Der Fall

1972 • Director: Kurt Früh
Drama • Unrated • 102 minutes
Praesens-Film AG • Black and White  Schweizerdeutsch (with German subtitles)
Starring Walo Lüönd, Annemarie Düringer

It's a Swiss detective story in film noir style with
a tip of the Alpine hat to German Expressionism.
A disgraced former police officer (Lüönd), now a private investigator, tries to find a lost promiscuous
girl (Katrin Buschor) even as his assistant (Düringer)
tries to keep him grounded. Rating: B+

The Bridesmaid

2004 • Director: Claude Chabrol
Drama • Unrated • 111 minutes
Alicéléo / First Run Features
Color • Language: French (English subtitles)
Starring Benoît Magimel, Laura Smet

Chabrol enjoys depicting relationships that appear simple and then suddenly exploding them. In The Bridesmaid, Philippe (Magimel) meets Senta (Smet) and sparks fly. But Senta's sullen intransigence hints at something sinister beneath the surface and Philippe makes the mistake of thinking he has her all figured out. Rating: B+

Europa

1991 • Director: Lars von Trier
Drama • Rated PG • 113 minutes
Canal+ España/Nordisk Film Biografdistribution
Color/B&W • Language: German and English
Starring Jean-Marc Barr, Barbara Sukowa

Von Trier is a master of atmosphere, and his Europa is no exception. An American who avoided the war now arrives to work as a train conductor. He begins to see the seamy side of the occupation and loses his impartiality. It's film noir evocative of an earlier era,  but Europa also carries deliciously subtle humor.   
Rating: B+

Count Five and Die

1958 • Director: Victor Vicas
Drama • Unrated • 92 minutes
Zonic Productions / Twentieth Century Fox
Black and White  • Language: English
Starring Jeffrey Hunter, Annemarie Düringer

In this British spy movie the Allies are trying to get the Germans to believe D-Day will be in Holland.
Will they fall for it? There's espionage and counter-espionage and it builds up a good head of steam,
but it's capped with a stock ending. This one's
dying for a remake. Rating: B

Badlands

1973 • Director: Terrence Malick
Drama • Rated PG • 94 minutes
Badlands Company / Warner Bros. Pictures
Color  • Language: English
Starring Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek

Malick's first is also one of his best. Kit (Sheen) is not so much menacing as he is eerily disconnected from human feeling. Holly (Spacek) tags along and witnesses his killing spree in passive silence while long quiet scenes full of reflection and peace stand in crisp contrast to Kit's rampage.  Rating: A–

The Lacemaker

1977 • Director: Claude Goretta
Drama • Unrated • 107 minutes
Action Films  / Jupiter Communications
Color • Language: French (with English subtitles)
Starring Isabelle Huppert, Yves Beneyton

A hairdresser (Huppert) falls in love with a handsome young student (Beneyton) with whom she has in common nothing but a mutual attraction. While ostensibly a story of young love, The Lacemaker is more concerned with the pains of those who are less than eloquently communicative. It's poignant in its observations, and well worth a look. Rating: B+

Shadow of Angels

1976 • Director: Daniel Schmid
Drama • Unrated • 103 minutes
Albatros / Artco Productions
Color • Language: German (with English subtitles)
Starring Ingrid Caven, Klaus Lowitsch

Shadow of Angels, based on a play by Fassbinder, is spectacularly lurid. A prostitute, too beautiful to be successful (Caven), begins to talk to her clients instead of offering sex and becomes in instant hit even as the process destroys her spirit. It's occasionally funny as melodrama, but many will blanch. Rating: B

Valkyrie

2008 • Director: Bryan Singer
Drama • PG-13 • 120 minutes
United Artists / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
Color • Language: English
Starring Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh

It's not the first film about the most famous plot on Hitler's life, and it's certainly not the best. Despite a good cast (Branagh and Terence Stamp) this film stumbles forward, and is awkwardly undramatic as Cruise spends most of his screen time answering phones and taking out his fake glass eye.
Rating: C

