Death Is a Caress (Edith Carlmar, 1949)

Claus Wiese and Bjørg Riiser-Larsen in Death Is a Caress

Cast: Claus Wiese, Bjørg Riiser-Larsen, Eva Bergh, Ingolf Rogde, Einar Vaage, Brita Bigum, Sossen Krohg. Screenplay: Otto Carlar, based on a novel by Arne Moen. Cinematography: Kåre Bergstrøm, Ragnar Sørensen. Art direction: H.C. Hansen. Film editing: Olav Engebetsen. Music: Sverre Bergh. 

A cougar on the prowl snares a handsome garage mechanic and takes him back to her lair in the Norwegian noir Death Is a Caress. Edith Carlmar, the first woman to direct a Norwegian film, tells the story of the ill-fated liaison of Sonja Rentoft (Bjørg Riiser-Larsen) and Erik Hauge (Claus Weise) with considerable finesse. The sinners in the movie still get punished -- one with death, the other with imprisonment -- but it's a film that reflects how timid Hollywood's output was under the Production Code, which forbade things like showing a man and a woman in bed together as well as any mention of abortion, both of which Carlmar has no hesitation about including.  

54 (Mark Christopher, 1998)

Ryan Philippe in 54

Cast: Ryan Philippe, Mike Myers, Salma Hayek, Neve Campbell, Breckin Meyer, Sela Ward, Sherry Stringfield, Ellen Albertini Dow, Heather Matarazzo, Skipp Sudduth. Screenplay: Mark Christopher. Cinematography: Alexander Gruszynski. Production design: Kevin Thompson. Film editing: Lee Percy. Music: Marco Beltrami. 

Mark Christopher's 54 tells the old tale of the moth drawn to the flame who gets his wings singed. It's the story of Shane (Ryan Philippe), a Jersey boy drawn to the bright lights of Manhattan and particularly those of Studio 54, the pleasure palace run by Steve Rubell (Mike Myers). Despite all the sex and drugs, however, it's a tepid, tedious film -- or at least the one that went into release and is now being shown on the Criterion Channel is. It uses the expository crutch of a voice-over narration by Shane to tell how he and his friends Anita (Salma Hayek) and Greg (Brecking Meyer) became victims of Rubell's vices and venality, though it ends improbably with a presumably repentant Rubell returning from prison to be welcomed by them in a cleaned-up Studio 54. The film was a critical disaster, which writer-director Christopher blames on the meddling of producer Harvey Weinstein. But a "director's cut" now exists that is reportedly darker, tougher, and incidentally a lot queerer, one in which Shane is not quite the choirboy gone astray.  

Love (Dag Johan Haugerud, 2024)

Andrea Bræin Hovig and Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen in Love

Cast: Andrea Bræin Hovig, Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen, Marte Engebritsen, Lars Jacob Holm, Tomas Gullestad, Marian Saastad Ottesen, Morten Svartveit. Screenplay: Dag Johan Haugerud. Cinematography: Cecilie Semec. Production design: Tuva Hølmebakk. Film editing: Jens Christian Fodstad. Music: Peder Kjellsby. 

What do we talk about when we talk about love? Sex? Commitment? Fidelity? Selflessness? In Dag Johan Haugerud's engaging Love, part of his "Oslo trilogy," the characters talk about all of those things and sometimes act upon them. The film centers on Marianne (Andrea Bræin Hovig), a urologist, and Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen), a nurse, who meet after work on a commuter ferry from Oslo to the Nesodden peninsula. Tor reveals to Marianne that he's on Grindr and often uses it to meet other gay men on the ferry. He's happily unattached and enjoys talking with the men he meets almost as much as he does having sex with them. The conversation sparks something in Marianne: She's middle-aged and unmarried, which doesn't seem to bother her as much as it bothers her friends, who keep trying to set her up. In fact, she's on her way to meet an eligible divorcé her friend Heidi (Marte Engebritsen) thinks is a good match for her. Marianne goes on Tinder, trying out Tor's methods, and has a brief hookup with a passenger she meets that way. It doesn't work out quite as smoothly as Tor suggests it does, but then neither does Tor's encounter with Bjørn (Lars Jacob Holm), a psychologist who becomes a patient in the clinic where Marianne and Tor work. Haugerud's delicate, knowing approach to his characters makes Love work splendidly.   

Wuthering Heights (Andrea Arnold, 2011)

James Howson in Wuthering Heights

Cast: Kaya Scodelario, Shannon Beer, James Howson, Solomon Glave, Oliver Milburn, Nichola Burley, James Northcote, Lee Shaw, Amy Wren, Steve Evets, Paul Hilton, Simone Jackson, Michael Hughes. Screenplay: Andrea Arnold, Olivia Hetreed, based on a novel by Emily Brontë. Cinematography: Robbie Ryan. Production design: Helen Scott. Film editing: Nicholas Chaudeurge. 

Andrea Arnold captures some of the feverishness of Emily Brontë's novel in her version of Wuthering Heights, but it's lost in some fashionable camerawork, and her actors aren't quite up to the demands of the characters. Shannon Beer and Solomon Glave provide some of the feral quality of the young Cathy and Heathcliff, but their adult counterparts, Kaya Scodelario and James Howson, don't have the abandon that the doomed lovers of the novel should have. When not called on to provide literal darkness to evoke the emotional darkness of the book, or punch up moments of conflict with a jiggly hand-held camera, cinematographer Robbie Ryan does capture the bleak environment of the story. The Brontë novel is probably unfilmable without lopping off large parts of the book, and Arnold stops short of the brutal last section about Heathcliff's destructive decline. There are some clumsy intrusions of contemporary language, words that would never have been allowed to appear in print at the time the book was published, and a few outright anachronisms, like "okay" and calling one's belongings "stuff." The film does a few things right, like casting Black actors as Heathcliff, but its chief problem is that it's more than a little dull.

