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One of my favorite subgenres is the author biopic that is made to feel like their literature (Naked Lunch, Kafka, Shakespeare in Love) and Becoming Jane would be in that mold if it truly understood what Jane Austen's books are like. Well, I'm no expert, but the movies goes for such arch melodrama in what is meant to be Austen's one love affair, a romance that really comes out of nowhere (out of history, I suppose) and which we must take on faith based on the basic romcom nuts and bolts at play (we hate each other, no we love each other) and the fact that they're played by hot young actors (both putting on an accent, which is a little annoying too). The comedy of manners her works are best known for is also present, and at its best, the film turns people into Austen characters, but it just doesn't completely commit, preferring to dive headfirst is cheesy historical romance tropes with lilting music, woodland glades, and passionate kissing. Worse, I think, is how much it makes the men sort of responsible for Austen's development as a writer, and how relatively little her writing career figures into her final decision, despite an earlier scene with another female writer foregrounding it. The editing is also noticeably pants. I'm sad to this a bad report - several of my close friends claim it as a favorite - well, check your nostalgia at the door, friends, I don't think it holds up.

Had I been able to recognize Sarah Polley on Go's poster, I would have seen it much sooner! This is a very 90s film in terms of fashions, music, spirit, and of course, the sort of structure we came to expect then from crime movies, though in this case, it inches closer to a teenage wasteland black comedy than other movies that shared in the trend, and a little less toothsome. Polley is part of a drug deal gone wrong, and her story spawns a few others that, once told, reveal a bigger fiasco still, bordering on the ridiculous. The title is a repeated meme, used in different contexts, but typically resonating with the impulsive characters' heading into more and more trouble. The twists are good bit of fun, so I won't go any farther into plot, or even character, specifics. Except to say that there are a lot of recognizable faces in the movie, many of them impossibly young, like Timothy Olyphant, Katie Holmes, Jane Krakowski, and, oh my, Melissa McCarthy in her first feature film role (she doesn't even sound like herself, was she putting on a voice, or did she get hit in the trachea later?). Anyway, a fun little Christmas (yes, Christmas!) movie.

While Sara Driver's first film, You Are Not I, owes much of its mystery and novelty to Peter Bowles' 1948 short story, the way it's framed as an unsettling ghost story is all Driver. Suzanne Fletcher (who would be Driver's protagonist again in Sleepwalk) is an escaped mental patient using the confusion of a road accident to get back home to her sister, but it takes a while before that's understood. Rather, the first act plays like she's an unnoticeable spirit sending the dead off to the afterlife. Even once we've contextualized what's really happening, the portrait of mental illness, with delusions building on delusions until she reaches a dissociative state still works as a ghost story, perhaps one more akin to possession. Made with relatively little means and many non-actors, You Are Not I nevertheless resonates and prefigures the odd, eerie (and all too few) films to come in Sara Driver's filmography.

Wow, I feel like I could write a dozen film theory essays on Challengers! Luca Guadagnino's use of homoerotic imagery (this is essentially a study in where to place balls and bananas in the frame). The notion of playing relationships out as a sporting event. Transference in many forms, with the tennis players funnelling the sexual frustration of their partnership to a woman who appears to be the sport at its peak, and that same woman judging based on their sporting ability/philosophy alone, "playing" through them in coaching/manipulating capacity. The metronome set by the ball translating into a back and forth through time in the structure of the film... Guadagnino has an amazing talent for presenting complex relationships, and the cast is more than up for it (certainly Zenday'a personal best to date). The tennis stuff is fun to watch. Reznor's score uses the kind of driving electronic beats I love, though rarely admit to myself. There are a lot of laughs. A lot of subtext to keep engaged (one might call it SURtext given how it amusingly manifests). It doesn't resort to tired old sports tropes. Hugely entertaining.

I am absolutely the kind of person who would watch a boring motorcycle racing movie like Silver Dream Racer just to catch 10 seconds of Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) in a rare film appearance (and she brings her usual expressiveness to the "bank teller"), but I'm only kidding about the movie being boring. I actually think it's fine, though its melodramatic moments tend to burst through its innate British naturalism. David Essex is watchable as a racer who inherits his brother's cutting edge motorcycle and then spends most of the movie looking for sponsors. Cristina Raines is very natural as the woman who loves him. Beau Bridges is in there as the shit-eating rival. And a young Clarke Peters (The Wire) is a strong presence as the comical sidekick. In terms of story, it plays like a biopic (which is not necessarily a compliment), though the "happy ending" American edit possibly undercuts that. Still some "biographical" elements seem to drop out given the lack of epilogue. Essex supplies a couple songs to the movie, but these are cheesy and on the nose. Yeah, it's... fine.