In the Company of Men

1997 • Director: Neil LaBute
Drama • Rated R • 97 minutes
Alliance Atlantis / Sony Pictures Classics
Color • Language: English
Starring Aaron Eckhart, Matt Malloy

Two misogynistic corporate men decide to date the same unsuspecting woman with the sole purpose of using her and dumping her. I watched with interest wondering what kind of commentary the film would make on such behavior, but there was none. I won't say it glorifies, but it curiously avoids condemning. Rating: B

Man Push Cart

2005 • Director: Ramin Bahrani
Indie • Unrated • 86 minutes
Noruz Films / Koch Lorber Films
Color • Language: English and Urdu
Starring Ahmad Razvi, Leticia Dolera

Ahmad, a quiet young man with a coffee cart in New York (Razvi) works hard to get ahead. He meets another immigrant whom he drifts toward. Ahmad has a hidden past, and when a fellow Pakistani émigré named Mohammed appears things get complicated. Well done, if a bit inert at times.
Rating: B

A Serious Man

2009 • Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Drama • Rated: R • 106 minutes
Focus Features
Color • Language: English
Starring Michael Stulbarg, Richard Kind

Although on the surface it's about the Jewish American experience, A Serious Man speaks just as much to the unpredictable nature of life in general. While a racist neighbor on one side rankles the protagonist Larry, the presence of bored housewife, Mrs. Samsky (Amy Landecker), boosts him. Typical Coen brothers: weighty themes warped with wicked comedy. Rating: A–

The Devil Strikes at Night

1957 • Director: Robert Siodmak
Drama • Unrated • 105 minutes
Divina Film / Zenith International
B&W • Language: German (German subtitles)
Starring Claus Holm, Annemarie Düringer

Based on a true story of a serial killer in wartime Hamburg, this film concerns itself with the attempts of a police inspector (Holm) and his faithful assistant (Düringer) to identify the true killer, not the suspect the SS has in custody. Interesting for its depiction of the treatment of criminal behavior by a regime that itself was criminal. Rating: B+

The Exterminating Angel

1962 • Director: Luis Buñuel
Drama • Unrated • 93 minutes
Producciones Gustavo Alatriste / Altura Films
Black & White • Language: Spanish (English subtitles)
Starring Silvia Pinal, Enrique Rambal

The premise is surreal and fascinating: a group of Spanish socialites have an extravagant party, but at the end of the night everyone is somehow unable to leave. There are critiques of class and the apparatuses of corrupt governments, but it's the growing desperation of the contemptible trapped party goers that keeps the viewers focused.
Rating: A–

Berlin Alexanderplatz

1980 • Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Drama • Unrated • 894 minutes
Bavaria Film / Bavaria Film International
Color • Language: German (with English subtitles)
Starring Günter Lamprecht, Barbara Sukowa

Set during the Twenties, this is a sprawling, complex fifteen hour long film that defies description. Prostitutes, angels, mystical rabbis, glowering criminals, and a parade of fascinating characters dip in and out of the narrative. The epilogue itself is a bizarre vision that seems to include every actor Fassbinder ever employed. Rating: A

The River

1951 • Director: Jean Renoir
Drama • Unrated • 99 minutes
Oriental International Films / United Artists
Color • Language: English
Starring Patricia Walters, Nora Swinburne

The River, taking place near the Ganges, begins as ethnography, then concerns itself with a British family and the arrival of a troubled American vet (Thomas Breen). The drama is light until an untimely death shatters the peace. The scenes before and after are poignant and intelligent; the tone meditative and contemplative.  Rating: A

Lost in Translation

2003 • Director: Sophia Coppola
Drama • Rated R • 104 minutes
Focus Features 
Color • Language: English
Starring Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray

Two travelers stumble into each other's lives in a city which for them holds only interminable boredom, blinding lights and unrelenting loneliness. It's a love story that's both innocent and intense, and at its height there's an intimate and crucial conversation that we see but can't hear. And that's because what happens in Tokyo stays in Tokyo. Rating: A–

All That Heaven Allows

1955 • Director: Douglas Sirk
Drama • Unrated • 89 minutes
Universal Pictures
Color • Language: English
Starring Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson

It's a story of forbidden love: a gardener and a wealthy widow fall in love. It seems tame now, but in the insular America of the Fifties it resonated deeply. As interesting as the obvious theme is the subtext concerning the children of Mrs. Scott (Wyman) who would deny their mother happiness even as they pursue their own. Rating: A–

Mulholland Dr.

