The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (Wim Wenders, 1972)

Arthur Brauss in The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick

Cast: Arthur Brauss, Kai Fischer, Erika Pluhar, Libgart Schwarz, Marie Bardischewski, Michael Toost, Bert Fortell, Edda Köchl, Mario Kranz, Ernst Meister, Rosl Dorena. Screenplay: Wim Wenders, Peter Handke, based on Handke's novel. Cinematography: Robby Müller. Production design: Burghard Schlicht, Rudolf Schneider-Manns Au. Film editing: Peter Przygodda. Music: Jürgen Knieper. 

As everyone knows, a murder involves motive, means, and opportunity. For Josef Bloch (Arthur Brauss), the opportunity was present, the means handed to him by the victim, but what of the motive? That's the part of the murder that goes unsolved in Wim Wenders's adaptation of the novel by Peter Handke, and failing that, we're left to our own speculations. Which is pretty much the point of the film: Everything we know about another person is speculative, and the speculation goes beyond the character created by Wenders and Handke into the nature of narrative itself. Why are we being told about Bloch's crime and his apparently blithe escape from punishment? When we're told a story we want it to have a meaning, a moral, a special significance. And when the storytellers leave us hanging without resolving our desires for closure we feel dissatisfied, even cheated. Perhaps even, to use an obvious word: anxious. Get it? 

Dark Habits (Pedro Almodóvar, 1983)

Julieta Serrano and Cristina Sánchez Pascual in Dark Habits

Cast: Cristina Sánchez Pascual, Julieta Serrano, Chus Lampreave, Marisa Paredes, Carmen Maura, Lina Canalejas, Mary Carillo, Berta Riaza, Manuel Zarzo, Cecilia Roth. Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar. Cinematography: Ángel Luis Fernández. Film editing: José Salcedo.

What is it that makes nuns funny? Is it just their anachronistic appearance, their ostensible modesty and piety in a culture that is anything but modest and pious? The nuns in Pedro Almodóvar's Dark Habits are certainly modest in dress, though one of them creates outré fashion designs (with the help of the parish priest). And they're pious enough to adopt self-mortifying names like Sister Sewer Rat (Chus Lampreave), Sister Manure (Marisa Paredes), Sister Damned (Carmen Maura), and Sister Snake (Lina Canalejas). But they also shoot heroin, drop LSD, and write salacious popular fiction. They run a retreat for wayward women like Yolanda (Cristina Sánchez Pascual), who brought about the death of a friend when she sold him some poisoned heroin and is on the run from the police. It's to Almodóvar's credit that he keeps the film going once the shock humor of these characters' secret lives is delivered, although there's not much more to Dark Habits than a comic take on transgressive behavior. At best, the movie is a sketch for the later, more involving Almodóvar films to come.  

Sound of the Sea (Bigas Luna, 2001)

Jordi Mollà and Leonor Watling in Sound of the Sea

Cast: Jordi Mollà, Leonor Watling, Eduard Fernández, Neus Agolló, Pep Cortés, Ricky Colomer. Screenplay: Rafael Azcona, based on a novel by Manuel Vicent. Cinematography: José Luis Alcaine. Art direction: Pierre-Louis Thévenet. Film editing: Ernest Blasi. Music: Piano Magic. 

A stranger comes to town and wins the hand of a young woman, but when he's lost at sea and ruled dead, she marries a rich man. Then after several years the stranger returns and meets secretly with the young woman, but they're discovered and the rich man takes his revenge. There's not much more to the plot of Bigas Luna's Sound of the Sea than that, although it's dressed up with some trappings of myth: The stranger is named Ulises (Jordi Mollà), evoking the Odyssey, and he woos Martina (Leonor Watling) with quotations from the Aeneid. But the characterization is sketchy: What drives Ulises to abandon Martina and their child and fake his death? What, other than a romantic urge, causes him to return? The film posits no retribution for the revenge by the rich man (Eduard Fernández). And it all concludes with a clumsy coda that seems to signify that love (or at least sex) survives death. It's often beautiful to look at, but not much more than that. 

The Bodyguard (Sammo Hung, 2016)

Jacqueline Chan and Sammo Hung in The Bodyguard

Cast: Sammo Hung, Jacqueline Chan, Li Qinqin, Andy Lau, James Lee Guy, Tomer Oz, Zhu Yuchen, Feng Yaiyi. Screenplay: Kong Kwan. Cinematography: Ardy Lam. Production design: Pater Wong. Film editing: Kwong Chi-Leung, Lo Wai-Lun. Music: Alan Wong, Janet Yung. 

