amanda (Mira Billotte) is a homeless runaway who sees the mall as a place to be exploited for mere survival. Adroitly manipulating images filmed at malls all over the country, Cohen first deconstructs the shopping mall and its welter of familiar corporate logos, and then, through juxtaposing what happens during the days Tamiko and Amanda (who never meet) spend in this ambiance, allows viewers to bring their own significance to an unlikely place. The result is eerie and revelatory.

Saving Face (Alice Wu, 2004)

Joan Chen and Michelle Krusiec in Saving Face

Cast: Michelle Krusiec, Joan Chen, Lynn Chen, Jin Wang, Guang Lan Koh, Jessica Hecht, Ato Essandoh, David Shih, Brian Yang, Nathanel Geng, Mao Zhao, Louyong Wong, Clare Sum. Screenplay: Alice Wu. Cinematography: Harlan Bosmajian. Production design: Daniel Ouellette. Film editing: Susan Graef, Sabine Hoffman. Music: Anton Sanko. 

Alice Wu's Saving Face is a pleasant mixture of family drama and romantic comedy that never quite gets the two genres to work together and doesn't break any new ground for either of them. It plays on the usual themes of stories about immigrant families adjusting to American life, particularly clashes between tradition and change, old and young, queer and heteronormative. Only the fine performances of its cast really hold the movie together.