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–