Sammo Hung's The Bodyguard is a mashup of sentimental drama, crime thriller, and martial arts film, with the sentiment dominating. Hung plays Ding, an aging man with a fading memory, who lives alone after a breakup with his daughter precipitated by his failure to look after his granddaughter, who went missing. Ding's landlady, Mrs. Park (Li Qinqin), has romantic designs on him, and he's befriended by a little neighbor girl, Cherry Li (Jacqueline Chan), whose father (Andy Lau), is mixed up with some mobsters. Although he looks like an ordinary, overweight elderly citizen, Ding is retired from the Central Security Bureau, a highly trained cadre of bodyguards for the elite of the Chinese Communist Party. Eventually, this training becomes apparent when Cherry's father steals from the mob and goes on the run, the mobsters retaliate by trying to kidnap the girl, and Ding, haunted by his failure with his granddaughter, successfully fends them off. More complications ensue before the plot culminates in a big fight scene in which Ding single-handedly takes on a flood of gangsters. The scene is fairly preposterous in comparison with those in Hung's earlier movies: It's filmed mostly in closeup with rapid editing, an obvious cheat. Eventually, of course, Ding and Cherry are reunited and she becomes a caretaker for the man who protected her. Despite the mushiness, there's a warmth and generosity in Hung's characterization of the aging man, and he has a genuine rapport with his young co-star. For martial arts movie devotees, there are cameos of other aging stars of the genre like Tsui Hark, Karl Maka, and Dean Shek, who play elderly men who kibitz on the passing scene.    

La Marge (Walerian Borowczyk, 1976)

Sylvia Kristel and Joe Dallesandro in La Marge

Cast: Sylvia Kristel, Joe Dallesandro, André Falcon, Mireille Audibert, Denis Manuel, Dominique Marcas, Norma Picadilly, Camille Larivière, Luz Laurent, Louise Chevalier, Karin Albin. Screenplay: Walerian Borowczyk, based on a novel by André Piyere de Mandriargues. Cinematography: Bernard Daillencourt. Production design: Jacques D'Ovidio. Film editing: Louisette Hautecoeur. 

Positing a connection between grief and sex, Walerian Borowczyk's La Marge tries to be more than just soft-core porn filtered through an exquisite sensibility. It fails, but honorably. What it needs is a more nuanced actor than Joe Dallesandro in the lead, greater narrative clarity, and an avoidance of symbolic clichés like the dwarf who marks the fringes of a fragmented reality. It overreaches just enough to be memorable but not to avoid ridicule. 

Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)

Ronee Blakley in Nashville

Cast: David Arkin, Barbara Baxley, Ned Beatty, Karen Black, Ronee Blakley, Timothy Brown, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Robert DoQui, Shelley Duvall, Allen Garfield, Henry Gibson, Scott Glenn, Jeff Goldblum, Barbara Harris, David Hayward, Michael Murphy, Allan F. Nicholls, Dave Peel, Cristina Raines, Bert Remsen, Lily Tomlin, Gwen Welles, Keenan Wynn, Elliott Gould, Julie Christie. Screenplay: Joan Tewkesbury. Cinematography: Paul Lohmann. Film editing: Dennis M. Hill, Sidney Levin. Music: Arlene Barnett, Jonnie Barnett, Karen Black, Ronee Blakley, Gary Busey, Juan Grizzle, Allan F. Nicholls, Dave Peel, Joe Raposo. 

Nashville hated Nashville. That's because it wasn't about them, but like most major movies of the '70s, from Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969) to Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979), it was about American angst. I hadn't seen it since its release and as I did then, I found it deserved the critical hosannas for sheer audacity but was also exasperatingly inconsistent in achievement. The satire remains pungent, especially when it involves Geraldine Chaplin's clueless BBC reporter, constantly missing the point, stumbling over her own preconceptions, or desperately searching for metaphors as she tours a junkyard or a school bus lot. Some of the performances are great, especially Ronee Blakley's fragile diva, Michael Murphy's oily political advance man, Gwen Welles's clueless would-be singer, and Lily Tomlin's unappreciated wife. But although the great Barbara Harris gets her moment to shine late in the film, her character is poorly integrated, and Shelley Duvall is wasted in a role that has no point. The decision to have the actors write and perform their own songs was a mistake, especially in the case of Karen Black, who never comes across as a credible rival to Blakley's Barbara Jean. Still, the film serves its major purpose, to portray an America wrenched by post-Watergate anxiety as it prepares to celebrate its bicentennial. Nashville is bracketed by two songs, one asserting that "we must be doing something right to last 200 years," the other anxiously repeating "you may say that I ain't free, but it don't worry me." What comes in between is apt demonstration of both premises. 

To the Devil a Daughter (Peter Sykes, 1976)

Nastassja Kinski in To the Devil a Daughter

Cast: Richard Widmark, Christopher Lee, Nastassja Kinski, Honor Blackman, Denholm Elliott, Anthony Valentine, Michael Goodliffe, Eva Maria Meineke. Screenplay: Christopher Wicking, John Peacock, based on a novel by Dennis Wheatley. Cinematography: David Watkin. Art direction: Don Picking. Film editing: John Trumper. Music: Paul Glass. 

