The Loveless (Kathryn Bigelow, Monty Montgomery, 1981)

Willem Dafoe in The Loveless

Cast: Willem Dafoe, Robert Gordon, Marin Kanter, J. Don Ferguson, Tina L'Hotsky, Lawrence Matarese, Danny Rosen, Phillip Kimbrough, Ken Call, Jane Berman. Screenplay: Kathryn Bigelow, Monty Montgomery. Cinematography: Doyle Smith. Production design: Lilly Kilvert. Film editing: Nancy Kanter. Music: Robert Gordon. 

If, as it's said to be, The Loveless is an homage to The Wild One (Laslo Benedek, 1953), it's not a bad example of the truism that there's a thin line between homage and parody. It's hard not to laugh at the poses of its leather-clad 1950s-style bikers, saying things like "daddio" and "cool your jets." One of them is an up-and-coming Willem Dafoe, making his debut as a movie lead. It was also Kathryn Bigelow's debut as a feature-film director, and was made as her master's thesis in the film program at Columbia -- the university, not the studio. Both Dafoe and Bigelow, as they say, show promise. Though it's slow and somewhat overcooked, it demonstrates, among other things, Bigelow's eye for male posturing, which would serve her well in a later film like Point Break (1991). It was her co-director Monty Montgomery's one outing as a feature director; he's better known as a producer, working with among other, David Lynch. The Loveless is one of those movies that are less interesting in themselves than for the conditions and circumstances under which they were made and as the harbinger of better things for some of its personnel.

The Runner (Amir Naderi, 1984)

Madjid Niroumand in The Runner

Cast: Madjid Niroumand, Behrouz Maghsoudlou, Mohsen Shah Mohammadi, Abbas Nazeri, Reza Ramezani, Musa Torkizadeh. Screenplay: Behrouz Gharibpour, Amir Naderi. Cinematography: Firooz Malekzadeh. Production design: Mohammad Hassanzadeh, Amir Naderi. Film editing: Bahram Beyzale. 

Amir Naderi's enthralling The Runner is about escape. Or, more particularly, about escape from one's own limits. When the protagonist, Amiro (Madjid Niroumand), keeps running after losing a footrace to another boy, he's asked why he didn't stop. "I wanted to see how far I could run," he replies. Amiro is a street kid with no parents, living in an abandoned boat on the shore in a coastal Iranian town. He survives with odd jobs: scavenging in a rubbish dump, collecting bottles that float ashore, peddling ice water, shining shoes. But he dreams of escape, of sailing on the ships that he sees in the harbor, flying on the planes that take off from a nearby airfield. Scorned for his illiteracy by a newsstand owner whose magazines he collects for images of airplanes and another world, he enrolls in a night class to learn to read. And he runs and runs, not only in races with other boys, but also to assert himself, chasing down a bicyclist who cheats him of a rial owed for a glass of ice water, pursuing a man who grabs a block of ice Amiro needs for the water he sells. He wins both times, even though the sum of money is petty and the ice has melted by the time he catches the thief. There is no story, only a fable of determination, and although the film ends in a fiery scene of triumph, Amiro's circumstances have not altered. Beautifully filmed, with a charismatic performance by Niroumand, The Runner is a neglected classic of childhood. 

The Brutalist (Brady Corbet, 2024)

Adrien Brody in The Brutalist

Cast: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn, Raffey Cassidy, Stacy Martin, Isaac De Bankolé, Alessandro Nivola, Ariane Labed, Michael Epp, Emma Laird, Jonathan Hyde. Screenplay: Brady Corbet, Mona Fastvold. Cinematography: Lol Crawley. Production design: Judy Becker. Film editing: Dávid Jancsó. Music: Daniel Blumberg. 

