Crazy Rich Asians (Jon M. Chu, 2018)

Constance Wu and Awkwafina in Crazy Rich Asians

Cast: Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Chan, Lisa Lu, Awkwafina, Ken Jeong, Sonoya Mizuno, Chris Pang, Jimmy O. Yang. Screenplay: Peter Chiarelli, Adele Lim, based on a novel by Kevin Kwan. Cinematography: Vanja Cernjul. Production design: Nelson Coates. Film editing: Myron Kerstein. Music: Brian Tyler.

Bright performances and a sumptuous production enhance Crazy Rich Asians, but it's really the novelty of an almost all-Asian cast that brought this otherwise likable but conventionally plotted romantic comedy to widespread notice.

Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1968)

Sergio Corrieri in Memories of Underdevelopment

Cast: Sergio Corrieri, Daisy Granados, Eslinda Núñez, Omar Valdés, René de la Cruz. Screenplay: Esmundo Desnoes, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, based on a novel by Esmundo Desnoes. Cinematography: Ramón F. Suárez. Production design: Julio Matilla. Film editing: Nelson Rodríguez. Music: Leo Brouwer.

Sergio (Sergio Corrieri), whose family has fled Cuba for Miami after the revolution, remains in Havana. A disaffected, well-to-do intellectual, he knows his days are numbered, but he remains, having an affair with the working-class Elena (Daisy Granados) as he watches history unfold. A provocative film that was somewhat better received in the United States than in Cuba.

Lady Snowblood (Toshiya Fujita, 1973)

Meiko Kaji in Lady Snowblood

Cast: Meiko Kaji, Toshio Kurosawa, Ko Nishimura, Masaaki Daimon, Miyoko Akaza, Eiji Okada,  Sanae Nakahara, Noboru Nakaya. Screenplay: Norio Osada, Kazuo Kamimura, Kazuo Koike. Cinematography: Masaki Tamura. Production design: Kazuo Satsuya. Film editing: Osamu Inoue. Music: Masaaki Hirao.

An often fascinating, often grisly tale, based on a popular manga, of a woman not only born but conceived to take revenge for her mother's rape and her family's murder. Among other things, it's an acknowledged source for Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003).

Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas, 2007)

Miriam Toews and Maria Pankratz in Silent Light

Cast: Cornelio Wall, Miriam Toews, Maria Pankratz, Peter Wall, Jacobo Klassen, Elizabeth Fehr. Screenplay: Carlos Reygadas. Cinematography: Alexis Zabe. Art direction: Nohemi Gonzalez. Film editing: Natalia López.

A kind of holiness suffuses Carlos Reygadas's Silent Light, a film set in a Mexican community of Mennonites who speak entirely in Plautdietsch, their dialect of German. The actors in the film are real people summoned to play characters who might have existed in their own community, so from the outset there's a strange feeling of otherness transcended into universality. One of the universals of the film is the eternal triangle of a man married to a woman but in love with another woman. Another is the cycle of day and night: The film begins with a day's slow dawning. And then there's the mystery of life and death, epitomized in a scene of resurrection that has inevitably made critics compare the film to Carl Theodor Dreyer's Ordet (1955). Silent Light is a simpler story than the one that great film tells, but also entirely worthy of the comparison.

Judge Priest (John Ford, 1934)

Stepin Fetchit and Will Rogers in Judge Priest

Cast: Will Rogers, Tom Brown, Anita Louise, Stepin Fetchit, Hattie McDaniel, Henry B. Walthall, David Landau, Rochelle Hudson, Charley Grapewin, Berton Churchill. Screenplay: Dudley Nichols, Lamar Trotti, based on stories by Irvin S. Cobb. Cinematography: George Schneiderman. Art direction: William S. Darling. Film editing: Paul Weatherwax. Music: Samuel Kaylin.

John Ford's Judge Priest fits neatly into that period, roughly from 1915 (the year of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation) to 1939 (the year of David O. Selznick's* Gone With the Wind), when Hollywood filmmakers were catering to audiences in the American South, eager for validation that their "lost cause" had been sacred and not the act of treason that it really was. So it's not surprising to find in the cast of Judge Priest both an actor from Griffith's film, Henry B. Walthall, and one from Selznick's, Hattie McDaniel. Ford's film, in which there's a joke about lynching and which concludes with a rousing performance of "Dixie" complete with waving of the Confederate battle flag, is hard to watch today, except for its historical interest, not only as an example of what movie audiences tolerated in 1934, but also for its glimpses of a then much-loved star, Will Rogers, and his occasional film sidekick, Stepin Fetchit, a comedian who was attacked as an Uncle Tom, but whose work has since been re-evaluated and appreciated for its skill. Judge Priest is also one of the few films in which McDaniel was allowed to sing, a talent she possessed in abundance. Otherwise, it's pretty wince-inducing.

