First off, this Robert Wise film written by Abraham Polonsky (using the front name of John O. Kilens because of the HUAC blacklist) has a fabulously fatalistic noir title. Harry Belafonte (also producer here helping drive the film to be made)’s Ingram is a gambler as well to give the set up and title an added layer as well. Robert Ryan is marvelous as the brooding, scowling Slater. Slater is racist and Ryan’s commanding physical presence aids the performance. Ryan has done this often before with great impact (On Dangerous Ground amongst others). He is angry at the world.

Orlando is the second feature of Sally Potter and is the first great artistic success of a young Tilda Swinton (aged 32 years) in the lead. Swinton was coming off her phase and period of work with avant-garde artist and director Derek Jarman – certainly avant-garde is how you can describe not only Orlando but much of career of Swinton (aside from some big blockbusters here and there). Swinton plays Orlando- addressing the camera directly. The film is broken up with a series of formal chapter titles marking different times and forms of Orlando– “1600 Death” and “1610 Love”

Mighty Aphrodite is certainly a minor work in Woody Allen’s vast and extraordinary oeuvre It opens on a Greek Chorus in costume led by F. Murray Abraham. This section of the film was shot in Sicily and it is set apart from and interwoven with the main narrative shot and set in New York City featuring Lenny (Woody Allen) his wife Amanda (Helena Bonham Carter). Through a bizarre set of circumstances, Lenny will end up seeking out the biological mother of his adopted son. The mother Linda is played Mira Sorvino in an Oscar winning performance for supporting actress.

Chilean auteur Pablo Larraín doubles down on his passion- making films about the wives of royalty (2016’s Jackie- about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassi) with 2021’s Spencer -taken from Princess Diana’s maiden name. Spencer tracks Diana through a few days during the Christmas holidays before her sort of emancipation from the British royal family. Spencer is also another feather in the cap for Kristen Stewart. Stewart, just over the age of thirty now, has put together a very decent resume that includes 2014’s Clouds of Sils Maria and Certain Women in 2016. Like Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women, Larraín shoots this in

Julie Taymor had previously worked on stage (notably “The Lion King”) and in television but 1999’s Titus was her debut feature film. Titus is certainly laudable for its full mise-en-scene: use of color, production design (Dante Ferretti- Salo, Casino, The Age of Innocence) and costume work (Milena Canonero- Barry Lyndon, Dick Tracy, A Clockwork Orange, most of Wes Anderson’s work). Titus is also notable for pairing Anthony Hopkins (not quite on the run he was in the early 1990s but still doing great work) with Shakespeare--- belting out the Bard “I shall grind your bones to dust!”

Aki Kaurismäki’s Lights in the Dusk marks the final film in his Finland Trilogy which includes Drifting Clouds (1996) and The Man Without a Past (2002). Lights in the Dusk gets off to a bit of a bumpy start with Janne Hyytiäinen cast in the lead as Seppo. He must be the youngest and most handsome of Kaurismäki’s protagonists over the years and decades. This feels like a kind of betrayal (he is the auteur that has often worked with Matti Pellonpää and Kati Outinen—Outinen has a small role as a check out girl here). Seppo is blue collar

Deadpan comedy is set up from the opening in Aki Kaurismäki’s Drifting Clouds as a piano player croons romantic paradoxes. Kaurismäki’s rigid minimal approach has rightly drawn comparisons to Jim Jarmusch over the years. In fact, the movie theater within the world of Drifting Clouds has posters for Night on Earth (along with L’argent and L'Atalante). Kaurismäki sharply critiques modern popular contemporary cinema with the blare of machine gun audio echoing out of the theater. Another strong entry or piece of the pie in Kaurismäki’s oeuvre. This is a working class tragedy played as comedy by Ilona (Kati Outinen-

In a small town in Alabama, three (3) friends have a wild night together “You’ll wanna get weird?”  (weird indeed is the shot above) where one of the three dies. A bizarre but strong mystery follows. As the A24 logo that opens the film would suggest, The Death of Dick Long is a very inventive work. The film playfully leans not only into its southern small town surroundings, but also the early 2000s music refences for Zeke (Michael Abbott Jr.) and the constantly vaping Earl (Andre Hyland) with Papa Roach, Lincoln Park, Creed and Nickleback in the mix. Between

Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop would make for a great double billing with Dennis Hopper’s 1969 film Easy Rider. This low budget road trip film stars good-looking, long-haired musicians-  James Taylor as “The Driver” and Dennis Wilson as “The Mechanic” who pair up with “The Girl” (Laurie Bird) as they roam around rather aimlessly racing cars for “bread”. Much of this is just the open road, the vacant but cool stare from the models. The only professional among the four leads is Warren Oates (24-minutes into the 102-minute film before he gets any dialogue) as the chatty “GTO”. GTO talks

Robert Wise so often worked in genre cinema that it seems a bit jarring to see him working in a straight drama. I Want to Live! Is a seminal capital punishment film (others would include Dead Man Walking -1995, maybe Monster-2003 is a cousin as they are both about women). “You are about to see a factual story”- the story of Barbara Graham. This is Susan Hayward’s greatest work. She quietly had five nominations in twelve years from 1947 to 1958 (culminating and winning for this). The writer of her stories portrayed in the film is Simon Oakland (would

Jack Clayton’s The Innocents is Truman Capote adapting Henry James on a grand widescreen CinemaScope canvas. It opens with a child singing “O Willow Waly” with haunting lyrics like “tree that weeps with me” and all of this is a good thirty seconds before the 20th Century Fox logo appears—it is just a black screen- a brilliant little choice. Jack Clayton and director of photography Freddie Francis (The Elephant Man, Scorsese’s Cape Fear) are absolutely dedicated to the depth of field photography just like Kurosawa during this fertile period of time in the early 1960s. Early on, Deborah Kerr

Dressed to Kill opens like many of De Palma films- with a complex tracking shot as the camera glides into the bathroom playing voyeur on Angie Dickinson’s Kate Miller character as she is taking a shower. De Palma revels in the seediness of it all- Dressed to Kill is yet another film (much like Body Double to follow) to have scenes that could be straight out of softcore… and this is the second film of De Palma’s already (1976’s Carrie) to open with a slow motion surrealism sequence featuring female nudity in the shower. It is somewhat complex set