School on Fire (Ringo Lam, 1988)

Fennie Yuen in School on Fire

Cast: Fennie Yuen, Sarah Lee, Damian Lau, Lam Ching-ying, Roy Cheung, Terrence Fok Shui-Wah, Joe Chu Kai-Sang, William Ho Ha-Kui, Chan Lap-Ban, Li Kwong-Tim. Screenplay: Nam Yin. Cinematography: Joe Chan. Art direction: Luk Tze-Fung. Film editing: Tony Kwok-Chung Chow. Music: Lowell Lo. 

Ringo Lam's School on Fire is the culmination of a series of "on fire" movies that started with City on Fire (1982) and continued with Prison on Fire (1987). (The 1991 sequel to the latter, Prison on Fire II, was made a response to the popularity of Chow Yun-fat in the first two films.) School on Fire centers on a schoolgirl, Chu Yuen Fong (Fennie Yuen), who is caught up in the infiltration into the schools of a triad headed by Smart (a handsomely sinister Roy Cheung). I think School on Fire is the best of the lot, in part because Lam's concentration on characters as well as action brings in focus his vision of corruption in Hong Kong. Still, nobody does frenzy better than Lam, and he tops himself with the climactic scene of School on Fire in which people and weapons and furniture are whipped into a chaotic conflict that makes you wonder how any of the actors involved in it survived.  

Maniac Cop (William Lustig, 1988)

Robert Z'Dar in Maniac Cop

Cast: Tom Atkins, Bruce Campbell, Laurene Landon, Richard Roundtree, William Smith, Robert Z'Dar, Sheree North, Nina Arvesen, Nick Barbaro, Lou Bonacki, Barry Brenner, Victoria Catlin. Screenplay: Larry Cohen. Cinematography: James Lemmo, Vincent J. Rabe. Production design: Jonathan R. Hodges. Film editing: David Kern. Music: Jay Chattaway. 

Whoever did the closed captions for William Lustig's Maniac Cop deserves special credit for recognizing the movie's essence. Instead of the usual description of background noises, like "swooshing sounds" or "loud explosion," they inserted the equivalent of comic book words like "POW!" and "WHAM!" So when a van takes a nose-dive into the waters of the bay, instead of "gurgling sounds" as it sinks, we get "*BLUB* *BLUB*." In short, Maniac Cop is schlock, but knows it, as you might expect that when you see that the cast includes Bruce Campbell, who made his name by teaming up with director Sam Raimi on such campy horror movies as The Evil Dead (1981) and Army of Darkness (1992). (Raimi has a cameo in Maniac Cop as a TV reporter.) Lustig's movie is less outrageously over the top than the Raimi films, and there's a good deal of sub-par dialogue and acting, but it spawned two sequels.  

We Don't Live Here Anymore (John Curran, 2004)

Mark Ruffalo, Peter Krause, Naomi Watts, and Laura Dern in We Don't Live Here Anymore

Cast: Mark Ruffalo. Laura Dern, Peter Krause, Naomi Watts, Sam Charles, Ginger Page, Jennifer Bishop, Amber Rothwell, Meg Roe, Jim Francis, Marc Baur, Patrick Earley. Screenplay: Larry Gross, based on stories by Andre Dubus. Cinematography: Maryse Alberti. Production design: Tony Devenyi. Film editing: Alexandre de Franceschi. Music: Michael Convertino. 

Even a quartet of accomplished actors can't save John Curran's We Don't Live Here Anymore from the fact that none of the characters they play is interesting enough to elicit our concern about what happens to  them. The Lindens, Jack (Mark Ruffalo) and Terry (Laura Dern), and the Evanses, Hank (Peter Krause) and Edith (Naomi Watts), are thirtysomethings living in a town where Jack and Hank teach at the local college. Jack and Edith are having an affair, and the tensions their sneaking around causes eventually drive Terry into a reciprocal affair with Hank. At some point it occurred to me that these marital disputes were really none of my business, and that I didn't really care if or how they worked things out. The film tries to keep us involved, laying on Michael Convertino's melancholy score to elicit emotions that the screenplay fails to inspire, but in the end I was left with nothing but the pleasure of watching actors act. 