Five Star Final (Mervyn LeRoy, 1931)

Edward G. Robinson and Oscar Apfel in Five Star Final

Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Marian Marsh, H.B. Warner, Anthony Bushell, George E. Stone, Frances Starr, Ona Munson, Boris Karloff, Aline MacMahon, Oscar Apfel. Screenplay: Byron Morgan, Robert Loird, based on a play by Louis Weitzenkorn. Cinematography: Sol Polito. Art direction: Jack Okey. Film editing: Frank Ware. 

Part of Mervyn LeRoy's Five Star Final is brisk and lively, and part of it is stiff and stagy. Edward G. Robinson plays Randall, managing editor of a New York tabloid called The Evening Gazette. Randall is being pressured by the paper's editor, circulation manager, and advertising sales director to increase circulation by printing a series about a murder that took place 20 years ago, in which a woman named Nancy Voorhees (Frances Starr) shot her boss when he reneged on a promise to marry her. She was acquitted of the crime because she was pregnant, but the sensation of the trial lingers in memory. Randall marshals his reporters, including a rather sinister one named Isopod (Boris Karloff), to find out whatever happened to Nancy. They discover that she's alive and happily married to Michael Townsend (H.B. Warner) who knows her story and has been willing to raise her daughter, Jenny (Marian Marsh) as his own. Moreover, Jenny is about to get married to Philip Weeks (Anthony Bushell), from a prominent family. Sensationally flogging the story has dire consequences for all concerned. Unfortunately, the melodramatic scenes that take place in the Townsend household are the ones we are supposed to believe in and take to heart, wrecking the tone of the movie. The entertaining ones in the newspaper office, filled with colorful characters and full of snappy repartee of the kind the Production Code would suppress, are the ones that bring Five Star Final to life. Robinson and Karloff are fine, and Aline MacMahon as Randall's secretary gets to pull off some memorable lines. When a Jewish reporter threatens to change his name to advance his career, she shoots back: "Don't do it, kid. New York's too full of Christians as it is." 

Brideshead Revisited (Julian Jarrold, 2008)

Ben Whishaw and Matthew Goode in Brideshead Revisited

Cast: Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw, Hayley Atwell, Emma Thompson, Patrick Malahide, Michael Gambon, Greta Scacchi, Ed Stoppard, Felicity Jones, Jonathan Cake. Screenplay: Andrew Davies, Jeremy Brock, based on a novel by Evelyn Waugh. Cinematography: Jess Hall. Production design: Alice Normington. Film editing: Chris Gill. Music: Adrian Johnston. 

Julian Jarrold's version of Brideshead Revisited pales in comparison to the classic 1981 miniseries. Despite a greater emphasis on the queerness of the relationship of Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) and Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw), Jarrold's film comes across as tepid and talky. Goode and Whishaw are well-cast, and they get impressive support from Emma Thompson as Lady Marchmain, Michael Gambon as her estranged husband, and Patrick Malahide as Charles's remotely vague father. But the film feels rushed as it tries to encompass the events of Evelyn Waugh's novel while trying to illuminate the book's complex manipulations of faith and family that span decades. 

Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino, 2007)

Zoë Bell in Death Proof

Cast: Kurt Russell, Zoë Bell, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Tracie Thoms, Rose McGowan, Jordan Ladd, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Quentin Tarantino, Mary Harriel, Eli Roth. Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino. Cinematography: Quentin Tarantino. Production design: Steve Joyner. Film editing: Sally Menke. 

Quentin Tarantino's parody of quick-and-dirty "grindhouse" movies, Death Proof, is sometimes dirty but not always quick enough. It's almost two hours long, when the originals were rarely more than an hour and a half. Kurt Russell plays a psychotic killer, an aging stuntman who uses his "deathproofed" car as a weapon against young women. Eventually, of course, it's young women who get their revenge against him. But we have to wait a long time for that revenge to take place, as it does after a spectacular car chase. It's a movie for Tarantino fans and people who like to see fast cars destroyed. 

Felicia's Journey (Atom Egoyan, 1999)

Bob Hoskins and Elaine Cassidy in Felicia's Journey

Cast: Bob Hoskins, Elaine Cassidy, Arsenée Khanjian, Sheila Reid, Nizwar Karanj, Peter McDonald, Gerard McSorley, Marie Stafford, Brid Brennan, Susan Parry. Screenplay: Atom Egoyan, based on a novel by William Trevor. Cinematography: Paul Sarossy. Production design: Jim Clay. Film editing: Susan Shipton. Music: Mychael Danna. 

A tightly wound performance by Bob Hoskins and a touchingly vulnerable one by Elaine Cassidy make Atom Egoyan's Felicia's Journey memorable. Cassidy is Felicia, an Irish girl who comes to Birmingham in search of the young man who made her pregnant and receives the sinister aid of Joe Hilditch (Hoskins), who runs a catering business. Egoyan subordinates suspense to character development and mood, which saves Felicia's Journey from being a routine and generic serial killer story. Paul Sarossy's cinematography avoids the clichés of darkness and shadow characteristic of the genre, and Mychael Danna's sometimes off-beat score also sidesteps familiarity. 

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.