Peter Sykes's To the Devil a Daughter was disowned by both its credited screenwriter, Christopher Wicking, and the author of the book on which it was based, Dennis Wheatley. It's easy to see why: It's muddled and uninvolving, a routine horror thriller that borrows its best ideas from The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973) and Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968), throws in a nude scene for Nastassja Kinski, who was only 14 at the time, and wastes the talents of Richard Widmark, Christopher Lee, and Denholm Elliott. 
 

Winter Kills (William Richert, 1979)

Jeff Bridges in Winter Kills

Cast: Jeff Bridges, John Huston, Anthony Perkins, Eli Wallach, Sterling Hayden, Dorothy Malone, Tomas Milian, Belinda Bauer, Ralph Meeker, Toshiro Mifune, Richard Boone, David Spielberg, Joe Spinell, Elizabeth Taylor. Screenplay: William Richert, based on a novel by Richard Condon. Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond. Production design: Robert F. Boyle. Film editing: David Bretherton. Music: Maurice Jarre. 

Every conspiracy thriller has to be judged by the standard set by John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate (1962), and that includes Jonathan Demme's ill-advised 2004 remake. What makes William Richert's Winter Kills such an obvious target for comparison is that it's based on a novel by Richard Condon, who also wrote the novel on which Frankenheimer's film was based. The difference between Frankenheimer's film and Richert's is that although both deal with a political assassination, The Manchurian Candidate appeared a year before the killing of John F. Kennedy and Winter Kills a decade and a half later. Frankenheimer's movie felt somehow so prophetic that it actually disappeared from circulation for years. Richert's is obviously modeled on the conspiracy and cover-up theories that have always surrounded the Kennedy assassination. Winter Kills is stuffed with stars, some of them, like the brief cameos by Sterling Hayden, Toshiro Mifune, and an unbilled Elizabeth Taylor, amounting to stunt casting. Its chief virtue is a reliably solid and attractive performance by Jeff Bridges as the half-brother of an assassinated president, who stumbles across a clue that seems to implicate their father, a billionaire played with sinister charm by John Huston. Even though everyone that Bridges's character comes in contact with seems to get killed, there's no real urgency driving the film, and the result is a puzzle with no payoff. 

The Beaver (Jodie Foster, 2011)

Mel Gibson in The Beaver

Cast: Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, Anton Yelchin, Jennifer Lawrence, Riley Thomas Stewart, Cherry Jones. Screenplay: Kyle Killen. Cinematography: Hagen Bogdanski. Production design: Mark Friedberg. Film editing: Lynzee Klingman. Music: Marcelo Zarvos. 

The Beaver was a notorious box office flop, and no wonder. It starts as a serious drama about a man in the throes of a deep depression, morphs into a comic fantasy with a teen romance subplot, and then becomes a horror movie before a bloody denouement leads to a tentative resolution. How do you market a movie like that, especially when its star is getting the wrong kind of press? You can't blame it all on Mel Gibson, who demonstrates throughout the movie that he's a skilled and resourceful actor when his demons of bigotry and violence aren't being released by alcohol. It's tempting to blame Jodie Foster for taking the helm of the movie, though she manages to give it some coherence. The producers must have seen some promise in Kyle Killen's screenplay, so we might question their wisdom and taste. But mark it down to systemic failure, a reminder that making movies is a collaborative project and that collective judgment is fraught with peril. 

The Dreamers (Bernardo Bertolucci, 2003)

Michael Pitt, Eva Green, and Louis Garrel in The Dreamers

Cast: Michael Pitt, Eva Green, Louis Garrel, Anna Chancellor, Robin Renucci. Screenplay: Gilbert Adair, based on his novel. Cinematography: Fabio Cianchetti. Production design: Jean Rabasse. Film editing: Jacopo Quadri. 

Matthew (Michael Pitt), a young American in Paris in 1968, meets Isabelle (Eva Green) and her twin brother, Théo (Louis Garrel), at the protest over the firing of Henri Langlois as head of the Cinémathèque Française, and is invited home to dinner with them. There he meets their parents, a prominent French poet (Robin Renucci) and his English wife (Anna Chancellor), and is invited to stay over for the night. When he gets up to go to the bathroom, he is surprised to see, through a partly opened door, Isabelle and Théo sharing a bed, naked. The next day, the parents depart on a month's vacation, leaving a check for the twins to cover their expenses. Matthew accepts an invitation from them to move into a spare room. And so begins a month in which Matthew's view of life is altered. Matthew, Isabelle, and Théo form a ménage familiar to them from the movies they have watched, like Jean-Luc Godard's Bande à Part (1964), whose familiar run through the Louvre they re-create. The sex and nudity in The Dreamers earned it an NC-17 rating, but when I learned that in the novel on which the film is based Matthew has sex not only with Isabelle but also with Théo, I wondered if Bertolucci regarded homosexuality as more transgressive than incest. Though The Dreamers intends to shock, it pales in comparison to the work of filmmakers like Michael Haneke and Catherine Breillat. A handsome and well-acted film, it feels inert, and an insertion of a scene from Robert Bresson's unsparing Mouchette (1967) in the film reveals how conventional and glossy it really is.