Suspiria / **** (1977)

The first thing to assault us is the music. A haunting, odd melodic blend of low menacing synths underneath joyful chimes harkens the memory to the days of sinister fairy tales, when beautiful maidens wandered aimlessly through a world quietly plotting to end them. Almost on cue, the chime is followed by the arrival of attractive Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper), who wanders an airport terminal after a long flight overseas brings her to Italy. Notice the space between her and the glass doors of the exit briefly seems exaggerated, as if they are moving away with each step. When the doors close, the musical chords drop to total silence. She moves in, now faster and with more determination, until they open, allowing the chime to begin again as she finally crosses the threshold into the stormy night. The music overwhelms her, as if it were not music at all, but a sonic enchantment transporting her out of the safety of one world for the uncertainty of the next. For Dario Argento, the enamored filmmaker, this is merely an overture in a decadent urban retelling of Snow White. But for the many admirers (and curious onlookers) of the great “Suspiria,” it is the first of many important moments in the most visually striking horror film they may ever see.

An American Werewolf in London / ***1/2 (1981)

Werewolves were hardly a fresh idea when John Landis helmed his mega-influential “An American Werewolf in London,” but it was one of the only movies of the modern era to do a faithful call-back to George Waggner’s “The Wolf Man,” the first picture to ever show the carnal transformation of a man into a bloodthirsty creature. Like that famed identity from the 30s, the villain in Landis’ outing is not an unknown source: it is the cursed alter ego of the protagonist, who undergoes the painful transformation as a result of a near-fatal encounter in the early scenes. “Beware the moon, lads,” a bar patron at a local pub ominously warns two Americans as they prepare to continue their hike through the Yorkshire countryside. Walking silently among rural shadows, a howl in the distance begins to sound. It moves in – closer and closer, until a violent attack ensues and one of them is killed. Gunshots ring out just as the second is mauled, but he survives. And so begins another glimpse into the world of the mythical lycanthrope, told from the rare perspective of a man who walks around knowing what he carries, but is uncertain about what it might cost him until far too late.

Lessons from Criterion: "Night of the Living Dead" by George A. Romero

What a strange and surreal experience it can be to look upon George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” in the here and now, so long after zombie culture has ingrained itself firmly in our minds and our sense of cynicism has caught up to its underlying influence. All the obligatory questions emerge before a single frame has transpired. What does a dated relic from the era of indie counter-culture have to offer us now? Aren’t we too desensitized to be shocked or dismayed? Does any of the material on screen resonate in any way, especially given how effortlessly its grim sensibilities have been upstaged by dozens of indirect remakes, sequels and modern interpretations through the years? In almost every conversation about the most prolific of horror sub-genres, the popular benchmark is usually spoken of in only passively admiring terms. Many, including self-appointed experts on the pseudo-politics of the walking dead, are inclined to dismiss it on the grounds of its amateur values, downplaying the matter for the favor of the more technically-competent – and challenging – endeavors. Perhaps they are the sorts raised in the shadow of the much more well-regarded “Dawn of the Dead,” which was the first of Romero’s zombie films to add the much-lauded sardonic cultural subtext to the ambitious flesh-ripping violence.

Halloween / ***1/2 (1978)

The key distinction between the original “Halloween” and “Psycho,” the movie it is most closely associated with, comes down to a need (or lack thereof) to understand the psychological motives of the villain. When it first caught audiences off guard in the fall of 1978, John Carpenter’s influential slasher was riding a new wave of reality-grounded horror films foreshadowed by the arrival of Norman Bates – ones that involved everyday people quietly evolving into the deviant madmen of old legends and bedtime stories. While it was always a given these individuals would become loathsome homicidal killers, now we were asking ourselves how we could not recognize the signs. Was there something in their genetic makeup that inspired the shift? A situation that destroyed their stability? Or gradual stressors no one else was seeing? Well before the era of criminal profiling made madmen of the flesh relatable, all we could do was study, ponder and then wait for the experts to assess the matter in pointed and revealing monologues. But the arrival of the Michael Meyers persona represented a startling shift away from the gray areas of movie villain psychology. When Dr. Loomis (Donald Sutherland), the man studying Meyers, is asked early on about what caused such a shy and quiet boy to murder his older sister in cold blood, his conclusion contradicts the very teachings of his profession. To him, there is nothing behind Michael’s eyes other than the dead and thoughtless conviction of a monster – a literal personification of evil, long detached from the human he once was.

X / ***1/2 (2022)

It comes to our notice early on in Ti West’s “X” that his probable casualties are far from being conventional pop-up targets. They occupy space in the movie with a sort of cheery displacement, fully cognizant of the danger that comes with their situation without letting their behaviors be entirely dictated by it. The scene: six young Texans with a penchant for southern euphemisms gather in a van, drive out into the country and rent the spare house on the property of an elderly couple – one of whom always seems to answer the door while holding a shotgun. Their objective: to turn this rickety old acquisition into the setting of an amateur porno, populated by aspiring adult film actors who have tagged along for their own slice of fame in the new frontier of home video. The ringleader, Wayne (Martin Henderson), foresees all the obligatory elements of fortune in this undertaking, but what he and the rest of his entourage are not able to successfully predict is that they’ve wandered into yet another backwoods nightmare of violent mayhem. The surprise, this time, is that they don’t go down without at least holding their own intellectually against the morose and cynical hunters they are destined to confront.