Reading some of the online comments about Brady Corbet's The Brutalist, I was surprised to learn that some people thought László Tóth was a real person. Which made me realize that I much prefer a faux biopic like The Brutalist to the ones like Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan, 2023) that purport to be about a real person. Tóth may be based on architects like Gropius, Breuer, and Mies van der Rohe, but he's wholly the creation of Corbet and co-writer Mona Fastvold, and we don't need to waste time fussing over what's fact and what's fiction. To be sure, with its curlicues of plot and eruptions of emotion, The Brutalist feels more Baroque than Bauhaus, the spare and linear architectural style it celebrates in the film's epilogue. It's also overlong and sometimes substitutes caricature for characterization, as in the role of Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who utters lines more florid than any real American captain of industry ever mustered. Still, Adrien Brody's performance brings Tóth to life and richly deserved the Oscar it received.   

Touchez Pas au Grisbi (Jacques Becker, 1954)

Jean Gabin in Touchez Pas au Grisbi

Cast: Jean Gabin, René Dary, Dora Doll, Vittorio Sanipoli, Marilyn Buferd, Gaby Basset, Jeanne Moreau, Paul Barge, Denise Clair, Michel Jourdan, Lino Ventura, Paul Frankeur. Screenplay: Jacques Becker, Albert Simonin, Maurice Griffe, based on a novel by Simonin. Cinematography: Pierre Montazel. Production design: Jean d'Eabonne. Film editing: Marguerite Renoir. Music: Jean Wiener. 

Grisbi is French slang for "the loot," which in Jacques Becker's classic Touchez Pas au Grisbi is the gold bullion Max (Jean Gabin) has stashed away after a successful heist at Orly. In another film, we'd see the heist, but Becker is not interested in that, but rather in the effect the grisbi has on the gangsters who'd like to get their hands on it. His film is a mood piece and a character study, centered on the aging Max, a guy with an expanding waistline and bags under his eyes, ready to retire from his life of crime and enjoy his ill-gotten gains. But loyalty to his old chum Riton (René Dary) will make it impossible when Riton lets on to his girlfriend Josy (Jeanne Moreau), a showgirl, that Max is sitting on a fortune. Eventually, there will be a chase and a shootout, but most of Becker's film is taken up with a portrait of the autumnal life of the once dashing Max and Riton. As a "gangster grown old" movie, it had an obvious influence on such later films as Louis Malle's Atlantic City (1980) and Martin Scorsese's The Irishman (2019), but it stands on its own, thanks to Gabin's performance and Becker's restrained storytelling.  

Vermiglio (Maura Delpero, 2024)

Cast: Tommaso Ragno, Roberta Rovelli, Martina Scrinzi, Giuseppe De Dominico, Carlotta Gamba, Orietta Notari, Santiago Fondevila, Rachele Potrich, Anna Thaler, Patrick Gardner. Screenplay: Maura Delpero. Cinematography: Mikhail Krichman. Production design: Pirra, Vito Giuseppe Zito. Film editing: Luca Mattei. Music: Matteo Franceschini. 

Maura Delpero's Vermiglio is a story about the impossibility of security. Vermiglio is a village in the Italian Alps untouched by World War II until one day Pietro Riso (Giuseppe De Dominico), a Sicilian deserting from the Italian army, shows up with a resident of the town, Attilio (Santiago Fondevila), who has also had enough of fighting in the now lost cause of the war. Before long, Pietro and Lucia Graziadei (Martina Scrinzi), the oldest daughter of the village schoolteacher, Cesare (Tommaso Ragno), have fallen in love. The lives of the large Graziadei family, which have been carefully ordered by the imperious patriarch, Cesare, are disrupted in unexpected ways. Delpero's film is a quiet one, but filled with tension as the family's secrets and desires are uncovered. Although the story of Pietro and Lucia is central to the film, it's laced with subplots as we learn more about the family and the people of Vermiglio, focusing especially on the repressed and dutiful lives of women. Cinematographer Mikhail Krichman takes advantage of the scenery of the area, but also composes interior shots that evoke classic genre paintings of village life.    

Intimate Relations (Philip Goodhew, 1996)

Julie Walters in Intimate Relations

Cast: Julie Walters, Rupert Graves, Laura Sadler, Matthew Walker, Holly Aird, Les Dennis, Elizabeth McKechnie, James Aidan, Michael Bertenshaw, Judy Clifton. Screenplay: Philip Goodhew. Cinematography: Andrés Garretón. Production design: Caroline Greville-Morris. Music: Laurence Schragge. 

