Landscapes of Horror

Tilda Swinton, perfectly cast as a dancer-choreographer, leads her troupe to hell in a g-string in Suspiria.

Luca Guadagnino sets his remake of Suspiria (2018) in a wintry world. Almost until the end, the palette is dominated by cool colors and muted pastels. It's a powerful contrast to the passions lurking beneath the surface in this tale of a dance company that's actually a front for a coven of witches. The women running the school glide through Berlin, with occasional outbursts of laughter, some of it sororal, some of it taunting, particularly when dealing with dancers who can't get with the program or men who, in their view, can't get with anything. The major burst of color is leading lady Dakota Johnson's red hair, which is a bit of foreshadowing.

At the center of all this is the relationship between choreographer Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton) and new dancer Susie (Johnson). Johnson is a fantasy figure out of Fame (1982) or Flashdance (1983) — an untrained dancer who's all explosive instincts. It's a conceit that plays well with slackers, like the musical numbers that come together out of nowhere on Glee. You can sit and watch while telling yourself that you could do just as well if you wanted to. Fortunately, Johnson has enough energy and openness to pull it off. Guadagnino shoots most of the dances like music videos, so his percussive editing convinces you that she's a better dancer than she is. The result is a performance that pulls you in. Despite the tired trope, you find yourself caring about this young woman. That's important since the main tension in the plot is the growing awareness that the coven has chosen her as a sacrifice to restore the vitality of their ancient leader, Mother Markos (also Swinton).

In the 33 years since she made her film debut in Derek Jarman's Caravaggio (1986), Swinton has established herself as one of the most powerful presences on film. Playing four roles in Suspiria (or rather, three and a half, since one is barely defined) she shows that there's a lot of skill backing up that presence. As Madame Blanc, she effortlessly dominates a dance company run by eccentric types. She doesn't overstate anything. You can tell from her eyes and the set of her body that she sees something of herself in Susie, which helps get across the film's central conflict — the battle between factions of the coven over Susie's fate — without pounding the audience over the head. Even more impressive is her work as Dr. Klemperer, a male psychiatrist who's been treating a young dancer who sees through the dance company's façade. She doesn't just rely on the makeup (which is very good) to put the character across. She moves with the considered delicacy of the very old and speaks with a slight rasp. It takes a moment to recognize the voice as hers, and you can only spot the physical resemblance when she's in profile.

Guadagnino wanted Swinton to play the male psychoanalyst to reinforce the film's heavy focus on women. Apart from two police detectives who have only a few scenes, all of the major players are women. This helps clarify the film's central conflict, the battle between destructive and nurturing approaches to power. As the film starts, the coven has just elected Mother Markos as leader over Madame Blanc. The Markos faction views Susie as a sacrifice and urges Madame Blanc to get her ready quickly. Blanc wants to hold off the sacrifice to see Susie's full potential. This echoes the political turmoil of Germany in 1977. News reports about the Baader-Meinhof Group's hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 181 play in the background of several scenes. Klemperer is haunted by the loss of his wife when they attempted to flee the Third Reich near the end of World War II. This historical perspective underlines the film's focus on the abuse of power. It will take a cataclysm to wrest power from the patriarchal forces that traditionally hold it, and that's what the film moves toward at the end.

I must admit that I am not a fan of Dario Argento's original Suspiria (1977). I've given the film numerous viewings, trying to find something to justify the high esteem in which others hold it, but I just don't get it. There are other films of his I love — The Bird with Crystal Plumage (1970), Deep Red (1975), Opera (1987), the "Black Cat" segment of Two Evil Eyes (1990), Mother of Tears (2007) and particularly Phenomena (1985). In his best work, there's a kind of delirium that defies logic. They're like being caught in a fever dream that won't let you wake up. For me, his Suspiria starts high and has nowhere to go. You can't exactly build on the super-saturated colors or the gruesome murder of Patricia, the young dancer who attempts to escape the company at the film's start. Nor is there any real sense of environment. The film's set in a dance academy where nobody ever seems to dance, and it's next to impossible to imagine Joan Bennett's Madame Blanc was ever a dancer. She's just a stately set piece, used more for her association with Dark Shadows than anything she might contribute as an actress.

By contrast, Gaudagnino's Suspiria is all about dance. Swinton moves with a dancer's grace. The one truly gruesome scene in the film's first part is the torture of Olga (Elena Fokina), another rebellious dancer who tries to leave the company. Some unseen force pulls her into a mirrored rehearsal room she can't escape. As Susie takes over her leading role in the company's signature piece, Guadagnino cuts so that Susie’s moves seem to be twisting Olga's body until she's left a quivering ball of pain. It's a great, upsetting scene that maintains the picture's identity as a horror film and keeps you viewing as Guadagnino moves through the plot and intensifies his themes.

It's not all smooth sailing. Guadagnino sometimes thinks too much like a novelist rather than a director. The film is divided into six acts and an epilogue, with each segment announced by a cryptic title. Only the story doesn't really break conveniently into six parts. And the titles are rather a distraction, particularly in the epilogue, which is called "A Sliced-Up Pear." If you look closely, you can find the pear on a character's breakfast tray, but what exactly is that supposed to mean? There also are strange cut-ins of a farm-house somewhere that aren't properly contextualized until more than halfway through the film (it's the Mennonite family Susie left to join the dance company). It just seems to be getting in the way of the rest of the narrative until Guadagnino finally uses it to drop a kernel of information. It's also a little disconcerting that though the dance in the film is inspired by the work of female choreographers like Pina Bausch (who was the model for Swinton's Madame Blanc) and Mary Wigman, the film's admittedly effective choreography is the work of a man, Damien Jalet. Were all the female choreographers in Europe sick or busy when they were putting the film together or could only a man explain feminist dance to the audience?

For all that, the film still has a powerful effect. Guadignino has filled the picture with strong female presences, most notably Chloe Grace Moritz as the first student to rebel, Angela Winkler, Alek Wek, Renee Soutendijk and, from the first film, Jessica Harper. There's a sense of dread that builds persuasively, and the finale effectively ties together Guadagnino's ideas. It certainly deserved a better fate at the box office. Hopefully, it will make up for that in ancillary markets, where the slackers who can believe an untrained dancer could end up as good as Susie will be more likely to see it.

Zohra Lampert serves up exquisite horror in Let's Scare Jessica to Death.

Director John Hancock and cinematographer Robert M. Baldwin turn the beauties of the Connecticut countryside into a nightmare world in their independent horror film Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971). It's the kind of trick — finding horror in the everyday —Alfred Hitchcock honed to perfection. With its subtle questioning of reality, however, the film is closer to the literate, low budget psychological horror films Val Lewton produced at RKO in the 1940s.

