Millennium Actress (Satoshi Kon, Ko Matsuo, 2001)

Cast (voices): Miyoko Shoji, Mami Koyama, Fumiko Orikasa, Shozo Izuka, Shoko Tsuda, Hirotaka Suzuoki, Hisaka Kyoda, Kan Tokumaru, Tomie Kataoka, Takko Ishimori, Masamichi Sato, Masaya Onosaka, Masane Tsukayama, Koichi Yamadera. Screenplay: Satoshi Kon, Sadayuki Murai. Cinematography: Hisao Shira. Art direction: Nobutaka Ike. Film editing: Satoshi Terauchi. Music: Susumu Hirasawa. 

I enjoyed Millennium Actress more than I do most anime because I love Japanese film and its history, and the movie is full of references to it, from wartime propaganda to postwar readjustment dramas, from ghost stories to samurai films, from geisha dramas to monster movies and beyond. The central figure is a retired actress, whose story echoes that of many famous Japanese actresses, including Setsuko Hara and Hideko Takamine. When the studio where she spent her career is closed, a documentarian and a cameraman go in search of her, hoping to tell the story of the studio through her own. They get more than they expect, finding not only that her life is intertwined with the movies she made, but also that they themselves become part of the story. The complex narrative is deftly handled and the hand-drawn animation is quite beautiful. 

Towheads (Shannon Plumb, 2013)

Walker Cianfrance, Shannon Plumb, and Cody Cianfrance in Towheads 

Cast: Shannon Plumb, Derek Cianfarnce, Walker Cianfrance, Cody Cianfrance. Screenplay: Shannon Plumb. Cinematography: Brett Jutkiewicz. Production design: Katie Hickman. Film editing: Joseph Krings. Music: Dave Wilder. 

A mother, struggling to raise two boys while also trying to recapture something of who she was before motherhood, has a nervous breakdown. She begins to recover by making a home video with the boys. That's the somewhat autobiographical premise of Shannon Plumb's Towheads, which stars writer-director Plumb, her husband, Derek Cianfrance, and their two boys, Walker and Cody. The myth of motherhood embodied by June Cleaver vacuuming in pearls while nurturing Wally and the Beav is long dead. Towheads simply amounts to dancing on its grave. It's lively, amusing, sometimes incoherent, but it hits the mark more often than it misses it. 

Ms .45 (Abel Ferrara, 1981)

Zoë Lund in Ms .45

Cast: Zoē Lund, Albert Sinkys, Darlene Stuto, Helen McGara, Nike Zachmanoglou, Abel Ferrara, Peter Yellen, Editta Sherman, Vincent Gruppi, S. Edward Singer, James Albanese. Screenplay: Nicholas St. John. Cinematography: James Lemmo. Art directions: Veronika Rocket. Film editing: Christopher Andrews. Music: Joe Delia. 

The microbudgeted Ms .45 stars Zoë Lund (aka Zoë Tamerlis) as Thana, whose name suggests the Greek word for death, a mute seamstress who, after being raped twice on the same day, goes on a killing spree targeting unsavory men. But a nutshell description like that doesn't do justice to the odd mixture of exploitation flick, satire, black comedy, and social commentary that Abel Ferrara makes of it. It's the kind of movie that sticks with you even when you wish it wouldn't. 

Popeye (Robert Altman, 1980)

Paul Dooley, Shelley Duvall, and Robin Williams in Popeye

Cast: Robin Williams, Shelley Duvall, Ray Walston, Paul Dooley, Paul L. Smith, Richard Libertini, Donald Moffat, MacIntyre Dixon, Roberta Maxwell, Donovan Scott, Allan F. Nichols, Wesley Ivan Hurt, Bill Irwin. Screenplay: Jules Feiffer, based on characters created by E.C. Segar. Cinematography: Giuseppe Rotunno. Production design: Wolf Kroeger. Film editing: John W. Holmes, David A. Simmons. Music: Morton Stevens, songs by Harry Nilsson. 

The busy, noisy adaptation of the Popeye cartoon was not particularly well-received by either critics or audiences when it was released, and it was something of a commercial disaster because of cost overruns during its filming in Malta. Much of the blame fell on its director, Robert Altman, but a lot of it had to do with its flamboyantly indulgent producer, Robert Evans, and some also cited the widespread use of cocaine on the set. The casting can't be faulted: Robin Williams in the title role and Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl couldn't be bettered. (Evans originally wanted Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin to play the roles.) But the songs by Harry Nilsson lack melodic hooks and the decision to record them live on the set was a mistake, considering that none of the actors was a real singer. Popeye has its moments, many of them contributed by the appealing Wesley Ivan Hurt, Altman's grandson, as the infant Swee'pea, but it's really something of a mess. 

Drug War (Johnnie To, 2012)

Louis Koo in Drug War

Cast: Louis Koo, Sun Honglei, Huang Yi, Wallace Chung, Gao Yunxiang, Li Guangjie, Guo Tao, Li Jing, Lo Hoi-pang, Eddie Cheung, Gordon Lam, Michelle Ye, Lam Suet. Screenplay: Wai Ka-Fai, Yau Nai-Hoi, 
Ryker Chan, Yu Xi. Cinematography: Cheng Siu-Keung. Production design: Horace Ma. Film editing: Allen Leung, David M. Richardson. Music: Xavier Jamaux. 

Even though we first see him frothing at the mouth and driving his car into a restaurant, and at the end of the film he's bargaining desperately for his life, Louis Koo makes an attractive if duplicitous figure at the center of Johnnie To's Drug War. The title says it all: Like our own war on drugs, the one in the film is a never-ending conflict full of compromises and fatal missteps. The first misstep the cops make in the movie is trusting Koo's Timmy Choi, whose meth lab has just exploded, and who desperately wants to avoid the death penalty China has imposed on fabricators of the drug. Choi promises to lead them into the heart of the country's drug world, and they go along with his plan. Initial success at gaining access to the workings of the drug business gives them hope, but Choi has only his survival in mind, and that precipitates a series of spectacular, if sometimes confusing, confrontations between cops and criminals, culminating in a spectacular shootout. Don't expect subtlety or sentiment from Drug War, and you'll be fine. 

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.