Given that the characters Philip Goodhew has written for them don't make a lot of sense, Julie Walters, Rupert Graves, and Laura Sadler do a fine job of just holding on as Intimate Relations morphs from black comedy satire to brutal based-on-a-real-crime drama. The satire is directed at a familiar target: middle class sexual hypocrisy in 1950s Britain. It's laid on thick from the start with Rosemary Clooney's 1951 hit "Come on-a My House" on the soundtrack as Harold Guppy (Graves), just out of the navy, becomes a lodger in the house of primly respectable Marjorie Beasley (Walters). Marjorie is married to Stanley (Matthew Walker), a one-legged World War I veteran, with whom she no longer sleeps, telling the horny Stanley that she's been advised against it for "medical reasons." Their youngest daughter, Joyce (Sadler), who has just turned 13, also lives with them -- in fact, she shares a bed with her mother. But it's not long before Marjorie creeps into Harold's room and bed. And it's barely a moment before Joyce joins them, pretending to sleep as nature takes its course with Harold and Marjorie. For a while, this situation is played for some queasy laughs, but the volatility of the ménage is obvious. To say that Intimate Relations doesn't work is an understatement, though the film has admirers who are willing to overlook the inconsistency of tone and the absence of plausible backstories for its uniformly unlikable characters.    

Infernal Affairs (Andrew Lau, Alan Mak, 2002)

Andy Lau and Tony Leung Chiu-wai in Infernal Affairs

Cast: Andy Lau, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Anthony Chau-Sang Wong, Eric Tsang, Kelly Chen, Sammi Cheng, Edison Chen, Sawn Yue. Screenplay: Alan Mak, Felix Chong. Cinematography: Yu-Fai Lai, Andrew Lau. Art direction: Sung Pong Choo, Ching-Ching Wong. Film editing: Curran Pang, Danny Pang. Music: Kwong Wing Chan, Ronald Ng. 

The spy-vs.-spy thriller Infernal Affairs is also a fable about identity. A young man is chosen by the mob to become a cop and serve as a mole within the police force; another young man is chosen by the cops to go undercover in the mob. After years posing as something they're not, each finds himself at odds with the persona he has assumed, but their lives depend on maintaining that identity, even when they come face to face. Co-directors Andrew Lau and Alan Mak keep this intricate and potentially lethal dance going to the final face-off. Though on a first viewing it's sometimes hard to keep straight who's ratting on whom and how and about what, the star charisma of Andy Lau as the mob's spy and Tony Leung Chiu-wai as the undercover cop gives the movie the drive it needs, with solid support from Anthony Chau-Sang Wong as the police inspector and Eric Tsang as the mob boss. It's a cleaner and leaner film than Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning 2006 remake, The Departed. 
 

Sex Is Comedy (Catherine Breillat, 2002)

Grégoire Colin and Roxane Mesquida in Sex Is Comedy

Cast: Anne Parillaud, Grégoire Colin, Roxane Mesquida, Ashley Wanninger, Dominique Colladant, Bart Binnema. Screenplay: Catherine Breillat. Cinematography: Lauren Mahuel. Production design: Frédérique Belvaux. Film editing: Pascale Chavance. 

Sex scenes are so common in movies today that producers routinely hire "intimacy coordinators" to supervise them, mostly to avoid lawsuits and media controversies of the sort that have followed the release of films as various as Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968), Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1972), and Abdellatif Kechiche's Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013). There are no intimacy coordinators in Catherine Breillat's Sex Is Comedy. There's only the director, Jeanne (Anne Parillaud), who is trying to get the most out of the actors in the sex scene of the movie she's making. And this involves much pleading, coddling, coaching, and even bullying on Jeanne's part, especially since the actor played by Grégoire Colin and the actress played by Roxane Mesquida despise each other. Sex Is Comedy is based on Breillat's own experience filming a painful scene in a painful movie,  Fat Girl (2001). She is using this metafictional approach to examine several things, including the nature of acting, the role of the director, and the simulation of private intimacy as public performance. Despite its title, the movie provides very little comedy beyond some scenes involving the penile prosthetic the actor is forced to wear, and it ends in tears rather than laughter as Jeanne gets the performance she wants from the actress. Mostly, the value of Sex Is Comedy lies in the insights it provides into Breillat as the creator of films that push the boundaries of depicting sex on screen. 