Jessica (Zohra Lampert) has recently been released from a mental hospital. To help with her recovery, her husband (Barton Heyman) has left his position as a symphony bassist and sunk all of their savings into an isolated Connecticut farm. Before they even arrive, Jessica starts seeing strange things, but she can't tell if they're real or mark the return of her mental problems. When she finally does share what's she's seen, Heyman’s not sure he can believe her because of her past. Nor is her mood helped by the hostility of the locals, who view them as invading hippies. Eventually, she comes to believe a young woman (Mariclare Costello) whom they take in after finding her squatting in the farmhouse is a vampire who has taken control of all the men around her.

Hancock pulls off a terrific balancing act. You're never sure if what you're seeing is real or Jessica's delusions. Even when we see things she couldn't see, as when an antique dealer they've befriended is haunted by a strange underwater figure or Costello seduces Heyman, there's the suspicion that we're just seeing more of her fantasies. By the end, when Jessica has either succumbed to madness or seen her world destroyed by the vampire, we're left wondering, like her, "Dreams or nightmares? Madness or sanity? I don't know which is which."

Let's Scare Jessica To Death was made just as Night of the Living Dead (1968) and its imitators were bringing the commodification of gore to the horror genre. With its low budget and disreputable genre, it wasn't taken very seriously on its initial release, though it has achieved some measured status as a cult film and is highly respected by filmmakers. Were a film of comparable quality made today, it could easily be in line for major awards consideration, something that would have been unheard of in 1971. Of course, if it were made today, it would be missing its best element, Lampert.

Lampert's Jessica isn't just one of the most fully rounded characters in the horror genre. Her performance is one of the best you're going to find anywhere. From her first scene, when she almost dances with delight as her husband stops their hearse (it's the cheapest vehicle they could find) at a rural cemetery so she can make a headstone tracing, she has the character down to the smallest gesture. Jessica is brimming with a childlike energy and openness that leaves her vulnerable to everything happening around her, and Lampert registers all of it in her face and body. Throughout the film, we hear her thoughts on the soundtrack. It's a tricky device that could sink a less talented actor. If you've ever suffered through the film version of Strange Interlude (1932), you know just how bad a bad voiceover can be, like the worst radio drama played over actors mugging painfully. But Lampert delivers her stream-of-consciousness monologues simply, trusting herself and the audience to follow the character's inner life at the speed of thought. It's an intelligent, deeply empathic performance that makes the film unforgettable.

The whole picture reeks of that kind of intelligence. This isn't the anything-for-an-effect world of Poltergeist (1982), where magic and the supernatural are used as an excuse for lack of logic. Hancock and screenwriter Lee Kalcheim have created a very specific type of vampire and don’t need to spell it out for the audience. Like good playwrights, they leave all the clues for the audience to assemble. These vampires are day walkers, and you can recognize them by the scars the original bloodsucker leaves on her victims. It isn’t long before the mere sight of a healed wound on someone is enough to send a chill through the audience. It’s reminiscent of the way Val Lewton’s directors (Jacques Tourneur, Robert Wise and Mark Robson) could use a well-placed shadow or a simple sound effect to send audiences round the bend without upstaging the underlying Stoicism of the films. In the same way, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death is certainly frightening enough, but its real goal isn’t just cheap scares. It’s aimed more at creating an overwhelming sense of dread about a world that can never be completely known. Dreams or nightmares? Madness or sanity? What does it matter when you’re poor Jessica caught up in the moment?

Burning and Boles

Ah-in Yoo, Jong-seo Jun and Stephen Yeun contemplate a landscape they could never equal in Burning.

There is a particularly exquisite moment in Chang-dong Lee’s Korean drama Burning (2018). The leading lady (Jong-seo Jun) gets stoned with the two men she’s been dating and starts dancing. As she dances, her hands slowly move up, reflecting a story she had told earlier about African Bushmen who dance to express their hunger. When they dance with their arms down, they’re dancing about physical hunger. When their hands move up, however, it’s about a more philosophical hunger, the desire to find some kind of meaning in life. As she dances, she removes her top, but the scene is backlit, so it’s more about her abandoning herself to some existential need than any kind of exhibitionism. Eventually, she dissolves into tears, and the camera moves away from her to linger on the countryside and the sky. Her great hunger is left unassuaged, and at that moment she and the film’s other characters seem inadequate to the world around them. Despite some beautiful images and good acting moments, the film itself feels in some ways inadequate as well. It’s not that it’s incapable of answering the big questions. What film ever is? It’s that it doesn’t seem to raise them very well.

For it’s first half hour, Burning seems to be a film about detachment. Lee Jong-su (Ah-in Yoo) is an aspiring writer who rarely writes. Instead he works part time making deliveries and takes care of the family’s dying dairy farm. He renews an acquaintance with Shin Hae-mi (Jun), whom he knew as a child, and they start a casual affair. When she goes off on vacation in Africa, he cares for her cat. For half an hour, we watch him drift through his life, seemingly disconnected from all around him except the one calf left on the farm. When he makes love to Hae-mi, he hardly looks at her, only staring out the window. Later, while cat-sitting, he masturbates looking out the window at the same view. Like Lee, the filmmaking here is detached. We follow him through his routine with little commentary. It’s all objective, cold and a little dull.

When Hae-mi returns from Africa, she brings along a friend she made while stuck in the airport. Ben (Stephen Yeun) brings a new energy to the film. He’s well off, but the source of his money is never explained. Lee describes him as a “Gatsby” character, and for a while the film seems to veer into the world of social comedy. There’s an interesting contrast between Yeun’s slick coolness and the workaday worlds of Lee and Hae-mi that’s underlined when he invites them out with his friends. As Hae-mi demonstrates the dancing of the African Bushmen, they look on indulgently. Yeun even exchanges a mocking glance with Lee. It’s as if she were a pet the with-it kids had picked up somewhere — a source of humor and a reinforcement of their delusions of coolness.

Then the film takes a darker turn. After a visit to Lee’s farm, where Hae-mi repeats her dance, she disappears, and Lee begins to suspect that Ben has killed her. Now the film seems to have become a thriller, only it doesn’t have the suspense of a Hitchcock film. It’s closer to the mysteries in Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960) and Blow-Up (1966), but without the sense of drive. Lee investigates Hae-mi’s disappearance with the same detachment he’s shown throughout the movie. Even when he starts stalking Ben, there’s something cold and removed about it, as if his concern for Hae-mi’s fate were more intellectual curiosity than actual love. Where Antonioni informed the mysteries in his films with a sense of obsession, Chang-dong Lee’s mystery seems more a question of duty, as if the director has to play out the tropes without taking any relish in them. At times, you may wish you were watching the decidedly shorter and zippier Strangers on a Train (1951) or Frenzy (1972).