Taxi Driver / **** (1976)

Like the most notable of cynical movie narrators, Travis Bickle arrives in “Taxi Driver” less an observer and more a force of nature nearing the breaking point of his stability. What separates him from a breed of other loners eager to critique the system is how far he is willing to go in dismantling it. This is not a man who gazes directly at the cultural construct of 1970s New York with pragmatism, and when he becomes driven to shake up its foundation, each choice plays like a step further away from a tangible moral center. In many instances that can be amusing to watch, at least when the results are uncomfortable rather than dangerous. Consider his interaction with women: early on he attempts to earn the interest of Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a political volunteer for an aspiring presidential candidate. At first she is just as amused by his blunt worldview as we are, until their first date ends up in a seedy theater showing porno. Now contrast that to how he approaches Iris (Jodie Foster), a 12-year-old prostitute whose eyes seem to plead for him to save her – admirable, perhaps, if you were to just passively observe the behavior. But while his is a pattern that is the staple of many movie characters whose madness walks in the guise of noble intentions, rarely are they this frontal, or so pointed in arriving at the core of the crumbling psyche.

"The Shining" Revisited

What is it about the Overlook Hotel that casts such an ominous cloud? How do the mysterious, inexplicable events surrounding a small and isolated family affect the terror they inflict on one another? These are just two of the broad questions hovering over a long mystery in “The Shining,” a movie of ageless dexterity that also remains one of the more fascinating case studies in academic film analysis. When it arrived in theaters over four decades ago, the conventional wisdom at the time had been swift and dismissive: the exacting hand of one Stanley Kubrick had lost sight of a cogent vision, supplementing the famous source material by Stephen King with so much surrealistic ambiguity and nonsense that he had released a labyrinthian mess instead of a probing psychological essay. But much like his own “A Clockwork Orange” and “2001: A Space Odyssey,” time has offered a generous reassessment, and now the picture is usually seen hovering towards the top of most lists of the greatest horror movies ever made. When I first encountered it at the age of 15, my admiration for its technical skill and tone were undermined by an inability to decipher the clues. What was happening to the Torrance family? Were they being haunted by ghosts, pitted against one another by elaborate mind games? Would they have been seen if the young boy at the center of the action were not clairvoyant? Or were they simply imagined by people whose sanity had been compromised by isolation? Over 20 years and dozens of viewings later, I can finally speak with confidence on some of the great paradoxes the story weaves.

Parasite / **** (2019)

The vicious cycle coalescing beneath class systems is a detail that draws much ire out of Bong Joon-ho, whose films all suggest a world where life and routine is usually mandated by where you fall in the system privilege. Not content to simply show sides of the structure clashing, he abandons them into a philosophical clarity that sees rot and cynicism as shared values; just as the wealthy are set in the method of clinging to their narrow vision, so do the impoverished embrace the seedy underbelly to propel their obligatory agendas. Both, perhaps, are what contribute to the ambiguous implication supplied by the title of “Parasite,” where a filmmaker never quite indicts a single target. Yet the argument inspires all the expected questions without direct answers. Are the characters in a wealthy family the victims of what will eventually transpire, or are they inconsolable leeches of an imbalanced society? Are we expected to see the poverty-stricken Kim family as sponges for all the trouble they are dealt, or as survivors adapting rapidly to the unpredictable whims of the hierarchy? The challenge offered in this audacious and engrossing little film barely reflects its deeper nature, which plays less like a standard narrative and more like a living organism adapting scene after scene to a volatile habitat of strange and mystifying nightmares.

"Psycho" Revisited

Abnormal even among the more challenging horror films of today, Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” abandons its central character arc for a much more unexpected second just as the plot begins to wade deeper waters. There is an observation made in the preceding scenes that suggest that possibility – namely, a moment when Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) realizes almost prematurely that she must return home and give up the money she stole from her employer – but our wildest notions of the conflict could scarcely predict the outcome of her abrupt escape down a rainy highway. Most of the familiar rules in horror were far from being accepted as part of the formula handbook, but a constant among the early prototypes was the use of one primary character as a source of study. Yet here she was, a mere 48 minutes into a film, showering at a rundown motel owned by an eccentric loner, and being snuck up on by a shadowy figure destined to stab her to death. If the shock of the incident remains startling for its perfect technical modulation – meticulous edits, a piercing soundtrack, out-of-focus details that obscured the numerous wounds – then its broader effect came entirely down to audacity. No other mainstream film up to that point committed itself to such nerve to shatter the comfortable borders of a story, and to this day it remains peerless among a growing arsenal of broadening genre standards.

