I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun, 2024)

Justice Smith and Jack Haven in I Saw the TV Glow

Cast: Justice Smith, Jack Haven, Ian Foreman, Helena Howard, Lindsey Jordan, Danielle Deadwyler, Fred Durst, Conner O'Malley, Emma Portner, Madeline Riley, Amber Benson. Screenplay: Jane Schoenbrun. Cinematography: Eric Yue. Production design: Brandon Tonner-Connelly. Film editing: Sofi Marshall. Music: Alex G. 

Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow uses the horror movie genre as a springboard into a fascinating and enigmatic fable of identity, gender and otherwise. Teenagers Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Jack Haven) form a bond over a TV series called The Pink Opaque, finding in it an alternative reality to that of their suburban home town. In time, Maddy comes to take that alternative as the true reality and tries to escape into it, while Owen remains grounded but troubled as he grows older. Hallucinatory visuals provided by Eric Yue's cinematography and Brandon Tonner-Connelly's set designs immerse the audience in what could be just a story of the effects of pop culture on impressionable minds, but in a larger interpretation is a parable about the problems of feeling different in a conformist culture. 

The Ghost Goes West (René Clair, 1935)

Robert Donat in The Ghost Goes West

Cast: Robert Donat, Jean Parker, Eugene Pallette, Elsa Lanchester, Ralph Bunker, Patricia Hilliard, Everley Gregg, Morton Selten, Chili Bouchier, Mark Daly, Herbert Lomas, Elliott Mason, Hay Petrie. Screenplay: Robert E. Sherwood, based on a story by Eric Keown. Cinematography: Harold Rosson. Art direction: Leila Rubin. Film editing: Harold Earle. Music: Mischa Spoliansky.

The premise of The Ghost Goes West, René Clair's first English language feature, is sound: An American businessman buys a castle in Scotland and ships it to Florida along with its resident ghost. Robert Donat is the handsome leading man in the double role of the ghost and his present-day descendant. Eugene Pallette, who plays the businessman, is one of the best character actors in a golden age for character actors. And Jean Parker is attractive as his daughter, who is romanced by both the ghost and his descendant. Yet somehow the movie keeps falling flat. It may have something to do with the screenplay by Robert E. Sherwood, a writer not known for the light touch needed for the blend of screwball and romantic comedy that the premise deserves. There were also some tensions between Clair and the producer, Alexander Korda, who originally planned the film as a vehicle for Charles Laughton, which may explain why Laughton's wife, Elsa Lanchester, is billed fourth for a role that has only a few minutes of screen time. When Korda decided he needed more romance in the film, the part was offered to Laurence Olivier, who was unavailable, so Donat stepped in. Tipping the film in the direction of romance also resulted in the loss of some of its satiric edge, aimed at American millionaires like William Randolph Hearst looting Europe and creating their own castles in the United States. Still, The Ghost Goes West has dryly clever moments that make it watchable and often amusing.

Afterglow (Alan Rudolph, 1997)

Nick Nolte and Julie Christie in Afterglow

Cast: Nick Nolte, Julie Christie, Lara Flynn Boyle, Jonny Lee Miller, Jay Underwood, Domini Blythe, Yves Corbeil, Alan Fawcett, Michèle-Barbara Pelletier, France Castel, Genevieve Bissonnette. Screenplay: Alan Rudolph. Cinematography: Toyomichi Kurita. Production design: François Séguin. Film editing: Suzy Elmiger. Music: Mark Isham.