Lee’s lack of connection to anything, including his search for Hae-mi, begins to suggest the film isn’t really about that relationship at all, but rather an extended courtship between Lee and Ben. In their first scenes together, Ben seems to be trying to seduce Lee in some way — whether to win his approval or get him into bed is anybody’s guess. In essence, the film’s central triangle is more homosocial than erotic. In fact, one could argue that Hae-mi is superfluous to the developing relationship between Lee and Ben. She’s only there as butch assurance, so the men’s relationship can be excused as a romantic rivalry rather than what it truly is, a courtship dance. After a while, you may question whether Lee is stalking Ben to find out what happened to Hae-mi or to find a way into his life.

Near the film’s end, Lee is caught keeping watch outside Ben’s apartment building. Instead of protesting, however, Ben invites him to a party he’s giving for the same friends Lee had met earlier. While in the apartment, Lee discovers a watch he had given Hae-me in a bathroom drawer filled with female jewelry. He also learns that Ben now has a cat. Ben hasn’t named it, but when Lee calls out for Burn, the name of Hae-mi’s cat, it comes to him. At the party, Ben’s new girlfriend, a salesgirl, does a lengthy imitation of the different ways people give her money. It’s an echo of Hae-mi’s dance for Ben’s friends earlier, including the mocking look Ben shares with Lee.. At that point, Lee leaves, but is he leaving because he thinks Ben is a serial killer or because he doesn’t want to become his next pet?

In a film more committed to its thriller conventions, this could be an intriguing mystery. In Burning, however, it just feels like a big muddle and a dismissal of Hae-mi’s individuality as a character. How can we blame Lee for his lack of investment in their relationship if the film doesn’t even invest in her. This is even more regrettable in light of Jun’s performance. She’s amazingly accomplished for an actress on her first professional job. When she meets Lee to show him her apartment, her walk is a perfect embodiment of the character — a wannabe party girl who knows that half the time she’s faking it but can’t stop herself. At times, she seems to get the character bettern than do the filmmakers. The film’s dismissal of her seems cruel and drags down the narrative.

Yoo suffers even more at the filmmakers’ hands. He’s made so detached that you may wonder if he’s even an actor (he is). He only has one scene in which he actually gets to connect, when talks about his mother’s leaving her family to escape his father’s violence and the night they burned her clothes because she was out of their lives. At that moment, you can see what a good performance Yoo could have given had the director let him.

The only actor who survives the film’s sense of detachment is Yeun. He’s fortunate in that he gets to play the character with the most energy. Whether he’s a serial killer or just a serial seducer, Ben thoroughly enjoys what he’s doing, and Yeun captures that. He’s really not romantic enough to be a Gatsby. He’s more like Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) or, if you buy him as a killer, Bruno in Strangers on a Train. Yeun has the casual good looks to pull it off (hell, his ability to maintain his looks as one of the hottest guys on The Walking Dead was almost a testament to human endurance), and there’s a sense of joy in his work that makes Ben a very convincing character. It’s a pity the film rarely rises to his or the other actors’ level.

Rhaposdy in … Green?

I recently caught up with a night of John Boles films on TCM. I’ve already written here about Craig’s Wife (see “Good and Bad Housekeeping”), but wanted to share my thoughts on three of the other pictures.

I wonder why they kicked the evening off with The King of Jazz (1930). It’s not just that Boles only turns up for only two musical numbers (he started out as a singer). It’s that his presence isn’t the real story here. The film has been out of circulation for years because of music rights and a badly decayed print. The recent restoration is a sight to behold, particularly the Technicolor Walter Lantz cartoon that opens the film. Color wasn’t enough to sell the picture to the public, however, and it’s considered the film that ended the first cycle of big-screen musicals. That’s easy to understand. Like The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and Show of Shows (both 1929), it has no plot, just a string of musical numbers and comic sketches of varying qualities, in this case built around the popularity of big band leader Paul Whiteman. The dance numbers are pretty static; they cry out for a Busby Berkeley or Fred Astaire to get the camera involved. The early sound equipment makes Jeanette Loff’s soprano voice almost achingly shrill. The sketches are desperately unfunny. For contemporary audiences, the film’s real star is Bing Crosby, who was part of the Rhythm Boys back then. His singing is light, almost improvisational and a lot of fun. You can see how he became a big star within a few years.

The film’s centerpiece, however, is George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” By 1929, Gershwin had become dissatisfied with Whiteman’s interpretation of the piece. Its rendition in this film probably made his head explode. It opens with an extensive drum solo Gershwin never wrote danced by Jacques Cartier, a white dancer dressed in pseudo African attire and a black rubber suit that’s a full body version of black face. Those few minutes could probably fuel a dissertation on cultural appropriation. When the Gershwin music starts, Cartier is back in a green tux, miming playing the clarinet to the solo that opens the piece. And he keeps playing the clarinet, even as other instruments take over. There are some bad cuts in the music, the dancers are often out of time and because blue didn’t photograph well in two-strip Technicolor, it’s all done up in shades of green. Yet the squence creates its own warped reality, particularly when a grand piano opens to reveal the Whiteman orchestra inside. It’s like a pops concert on acid.

Douglass Montgomery is putty in the hands of Gloria Swanson and John Boles in Music in the Air.

At least Boles has a starring role in Music in the Air (1934), an adaptation of the hit Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein musical. In true Hollywood fashion, the film leaves out the show’s biggest hit, “The Song Is You,” though the number is performed under the opening titles. Boles and Gloria Swanson, in her last film for seven year, are a battling stage couple. Boles handles the material pretty well and shows a real flair for musical satire when he re-creates the finale of operetta he’s writing. Swanson sings beautifully, but her acting is too over-the-top for what’s supposed to be sophisticated material. She may not have had a dead body floating in her swimming pool, but it’s clear from this that there was more of Norma Desmond in Swanson than she ever wanted to admit.

The plot hinges on Boles and Swanson’s using a pair of young innocents — a small-town songwriter and his sweetheart — to get at each other. The girl, June Travis, plays the role as well as anybody could, but she’s been dubbed by another of those headache-inducing, shrill sopranos, and by 1934 you can’t blame that on the sound equipment. The boy, however, is a breath of fresh air. Douglass Montgomery was a real looker who should have had a better career (being gay off-screen may have held him back). He’s a very convincing and attractive young innocent, and he’s dubbed by a baritone who’s very easy on the ears.

There are two curious footnotes on the film. One of the writers is Billy Wilder, and the background music was written by Franx Waxman, both of whom would reunite with Swanson for the much more successful Sunset Boulevard (1950). In a bit part with no lines, Marjorie Main plays Swanson’s longsuffering maid. While Swanson’s busy chewing scenery, Main walks off with every scene she’s in by virtue of simplicity and commitment.

If Lionel Atwill, Julie Haydon, Irene Dunne and John Boles don’t watch out

Helen Westley will steal The Age of Innocence from them.

