Benny's Video (Michael Haneke, 1992)

Arno Frisch in Benny's Video

Cast: Arno Frisch, Angela Winkler, Ulrich Mūhe, Ingrid Stassner, Stephanie Brehme, Stefan Polasek. Screenplay: Michael Haneke. Cinematography: Christian Berger. Production design: Christoph Kanter. Film editing: Maria Homolkova. 

Sometimes I admire the unsparing vision of Michael Haneke's films, and sometimes I think he's just bullying us. I felt that way at the beginning of Benny's Video when he showed the slaughter of a hog twice in succession. Later, when I knew why he did it, I felt more accepting. And yet, by the end of the film, when a sort of justice is done to his characters, who are both disturbed and disturbing, I felt nothing but a kind of resentment at being toyed with for 110 minutes. Haneke is a great manipulator, able to make you believe in his characters and the ghastly situations they put themselves in, but to what end? If that's an objection, it could probably be made of any number of great filmmakers, starting with Alfred Hitchcock, but why do I feel that in films like Benny's Video Haneke represents the decadence of an art form, and not what he seems to be trying to suggest: the decadence of our civilization? 

Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier, 1962)

Cast: Jean-Claude Aimini, Stefania Sabatini, Yveline Céry, Daniel Descamps, Vittorio Caprioli, David Tonelli, André Tarroux, Christian Longuet, Michel Soyet, Arlette Gilbert, Maurice Garre. Screenplay: Michèle O'Glor, Jacques Rozier. Cinematography: René Mathelin. Film editing: Monique Bonnot, Claude Durand, Marc Pavaux. Music: Jacques Denjean, Paul Mattei, Maxime Saury. 

The Nouvelle Vague loved its threesomes, but the dynamic in Jacques Rozier's Adieu Philippine is different from the more famous ones in François Truffaut's Jules and Jim (1962) and Jean-Luc Godard's Bande à Part (1962). Instead of two men and one woman, Rozier gives us two women and one man. Otherwise, it walks the same sexual tightrope, juggling the same ideas about what it means to be free in a world that seems determined to stifle that freedom. 

Sambizanga (Sarah Maldoror, 1972)

Elisa Andrade in Sambizanga

Cast: Elisa Andrade, Domingos de Oliveira, Jean M'Vondo, Dino Abelino, Benoît Moutsila, Talagongo, Lopes Rodrigues, Henriette Meya, Manuel Videira, Ana Wilson (voice). Screenplay: Sarah Maldoror, Maurice Pons, Mário de Andrade, Claude Agostini, based on a novel by Luandino Vieira. Cinematography: Claude Agostini. Film editing: Georges Klotz. 

Sarah Maldoror's Sambizanga is a tough, heartbreaking portrait of Angola struggling for independence from colonial rule, focused on the arrest, torture, and death of a revolutionary leader called Domingos Xavier (Domingos de Oliveira) and the attempt of his wife Maria (Elisa Andrade) to discover what has happened to him. Beautifully filmed and performed by a mostly non-professional cast, many of whom had ties to the revolutionary movement. It was shot in the neighboring Republic of the Congo. 

Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025)

Michael B. Jordan in Sinners

Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O'Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller, Delroy Lindo, Peter Dreimanis, Lola Kirke, Li Jun Li, Saul Williams, Yao, David Maldonado, Helena Hu, Adrene Ward-Hammond, Nathaniel Arcand, Emonie Ellison. Screenplay: Ryan Coogler. Cinematography: Autumn Durald Arkapaw. Production design: Hanna Beachler. Film editing: Michael P. Shawver. Music: Ludwig Göransson. 

I admit that I felt a little let down when, after one of the most exhilarating scenes I've seen in a movie for years, Ryan Coogler's Sinners turned into a vampire movie. But by the end of the film, and the mid-credits coda that HBO Max stupidly will make some viewers miss, I was back with it again. It's a movie so alive in texture and significance that it reminds me of the old days when people would sit around and talk about what they had just seen. I'm not surprised that in the online world there are people asking if the version now available for streaming is the same one they saw in theaters: It's easy to miss some of the nuances when you're having your expectations challenged -- not in the gimmicky plot twist way but in changing insights into characters and themes -- at every turn. I can only hope that Coogler's hit sets an example for directors to make movies that succeed by provoking comment and thought rather than just gratifying expectations.

Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2001)

Shu Qi in Millennium Mambo

Cast: Shu Qi, Jack Kao, Duan Chun-hao, Chen Yi-Hsuan, Jun Takeuchi, Doze Niu, Jenny Tsen Yan Lei, Pauline Chan, Huang Xiao Chu. Screenplay: Chu T'ien-wen. Cinematography: Mark Lee Ping-bing. Production design: Huang Wen-Yin, Wang Chih-cheng. Film editing: Yoshihiro Hanno, DJ Fish, Giong Lim. 

In Millennium Mambo, Hou Hsiao-hsien presents Vicky (Shu Qi) to us as an object of contemplation, as lacking in agency and volition as an apple in a Cézanne still life. She is being contemplated not only by us but also by herself, ten years later, so Vicky sometimes narrates events before we even see them. She is existentially passive, allowing herself to be propelled through life by others, especially men and particularly her boyfriend Hao-Hao (Duan Chun-hao) and the gangster Jack (Jack Kao). Naturally, as a woman and not an apple, she responds to stimuli, pleasure and pain, but we're no more expected to pass judgment on her than we are the apple. It's a film that replaces plot and narrative with incident and images, handsomely provided by cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bing, in a cinema moving away from novels and plays toward paintings and sculpture, yet retaining a connection with actuality inherent in the medium. Millennial indeed.

In Celebration (Lindsay Anderson, 1974)

James Bolam, Alan Bates, and Brian Cox in In Celebration

Cast: Alan Bates, Brian Cox, James Bolam, Constance Chapman, Bill Owen, Gabrielle Daye. Screenplay: David Storey, based on his play. Cinematography: Dick Bush. Art direction: Alan Withy. Film editing: Russell Lloyd. Music: Christopher Gunning. 

Upward mobility is not all it's cracked up to be in the Shaw family, the focus of David Storey's play and Lindsay Anderson's film In Celebration. The middle-aged sons of a coal miner have come home to the cramped house where they grew up to celebrate the 40th wedding anniversary of their parents. The oldest, Andrew (Alan Bates), studied the law but has given it up to become an artist. The middle son, Colin (James Bolam), works for an automobile manufacturer as a labor negotiator. And the youngest, Stephen (Brian Cox), is a schoolteacher who has been writing a book but has hit a block. The father (Bill Owen) still works the mines at 64, and the mother (Constance Chapman) keeps a tidy house. You can see where this is going, and it doesn't take long for family secrets and half-buried resentments to surface. D.H. Lawrence and Eugene O'Neill, among others, did this kind of cultural and generational clash with more color and meaning. But this is mostly a vehicle for actors, and we get to watch several very good ones do their thing. Bates, Cox, and Chapman get the roles with more nuance and ambiguity built into them, and  
they serve them up well. It's barely a movie rather than a play opened up around the edges, partly because it was part of an experiment called The American Film Theatre, which for a couple of years in the mid 1970s produced adaptations of stage plays shown in selected movie theaters on an advanced sale and subscription basis. The results satisfied neither theatergoers nor movie lovers, but they provide an interesting portrait of the theatrical life of the era and preserve some performances that would otherwise be lost. In this case, it's interesting to see the young Brian Cox after becoming familiar with him as the patriarch on Succession.  

Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell in Miami Vice

Cast: Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell, Gong Li, Naomie Harris, Ciaràn Hinds, Justin Theroux, Barry Shabaka Henley, Luis Tosar, John Ortiz, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Dominick Lombardozzi, Eddie Marsan, Isaach De Bankolé, John Hawkes. Screenplay: Michael Mann. Cinematography: Dion Beebe. Production design: Victor Kempster. Film editing: William Goldenberg, Paul Rubell. Music: John Murphy. 

The dark-on-dark credits roll for Michael Mann's film version of his hit 1980s TV series Miami Vice is the most illegible I've ever tried to read. It's as if no one connected with the movie was especially eager to be associated with it. Not that it's a bad movie, but that it never comes to life, never stirs the kind of enthusiasm that the original did. It has all the elements: attractive performers, hip music, fast cars, boats, and planes, the requisite sex and violence. But it doesn't seem to be going anywhere new or interesting. The characters don't generate much empathy or commitment to their fates. It ends on the most perfunctory note I think I've seen in a big American movie, not even trying to make you want a sequel.

Breakfast of Champions (Alan Rudolph, 1999)

Bruce Willis in Breakfast of Champions

Cast: Bruce Willis, Albert Finney, Nick Nolte, Barbara Hershey, Glenne Headly, Lukas Haas, Omar Epps, Vicki Lewis, Buck Henry, Ken Hudson Campbell, Jake Johanssen, Will Patton, Chip Zien, Owen Wilson. Screenplay: Alan Rudolph, based on a novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Cinematography: Elliot Davis. Production design: Nina Ruscio. Film editing: Suzy Ruscio. Music: Mark Isham. 