Dead Presidents (Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes, 1995)

Bokeem Woodbine, Freddy Rodriguez, Larenz Tate, and Keith David in Dead Presidents

Cast: Larenz Tate, Keith David, Chris Tucker, Freddy Rodriguez, Rose Jackson, N'Bushe Wright, Alvaleta Guess, James Pickens Jr., Jennifer Lewis, Clifton Powell, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Terrence Howard, Bokeem Woodbine. Screenplay: Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes, Michael Henry Brown. Cinematography: Lisa Rinzler. Production design: David Brisbin. Film editing: Dan Lebental. Music: Danny Elfman. 

The Hughes Brothers' Dead Presidents sags under the weight of its own ambition to portray the urban Black experience in the Vietnam War era, trying to be both a war film and a heist movie. Larenz Tate is too lightweight an actor for the central role of Anthony Curtis, who chooses to join the Marines and returns from the war to find his expectations of fitting into postwar life thwarted. The film succeeds in providing vivid roles for supporting actors, particularly Chris Tucker and Keith David, but the final third of the movie feels rushed to its rather flat conclusion.

Winter Brothers (Hlynur Pálmason, 2017)

Elliott Crosset Hove in Winter Brothers

Cast: Elliott Crosset Hove, Simon Sears, Vic Carmen Sonne, Lars Mikkelsen, Peter Plaugborg, Michael Brostrup, Anders Hove, Birgit Thøt Jensen, Laurits Honoré Rønne, Frédéric André. Screenplay: Hlynur Pálmason. Cinematography: Maria von Hausswolff. Production design: Gustav Potoppidan. Film editing: Julius Krebs Damsbo. Music: Toke Brorson Odin. 

Hlynur Pálmason's Winter Brothers begins in darkness, with a few lights shuttling around in the blackness that eventually reveal that we are in a mine, part of the limestone quarry and chalk factory that forms the setting for the film. It's a way of setting up the contrast of dark and light that gives the film its peculiar power. This is a bleak setting for wintry lives, particularly those of the brothers, Emil (Elliott Crosset Hove) and Johan (Simon Sears), who work in the factory. There's not much story to be told in the movie beyond delineating the tensions that exist between the brothers, the unsettled Emil and the more stoic Johan, but Pálmason, with the significant aid of Maria von Hasswolff's cinematography, provides a darkly poetic vision of figures in a forbidding landscape. 

Neighboring Sounds (Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2012)

Gustavo Jahn and Irma Brown in Neighboring Sounds

Cast: Irandhir Santos, Gustavo Jahn, Maeve Jinkings, W.J. Solha, Irma Brown, Lula Terra, Yuri Holanda, Clébia Souza, Albert Tenório, Nivaldo Nascimento, Felipe Bandeira, Clara Pinheiro de Oliveira. Screenplay: Kleber Mendonça Filho. Cinematography: Pedro Sotero, Fabricio Tadeu. Production design: Juliano Dornelles. Film editing: João Maria, Kleber Mendonça Filho. Music: DJ Dolores. 

Oblique, elliptical, subtly unsettling, Kleber Mendonça Filho's debut fictional feature film Neighboring Sounds is a glimpse into the private lives of some middle-class residents of a condominium complex. It gradually exposes their secrets in ways that will frustrate viewers expecting conventionally dramatic revelations. But then, how much do you really know about your neighbors?    

F1 (Joseph Kosinski, 2025)

Cast: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Javier Bardem, Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies, Kim Bodnia, Sarah Niles, Will Merrick, Joseph Balderrama, Abdul Salis, Callie Cooke, Samson Kayo, Simon Kunz. Screenplay: Joseph Kosinski, Ehren Kruger. Cinematography: Claudio Miranda. Production design: Ben Munro, Mark Tildesley. Film editing: Stephen Mirrione. Music: Hans Zimmer. 