The Bitter Stems (Fernando Ayala, 1956)

Carlos Cores in The Bitter Stems

 Cast: Carlos Cores, Julia Sandoval, Vassili Lambrinos, Gilda Lousek, Pablo Moray, Virginia Romay, Aída Luz, Bernardo Perrone, Adolfo Linvel, Otto Webber. Screenplay: Sergio Leonardo, based on a novel by Adolfo Jasca. Cinematography: Ricardo Younis. Production design: Germán Gelpi, Mario Vanarelli. Film editing: Gerardo Rinali, Antonio Ripoll. Music: Astor Piazzola. 

Fernando Ayala's The Bitter Stems is as solid and twisty a thriller as you're likely to see, and only because it was made in Argentina explains why you've probably never heard of it. The handsome Argentine leading man Carlos Cores plays Alfredo Gasper, a journalist who hates his job because it never brought him the excitement and wealth he hoped for -- and, in an expressionistic sequence, dreams about. He's so fed up with the work that when he meets a Hungarian émigré named Liudas (Vassili Lambrinos) who has a get-rich-quick scheme, he signs on. Liudas wants to make enough money to bring his family, especially his son Jarvis, to Argentina. Gasper is so impressed with Liudas's devotion to his family that he agrees to give him a majority interest in the proceeds. But after the money begins to flow in, Gasper begins to suspect that Liudas is conning him out of his rightful share, and that the much-lauded Jarvis doesn't really exist. So he plots to bump Liudas off and take over the business himself. How could anything go wrong? The Bitter Stems benefits from the cinematography of Ricardo Younis, who was influenced by the work of Gregg Toland: In addition to a skillful use of light and shadow, Younis also effectively employs the deep-focus camerawork that was Toland's signature. 

Nine (Rob Marshall, 2009)

Daniel Day-Lewis in Nine

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Fergie, Sophia Loren. Screenplay: Michael Tolkin, Anthony Minghella, based on a musical by Arthur Kopit, Maury Yeston, and Mario Fratti and a screenplay by Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, and Brunello Rondi. Cinematography: Dion Beebe. Production design: John Myhre. Film editing: Claire Simpson, Wyatt Smith. Music: Andrea Guerra, songs by Maury Yeston.

Federico Fellini's 1963 classic 8 1/2 is a work of self-deprecating wit, in which a director played by Marcello Mastroianni, who was Fellini's cinematic alter ego, tries to launch a new film while at the same time scrutinizing his failures and foibles, most of which have to do with women, including his mother, his wife, his mistresses, and his flings. Any attempt to remake or adapt that film is going to lack its essence: the personality of Fellini himself. On Broadway, the musicalization of the film as Nine substituted performance for personality, using the very slight plot of the movie as a reason to string together songs and production numbers. But by returning the stage production to its original medium, Rob Marshall's Nine not only loses the energy of live performance but also invites comparison of one movie to the other. Nine is essentially a remake, and has to be judged as that. Everyone in Marshall's film works very hard to put it across. As Guido, Daniel Day-Lewis energetically tries to efface the memory of Mastroianni is the tormented director. Penélope Cruz has a sizzling musical number and manages to create a vivid character out of Carla, Guido's mistress. Marion Cotillard sings well and acts beautifully as Guido's wife. And just the presence of Sophia Loren as Guido's mother is enough to cast a spell over the movie. But in the end nothing works, and the film falls flat where 8 1/2 sent moviegoers out of the theater with a sense of exhilaration, of having experienced a director's complete and complex vision. Once, while typing the title of Marshall's movie, I wrote None. Maybe I should have left the typo.