Elliptical to the very end, Alan Rudolph's Afterglow makes the audience do a lot of work sorting out the messy backstories of the two attractive married couples whose lives and problems intersect. Lucky (Nick Nolte) and Phyllis (Julie Christie) are an odd couple to start with: He's a rough-edged handyman, she's a former movie actress. Jeffrey (Jonny Lee Miller) and Marianne (Lara Flynn Boyle) are younger and wealthier: He's an executive in a corporation, she's a lady who lunches. In both cases, the marriages are at a sexual standstill: Phyllis tolerates Lucky's sleeping around with other women, who are often clients for his handyman services, and Jeffrey seems to find all sorts of work-related reasons not to sleep with Marianne, who has decided that she wants to have a baby. We come to find out that Lucky and Phyllis stopped having sex when he discovered that their daughter wasn't fathered by him but by her co-star. In the uproar that followed, their daughter left home, and now they have come to Montreal in search of her. The reason for Jeffrey's lack of interest in Marianne is less explicit, though he may be having doubts about his sexual orientation: His friend Donald (Jay Underwood) seems to be coded as gay, and Jeffrey likes to compliment his secretary, Helene (Domini Blythe), on what she's wearing. The worlds of the two couples collide when Marianne hires Lucky to remodel their apartment. The Montreal setting gives Rudolph an excuse to make a French movie on New World soil, for Afterglow has the kind of sophistication about relationships that we associate with the French but also the sexual mores of this side of the Atlantic. The film's chief virtue is a radiant performance by Julie Christie, which earned her an Oscar nomination, and Nolte is often fun to watch. Unfortunately, Boyle and Miller aren't quite up their standard, so Afterglow often feels unbalanced.

D.E.B.S. (Angela Robinson, 2004)

Devon Aoki, Meagan Good, Michael Clarke Duncan, Sara Foster, and Jill Ritchie in D.E.B.S.

Cast: Sara Foster, Jordana Brewster, Meagan Good, Devon Aoki, Jill Ritchie, Geoff Stults, Jimmi Simpson, Michael Clarke Duncan, Holland Taylor, Jessica Caulfield. Screenplay: Angela Robinson. Cinematography: M. David Mullen. Production design: Chris Anthony Miller. Film editing: Angela Robinson. Music: Steven M. Stern.

When is a silly movie not just a silly movie? When it's a cult film that some consider a landmark in the representation of queer people on screen, like Angela Robinson's D.E.B.S. Or are we past that now?  Is it possible that there have been enough movies about queer people that don't treat them as victims or objects of scorn, and we can just start judging films about them by the criteria we use on all movies? Could we say that it was a mistake to turn Robinson's 11-minute short film, a spoof on the spy movie subgenre epitomized by the Charlie's Angels TV series and movies, into a 91-minute feature, stretching its gags out to the point of tedium? Could we say that some of the acting is sub-par and that there's no chemistry between the two actresses, Sara Foster and Jordana Brewster, who play the superspy and supervillain who fall for each other? Or is being a landmark enough? Just asking. 

Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie, 2024)

Félix Kysyl and Jacques Develay in Misericordia

Cast: Félix Kysyl, Catherine Frot, Jean-Baptiste Duran, Jacques Develay, David Ayala, Tatiana Spivakova, Serge Richard, Sébastien Faglain, Salomé Lopes, Elio Lunetta. Screenplay: Alain Guiraudie. Cinematography: Claire Mathon. Production design: Emmanuelle Duplay. Film editing: Jean-Christophe Hym. Music: Marc Verdaguer. 

Alain Guiraudie's deadpan Dostoevskyan farce Misericordia plays out in the picturesque Aveyron region of southern France. The protagonist, Jérémie (Félix Kysyl), returns to the village where he grew up for the funeral of the town's baker, from whom he learned the trade. There he learns that you can go home again, but you'd better be prepared to pay the price, which in Jérémie's case is murder. A young man of free-floating sexuality, Jérémie is soon involved in various ways with the baker's widow, Martine (Catherine Frot); her son, Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand); a boyhood friend, Walter (David Ayala); and even the village priest, Philippe (Jacques Develay). The effect of the film, however, is anything but erotic, given that all the characters, Jérémie included, are homely, ordinary people who wouldn't catch your eye if you passed them on the street. Instead, it's a nicely accomplished exercise in playing with the audience's expectations of what will happen next, a game of small surprises. 

Bullshot (Dick Clement, 1983)

Billy Connolly, Alan Shearman, and Christopher Good

Cast: Alan Shearman, Diz White, Ronald E. House, Frances Tomelty, Ron Pember, Mel Smith, Michael Aldridge, Christopher Good, Billy Connolly, Geoffrey Bayldon, Christopher Godwin, Bryan Pringle. Screenplay: Ronald E. House, Diz White, Alan Shearman, based on their play. Cinematography: Alex Thomson. Production design: Norman Greenwood. Film editing: Alan Jones. Music: John Du Prez. 

