Eastern Condors (Sammo Hung, 1987)

Cast: Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Haing S. Ngor, Joyce Godenzi, Chui Man-yan, Ha Chi-chun, Lam Ching-ying, Melvin Wong, Charlie Chin, Cheung Kwok-keung, Billy Lau, Yuen Woo-ping, Corey Yuen, Peter Chan, Chin Kar-lok, Hsiao Ho, Lau Chau-sang, Yuen Wah. Screenplay: Barry Wong. Cinematography: Arthur Wong. Production design: King Man Lee. Film editing: Peter Cheung. Music: Danny Chung. 

Blithely stealing from classics in the genre, Sammo Hung crafts in Eastern Condors the action film to end all action films. (If only.) The premise is that after the fall of Saigon, the retreating Americans left behind a missile installation that they now want to disarm, lest it fall into the wrong hands. So the American military recruits undocumented Chinese immigrants now in prison for a variety of offenses to be air-dropped into Vietnam to destroy the facility. If they succeed, they will be rewarded with American citizenship and a large sum of money. If this sounds familiar, at least there are more than a dozen of them and they're not particularly dirty. Eastern Condors is full of gags ribbing the Americans, as well as a few that wouldn't pass muster in an American movie, such as a volunteer whose stutter is played for laughs until it proves fatal. There's more gunplay than kung fu in Hung's movie, although it ends with a great martial arts standoff that's worth sitting through the rest of the movie for. Hung, slimmed down for the film, plays a more serious role than usual, but the movie is stolen by Yuen Biao as the wily Rat Chien and Yuen Wah as a giggling Viet Cong general modeled on some of James Bond's more epicene villains. 

Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhang-ke, 2024)

Zhao Tao in Caught by the Tides

Cast: Zhao Tao, Li Zhubin, Zhou You, Xu Changchu, Lan Zhou, Hu Maotao, Pan Jianlin. Screenplay: Wan JIahuan Wan, Jia Zhang-ke. Cinematography: Eric Gautier, Nelson Lik-wai Yu. Production design: Liu Weixin. Film editing: Yang Chao, Matthieu Laclau, Xudong Lin. Music: Lim Giong. 

I can't imagine watching Caught by the Tides without having seen Jia Zhang-ke's earlier films, particularly Unknown Pleasures (2002), Sill Life (2006), and Ash Is Purest White (2018), which introduced us to his characters, settings, and themes. The docufictional Caught by the Tides is part reprise of and part coda to those films. The first two-thirds of it are actually patched together with outtakes and footage from them, along with personal footage shot by Jia himself during their production, and then blended into a narrative centered on Qiao Qiao (Zhao Tao) and her sometime lover, the shady Guo Bin (Li Zhubin). The titular tides are those of Chinese history and society in the first quarter of the 21st century, sweeping Qiao and Bin apart and together again. They're also, in the middle part of the film, the tides of the Yangtze, as the immense Three Gorges Dam project transforms the geography of China. It's a film about "progress" and its human consequences, most human at its beginning in the industrial city of Datong, where the declining old city is being redeveloped. By the end of the film, which returns to Datong, the city has been transformed by technology into something glossier but less human. The plot, such as it is, involves Qiao's attempt to reconnect with Bin, who noticeably declines as she seems to grow stronger. If there's a failing in Jia's work, it's that his vision is too personal, too concerned with working out a commentary on the history of modern China, with a consequential loss of connection to international audiences. But the skill with which he works out that vision may also be his greatest strength.      

The Sandpiper (Vincente Minnelli, 1965)

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in The Sandpiper

Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Eva Marie Saint, Charles Bronson, Robert Webber, James Edwards, Torin Thatcher, Tom Drake, Douglas Henderson, Morgan Mason. Screenplay: Martin Ransohoff, Irene Kamp, Louis Kamp, Dalton Trumbo, Michael Wilson. Cinematography: Milton R. Krasner. Art direction: George W. Davis, Urie McCleary. Film editing: David Bretherton. Music: Johnny Mandel. 