*Yes, Victor Fleming was the credited director of GWTW, but if ever a movie deserved to be credited mainly to its producer, it's that one.

Kaili Blues (Bi Gan, 2015)

Cast: Chen Yongzhong, Guo Yue, Liu Linyan, Luo Feiyang, Xie Lixun, Yang Zhuohua, Yu Shixue, Zhao Daqing. Screenplay: Bi Gan. Cinematography: Wang Tianxing. Production design: Zhu Yun. Film editing: Qin Yanan. Music: Lim Giong.

The centerpiece of Kaili Blues is an astonishing long take -- a very long take lasting 41 minutes -- that follows the young motorcycle-riding doctor who is the protagonist of the film along his journey. It's not just a tour de force sequence but one integral to the poetic essence of the work. In his first feature, Bi Gan reveals himself as a poet -- he recites some of his verse in the film -- who is playing with time and memory, dream and waking reality in challenging and enigmatic ways.

Dance, Fools, Dance (Harry Beaumont, 1931)

Cast: Joan Crawford, Lester Vail, Cliff Edwards, William Bakewell, William Holden*, Clark Gable. Screenplay: Aurania Rouverol, Richard Schayer. Cinematography: Charles Rosher. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: George Hively. Costume design: Adrian.

Although it was the first film in which Joan Crawford appeared with Clark Gable, it's mostly Crawford's movie -- Gable gets sixth billing, below the first William Holden*, who plays Crawford's father. Dance, Girl, Dance isn't quite the musical it sounds like, although Crawford does get to dance a little clunkily. It's a gangster movie in which Crawford's character, a rich girl turned poor by the Depression, goes into journalism and finds herself investigating mob boss Jake Luva (Gable), for whom she of course falls until she finds out that he's a killer. The chemistry between Crawford and Gable led to their teaming in seven more films.

*1861-1932

My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985)

Cast: Gordon Warnecke, Daniel Day-Lewis, Roshan Seth, Saeed Jaffrey, Shirley Anne Field, Rita Wolf, Derrick Branche. Screenplay: Hanif Kureishi. Cinematography: Oliver Stapleton. Production design: Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski. Film editing: Mick Audsley. Music: Stanley Myers, Hans Zimmer.

A fusillade across the bow of Thatcherite Britain, My Beautiful Laundrette manages to take on racism, homophobia, and capitalist entrepreneurship all in one breathtaking moment. It also served as a breakthrough film for Daniel Day-Lewis as Johnny, a gay skinhead with an Anglo-Pakistani lover, Omar (Gordon Warnecke).

The Mad Miss Manton (Leigh Jason, 1938)

Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda in The Mad Miss Manton

Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Sam Levene, Frances Mercer, Stanley Ridges, Hattie McDaniel. Screenplay: Philip G. Epstein, Wilson Collison. Cinematography: Nicholas Musuraca. Art direction: Van Nest Polglase, Carroll Clark. Film editing: George Hively. Music: Roy Webb.

If The Mad Miss Manton seems to me a laborious misfire of a screwball comedy, it may be because I can't help comparing it to another film that also stars Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda, Preston Sturges's sublime The Lady Eve (1941). Stanwyck plays the doyenne of a gaggle of silly socialites who get involved in trying to solve a murder. They tangle with a police lieutenant played by Sam Levene and a reporter played by Fonda in the process, but Stanwyck's character and Fonda's naturally fall in love during the proceedings. It's over-frantic and under-motivated.

My Name Is Julia Ross (Joseph H. Lewis, 1945)

May Whitty in My Name Is Julia Ross

Cast: Nina Foch, May Whitty, George Macready, Roland Varno, Anita Sharp-Bolster, Doris Lloyd. Screenplay: Muriel Roy Bolton, based on a novel by Anthony Gilbert. Cinematography: Burnett Guffey. Art direction: Jerome Pycha Jr. Film editing: Henry Batista. Costume design: Jean Louis.

A tidy, twisty thriller about a woman (Nina Foch) who, when she gets hired as a secretary to a wealthy elderly woman (May Whitty) who lives in a lonely, isolated old house by the sea, becomes a pawn in a plot to cover up a murder. It's one of the films -- another is Gun Crazy (1950) -- that suggest that Joseph H. Lewis could have been more than just a B-movie director. Short (65 minutes) and to the point.