When a film starts with a man with a gun in his mouth, you expect it to explain why he's doing that. Alan Rudolph's Breakfast of Champions never really does. You can only accept as explanation a desire to escape the hurly-burly of events that follows. There are those who love this movie and those who would need to be strapped to a chair with their eyes taped open to watch it again. I found it exhausting and pointless, with gags that went on too long and characters who serve no function in whatever plot it possesses.  

Mapplethorpe (Ondi Timoner, 2018)

Matt Smith in Mapplethorpe

Cast: Matt Smith, Marianne Rendón, John Benjamin Hickey, Brandon Sklenar, Tina Benko, Mark Moses, Carolyn McCormick, Thomas Philip O'Neill, Mickey O'Hagan, Anthony Michael Lopez, McKinley Belcher III, Brian Stokes Mitchell. Screenplay: Ondi Timoner, Mikko Alanne, based on a screenplay by Bruce Goodrich. Cinematography: Nancy Schreiber. Production design: Jonah Markowitz. Film editing: John David Allen, Lee Percy, Ondi Timoner. Music: Marcelo Zarvas. 

An unconventional artist like Robert Mapplethorpe deserves an unconventional biopic. Ondi Timoner's Mapplethorpe isn't. It's full of clichés like the meet-cute: Mapplethorpe (Matt Smith) meets Patti Smith (Marianne Rendón) on a park bench when she latches on to him as a pretend boyfriend to evade a pursuing creep. There are the usual clashes with the parents, a bullying father (Mark Moses) and an ineffectual mother (Carolyn McCormick). There's the chance meeting that launches him to success: The wealthy art collector Sam Wagstaff (John Benjamin Hickey) becomes both mentor and lover. And the faint funk of disapproval hangs over the film, as if Mapplethorpe's life were something of a warning to aspiring artists, especially queer ones. I think it wants to celebrate Mapplethorpe as an artist, but is afraid to do so, stepping gingerly around gay sexuality as if afraid of rousing the "ick factor" in a straight audience. The lives of artists are notoriously hard to dramatize, and everyone connected with Mapplethorpe deserves respect for trying, but they didn't succeed.

Richard III (Laurence Olivier, 1955)

Laurence Olivier in Richard III

Cast: Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud, Cedric Hardwicke, Claire Bloom, Alec Clunes, Mary Kerridge, Andrew Cruikshank, Clive Morton, Norman Wooland, Helen Haye, George Woodbridge, Pamela Brown, Stanley Baker. Screenplay: Laurence Olivier, based on a play by William Shakespeare. Cinematography: Otto Heller. Production design: Roger K. Furse. Film editing: Helga Cranston. Music: William Walton. 

Laurence Olivier clearly relished Shakespeare's cunning Machiavel Richard III, and with good reason: It's a role that put him front and center at all times. Of the roles he filmed, even Hamlet has to share the stage with others as colorful as Polonius, Claudius, and Ophelia, and Othello stands on equal footing with Iago in getting attention. But Richard is buzzed around by characters he can swat off like flies, which lets Olivier cast his two rivals for greatest English actor of the 20th century, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, alongside him. For good measure, he even adds that hammy knight Cedric Hardwicke, who chews the scenery in his big moment. I happen to think that Gielgud gives the best performance in the film, but Clarence leaves the play early. Richardson for some reason underplays the role of Buckingham, and Olivier said that he wished he had been able to cast Orson Welles instead. Outfitted with a prosthetic nose and a page-boy wig of stygian blackness, Olivier lurks and limps around the stage, scowling and plotting. In adapting the play, he cuts and rearranges: The scene in which Richard woos the Lady Anne (Claire Bloom) is cut into two pieces, but it helps increase the credibility of a widow succumbing to the man who killed her husband. The ranting of Queen Margaret is one of the play's more entertaining moments, but it interrupts the flow, so Olivier cuts the role entirely. He brings Mistress Shore onto the stage and casts her generously with Pamela Brown, even though she has only one interpolated line. He borrows bits from 18th century adaptations of the play by David Garrick and Colley Cibber. The result is a reasonably swift and tight account of the play, less confusing to audiences that have trouble with the tangled genealogy of the Yorks and Lancasters. Unfortunately, Roger Furse's design is a little drab, and in some scenes Olivier's blocking and camera direction are cluttered. Still, on the whole, Richard III deserves its current reputation as Olivier's best adaptation of Shakespeare to the screen.