Cynically concocted by its producer, Martin Ransohoff, as a vehicle for Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton at the peak (or nadir) of their celebrated relationship, The Sandpiper steals its dialectic from the hoary old Somerset Maugham tale of Sadie Thompson and the missionary. Ransohoff set a team of writers, including former blacklistees Dalton Trumbo and Michael Wilson, to work on fleshing out his idea to tell the purloined story of a free-spirited woman and an uptight male. The best the writers could do was to lard the story with glitzy profundities, e.g. "Man is doomed by his myths" or "Man is essential to any concept of the universe" or "Saints tend to be myopic, whereas the atheist is almost always innocent." Burton looks especially uncomfortable mouthing lines like "I cannot dispel you from my thoughts," and Taylor has to say things like "Life always flies back to life if it isn't penned in." We get some relief from the tedious course of the plot, which anyone can see coming almost before the movie starts, with some lovely shots of the scenery at Big Sur. Otherwise, The Sandpiper doesn't even offer the delight of camp, since its stars are so uninterested in the story that they don't even bother overacting. 

Gidget (Paul Wendkos, 1959)

Sandra Dee and Cliff Robertson in Gidget

Cast: Sandra Dee, James Darren, Cliff Robertson, Arthur O'Connell, The Four Preps, Mary LaRoche, Joby Baker, Tom Laughlin, Sue George, Robert Ellis, Joe Morrow, Yvonne Craig, Patti Kane, Doug McClure, Burt Metcalfe. Screenplay: Gabrielle Upton, based on a novel by Frederick Kohner. Cinematography: Burnett Guffey. Art direction: Ross Bellah. Film editing: William A. Lyon. Music: Arthur Morton.

Deconstructing Gidget is an amusing pastime. This is a movie made four years after the publication of Lolita, in which Burt Vail, aka Kahuna (Cliff Robertson), a 36-year-old man, almost seduces Francie Lawrence, aka Gidget (Sandra Dee), a 17-year-old girl. (For another perspective, try to imagine Gidget being screened at the Jeffrey Epstein mansion.) Of course, the unmarried Kahuna also hangs around with a bunch of half-naked college boys. And Gidget has an androgynous friend called B.L. (Sue George) who claims to have a boyfriend we never meet. Eventually, to be sure, tomboy Gidget, who claims to be repulsed by the physical advances of boys, will succeed in the "man hunt" initiated by her other, more nubile girlfriends and land the handsome, hunky Jeffrey Matthews, aka Moondoggie (James Darren), one of Kahuna's male followers. It's a movie that launched sequels, a TV series, and a whole subgenre of beach party movies. But were we ever so naive as to take Gidget as just wholesome entertainment? 

Pilgrim, Farewell (Michael Roemer, 1980)

Elizabeth Huddle and Christopher Lloyd in Pilgrim, Farewell

Cast: Elizabeth Huddle, Christopher Lloyd, Laurie Prange, Leslie Paxton, Shelley Wyant, Elizabeth Franz, Robert Curtis Brown. Screenplay: Michael Roemer. Cinematography: Franz Rath. Film editing: Terry Lewis. 

Life is messy, but dying is messier. That seems to be the point of Michel Roemer's emotionally raw Pilgrim, Farewell. Kate (a compelling Elizabeth Huddle) is not going to let cancer take her without making a fuss about it, which involves lashing back at the well-meaning people, her physicians and family, who would like to make it easier for her. She's especially hard on her sister, Rebecca (Leslie Paxton), and her daughter, Annie (Laurie Prange), both of whom have problems of their own, even if they aren't fatal ones. Annie and Rebecca both collapse under Kate's pain-driven assault, but manage to recover with the aid of Paul (Christopher Lloyd), the man Kate is living with. There are times when I felt that Roemer had crammed too much backstory into the lives of her characters, bringing a whiff of melodrama into what is mostly a serious film. And he makes Paul just a little too sturdy and patient in dealing with the women who are acting out the crisis of Kate's illness. (The film was made before Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985) established Lloyd as a comic character player, specializing in eccentrics. I wish we'd seen more of this side of him as an actor.) It's also unfortunate that the story of the effect of a woman's slow death on others brings to mind a greater film, Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers (1972). Pilgrim, Farewell can't hope to match up to that standard, but it's a solid and often profoundly moving work. 

