Brief Encounters (Kira Muratova, 1967)

Vladimir Vysotskiy and Kira Muratova in Brief Encounters

Cast: Kira Muratova, Nina Ruslanova, Vladimir Vysotskiy, Lidiya Bazilskaya, Olga Viklandt, Aleksey Glazyrin, Valeri Isakov, Tatyana Midnaya, Kirill Marinchenko, Svetlana Nimolyaeva, Grigoriy Kogan. Screenplay: Kira Muratova, Leonid Zhukovitsky. Cinematography: Gennady Karyuk. Production design: Aleksandra Konardova, Oleg Perederiy. Film editing: O. Kharakova. Music: Oleg Karavaychuk. 

Kira Muratov's first feature, Brief Encounters, is a deftly handled romantic drama about a middle-aged woman, Valentina (Muratova), her not-so-faithful husband, Maksim (Vladimir Vysotskiy), and a pretty young woman, Nadya (Nina Ruslanova), whom Valentina hires as a housekeeper. What neither Valentina nor Nadya realizes when the hiring takes place is that Nadya and Maksim have already met. The process of discovering that fact and dealing with it constitutes the plot. In the meantime, we see the satire-tinged portrait of Valentina's life as a bureaucrat in the city of Odesa, dealing with contractors who cut corners and people anxious to occupy the apartment houses they're building. Muratova wittily fragments the narrative, with flashbacks to the on-the-road encounter of Nadya and Maksim, who is a geologist exploring the rural Ukraine that Nadya is eager to leave. It's the kind of movie whose narrative technique demands attention, but it's also engaging enough that you want to go back and watch it again once you've sorted out the relationships of the characters. 

A Chinese Ghost Story (Ching Siu-tung, 1987)

Leslie Cheung and Joey Wong in A Chinese Ghost Story

Cast: Leslie Cheung, Joey Wong, Wu Ma, Lau Siu-ming, Lam Wai, Xue Zhilun, Wong Jing, David Wu. Screenplay: Yuen Kai-chi, based on stories by Pu Songling. Cinematography: Poon Hang-sang, Sander Lee Kar-ko, Tom Lau Moon-tong, Wong Wing-hang. Production design: Yee Chung-man. Film editing: David Wu. Music: Romeo Diaz, James Wong.

I hadn't expected a Chinese ghost story, or rather a film with that title (the original Chinese title translates as The Ethereal Spirit of a Beauty), to be so funny. But Chiung Siu-tung's frenetic melange of horror tropes, legend, slapstick, martial arts, and satire is just that, thanks to a charming comic performance by Leslie Cheung. He plays a novice tax collector trying to do his job in a village and meeting more than the usual resistance. Forced to spend the night in an abandoned temple, he encounters a beautiful young woman (Joey Wong) and a Taoist priest (Wu Ma). The latter informs him that the young woman is a ghost, but his infatuation persists. It turns out that she's under the control of a tree demon from whom her soul can only be freed if he disinters her remains and takes them to safety. He and the priest set out to do that, but the tree demon, who possesses, among other powers, a threatening tongue, puts up a fight. There are other spirits to be dealt with, too, including a horde of the undead. The barrage of special effects fortunately never overwhelms the performers.  

Requiem for a Vampire (Jean Rollin, 1972)

Mireille Dargent and Marie-Pierre Castel in Requiem for a Vampire

Cast: Marie-Pierre Castel, Mireille Dargent, Philippe Gasté, Dominique, Louise Dhour, Michel Delesalle, Antoine Mosin, Olivier François, Dominique Toussaint, Angès Petit, Agnes Jacquet, Anne-Rose Kurat, Paul Bisciglia, Jean-Noël Delamarre. Screenplay: Jean Rollin. Cinematography: Renan Pollès. Film editing: Michel Patient. Music: Pierre Raph. 

We never find out why the two young women dressed as clowns are fleeing a pursuing car at the start of Jean Rollin's Requiem for a Vampire or how they got the guns or why they never seem to run out of ammunition. It's clear that Rollin will do anything within his budget (which includes torching the car they're escaping in) for an effect. It's part horror movie, part skin flick, cobbled together from whatever's available, which includes a picturesque setting, the Château de la Roche-Guyon and environs in Normandy. There are vampires, of course, cheesily outfitted with fake fangs. For Rollin, vampirism is a form of rape, of which there are several exploitative scenes involving naked women in chains. Our heroines get naked, too, cuddling in bed until they're interrupted by creepy noises. It comes as no surprise that, in order to make his "serious"  films, of which this is considered to be one, Rollin also directed porn. The effect of this film on me was mostly "what the hell?" 

Shanghai Blues (Tsui Hark, 1984)

Sylvia Chang and Kenny Bee in Shanghai Blues

Cast: Kenny Bee, Sylvia Chang, Sally Yeh, Ching Tien, Loletta Lee, Fu-On Shing, Manfred Wong, Ging-Man Fung, Woo Fung, Lung Kong. Screenplay: Chan Koon-Chung, Szeto Cheuk-Hon, Raymond To. Production design: Ah-Yeung Hing-Yee. Film editing: Chew Siu Sum. Music: James Wong. 