Makoto Shinkai is really paying homage to Miyazaki in Suzume, name-dropping the older director in an Easter Egg, mentioning a Gibli film in the dialog, and of course, presenting us with a fantastical world just outside the range of our perceptions that speaks to environmental concerns. And a cute cat. And lots of high-flying (falling?) action. So yes, it's more "juvenile" (or more "adventuresome", to put it kindly) than a lot of his other films, but that should be allowed. Suzume is a teenage girl who stumbles upon this hidden world when she takes an interest in a cute boy, who is almost immediately turned into her limping chair sidekick, which I think is incredibly charming. Together, they travel the country to close gates to an underworld that sends out the monstrous creature that creates Japan's earthquakes. An accumulation of abandoned places that evoke Japan's history with natural disasters (and bombings during WWII) justifies the somewhat repetitive structure (as several gates must be closed), but it might have cut one of these incidents to get us to Suzume's closure (ha! it's the world of "Closers") faster. Then again, her trek through a very helpful Japan (don't expect this level of friendliness when YOU run away from home, kids!) is a journey worth taking, if only for the beautiful animation and growing closeness between the characters. It may be a Miyazaki riff, in many ways, but the skies, the trains, the sensual asides, and the relationship dramas are notably Shinkai.

Some movies, like The August Virgin, feel like summer days. Hot, lazy, where anything goes. Taking place over two weeks in August, the film follows Eva, a woman in thirtysomething crisis, on the cusp of birthing her new self, the next phase of her life. But there's no insemination (so to speak), and she's rudderless (but not insecure, I love her confidence) and looking for direction wherever it might be found - the past, the future, spiritualism, new and old places alike. Itsaso Arana is great in the role, taking us on an introspective journey that feels incredibly naturalistic - wandering through Madrid, effortlessly making summer friends, talking about this and that, honestly confronting her lack of orientation, choosing to say yes to things, those warm nights that don't end until you see the sun rise... SUCH a summer vibe. It's therefore "a mood", so be sure to be in a lackadaisical one before you sit down to this slow-burning character study, and be rewarded.

Shot, or at least presented, on the horizontal plane, like a letterbox ratio on its side, Never Tear Us Apart (or Fisting, if you prefer) creates a voyeuristic intimacy with its formal experimentation, sort of as if we were seeing everything from a door opened just a crack. But it's really a phone's eye view, with chat screens and meme iconography edited in. Or at least, this is how it plays in the first act, when we follow a young gay man's visits to his older lover. I started losing the plot when we moved over to his father (where James Bond imagery takes over, but one can't really ascertain if he's really a spy or just playing at being one) and mother (delusional in that she makes herself relive her son's birth and early years). And then there's the Shadow, a serial killer that's out there and could be one of them, or an urban legend, or a fiction based on news reports since so much of the film seems to be a fantasy. What are we to believe? The claustrophobic shots give a partial picture, which director Whammy Alcazaren may be equating with the view of the world we get from our devices. But the principal theme is sex, perverse and not, which also invites fantasy.

Sometimes you're hobby/fandom/passion can get between you and your partner (or prospective partners). Sometimes it can bring you together. Faintheart is a really rather sweet situation comedy that explores this idea, with Eddie Marsan as a meek Viking battle reenactment enthusiast despondent over his recent separation from his wife (Jessica Hynes), losing his connection to his son in the process. Trainspotting's Ewen Bremner is his best mate, a virginal comic shop clerk looking for love on the Star Trek bulletin boards. And between the two of them, and the tween son who might fall in love if he can only get respite from bullies, we get different variations on the theme. Though much of the film paints the "fans" as losers of the social order, the last half hour is both rousing and touching as the characters accept who they are and double down after a period of doubt. Is it possible to grow up without growing OUT of something? Faintheart doesn't reinvent cinema, but it's a smile-inducing British comedy with lots of recognizable faces.

God lives in Brussels and he's a terrible a-hole in Jaco Van Dormael's absurdist comedy The Brand New Testament, but the writer-director is, quite frankly, judging him in His Works. From his point of view, his Son ran away from home and ruined everything with his Gospels. This is the story of his 10-year-old DAUGHTER, Ea (thankfully, because he's intolerable and deserves every taste of his own medicine he gets) as SHE runs away from home and attempts her OWN Gospel through her own apostles (most recognizably, Catherine Deneuve) and evangelist, people picked randomly from the crowd who are, like everyone on Earth, trying to parse the paradigm shift Ea has created during her escape. Their stories are ones of loneliness, and therefore makes Ea's Testament one of connection, with oneself, with others, and with the natural world. It is a beautiful piece of work. Van Dormael's image-making is surprising and wonderful. The twists are wild. The characters are poignant. The satire is biting. And for fans of Van Dormael's other films, you might even get a few of their characters folded into this larger world.