We Won't Grow Old Together (Maurice Pialat, 1972)

Marlène Jobert and Jean Yanne in We Won't Grow Old Together

Cast: Marlène Jobert, Jean Yanne, Christine Fabréga, Patricia Pierangeli, Jacques Galland, Maurice Risch, Harry-Max, Muse Dalbray, Macha Méril. Screenplay: Maurice Pialat. Cinematography: Luciano Tovoli. Film editing: Bernard Dubois, Arlette Langmann. 

Now that all relationships between (and among) consenting adults can no longer be called "perverse," it's hard to find a word for that of Catherine (Marlène Jobert) and Jean (Jean Yanne) in Maurice Pialat's We Won't Grow Old Together. "Dysfunctional" comes to mind, although it has apparently been functioning for six years before we encounter them. "Sadomasochistic" is a little too clinical and reductive for their on-again, off-again pairing. Separately, it's easier to categorize Jean as a jerk and Catherine as a doormat, except that there's something larger and deeper about both of them. In the astonishing scene in which Catherine sits blank-faced while Jean spews out a torrent of abuse, denouncing everything about her from her looks to her family to aimlessness in life, we project our own emotions about what it would be like to undergo such a barrage of insults, only to realize that her blankness, her lack of affect, her failure to fight back, is a way of asserting her control over him. When we meet Jean's beautiful, competent, and independent wife, Françoise (Macha Méril), we realize that his urge to dominate and abuse Catherine stems from a sense of his own inadequacy. We Won't Grow Old Together, a title that admits failure from the outset, is a complex psychological portrait, perhaps too complex for the medium of film, which makes it at once fascinating and abhorrent. 

Volavérunt (Bigas Luna, 1999)

Aitana Sánchez-Guión in Volavérunt

La Maja Desnuda, by Francisco de Goya

Volavérunt, by Francisco de Goya

Cast: Aitana Sánchez-Guión, Penélope Cruz, Jordi Mollà, Jorge Perugorría, Stefania Sandrelli, Empar Ferrer, Zoe Berriatúa, Jean-Marie Juan, Olivier Achard, Fermí Reixach. Screenplay: Cuca Canals, Bigas Luna, based on a novel by Jean-Louis Benoît. Cinematography: Paco Femenia. Production design: Koldo Vallés. Film editing: Kenout Peltier. Music: Alberto García Demestres. 

Bigas Luna's Volavérunt tries to be several different things before finally settling down as perhaps the least interesting of them. It's an erotic fable, or a historical pageant, or a dramatization of an incident in the life of an artist, or a tale of political intrigue, before it finally becomes a whodunit. The title, which means "they have flown," refers perhaps most directly to one of Francisco de Goya's Caprichos, the artist's series of satirical etchings, which depicts his patron and perhaps mistress the Duchess of Alba, in flight with a group of grotesques at her feet. In the film, he shows his sketch of the scene to the duchess in response to her wish to fly. Which she might well desire, given that the duchess played by Aitana Sánchez-Guión is having an affair not only with Goya (Jorge Perugorría) but also with the Spanish prime minister Manuel de Godoy (Jordi Mollà), who is also having an affair with Queen Maria Luisa (Stefania Sandrelli). Meanwhile, Goya is painting a pair of portraits of a reclining woman, in one of which she is clothed and in the other nude. He is using as a model Godoy's mistress Pepita Tudó (Penélope Cruz), but the face in the finished portraits is not hers, leading to speculation that the model was actually the duchess. But this famous artistic mystery fades into the background of the movie when the duchess suddenly dies. Luna turns Godoy and Goya into detectives, out to solve the mystery of the duchess's death. Ultimately, the film collapses under the weight of too much historical speculation, both political and artistic, with only the colorful setting and the vivid performances of Sànchez-Guión, Cruz, and Sandrelli to make it memorable. 

Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes, 1998)

Jonathan Rhys Meyers in Velvet Goldmine

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Christian Bale, Toni Collette, Eddie Izzard, Emily Woof, Michael Feast, Janet McTeer (voice). Screenplay: Todd Haynes, James Lyons. Cinematography: Maryse Alberti. Production design: Christopher Hobbs. Costume design: Sandy Powell. Film editing: James Lyons. Music: Carter Burwell, Craig Wedren.