Tsui Hark's zany slapstick rom-com Shanghai Blues begins with the Japanese attack on Shanghai in 1937. Two young people, Tung Kwok-Man (Kenny Bee) and Shu-Shu (Sylvia Chang) take shelter under a bridge and hit it off immediately. As he runs off to join the army and she goes in search of her family, they vow to meet again in the same place in ten years. The setup made me try to imagine an American version, set perhaps during the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but the cognitive dissonance was too great. But their reunion in Shanghai after the war is a more familiar situation: The city was undergoing economic upheaval not unlike that of the Great Depression, a setting more like that of many screwball comedies of the 1930s. It was dark under that bridge, so neither of them has a clear image of the person they vowed to meet again, so true to romantic comedy they don't recognize each other when they happen to wind up in the same rundown apartment building. He's a struggling musician, and she's a dancer in a nightclub. She also has a comic sidekick who takes on the nickname translated as "Stool" (it probably makes more sense in Chinese), who is played with fine goofiness by Sally Yeh. She falls in love with Tung, of course. The rest is a melange of mistaken identities, mixed signals, chases, farcical near-encounters, some smutty jokes, and almost any gag and sitcom trope Hark and his screenwriters can wedge into the movie. Shanghai Blues is undeniably funny, but it's also a little exhausting.

To Sleep With Anger (Charles Burnett, 1990)

Paul Butler and Danny Glover in To Sleep With Anger

Cast: Danny Glover, Paul Butler, Mary Alice, Richard Brooks, Carl Lumbly, DeVaughn Nixon, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Vonetta McGee, Ethel Ayler, Reina King, Cory Curtis, Paula Bellamy, Wonderful Smith, Sy Richardson, Davis Roberts, John Hawker, Julius Harris. Screenplay: Charles Burnett. Cinematography: Walt Lloyd. Production design: Penny Barrett. Film editing: Nancy Richardson. Music: Stephen James Taylor. 

The conventional interpretation  of Charles Burnett's To Sleep With Anger is that the character of Harry, played by Danny Glover, is the devil. But remember Rilke's assertion that "every angel is terrible." The film begins with an image of endurance, a man being enveloped but not consumed by flames. It ends with an instance of persistence, an amateur trumpet player whose discordant notes segue into a triumphant harmony. Remember, too, that it's Harry who points out that however much the young trumpeter's practice may annoy the neighbors, if he continues with it he may become a real musician. Harry brings mischief and misfortune to the South Central LA family and their friends, but he leaves them wiser and more harmonious. He brings the refining fire, the resolution to discord. He stirs memories of the Southern past -- the discrimination and abuse, but also the pleasure-seeking and lawlessness -- that spurred the Black diaspora, but by reminding them of it he enables them to move on with their lives more assuredly. Burnett's morality tale is never so didactic: Its strength lies in its ambiguities. It falters occasionally in narrative ellipses and by being a bit overcrowded with characters, but it fully earns the praise it has gained over the years since its somewhat inept release and marketing. 

Bug (William Friedkin, 2006)

Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon in Bug

Cast: Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, Harry Connick Jr., Lynn Collins, Brian F. O'Byrne. Screenplay: Tracy Letts, based on his play. Cinematography: Michael Grady. Production design: Franco-Giacomo Carbone. Film editing: Darrin Navarro. Music: Brian Tyler. 

If Bug feels sometimes overburdened with subtext, it's probably not the fault of William Friedkin, never the most subtle or cerebral of directors. The sense that it can't be allowed to be just a psychological body horror movie probably comes from Tracy Letts, whose screenplay, based on his off-Broadway play, is rife with American malaise. Name-checking everything from the Tuskegee Experiment to Timothy McVeigh to Ted Kaczynski, it touches on sexual dysfunction and discrimination, the drug culture of the underclass, regional antagonisms, the military-industrial complex, the prison industry, political conspiracy theories, and ecoterrorism, among others. That it succeeds at all is due to the commitment of its lead actors, Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon, who make the lost souls of Agnes and Peter visible to us. I suspect that on stage Bug was more of a dark comedy than it becomes on screen, though some of that still comes through despite Friedkin's tendency toward overkill and an apocalyptic ending that doesn't make a lot of sense. 

The Killer (John Woo, 1989)

Chow Yun-fat and Danny Lee in The Killer

Cast: Chow Yun-fat, Danny Lee, Sally Yeh, Kenneth Tsang, Chu Kong, Shing Fui-on, Ricky Yi Fan-wai, Barry Wong. Screenplay: John Woo. Cinematography: Peter Pau, Wong Wing-Hang. Art direction: Luk Man-Wah. Film editing: Fan Kung-Ming. Music: Lowell Lo. 