2001 • Director: David Lynch
Drama • Rated: R • 147 minutes
Studio Canal / Universal
Color • Language: English
Starring Naomi Watts, Justin Theroux

This begins with a narrative that advertises itself as a mystery but halfway through descends into a murky hallucination that cuts any ties to reality. I get its self-referential digs at the industry, but I'll have my Hollywood critiques in the form of Barton Fink on the rocks with a chaser of The Player, thank you.
Rating: B

Iron Man

2008 • Director: Jon Favreau
Action • PG-13 • 126 minutes
Paramount Pictures
Color • Language: English
Starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow

The fact that wealthy industrialist Tony Stark in the comic books is an alcoholic and is played by Robert Downey Jr. in the movie adds a bit or realism to Downey's portrayal of Stark. Besides this bit of life intersecting with art, Iron Man is no more imaginative than any other superhero movie, and it takes forever to build any momentum. Rating: B–

À Nos Amours

1983 • Director: Maurice Pialat
Foreign • Rated R • 95 minutes
Les Films du Livradois / Gaumont
Color • Language: French (with English subtitles)
Starring Sandrine Bonnaire, Maurice Pialat

À Nos Amours carries the viewer alongside the heroine, fifteen year-old Suzanne (Bonnaire), as she deals with the pain of her dysfunctional home life. She explores her sexuality with promiscuity, and it's uncomfortable to witness. Her father (Pialat) is a credible compatriot for her while he sorts out his own problems. Rating: B+

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman

1958 • Director: Nathan Juran
Science Fiction • Unrated • 65 minutes
Woolner Brothers Pictures / Allied Artists Pictures
Black and White • Language: English
Starring Allison Hayes, William Hudson

The best you can say about this gargantuan bomb is that it has some sassy dialogue and special effects that are…well… most un-special. You can't really blame the times because Them! is frightening and it appeared four years earlier. Still though, for kitsch, there's entertainment value.  Rating: C+

Rebecca

1940 • Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Drama • Unrated • 130 minutes
Selznick International Pictures / United Artists
Black and White • Language: English
Starring Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine

In Rebecca, the story parallels Jane Eyre a bit too closely and the story's pace sags suddenly in the second hour. Still, one can easily see Hitchcock's interest in spookiness beginning to flower as he places Mrs. DeWinter (Fontaine) in rooms that appear to diminish her to frightening degrees. Rating: A–

Belle de Jour

1967 • Director: Luis Buñuel
Foreign / Drama • Rated R • 101 minutes
Robert et Raymond Hakin / Valoria Films
Color • Language: French (with English subtitles)
Starring Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel

In Belle de Jour, the timeline and depictions of reality blur frequently and often violently. Disturbing images and themes emerge as Séverine (Deneuve) makes the decision to be a prostitute by day and a devoted wife to a man of means at night. Absolutely absorbing and dreamily artistic. Rating: A

Der 20. Juli

1955 • Director: Falk Harnack
Drama • Unrated • 97 minutes
CCC / Herzog-Filmverleih
Color • Language: German (German only subtitles)
Starring Wolfgang Preiss, Annemarie Düringer

Also known as The Plot to Assassinate Hitler, this film is among the earliest about the attempt on Hitler's life in 1944. Unfortunately, it suffers from clunky insertions of war footage and some terrible set design. Despite fine acting by Preiss and the delightful Annemarie Düringer, this is mostly of interest for historical reasons.  Rating: B