Streetwise (Na Jiazuo, 2021)

Li Jiuxiao and Huang Miyi in Streetwise

Cast: Li Jiuxiao, Huang Miyi, Yu Ailei, Yao Lu, Sha Baoliang. Screenplay: Na Jiazuo. Cinematography: Li Jia Neng. Film editing: Jinlei Kong. 

Bleak in concept but often lush in execution, Na Jiazuo's debut feature, Streetwise, centers on the lives of three young people in a city in Sichuan in 2004. Dong Zi (Li Jiuxiao) works with his friend Xi Jun (Yu Ailei) as a debt collector for a man known as Mr. Four (Sha Baoliang), getting beat up as often as not by the people they try to collect money from. Dong Zi takes on this unpleasant job to pay the hospital bills for his father (Yao Lu), who is a handful of his own, constantly in trouble for gambling. Unfortunately, Dong Zi also has a bent for trouble, getting involved with Mr. Four's ex-wife, Jiu'er (Huang Miyi), who runs a tattoo parlor. Streetwise is narratively somewhat choppy, and it takes patience and attention to sort out the connections among the characters, but it repays that attention with some vivid characterization and a real feeling for the atmosphere of a dead-end city.   

Chongqing Hot Pot (Yang Qing, 2016)

Cast: Chen Kun, Bai Baihe, Qin Hao, Yu Entai. Screenplay: Yang Qing, Zhang Enming, Zhang Shimao. Cinematography: Liao Ni. Art direction: Lin Mu. Film editing: Li Nanyi. Music: Peng Fei, Zhao Yingjun. 

Liu Bo (Chen Kun) and his buddies Xu Dong (Qin Hao) and Four Eyes (Yu Entai) get caught in the middle of a bank heist in the hyperviolent comedy Chongqing Hot Pot. The guys, who run a hot pot restaurant in a former bomb shelter, discover that they share an easily penetrated wall with a bank, and the passage leads straight to the vault. Liu Bo is having difficulties with the gambling debt he owes a mobster, so the temptation to take the cash lying out on a table in the vault is intense. But that cash has coincidentally become the target of some robbers who, wearing masks, try to pull off a daylight heist. Also coincidentally, a pretty young woman (Bai Baihe) whom the guys knew in middle school works in the bank, adding a romantic subplot to the movie. Yang Qing doesn't quite tie up all the loose ends of this complicated story, and Chongqing Hot Pot is a little darker than it needs to be, but there are some amusing moments. 

A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman, 2006)

Garrison Keillor in A Prairie Home Companion

Cast: Woody Harrelson, L.Q. Jones, Tommy Lee Jones, Garrison Keillor, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Virginia Madsen, John C. Reilly, Maya Rudolph, Tim Russell, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin. Screenplay: Garrison Keillor, Ken LaZebnik. Cinematography: Edward Lachman. Production design: Dina Goldman. Film editing: Jacob Craycroft. Music: Garrison Keillor. 

Garrison Keillor used to be celebrated as a humorist in the tradition of Mark Twain and James Thurber, crafting stories out of the regional American experience with his best-selling tales of Lake Wobegon, Minn. and hosting a public radio show with a devoted following. His descent into obscurity came, like many others, with charges of inappropriate sexual behavior, but it's a mark of how famous he once was that a feature film with a starry cast was built around his radio show. A Prairie Home Companion was Robert Altman's last feature, and it demonstrates his ability to direct an ensemble of vivid characters. The thread of story concerns the final broadcast of the show, brought about by the purchase of the theater by a large Texas corporation. Somehow, a mysterious figure in a white trench coat, played by Virginia Madsen and billed in the credits as "Dangerous Woman," is inserted into the plot, as is the character of Guy Noir, the private eye played on the radio by Keillor but in the film by Kevin Kline. But the point of the movie is really to have the stars show off. Keillor's owlish presence is what holds the movie together, and the cast seems to be having fun. Whether the audience does too seems to be a matter of taste. I admit that I never appreciated Keillor's humor. It always seemed to contain a whiff of condescension to the residents of Lake Wobegon and the old-fashioned down-home music on his show, a kind of smirky folksiness, and that mars the film for me. 

Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, 1981)

Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill in Possession

Cast: Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, Margit Carstensen, Heinz Bennent, Johanna Hofer, Carl Duering, Shaun Lawton, Michael Hogben, Maximilien Rüthlein. Screenplay: Andrzej Zulawski, Frederic Tuten. Cinematography: Bruno Nuytten. Art direction: Holger Gross. Film editing: Marie-Sophie Dubus, Suzanne Lang-Willar. Music: Andrzej Korzynski. 

As if the story of a woman possessed by ... something weren't enough, Andrzej Zulawski tells it with such feverish restlessness that Possession exhausts the audience well before its frenzied climax. Two men can't have a conversation without at least one of them bobbing and weaving or swiveling in a desk chair. Yet somehow this most hyperactive of horror movies makes its impact, putting its leads, Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill, through hell. To what point other than touching a viewer's every nerve? The Berlin setting, smack up against the Wall, suggests a political subtext reflected in the apocalyptic ending, and the dialogue is riddled with references to God and Faith and Chance, but I tend to think that in this case the mannerism is the message.  
 

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?