The rhythmic violence of John Woo's The Killer obliterates thought, turning what could be a study of motives and morals into a ballet of blood-letting that exhilarates with its inherent absurdity. It's a film of overkill, in which dispatching an adversary is never accomplished with one shot but with four or six or eight. No one falls dead, they recoil and squirm. Opponents come in waves, never stepping into the fray but rushing and swooping. If you closed your eyes (not that that's possible), the gunshots could be a drum solo punctuated by grunts and squeals. It is, in short, action movie making at its purest and best. It helps that the actors playing the film's antagonistic protagonists, Ah Jong (Chow Yun-fat) and Li Ying (Danny Lee), possess an innate charisma, so that we're fooled into thinking of them as human beings when in fact they're just plot devices to provoke action. Woo wants us to reflect on their motives and morals, and he gives them speeches to explore those, but then the action starts again and it's just a movie. But what a movie, a torrent of bullets and doves, of religion and gore, of mayhem and honor.  

Ghosts of Mars (John Carpenter, 2001)

Ice Cube and Natasha Henstridge in Ghosts of Mars

Cast: Natasha Henstridge, Ice Cube, Jason Statham, Clea DuVall, Pam Grier, Joanna Cassidy, Richard Cetrone, Rosemary Forsyth, Liam Waite, Duane Davis, Lobo Sebastian, Rodney A. Grant. Screenplay: Larry Sulkis, John Carpenter. Cinematography: Gary B. Kibbe. Production design: William A. Elliott. Film editing: Paul C. Warshilka. Music: Anthrax, John Carpenter. 

It's a space zombie Western, how good could it be? There are those who are willing to overlook the bad acting, the lame dialogue, the lack of plausibility, and the overall cheesiness of design in John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars, and I understand them. There's a place for this kind of B-movie throwback to sci-fi tropes of the 1950s, and it's in the hearts of many cineastes, especially those who admire the chutzpah of its writer-director-composer. I don't belong to the Carpenter cult myself, but I respect their enthusiasm. Still, if you came across this movie on TV and didn't know anything about its auteur, how long would you keep watching before you looked for something better? 

Taipei Story (Edward Yang, 1985)

Hou Hsiao-hsien in Taipei Story

Cast: Tsai Chin, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Wu Nien-jen, Lin Hsiu-ling, Ko I-chen, Ke Su-yun, Wu Ping-nan, Mei Fang, Chen Shu-fang, Yang Li-yin, Lai Te-nan. Screenplay: Chu T'ien-wen, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang. Cinematography: Yang Wei-han. Film editing: Sung Fan-chen, Wang Qi-yang. Music: Edward Yang. 

Edward Yang's Taipei Story thrusts us into the midst of the lives of two people in the city of Taipei in the mid-1980s, and then lets us sort out the personal, social, and economic tensions between them. Chin (Tsai Chin) and Lung (Hou Hsiao-hsien) grew up together in the city and at some point decided to live together, despite pressure from their parents to get married. Lung has a small fabric shop and Chin is the executive assistant to a manager of a large construction company. As the film opens, Chin is about to lose her job because the company is about to be taken over by a larger corporation, and the woman she works for has resigned. Lung has just returned from the States, where his sister is married to a man who runs an import business. The possibility of immigrating intrigues both of them, especially since Chin's future is uncertain. But their lives are complicated by their families, old and new lovers, and the city that's changing around them. It's a film with the flavor of a good novel, whose subtlety and the intricacy of its relationships suggest that it probably improves with more than one viewing. 

Kalpana (Uday Shankar, 1948)

Uday Shankar in Kalpana

Cast: Uday Shankar, Amala Shankar, Lakshmi Kanta, G.V. Subbarao, Birendri Banerji, Swaraj Mitter Gupta, Anil Kumar Chopra, Brijo Behari Banerji, Chiranjilal Shah, Devilal Samar, K. Mukerjee. Screenplay: Uday Shankar. Cinematography: K. Ranoth. Production design: A.K. Sekar. Film editing: N.K. Gopal. Music: Vishnudas Shirali.

Uday Shankar's phantasmagoric, angry, joyous, often baffling Kalpana is the ultimate dance musical, recalling everything from Busby Berkeley's pattern-making choreography to the expressionist visions of Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927). It was Shankar's only film, and it's easy to see why: It's exhaustive and exhausting. The flood of dance sequences occurs in a flashback within a frame story about Udayan, played by Shankar, trying to persuade a box office minded producer to make a film based on his life work. He's doomed to failure because the producer thinks only of money, which Udayan has learned to be an evil, though a necessary one. He has a vision of India as a cultural force, an independent leader of nations, emerging from its colonial past, though thwarted by capitalist greed. There's also a love story along with some intrigue and villainy in Kalpana, resulting in a narrative muddle, which may be why it was not a great success when it was initially released. However, its energy and imagination (which is one meaning of the Sanskrit word that gives the film its title) overcome its flaws.