I go to the theater often and I've had a lot of bad experiences with rowdy or disrespectful (also stupid) patrons. Lamberto Bava (Son of Mario) gets it. Demons (co-written by Dargento) is at once a horror pastiche of that kind of movie-goer and in concept, the movie fighting back. You're having a bad time, but you don't want to leave the movie because you're a prisoner of the story. A bunch of quickly-drawn characters are lured to a theater with golden tickets and the demonic summonings on screen slip into the real worlds. As they one by one become Deadites (and if there's a movie that deserves to count as part of the Evil Dead universe, it's this one), the patrons have to band together and either huddle in fear or try to escape. The front half of Demons is the stronger, with its cool interplay between the real world and what's projected on the screen, but the really crazy stuff is at the back, some of which I'm unable to even justify (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). Either way, the gore is very, very gooey. You've been warned. Man, I sort of wish I'd seen this IN a theater. I bet it would be much more effective than my living room.

In Farewell China, Clara Law paints an ugly portrait of the United States (or at least, of New York)' but also gives no other alternative to her characters, as everyone back home in Mainland China counsels them never to return. After losing touch with his wife gone study in America (Maggie Cheung), a husband (Tony Leung Ka-fai) smuggles himself to the Big Apple to track her down. The picture painted by the people whose lives hers intersected seems disjointed and impossible to reconcile (it is proper, I think, to compare this with the Chinese-American indie film Chan Is Missing), but it will when they finally find each other. Though I can't really co-sign the twist that makes it possible, it doesn't come out of nowhere. But while the search goes on, the husband finds himself in a world of poverty, sin and decadence, helped on his quest by a 15-year-old prostitute, just to give you an idea of how debased Law's America appears to be. And if there's racism - and there is - it's often directed inward. A self-loathing that goes beyond rejecting one's home country, but one's cultural identity, which Law may be equating with the Cultural Revolution. Vivid images, strong acting, but a big downer. Prepare yourself.

Some people are just meant to be in each other's lives... Comrades, Almost a Love Story is being coy with its title, but it also obviously invites small tragedies to keep the two leads apart. Leon Lai a naive country bumpkin just moved to Hong Kong to make his fortune before getting married to his sweetheart. Maggie Cheung is much more streetsmart new arrival who takes advantage of him. But the relationship grows, first into a friendship, then one with benefits. But is there more there? As they fulfill their ambitions, unspoken feelings get in the way, but director Peter Chan isn't telling a traditional romcom here, so while the hand of destiny plays a part, truthful psychology governs the characters' reactions. Shout-out to a couple of character actors supporting the action: Eric Tsang, who I've loved since Infernal Affairs, and famed cinematographer Christopher Doyle here in the amusing role of the English teacher. Comrades IS a love story, just not a traditional one, and it explores, in fact, more than one love story, loves forged by different blacksmiths, whether friendship, adversity, or familiarity. Even Irene Tsu's starstruck love for William Holden in the film counts.

At first and like many, I freely admit I had trouble following the plot of Masahiro Shinoda's Samurai Spy. Its opaque plot. Its dense exposition scenes. I thought I was just not culturally equipped to tell the various factions (or Japanese names) apart. That's until I read another person's comment that this was essentially Chambara Noir and it came into focus for me. Samurai Spy has a lot more in common with The Maltese Falcon than, say, Seven Samurai. Like that film, there are too many twists, turns, suspects and reveals to truly make sense of things (certainly on a first watch), but one remains interested in the intriguing characters and the crisp black and white cinematography. Understanding what genre it's playing with helps make sense of that ending where our hero - a neutral samurai walking the gray line between two warlike factions (and asking, why war?) - has a "J'accuse!" moment as if he were a 1930s gumshoe. And this is also a Cold War narrative set in Japan's Edo period, which also tends to Noir.