Before Martin Scorsese’s justly celebrated 1993 version of Edith Wharton’s novel, Hollywood had tackled The Age of Innocence twice before. I don’t know anybody who’s seen the silent version from 1924, but the RKO rendition from 1934 finished off TCM’s tribute to Boles. It’s a strange business, lacking the opulence and passion of Scorsese’s film. This version is adapted from a stage dramatization of the novel, so it’s talky and visually static. It’s also missing a lot of the novel’s subplots and minor characters. It hits all the thematic points about American and European values in conflict, but at 90 minutes, it’s pretty bare bones.

As Newland Archer, the young attorney torn between his duty to fiancée May Welland (Julie Haydon) and his passion for the married Countess Olenska (Irene Dunne), Boles is uncharacteristically stiff, as though the 19^th century costumes were squeezing the life out of him. Dunne seems like a comedienne waiting to happen. She only comes to life when the Countess has a playful moment or two. I suppose she deserves some kind of credit for spitting out the clunky dialogue without laughing or puking. When Boles suggests they go somewhere they can be free, she says:

Where is that place? Has anyone ever been there? Because I know so many who have tried to find it. And, believe me, they all got out by mistake, at some wayside station, like Dieppe or Pisa or Monte Carlo. It wasn’t at all different from the old world they’d left. Only, smaller and dingier and more promiscuous. You see, over there, we think it’s over here. And over here we thing it’s over there. But, now I know it isn’t anywhere.

Actors have gone on suspension to avoid better dialogue than that.

With the stars hamstrung by bad writing, you have to look to the supporting cast for any joy.  Haydon doesn’t get a lot to do as May (at least in the remake Winona Ryder got to play the character’s more manipulative scenes on-screen), but there’s one look of death she shoots at Boles near the film’s end that points to the better work she would do in The Scoundrel (1935) and on stage (she was the original Laura in The Glass Menagerie). Laura Hope Crews is her delightfully daffy self as May’s mother, and Lionel Atwill is fun as a society bon vivant who would be a coded gay man if the script didn’t give him designs on Dunne. Best of all is Helen Westley, a stage veteran probably best remembered by film audiences as Shirley Temple’s aunt in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938). She’s an inveterate scene–stealer, and casting her as Dunne and Haydon’s eccentric grandmother is a gift to the audience. Maybe TCM should build an evening around her work.

Good and Bad Housekeeping

The invisible Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) looks after the family in Alfonso Cuarón's sublime Roma.

The opening titles of Alfonso Cuarón's Roma (2018) play out over a long shot of paving stones as water flows over them and reflects the sky and a plane passing overhead. The film's final shot looks upwards toward the outbuildings of what we've learned is a middle class home, this time showing the sky more directly as the family's Native maid, Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), carries their laundry to the rooftop washing area. It's a simple shot of almost overpowering intensity within the context of what Cuarón has depicted during the past two hours and 15 minutes. During that time, we find that Cleo is the real backbone of the family. She may be just "the help," and, as such, virtually invisible at times, but she keeps the family running, even during times of crisis.

Like many great realistic works, and Roma most definitely is one of the great films, the picture sheds life on the marginalized. Cleo, a character inspired by Liboria Rodriguez, the maid who helped raise Cuarón, is one of the many often overlooked people who keep the worlds of middle and upper class Mexicans running smoothly. In the firm's first scene, a beautifully framed long shot of the house's upper level, she moves silently through the bedrooms, making beds and gathering dirty clothing. The scene quickly establishes her importance to the family. Their story would be the subject of any number of popular dramas or telenovelas. The restless father (Fernando Gradiaga), a well-off doctor, moves off to be with his mistress, leaving his wife (Marina de Tavira) to pick up the pieces. But the film focuses instead on the maids who quietly get them through the crisis. The marital break-up is important primarily as it affects Cleo's life. The husband's leaving leads his wife to take her hurt and anger out on Cleo in a brief outburst. While the family is off celebrating Christmas, the maid witnesses a married friend coming on to the now deserted de Tavira. She's with the children when their mother explains that their father has left and shares their shock when they return from a vacation to a house from which the husband has removed his belongings.

Yet Cuarón also gives the film a dreamlike atmosphere. The long takes, often with the camera following Cleo as she moves through her world, create an otherworldly rhythm. It's as if the camera were exploring an alien landscape made up of familiar objects. Cuarón also has a knack for incorporating elements of the environment that seem strangely out of place, like a trio of crosses set up along the road or a man dressed as a pagan forest creature for a holiday party who joins in when the guests go out to fight a forest fire as if this were the way anybody would dress to douse the flames. When Cleo's trip to buy a crib for her unborn baby coincides with 1971's Corpus Christi Massacre, a student uprising attacked by CIA-trained soldiers and right-wing guerillas, it all seems part of some strange nightmare in which the character is caught.

For all its stylistic bravado, however, Roma's greatest strength lies in Cuarón's ability to capture character in all its contexts — psychological, social, environmental — often in a single image. Gradiaga is introduced as he tries to park his car in the home's narrow driveway. Cuarón first shows his hands as he smokes a cigarette, the ashes going wherever they will. That one shot perfectly sums up his careless attitude toward the world around him, creating an impression only reinforced when he leaves his family without making arrangements for their financial support. As a more complex character, Cleo is captured in a series of images — the impassive stoicism with which she goes about her duties, the wry smile on her face as she watches her macho lover (Jorge Antonio Guerrero) show off in a hotel room where they've just made love, the childlike quality she captures while playing with one of the children in the rooftop laundry area and the pain when her pregnancy doesn't go as planned.

In all of this, Aparicio is a wonderful collaborator, capturing Cuarón's vision almost effortlessly. This is her film debut, and she had had no prior experience or training as an actress. Her work lacks the polish and interpretive focus of a trained actress, which in this case is a benefit. I don't think Cleo would be as moving a vehicle for Cuarón's social commentary were she played by someone with the tricks to help underline his meanings. Where a trained actress might have underlined the writer-director's work, Aparicio simply is. She inhabits the role in a simple, instinctive performance that is ultimately devastating.

By the film's end, this invisible woman has been shown to be the driving force behind the family's survival. She does so quite literally in the film's final movement, when, in the midst of her own personal crisis, she goes into the ocean without hesitation when she fears something has happened to two of the children. The scenes that follow, with the family's homecoming, underline her marginalized status. When the camera follows her as she climbs the stairs at the end, it's almost as though the character herself were ascending. It's a great moment of exaltation — not mindlessly optimistic, but rather grounded in the full knowledge of the character's social standing in a world too preoccupied with class and material worth to give her the value the film does.  

  Christmas with Virginia Madsen, Aidan Langford, Cory Michael Smith and Michael Chiklis in 1985, a gift that doesn't keep on giving.