I used to think that if Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950), Smiles of a Summer Night (Ingmar Bergman, 1952), and 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963) could all be made into musicals, why couldn't someone do that to Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)? I mean, aside from the fact that the only person who sings in that movie, Susan Alexander Kane, isn't very good at it, there are lots of opportunities for musical numbers. Kane himself has a scene with some dancing girls that could be turned into a production number, and Bernstein's recollection of the girl in a white dress with a white parasol could be turned into a wistful ballad. Of course, you'd probably wind up calling the musical Rosebud!, with a theme song reprised throughout. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that Todd Haynes had already made a Kane musical called Velvet Goldmine. Actually, what Haynes does is superimpose the Kane plot on a story about a reporter (Christian Bale) searching for the truth about a glam rocker, Brian Slade, aka Maxwell Demon (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), whose fake death led to a career death. The resulting movie is a bit of a muddle, especially when Haynes adds elements drawn from Oscar Wilde to the mix, but it's probably better than Rosebud! would have been, and it might even have reached greatness if Haynes had been able to secure the cooperation (and the songs) of David Bowie, as he originally wanted. As it is, it's an intriguing picture of a moment in rock history and the continuing change in attitudes about gender identity. Ewan McGregor is particularly good as Curt Wild, a figure modeled on Iggy Pop, especially considering McGregor's retreat from edgy roles like this one and the junkie in Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996) into the Star Wars universe.    

The Magnificent Butcher (Yuen Woo-ping, 1979)

Sammo Hung in The Magnificent Butcher

Cast: Sammo Hung, Kwan Tak-hing, Yuen Biao, Wei Pai, Fan Mei-sheng, Chung Fat, Hoi Sang Lee, Fung Hak-on, JoJo Chan, Tong Ching, Chong Kam, Lam Ching-ying, Yuen Miu, Tsang Cho-lam. Screenplay: Edward Tang, Wong Jing. Cinematography: Ma Koon-wah.  Art direction: Wo Mak. Film editing: Peter Cheung. Music: Frankie Chan. 

A kung fu action comedy doesn't really need an elaborate plot, and certainly not one with the rape-murder subplot that sours Yuen Woo-ping's The Magnificent Butcher. What it needs is lots of setups for flips and feints, strikes and sweeps and rapid-fire conflict, and the rival martial arts schools of Yuen's movie set that up adequately. Mostly the movie is a showcase for Sammo Hung, the endearingly pudgy star whose agility belies his girth. I admit that I began to tire of so many choreographed confrontations, skillful as they were, and of the mugging of some of the actors, especially Fan Mei-sheng as Beggar So, but things picked up again when Hung's Butcher Wing took on Chung Fat's Wildcat, who displayed moves I haven't seen since the last time I tried to trim my cat's claws. Devotees of the discipline will relish the movie. Others may just want to sample it. 

Breaking News (Johnnie To, 2004)

Richie Jen and Kelly Chen in Breaking News

Cast: Richie Jen, Kelly Chen, Nick Cheung, Eddie Cheung, Benz Hui, Lam Suet, Yong You, Ding Haifeng, Li Haitao, Simon Yam, Alan Chiu Chung-San, Maggie Shiu, Wong Chi-wai, Wong Wah-wo. Screenplay: Chan Hing-kai, Yip Tin-shing. Cinematography: Cheng Siu-keung. Production design: Bruce Yu. Film editing: David M. Richardson. Music: Ben Cheung, Chung Chi-wing.

Johnnie To's Breaking News treats media manipulation as if it were something new, which it isn't. It's been with us at least since FDR used radio for his "fireside chats" and Adolf Hitler hired Leni Riefensthal to make Triumph of the Will (1935). But propaganda is so much a part of our life that although To's thriller tells us nothing new, it cleverly integrates it into a standard cops-and-crooks plot. When a shootout between the police and the bad guys goes wrong, media-savvy police superintendent Rebecca Fong (Kelly Chen) takes over with a double aim: to catch the criminals and to save the department's reputation. The failed shootout takes place in a bravura opening sequence, in which Cheng Siu-keung's camera travels through, around, up, and over the scene with breathtaking, apparently uninterrupted fluidity. The movie barely rests after that's over. There are a few bobbles in the movie's storytelling, and it's sometimes hard to see who's shooting whom, but we're here for the chase, the suspense, and a few laughs, so nobody who really matters will mind.