It's so hard to be a whistle blower that whistle blowers should stick together. And if that was the lesson of 1999's The Insider - based on the true events of 1995 surrounding the tobacco industry's criminal behavior - imagine how bad it is NOW. This is the kind of movie that would have Mark Ruffalo as the crusading journalist today, but Al Pacino will do, as a 60 Minutes producer at odds with CBS itself when corporate masters start protecting one another. The truth just isn't profitable enough. But as the the title suggests, this is really more about the whistle blower himself, played by Russell Crowe who was kind of in everything in this era, and how doing the right thing basically destroys his life. Though the movie sides with the "right thing", it's also a terrible warning against doing so. Michael Mann is at the helm and he tends to shoot everything as if it were a rain-soaked action film, which in this case counterbalances the potential dryness of the subject matter admirably. Dealing with an industry that's extremely litigious, you can sense a certain timidity in some quarters (like, why so many non-American actors?), but Mann doesn't let you feel it. It's possibly too long for its own good, but now 25 years removed from its release, I really enjoyed how it was placed very specifically in its time, with the 60 Minutes people talking about real news items, including the Oka Crisis over in Quebec, which dominated Canadian headlines if not American ones.

I generally love Ozu's work, but some of his films hit me more strongly than others. Put 1950's The Munekata Sisters in that column. 5 years after the War, we meet two sisters who each culturally teeter on opposite sides of it. The eldest, Setsuko, wears kimonos and visits temples, and though she is a business woman, is demure and deferential, a traditional wife to a husband who doesn't seen to care much about her. Mariko, on the other hand, is the most modern character Ozu has probably ever breathed life into. Interested in up-to-date fashions and spending her time with a guy who sells CHAIRS, she surprises with a lack of manners and a wild spirit that taps into the movie scripts she imagines herself and other navigating. She's the lively future of Japan, which Ozu rarely celebrates to this extent, usually adopting a resigned stance to change while mourning pre-war Japan. But while Mariko is the one to watch, it's Setsuko who will squeeze your heart with her restrained emotions - a beautiful performance from Kinuyo Tanaka. The father who is dying of cancer (or to stubborn to succumb to it) is a decoder key, ill because of excess, which for Japan was the war, yet forging ahead and loving both his girls equally. And the two women ARE more alike than even they realize, in their overwhelming imaginations and in their authenticity and stubborn will to be nothing but themselves. An underrated Ozu, as far as I'm concerned.

Otto Preminger's Where the Sidewalk Ends is a hard-bitten Noir in which Dana Andrews plays a police detective just-demoted for brutality charges when he accidentally kills an innocent man. I think he could have gotten out of it, but he panics, makes some bad decisions, and finds himself part of a team investigating his own wrongful killing. A great paranoid thriller ensues, with a reverse femme fatale in Gene Tierney, the girl who may inspire him to do the right thing (or at least makes having done the wrong thing untenable), and one of my favorite patron-restauranteur screen relationships ever, courtesy of Ruth Donnelly. There are shades of Hitchcock in this one, but also Marlowe, with many moving parts, not the least of which is the massive pull of both guilt and fear of getting caught. And who doesn't love a Spirit-like opening title that's part of the filmed action? Where the Sidewalk Ends is where Noirjoyment begins.

The Blood on Satan’s Claw is full of interesting, even beautiful, shots, taking the edge off some of the low production values (the wigs especially) and has an intriguing premise to boot - the Devil (or some fiend) is trying to manifest itself in the 17th-Century countryside by harvesting body parts from his coven and other villagers. Wendy Padbury has a pretty big role in this, but it's a 70s horror movie so she meets a fate that's distressing even to non-Doctor Who fans. But generally, the incidents feel a little strung together as if the film was plotted from a collection of folk tales and witchcraft reports, especially the scenes that involve the county witchfinder, whose motivations seem almost sinister until they're not. For horror fans who love the devil worshipper subgenre, there's a lot to like. Never been my favorite horror type, so I'm going to give it a passing grade, but no more.

Though there are a couple of dodgy moments, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery still holds up, and of course part of it is that some of that dodginess is part of the retro-60s spoofing (for example, Will Ferrell in Peter Sellers brown face). But for a sex pest, Austin Powers is quite keen on consent, so it works. That film film left an undeniable stamp on pop culture, and I remember many conversations peppered with quotables from it. Vivid characters with memorable shticks. And as a fan of the superspy genre this was spoofing, I enjoy the references. In the mid-60s, the genre was ubiquitous, but by 1997, even Bond was on the wane, so Austin and Dr. Evil really are men out of their time and seem ridiculous beyond just Mike Myers' caricatures. The humor often leans into the Airplane/Naked Gun variety, but it also has the period feel of those 60s camp comedies no one really talks about anymore. Elizabeth Hurley would have been perfect as a Bond girl, but this is perhaps a better role. The music is fun (I'd forgotten about the BBC song). The sets look like they were designed by Ken Adam. It's hard not to get swept up in the ridiculousness.