Cory Michael Smith has the narrow, angular face of an El Greco saint. When he puts on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, and goes all manic as Edward Nygma on Gotham — a TV series noted for its stylish, over-the-top villains — his face works beautifully to reinforce the character's special brand of crazy. It can also twist into an impressive mask of suffering, which is almost enough to salvage Yen Tan's 1985 (2018). Smith, who also co-produced, stars as a young man visiting his Texas family after a three-year absence. His father (Michael Chiklis) is emotionally withdrawn; his mother (Virginia Madsen) is the family peacekeeper; and son Adrian (Smith) is living a typical gay life for the period, out in the mecca of New York, closeted at home. It's a situation familiar to anybody drawn to gay theatre or independent films or who lived through the 1980s. Adrian has come home seeking some kind of closure with his family and his ex-girlfriend (Jamie Chung). Can he come out and tell them he's HIV-positive in an era when the diagnosis was a virtual death sentence?

It's not just that the coming-out drama has been done before and better in TV movies like An Early Frost (1985), Consenting Adult (1985) and Doing Time on Maple Drive (1992). It's that 1985 seems to have been written in 1985. There's none of the innovative storytelling that made Angels in America (1991-1992) or Parting Glances (1986) or even Longtime Companion (1989) such groundbreaking works. Not only does the script by Tan and cinematographer Hutch offer nothing new on the subject. What it does offer is presented in a flat and plodding style. Hutch shoots the film in a murky black and white, and he and Tan don't create many expressive images. There are a lot of shots that just feel wrong — close-ups that need to be two shots or people just standing in front of the environment without really seeming to inhabit it. Is this an attempt to make the family's home, Fort Worth, seem like the kind of place any thinking individual would want to escape? If so, it's a rather condescending approach. It's not as if Adrian suddenly turned into a sensitive individual on his own. There must be something back home that shaped him.

This is particularly regrettable because every now and then there's a nice touch in the writing that suggests that Tan and Hutch could have written a better script if they'd just been willing to dig a bit more deeply into their story's context. When Smith visits Chung in Dallas, she's doing a comedy routine at a local club. It's not only better shot than most of the film, but it's also better written as she riffs on being a Korean-American in white-bread Texas. Later Smith takes his brother (Aidan Langford) to the movies. The movie the kid wants to see, A Chorus Line (1985), is sold out (luckily for them; that film was so bad it could probably turn people off to musical theatre and gay life forever), so they end up seeing A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddie's Revenge (1985), the most homoerotic horror film of its day. But in both cases, as soon as the moment lands, it's right back to plodding dramatics that seem more about putting people into telling situations than letting the characters actually breathe.

None of this is the fault of the cast. They all work very hard at bringing Tan and Hutch's moribund dialogue to life and in some cases succeed. Smith captures the way closeted gay men are constantly shifting roles. He's a different person with his parents than he is with his former girlfriend or his kid brother or when he calls one of his roommates in New York. And when he has to suffer, he's totally committed to the moment. Chiklis is saddled with one of the film's most unfortunate scenes. In a late night conversation with his son, he reveals that he's known Adrian is gay for years because, in essence, he stalked him while visiting New York. This is about three quarters of the way through the film, but there's been nothing in his behavior to suggest any of this. It suddenly comes up out of nowhere. The scene ends with him warning Smith not to tell his mother, because it would destroy her. Yet we've already seen enough of her sympathetic nature to know that she'd probably handle it better than her husband. Did the script really need to drive home his lack of awareness of his own family? Chiklis connects to the material, but for all his efforts, the scene just doesn't ring true.

Madsen connects well, too, and has one of the film's better scenes, when she confides to her son that she voted for Mondale rather than Reagan. It's a lot more believable when she warns Smith not to out her to his father. She also has a really lovely moment at the end when all she has to do is turn off the radio. It's a Christian talk show, and she makes it a subtle moment of rebellion. Langford, as the younger brother, is also deeply resonant, though you can pretty much tell his story from his first moment on screen. You don't need to find out that he quit the football team to join the school drama club to know that he's another gay boy in training.

The situation in 1985 is so basic that for a lot of audience members the resonance is built in, and I've spoken to people who saw themselves in the movie so thoroughly they had no problems relating to the material. Yet I can't help wishing the audience and the cast had been given something deeper. Coming out and dealing with AIDS are primal experiences in most gay men's lives. That people survive them at all is a testament to the strength and resilience of LGBTQ+ peoples. There are many films that have captured that sense of power. 1985's actors and audience deserve that kind of movie.

  Domestic matters concern Jane Darwell, John Beal and Rosalind Rusell — in a gown that helps make the domestic universal — in Craig's Wife.

One of the joys of Turner Classic Movies is the opportunity it gives viewers to discover great films they may have overlooked. Combining the network with a good DVR creates an education in film history. That happened to me when I taped most of a night of John Beal films and finally got a look at Dorothy Arzner's amazing 1936 film adaptation of George Kelly's Pulitzer Prize play Craig's Wife. Like many plays from the 1920s and 1930s, the original seems over-written. It takes forever to make its points. Arzner and screenwriter Mary C. McCall, Jr., reduce the running time to less than 90 minutes, and that includes a few scenes added to open the piece up. Yet they don't miss a beat. The thing moves along pretty rapidly without making the viewer feel rushed, and, if anything, the cutting actually adds to the play.

Both versions focus on Harriet Craig (Rosalind Russell), a woman whose god is materialism. Although her husband (John Beal) loves her, she views him as simply a convenience, the source of a house she treasures more than she could another human being. During the course of one day, he becomes aware of just how mercenary she is and leaves her. Kelly provides a mirror of their unsatisfactory relationship in the marriage of Fergus Passmore, a friend of the husband's who kills his wife in the throes of jealousy and then kills himself. In the play, we simply hear about the case. In the film, however, we go with the husband on a visit to Passmore where we see the man's suffering through his unhappy marriage. The scene is short, but Thomas Mitchell makes the most of it, turning Passmore into an abject character whose grief over his wife's neglect has caused him to lose most of his friends.

That's just one scene, of course. The entire movie —from the opening in which the housekeeper (Jane Darwell) tries to stop the new maid (Nydia Westman) from moving Russell's prized Grecian urn, to the final scene, when Russell pays for her shortcomings and finally realizes the cost of cutting herself off from others to focus on her house — is all of a piece. Arzner moves from one plot point to another effortlessly. Her special gift was finding ways to make acting, script and design all work together to capture a sense of human experience. Given the studios' tendency to type her for "women's subjects," this inevitably translates to female experience.

The advantage to Arzner's brisk pace is the way it focuses the story more clearly on the tragedy of Harriet Craig. Kelly's original play, which seems to go on forever, tends to lose its points in all the padding. Although some scholars have suggested the focus of his dramatic barbs was materialism, it's hard not to read the play as misogynistic. Harriet would seem to represent a nightmare version of woman in her ordained social role as homemaker. She's done such a thorough job of creating the perfect home she can't allow anything to disrupt it. She only lets her husband smoke in certain rooms and has driven away most of his friends because she can't keep the place tidy if people keep parading in and out. The fact that it's the women in her life, her niece and her husband's aunt, who first see through her, only underlies the script's patriarchal subtext. They represent the "good woman" who realizes that everything a woman does takes second place to her primary function, keeping some man happy.