The character Bulldog Drummond, created in 1920 by H.C. McNeile and portrayed in a string of mostly forgettable movies from 1922 to 1969, was a World War I veteran in search of postwar adventures, and a precursor of James Bond filtered through Sherlock Holmes. Bullshot is a silly spoof of that mostly forgotten character, cooked up by the British actors Alan Shearman and Diz White and the American Ronald E. House for a stage play that was performed in London and San Francisco. The film version is laden with sight gags, goofy accents, faintly smutty jokes, and improbable cliffhanger situations. It emulates the humor of Monty Python and Peter Sellers's Pink Panther movies but just misses. If pretty good wacky spoofs are enough for you, have at it.  

The Black Vampire (Román Viñoly Barreto, 1953)

Nathán Pinzón and Gogó in The Black Vampire

Cast: Olga Zubarry, Roberto Escalada, Nathán Pinzón, Nelly Panizza, Georges Rivière, Pascual Pelliciota, Gloria Castilla, Mariano Vidal Molina. Screenplay: Román Viñoly Barreto, Alberto Etchebeherre, based on a screenplay by Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou. Cinematography: Anibal González Paz. Production design: Jorge Beghé. Film editing: Jorge Gárate, Higinio Vecchione. Music: Juan Ehlert. 

Román Viñoly Barreto's The Black Vampire is not so much a remake of Fritz Lang's 1931 M as a reworking of it. It builds a new story, that of a reluctant witness, on the original film's narrative of the manhunt for a serial killer of little girls. Rita (Olga Zubarry) is a singer in a rather louche cabaret who from the window of her dressing room sees the killer dispose of the body of one of his victims down a sewer opening. She's reluctant to tell the police what she saw because she doesn't want the publicity that might let the school her daughter attends find out that she works in such a disreputable place. But an investigator (Roberto Escalada) senses that she knows more than she's telling. So in addition to the story of the manhunt and of the killer's attempt to evade it, The Black Vampire adds another layer: that of the relationship that develops between Rita and the investigator, who is sexually frustrated in his marriage to an invalid and finds Rita attractive. Somehow this narrative overlay doesn't detract from the primary story of the killer, played by Nathán Pinzón in a way that evokes Peter Lorre's performance in the original film without copying it. Eventually, of course, the killer and Rita's daughter come together in an ingenious if improbable trick of plotting. Anibal Gonzálex Paz's shadowy cinematography gives the film a richness of atmosphere that helps make up for its narrative convolutions. The Black Vampire is at its best a suspenseful homage to Lang's classic. 

Bye Bye Braverman (Sidney Lumet, 1968)

Sorrell Booke, Jack Warden, Godfrey Cambridge, and George Segal in Bye Bye Braverman

Cast: George Segal, Jack Warden, Joseph Wiseman, Sorrell Booke, Jessica Walter, Phyllis Newman, Zohra Lampert, Godfrey Cambridge, Alan King, Anthony Holland. Screenplay: Herbert Sargent, based on a novel by Wallace Markfield. Cinematography: Boris Kaufman. Art direction: Ben Kasazkow. Film editing: Gerald B. Greenberg. Music: Peter Matz. 

Sidney Lumet's Bye Bye Braverman is a shaggy dog of a movie about four middle-aged Jewish intellectuals who go on a kind of road trip to the funeral of their friend Braverman, who has just died of a heart attack at 41. It's a road movie, except that all of the roads are in New York City. It's also rife with the kind of ethnic stereotypes that only people who belong to that ethnicity can pull off. Instead of plot, there are incidents: a fender-bender with a cab driven by a Black Jew (Godfrey Cambridge) and a sermon by a rabbi (Alan King) at a funeral that turns out not to be Braverman's. And mostly it's a showcase for the talents of the actors playing the four friends, Morroe Rieff (George Segal), Barnet Weinstein (Jack Warden), Felix Ottensteen (Joseph Wiseman), and Holly Levine (Sorrell Booke). Segal gets the key scene in which Morroe wanders among the tombstones in one of New York's vast necropolises and informs the residents of what has happened in the world since they died, but every actor (and the ones who play the women in their lives, Jessica Walter, Phyllis Newman, and Zohra Lampert) gets a moment to shine. It's not a movie for everyone: The only person I know who ever listed it among their favorites was a middle-aged Jewish intellectual from New York City. But if you're in the mood for something droll, it will do.  