Joseph Kosinski's entertaining but unoriginal F1 was one of this year's surprise nominees for the best picture Oscar. Nobody actually gives it much of a chance of winning, and there was much comment on the fact that it took that place of Jafar Panahi's much-praised It Was Just an Accident. As a racing movie, it has the usual plot clichés: rival drivers, big crashes, behind-the-scenes villainy, an inevitable love affair. You might call it a case of déjà vroom.  

Trade Winds (Tay Garnett, 1938)

Fredric March and Joan Bennett in Trade Winds

Cast: Fredric March, Joan Bennet, Ralph Bellamy, Ann Sothern, Sidney Blackmer, Thomas Mitchell, Robert Elliott. Screenplay: Tay Garnett, Dorothy Parker, Alan Campbell, Frank R. Adams. Cinematography: Rudolph Maté. Art direction: Alexander Toluboff, Alexander Golitzen. Film editing: Otho Lovering, Dorothy Spencer. Music: Alfred Newman. 

Tay Garnett's Trade Winds is the product of a trip he took to the Far East, accompanied by  cinematographer James B. Shackelford (credited with "foreign exterior photography" on the film). When he got back to Hollywood, he cobbled together a story that would use the scenic footage Shackelford shot, and then hired a crew of writers that included Dorothy Parker and her husband, Alan Campbell, to come up with a screenplay. What they gave him is a goofy mess about a woman (Joan Bennett) accused of murder who flees to various Asian locales, and a detective (Fredric March) who follows her, trying to collect the $100,000 reward for her capture. Naturally, they fall in love. In addition to March and Bennett, the cast includes Ann Sothern as his (you guessed it) wisecracking secretary and Ralph Bellamy in one of the doofus roles he specialized in during the 1930s. The cast never left the sound stages of Hollywood, where they spent a lot of time posing or walking on treadmills before rear-projection screens that showed Shackelford's footage. It's a rather tiresome adventure comedy with an ending that doesn't make a lot of sense.   

Vigilante (William Lustig, 1982)

Fred Williamson in Vigilante

Cast: Robert Forster, Fred Williamson, Richard Bright, Rutanya Alda, Don Blakely, Joseph Carberry, Willie Colón, Joe Spinell, Carol Lynley, Woody Strode, Vincent Beck. Screenplay: Richard Vetere. Cinematography: James Lemmo. Production design: Mischa Petrow. Film editing: Larry Marinelli. Music: Jay Chattaway. 

William Lustig's Vigilante is a raw, hyper, low-budget version of Michael Winner's Death Wish (1974), and there are those who think it's the more effective movie because its rawness and cheapness make it feel more immediate. Robert Forster plays Eddie Marino, whose son is murdered by a marauding gang that also sends his wife (Rutanya Alda) to the hospital. When a judge on the take lets the bad guys go free, and Eddie's protest gets him jailed for contempt of court, he joins a group led by Nick (Fred Williamson) that's determined to take the law in their own hands. The movie turns out to be a solid endorsement of vigilantism, unconscionable and full of ethnic stereotypes, but undeniably watchable.

Shoeshine (Vittorio De Sica, 1946)

Rinaldo Smordoni and Franco Interlenghi in Shoeshine

Cast: Franco Interlenghi, Rinaldo Smordoni, Annielo Melie. Bruno Ortensi, Emilio Cigoli. Screenplay: Sergio Amidei, Adolfo Franci, Cesare Giulio, Cesare Zavattini. Cinematography: Anchise Brizzi. Production design: Ivo Battelli, Giulio Lombardozzi. Film editing: Niccolò Lazzari. Music: Alessandro Cicognini. 

Vittorio De Sica's neorealist classic Shoeshine is not quite as successful as his Bicycle Thieves (1948) in capturing the street life of Rome after the end of World War II, chiefly because its focus on the two boys, Pasquale (Franco Interlenghi) and Giuseppe (Rinaldo Smordoni), imposes limits. But they never become Dickensian waifs -- Dickens would never have crafted such an unsentimental ending. If Bicycle Thieves is ultimately the greater picture it's because De Sica learned from Shoeshine the importance of ambiance -- present largely in the prison setting for the earlier film. Still, it's one of the great films about childhood, with a searing vision that was unavailable to American filmmakers of the day.