The film's more compact script, however, subtly shifts the meanings. In Act II, Kelly gives Harriet a justification for her devotion to house over husband:

I saw what happened to my own mother, and I made up my mind it'd never happen to me. She was one of those "I will follow thee, my husband" women — that believed everything my father told her; and all the time he was mortgaging her home over her head for another woman. And when she found it out, she did the only thing that women like her can do, and that was to die of a broken heart — within six months; and leave the door open for the other woman to come in as stepmother over Estelle and me. And then get rid of us both as soon as Estelle was marriageable. But the house was never mortgaged over her head, I'll promise you that; for she saw to it that it was put in her name before ever she took him; and she kept it there, too, right to the finish.

In the play, that speech, although well placed at a climactic moment, tends to get lost in the shuffle. In the film, however, it feels much more prominent. Arzner shoots it in close-up, and Russell brings it just the right level of fervor to make it important but not overstated. She also cuts everything after "broken heart," so there's little mention of the woman who stole Harriet's father from his wife. As a result, Harriet's pathology is presented as the result of her mistreatment by the first prominent man in her life.

Arzner also does more with the film's end. Kelly's presentation of the final scene is rather subtle. A neighbor has dropped off some roses for Craig's aunt, who has already left to get away from Harriet. Earlier, Harriet had ordered a similar gift out of the living room because real flowers are messy. In the final scene, she holds the flowers, not noticing as they drop petals on the floor. Rather than use the falling petals to drive home her point (Arzner has already made great use of other objects, particularly Harriet's treasured urn, the husband's cigarettes and the house keys), Arzner simply uses close-ups of Russell, who suffers impressively at the realization of her ultimate isolation.

Russell rarely had a kind word for this film, even though it convinced her home studio, MGM, to give her bigger and more demanding roles. She fought against the loan-out to Columbia to do the picture. In fact, Columbia head Harry Cohn only asked to borrow her for the role because he didn't want any of his contract female stars to play such an unpleasant character (this was two years after Bette Davis became a star playing the even more unpleasant Mildred in 1934's Of Human Bondage).

For all her misgivings, however, she turns in a masterful performance. Early Russell is a revelation. There's a lightness to her work that fades by the late 1940s. She uses her stage training to great advantage. Her perfect posture and clipped diction help express Harriet's detached superiority. Oddly, they also anticipate her best work in comedies like The Women (1939) and His Girl Friday (1940). Her freshness gives the work an almost improvisational quality that's far from the heavy, over-determined work of films like Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), Picnic (1955) or Five Finger Exercise (1962).

Arzner sets her off to good effect. One of her smartest choices was to go for a Grecian style for the living room set. Working with former silent star Billy Haines (who's not credited), she turns the home into a temple for Harriet. For her big confrontation with Beal, costumer Lon Anthony even incorporates Grecian elements into her gown. The lines show off Russell's height and bearing. She's almost unbelievably svelte, like a goddess expecting to be worshipped.

This wasn't Harriet Craig's only screen appearance. Irene Rich had played her in a 1928 silent, and Joan Crawford starred in a 1950 remake named for the character. The latter has become the most famous translation of the work, which is a pity. The connection between Harriet's compulsive housekeeping and the legends about Crawford's incessant cleaning in real life gives the whole thing an air of camp, while the adaption loses most of the original's resonance. The murder-suicide subplot is gone, and Harriet's machinations start moving into the land of bad soap opera. All that tends to push Arzner's superior version into the shadows. Without TCM, it would likely stay there.

The Big Roundup

I saw a lot more than the 33 movies (and one TV series) I wrote about last year. I realize 33 is too much for some people. Five would be a lot for some. But as a movie buff who writes about movies for a living as well as for love, 33 seems almost paltry. Between theatrical visits, which are becoming increasingly rare as I get older and crankier, and streaming services, I see much more than that. If I haven't written about all of them, it's because life keeps getting in the way. Sometimes I don't have time to get down my thoughts in a timely manner. And other times, however much I may enjoy or dislike a film, the words just don't come.

So here's a rundown of some of the films I didn't get a chance to share. Originally, I was going to write about everything I saw, but the list got a little long, so I'm just going for the highlights. These are quickies —random observations. I've put them in alphabetical order so you can skim for what interests you.

 

Clockwise from upper left: Ant-Man and the Wasp, The Bad and the Beautiful.

City That Never Sleeps and Boy Erased

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) — With Paul Rudd co-writing and starring (and solid comic support from Michael Peña and Walton Goggins), this film is so much fun it's easy to lose sight of the plot. It's something about keeping an evil mutant what's-it from getting the equipment Rudd and the new Wasp (Evangeline Lily) need to rescue her mother, the original Wasp, from the microverse. Since that role is played by Michelle Pfeiffer, the sooner they get to it the better.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) — Three thoughts on an enjoyable if over-stuffed film:

1.     What's the point of casting an actress as good as Carrie Coon as Proxima Midnight if she's going to be lost behind heavy makeup, with half her performance delivered by a stunt woman or CGI?

2.     When you put most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe heroes into one film you begin to notice the funny ones all sound pretty much the same.

3.     If you're up on your industry news, the big finish loses some of its impact, despite Robert Downey, Jr.'s well-played reactions to the carnage. Most of the people who got ashed are signed for sequels to their own films, so death is as impermanent in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as it is in their comics.

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) —Two years after All About Eve (1950), MGM produced a film equivalent, using wit and blind-item plotting to dissect the worst aspects of the art form. If you don't take it too seriously (this applies particularly to the lines about the Lana Turner character's becoming a great actress), it's a lot of fun. Nobody plays a heel like Kirk Douglas, and if you're surprised that Gloria Grahame won an Oscar for playing the writer's flighty wife (which she does very well), remember she had two other big hits that year —The Greatest Show on Earth and Sudden Fear — neither of which had the cachet of The Bad and the Beautiful.

Begone, Dull Care (1949) —This eight-minute film is more creative and exciting than most features. Rather than shooting images, directors Evelyn Lambart and Norman McLaren painted, drew and scratched directly on celluloid, even including dirt that got on the film while the strips were drying in the lab. It all plays out to music by jazz great Oscar Peterson. Made long before computer editing, the whole thing still seems to fit perfectly. It's Fantasia (1940) for adults, very sophisticated adults.