Thieves' Highway (Jules Dassin, 1949)

Cast: Richard Conte, Valentina Cortese, Lee J. Cobb, Millard Mitchell, Jack Oakie, Barbara Lawrence, Joseph Pevney, Morris Carnovsky, Tamara Shane, Kasia Orzazewski, Norbert Schiller, Hope Emerson. Screenplay: A.J. Bezzerides, based on his novel. Cinematography: Norbert Brodine. Art direction: Chester Gore, Lyle R. Wheeler. Film editing: Nick DeMaggio. Music: Alfred Newman. 

Jules Dassin's Thieves' Highway is a fascinating, little-known noir, set in multiethnic working-class postwar California. Richard Conte plays Nick Garcos, who returns to Fresno after the war to find his father (Morris Carnovsky) has lost his legs in a trucking accident after being cheated by Mike Figlia (Lee J. Cobb), a boss in the produce trade in San Francisco. Determined to take revenge on Figlia, Nick takes up with Ed Kinney (Millard Mitchell), who has salvaged Nick's father's truck and wants to buy up a farmer's apple crop and resell it in the city. There are some exciting scenes on the road, as trucks roar by on the narrow highway after Nick's truck blows a tire and he gets pinned under the truck trying to change it. Rescued by Ed, who is following in the salvaged truck which is held together, as Ed says, by spit. a sleep-deprived Nick makes it to Frisco (don't cavil, that's what it's called). There he encounters Figlia, who does what he can to cheat Nick, including hiring a streetwalker (Valentina Cortese) to seduce him. The film gets a great sense of actuality from the scenes set in the old San Francisco produce market, and the performances have a satisfying grittiness to them. Dassin and Bezzerides are forced into some narrative compromises by Hollywood studio conventions and censorship, but at its best, Thieves' Highway often evokes Italian neorealism in its depiction of ordinary people caught up in anything-goes capitalism.    

O (Tim Blake Nelson, 2001)

Mekhi Phifer and Josh Hartnett in O

Cast: Mekhi Phifer, Josh Hartnett, Julia Stiles, Martin Sheen, Andrew Keegan, Rain Phoenix, Elden Henson, John Heard. Screenplay: Brad Kaaya, based on a play by William Shakespeare. Cinematography: Russell Lee Fine. Production design: Dina Goldman. Film editing: Kate Sanford. Music: Jeff Danna. 

Tim Blake Nelson's O begins with Desdemona's prayer from Verdi's Otello on the soundtrack, which seems to me like a misstep, reminding anyone who knows either Shakespeare's play or Verdi's operatic adaptation of it that they won't be hearing either the former's verse or the latter's music. That probably doesn't matter to anyone unfamiliar with those masterworks, which includes much of the teenage audience for which the movie seems designed, but it puts a heavy burden on it for those who do know them. Brad Kaaya is quite deft at sticking to the plot and characters of the play, however, and many of the actors are up to its demands. As Hugo, the movie's Iago, Josh Hartnett is a plausible schemer, and Kaaya probably didn't need to supplement the "motiveless malignancy" of the original character with a suggestion of 'roid rage, showing Hugo shooting up a performance enhancer. Julia Stiles's Desi is spunkier than the play's Desdemona, which presents a problem only at the end, when her character doesn't fight back as much as she might be expected to. But the casting to Mekhi Phifer as Odin (a curiously Nordic name) is the major mistake: He doesn't evoke the charisma and power that Othello needs, both in wooing Desi and becoming the tragic subject of Hugo's. Phifer is also a good deal shorter than Hartnett, which unbalances their confrontation. Still, if you're going to rip off Shakespeare, O does a better job of it than might be expected.