Blood Beach (1980) — Back before Syfy, cheapies like this actually played in movie theatres. Blood Beach features a mostly unseen thingie lurking under the Santa Monica beach that keeps sucking people under the sand to eat them. It takes out an old woman, thereby motivating the romantic plot; her daughter (Marianna Hill) comes home and renews ties with her childhood sweetheart (David Huffman). The actors are decent, but the writing for them isn't. After his stewardess girlfriend gets eaten, Huffman gets back with Hill in record time. As head of the city police department, John Saxon pops in every so often to register confused disgust, which seems prescient when the monster is finally revealed. It looks like an ambulatory vulva.

Boy Erased (2018) — Not having the time to write up all my thoughts on this one really hurt. In only his second feature as writer and director, Australian actor Joel Edgerton navigates a tricky script that plays with time to dramatize Garrard Conley's memoir of his stay in a Christian rehabilitation center for gay and lesbian youth.  Shortly after the young man's arrival, the camera pans through the group as they pray, revealing ever younger participants, the last of whom seem to have barely reached puberty. It's one of the most horrifying sights in any film this year. The entire cast (including Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, singer Troye Sivan and Edgerton, who plays the rehabilitation center's leader) is strong. As Jared, the fictionalized stand-in for Conley, Lucas Hedges dominates the film with effortless grace. Hedges has the perfect face for a middle American everyman. There's an open passivity to his look that makes him seem like any face in the crowd, but he also has the emotional depths to break through that. In one scene, he goes running on a night off from the center. He passes a bus shelter with an ad featuring a male model posed seductively. It's an amazing moment, and a terrific bit of physical acting, Without any words, he and Edgerton suggest conflicting feelings about our sexualized culture that go beyond what a lot of filmmakers try to do with just dialogue.

City That Never Sleeps (1953) —It's a good thing this Republic film noir was recently restored. There's a key plot point you can't see in the print available on YouTube. It would be a pity if print quality kept people from enjoying this surprising little combination of film noir and fantasy. Gig Young stars as a Chicago cop tempted to pull off a crooked deal so he can run off with his mistress (Mala Powers). On what could be his last night out, his regular partner is replaced by Chill Wills as an officer nobody knows who keeps spouting folksy wisdom about the city and seems to have inside information on Young's life. The picture is filled with unusual characters and surprising performances, with Marie Windsor as a classic noir femme fatale and William Tallman as a psychopath with a pet rabbit almost walking off with acting honors. It's imaginatively directed by the Hungarian Joseph H. Auer, who never did anything comparable in almost 30 years of filmmaking, and beautifully shot by John L. Russell.

The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) — Dear Return of the Jedi: You are no longer the most disappointing end to a film trilogy. Sincerely, The Cloverfield Paradox.

Crazy Rich Asians (2018) — It's wonderful to see a film showcasing such a strong cast of Asian actors and so many Asian musicians, but this is one rom-com that's long on the rom and short on the com. And the rom part is pretty generic. It's your basic spunky girl falls for someone without realizing how rich he is and then gets rejected by the wealthy family, even though they're the ones who aren't good enough. Some critics have labeled it "affluence porn," suggesting the ultimate message is that the only good Asians are rich Asians. Constance Wu, Michelle Yeoh and Lisa Lu are very good, while Awkwafina, Ken Jeong and Nico Santos (as the gay cousin who's tolerated because he can get his aunties anything) carry what little comedy there is.

 

Clockwise from upper left: Creep, The 400 Blows, Diabolique and Games

Creep (2014) — This film could have been made by the people who preach against the dangers of social media, except few of them are anywhere near this witty. An aspiring filmmaker (the director, Patrick Brice) answers a Craigslist ad from a supposedly dying man (Mark Duplass) who wants to record a video message for his unborn child. Most of the film is improvised, and Duplass comes up with a series of increasingly threatening provocations, as frightening as they are silly. Ultimately, the low-budget film is more unsettling than most mainstream horrors.

The Darkest Minds (2018) — I only mention this because seeing the simple, clean work of leading man Harris Dickenson led me to the much better Beach Rats (2017, see "Closets and Complexes"). He and Amanda Stenberg are fine as the leads in this tale of teens with super powers being hunted down by a corrupt government —think of it as "X-Men Lite" — but the whole thing is a little pat and is very obviously designed to launch a franchise, though the picture's poor box office would seem to have put an end to that idea.

Diabolique (1955) — What a wonderfully nasty piece of work it is! Henri-George Clouzot's classic thriller pits abused wife (Vera Clouzot) and mistress (Simone Signoret) against the nasty headmaster of a boy's school, or does it? There's not a sympathetic character in sight. Even the students are little terrors. This film may have the most oppressive mise en scene on record. There isn't a plain wall or bare table in sight. Clutter rules!

Enchanted (2007) — Why did it take me so long to catch up with Disney's goof on its own conventions? Amy Adams, between her first and second Oscar nominations, is a delight as Giselle, an animated almost-princess magically transported to New York City. Her confrontations with the real (at least in comparison to her cartoon reality) world are often very funny, particularly when she gets to sing.  She's such a good musician she can get away with making fun of musical conventions. There isn't enough of James Marsden as her animated prince or Susan Sarandon as the wicked witch, but when he's not being directed by Mike Leigh, a little bit of Nicholas Spall as the queen's evil accomplice is already too much.

Excision (2012) — If you don't read the credits, you won't realize the uptight mother in this comic horror is Traci Lords. After years of playing overgrown delinquents with more enthusiasm than technique, she turns in a thoroughly accomplished character turn as a woman whose perfectionism pushes her misfit daughter (a very good AnnaLynne McCord) to horrifying ends. Get this woman into an A-budget film, now!

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) — The beasts are enchanting. Eddie Redmayne isn't. For an actor capable of delivering work as good as his Anthony Baekeland in Savage Grace (2007) and Stephen Hawkings in The Theory of Everything (2014), he has a distressing habit of turning into a human-sized wind-up toy in this film, so mechanical you can't tell if it's real or CGI.

Final Destination 5 (2011) — With this entry, the franchise becomes the Ring of the Nibelungen of the horror genre. Five films and seven and a half hours later, and you're right back where you started.

The First Purge (2018) — The curious thing about the third Purge film is the opening newscast, which reveals that the purge (the yearly orgy of legal violence that supposedly frees the nation of its aggressions) was made possible when a new political party swept to power thanks to massive donations from the NRA. Amazing to think a film could be outdated before it even hits home video.

The 400 Blows (1959) — With the demise of FilmStruck, is it still possible to stream this painful, exquisite portrait of a troubled young man? Francois Truffaut's semi-autobiographical film remains one of the most impressive feature directing debuts in the form's history. The conventions of nouvelle vague filmmaking (hand-held cameras, improvisation, extensive location footage) give the picture a documentary feel that makes some of its more melodramatic excesses (the hateful parents) more believable. Jean-Pierre Leaud, as the young Antoine Doinel, is a great find and would go on to serve as Truffaut's alter ego in a series of films. The final freeze frame is shattering.

Games (1967) — One of the great forgotten auteurs, Curtis Harrington, made the leap from experimental films and B movies to the mainstream by borrowing plot elements and leading lady Simone Signoret from Diabolique (1955). Heiress Katharine Ross and trophy husband James Caan collect antique games while playing practical jokes on friends and each other. When con artist Signoret infiltrates the household, the stakes rise. Caan does a great job as the pretentious, nouveau riche husband. He's particularly funny imitating a loutish delivery boy (Don Stroud) caught up in their games. Stroud plays the role like a young Brando, so Caan's mimicry, five years before The Godfather, seems oddly prescient.

Clockwise from upper left: Last Train to Busan, The Giant Claw,  

Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things and Searching

The Giant Claw (1957) — The Earth is attacked by a giant turkey buzzard from an anti-matter universe. The creature looks as ridiculous as the plot description makes it sound, but stars Jeff Morrow and Mara Corday play it so earnestly they're almost endearing, at least when his behavior doesn't start approaching sexual harassment. In an era when mainstream features presented women in roles so submissive they bordered on the masochistic, it's fascinating to think how many horror films gave actresses like Corday, Faith Domergue, Paula Raymond, Joan Weldon and Julia Adams opportunities to play empowered women.

Hurricane Bianca: From Russia With Hate (2018) — The sequel to 2016's Hurricane Bianca is so lacking in the qualities that made the earlier film work it's surprising to realize it was written and directed by the same man, Matt Kugelman. Within the first few minutes, Kugelman's script undoes most of the ending of the earlier film, putting us back to square one. As Bianca Del Rio, Ray Haylock is a dynamic performer with a gift for delivering insults that's ultimately empowering. The film robs him of most of his power with a contrived plot that sends his character, high-school teacher Richard Martinez, to Russia for a series of jokes that should have gone out with the Cold War. With Bianca robbed of most of her mojo, the greatest acting energy comes from a new addition, Doug Plaut as a druggie friend. At first, he's saddled with a bunch of tired jokes about how stupid he is, but eventually his zonked-out sweetness becomes funnier and more compelling than anything else in the film.

The Idle Class (1921) — Sublime. Charles Chaplin wrote and directed this lightweight short in which the Little Tramp is mistaken for a dissolute society type. In one inspired bit, the wealthy man's wife (Edna Purviance, of course) leaves him because of his drinking. We see his back as he's seemingly wracked with sobs. Then he turns around to reveal his heaving shoulders were actually the result of his shaking a cocktail to celebrate his newfound freedom. The film is informed with Chaplin's grace as a performer without any of the rampant sentiment that can get a little heavy in his later works.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) — How inept is this sequel to the more entertaining, if still rather absurd Jurassic World (2015)? At one point, the film seems to forget that Geraldine Chaplin is in the cast. Where does she go? What happens to her? Since she's not a cute kid, a hot redhead, a hunky moron or a villain, nobody seems to care. Ultimately the film's only sympathetic character is a CGI dinosaur caught in a volcanic eruption. Pity they couldn't save him or her and kill all the humans.

Justice League (2017) — If the highlights of a superhero mash-up are the simple scenes in which two characters communicate, you know you're in trouble. Like Marvel, DC has filled its cinematic universe with good actors. When Diane Lane's Martha Kent and Amy Adams' Lois Lane compare notes on how to deal with grief or when Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman and Ben Affleck's Bruce Wayne discuss leadership qualities, there's a compelling movie there. When the action starts, however, it's a mess of body blows and misplaced wisecracks.

The Prowler (1981) — This vintage slasher film has a nonsensical plot (Can anybody explain the killer's motivation? Go ahead. I dare you) and most of the standard tropes. But it also has a lot of atmosphere thanks to its Jersey shore location. I grew up in Philadelphia and spent a lot of summer vacation time in places like those in the film. They could be pretty spooky even when there wasn't anybody running around killing teenagers. A rather sad-looking graduation party is invaded by the return of a killer, a jilted G.I. who had taken out his faithless girlfriend and her 4F lover 35 years earlier. The leads are appealing and leading lady Vicky Dawson appropriately spunky. There are two "name" actors slumming in this one. Lawrence Tierney doesn't have nearly enough to do to justify his powerful presence (the handsome young actor aged into a virtual special effect), while Farley Granger looks like he'd rather be back touring with the National Repertory Theatre, and who can blame him?

Reflections of Horror (1974) — The biggest surprise about this TV remake of Diabolique (1955, see above) is how much it doesn't suck. There are the inevitable plot changes, but they work, particularly with the mistress' nasty tenants transformed into Lucille Benson's loquacious landlady. Joan Hackett and Tuesday Weld are great casting as wife and mistress, respectively, and who'd have thought Sam Waterston would be so good (and so sexy) playing an unredeemable bastard?

Searching (2018) — If John Cho's work on the second season of The Exorcist or in the independent drama Columbus (2017) hasn't already convinced you that he's a star just waiting to happen, I don't think you're smart enough to play with me. This intriguing thriller takes a troublesome concept — the entire story is told on computer screens — and whips it into shape. Cho's a widowed father whose high-school-age daughter suddenly goes missing. As he trolls through her laptop for clues as to where she might be, he realizes he's been so isolated by grief he has no idea who the girl really is. Any objections you might have to the gimmick melt away under the strength of Cho's performance, and he gets solid support from Debra Messing as a police detective who picks up the case.

Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things (1971) — If the way this low-budget thriller plays with gender is intentional, writer-director Thomas Casey is one of the great unsung heroes of independent film. If it's accidental, this remains one of the most interesting exploitation pictures ever made. Two crooks hide out in Miami after a murder. To throw the police off their trail, the older (Abe Zwick) masquerades as the younger's (Wayne Crawford, billed as Scott Lawrence) Aunt Martha. Their relationship is more than a little unconventional. They bicker like a dysfunctional mother and son. When Lawrence brings home a date who begins to get too grabby, he calls for his Aunt Martha, who dispatches the real girl with a kitchen knife. At one point they have to share a bed, which leads Crawford to joke about Zwick's having his way with him, but when they make up after a fight, their physical intimacy borders on the romantic. It's almost as if they were trying to prove that you could indeed do Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with an all-male cast. The two leads are surprisingly good. Zwick never made another film (at least under that name), while Crawford went on to a long career as a character actor and producer.

Train to Busan (2016) — Korean horror has become a thing, though this differs from the most popular examples of the type by eschewing body horror in favor of a good old-fashioned zombie plot. The setting this time is a train, and director Sang-ho Yeon makes great use of the confined setting to generate tension. The attack scenes are powerfully kinetic. It's all grounded in a basic human plot — workaholic father Yoo Gong has to take daughter Su-an Kim on a train ride to spend time with her mother, his ex-wife. When the zombie apocalypse breaks out, his drive to protect the girl surprises him more than anybody. The film did so well there's already a sequel in the works and talk of a U.S. version. Paging John Cho?