The Lighthouse / ***1/2 (2019)

On the edge of a rock hugging the violent sea, a weathered lighthouse affirms the mission of two men stalled on a mental tightrope. They plod day and night through a routine that always leads to one outcome: ensuring the illuminating glow of the tower never dims, even as the most turbulent storms loom relentlessly overhead. But a day comes when the winds shift, casting doubt on their own perseverance; a nor’easter draws down like a force of punishment, until their demeanors – one sardonic, the other silent and morose – collide on each other with disturbing gravitas. On the other side of the struggle is only more of the same: a cycle without relief or certainty, unless the primary conviction is to stilt the moods of those eager viewers watching below the projector’s light. Their feelings, I reckon, might parallel what some of the early audiences thought upon first seeing “The Shining,” also about people who were driven mad by isolation. Did the slow plod through a tonal labyrinth, too, undermine their defenses enough to amplify the horror of the climax? Were they submissive to the visual attack, and did it negate any questions of logic they might have had? Robert Egger’s eerie, hypnotic new film mirrors many of those possibilities and finds something rather interesting buried beneath: an imagination that escalates its visions into the fantastical and absurd.

Ad Astra / ***1/2 (2019)

The most reflective moment in “Ad Astra” takes place just outside the orbit of Neptune, seen hovering in the distance like the most vulgar mood indicator in a sci-fi film since the ominous planet in “Solaris.” While its energies don’t directly influence the emotional demeanors of those nearby, their attitudes have all but foregone a similar deep melancholy: a recognition that there may be only deafening solitude in the great emptiness that is space. Up to that point, James Gray’s mysterious film foreshadows that statement via a morose internal monologue by his lead star: Roy McBride (Brad Pitt), an astronaut who has abandoned a family on Earth to take to the same stars his father disappeared into decades before. But when he must confront the man he feels abandoned him, what can they say to one another? Was his father’s sacrifice really all terrible given that Roy has followed the same trajectory? Aboard the rusting ship that once housed a crew seeking intelligent life, two men lose the desire to form a cogent reasoning and can only submit, quietly, to a discovery that ought to have been obvious all along. What is not as discernable, at least until those final scenes, is how Gray will fill his audience with the same sense of dread. If we come to science fiction to understand the unknown and make it palpable, here is a movie that suggests we are naive in assuming greater secrets beyond our own corroding existence.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood / ***1/2 (2019)

Towards the middle of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” Quentin Tarantino casually reveals his intentions in a sequence involving an audacious clash of history and fiction. Already he has established the key relationship between an actor, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), and his stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), but not until there is a western-style standoff with members of the Manson family do we sense the gravitas of their roles; just as Cliff is the one exposed to all the danger on the set, so does he carry that burden off-screen, where his friend and partner is usually sulking in self-pity. This, we soon realize, is the destiny that will foreshadow how the movie must play out: with the stunt man ready to face off against a violent threat emerging in the shadows while the other, more aloof personality, is left to remain mostly ambivalent in the backdrop. Is Tarantino saying something about his own ideals in these characters, who are like two halves of a fully contained behavioral system? Is his Rick Dalton, a neurotic and insecure man reflecting on the monotonous tide of his career, an avatar that he projects all his fears onto, while Cliff symbolizes the more youthful scope of his own chutzpah? Theirs is a union necessary to a film that would otherwise collapse without it; they bring guidance and perspective to an atmosphere that is essentially a eulogy to the old ways of Hollywood.

Birds of Passage / **** (2019)

Tradition is a social construct eroding in the sweep of modern values. This is one of the key observations made by Marxist E. J. Hobsbawm, who also suggests their prevalence in a series of more dangerous cultural identities, including the same nationalism that lead to Hitler’s Germany. One wonders how the writers of “Birds of Passage” would feel about this assessment – whether they would, quite possibly, concede that the behaviors of their characters seem like gateways to troubling histories, or if they, like their customs, are simply undermined (or destroyed) by more cynical paradigms. Evidence before them could support either theory. The scene: an indigenous tribe of Wayuu natives in the plains of Colombia is celebrating the coming-of-age of Zaida, the daughter of the family matriarch, and she has acquired the notice of Rapayet, a member of the neighboring family, who announces his intention to marry her. The snag in his desires is Ursula, Zaida’s mother, who insists on a steep dowry. Protective and dismissive, she believes he will never be able to pay it. But as days pass and Rapayet is seen caught up in a monetary agenda with foreign vacationers, her demands are met. Unfortunately, this does more than promise him the bride he seeks; it also sets the early stages in motion for what will become the gestation period of the Colombian drug trade, which found footing in the late 1960s and became the source of a cycle of violence that continues well into the 21st century.

Last Tango in Paris / **** (1972)

No other high-profile actor from the Hollywood golden age was more earnest in personifying the agony of character than the great Marlon Brando. Across four decades of challenging performances that involved smooth-talking creeps (“A Streetcar Named Desire”), crime world kingpins (“The Godfather”), exiled military generals (“Apocalypse Now”) and a mournful dock worker (“On the Waterfront”), it was his harrowing turn as a pseudo-predatory widow in “Last Tango in Paris” that ricocheted with the most realism. Something within what was otherwise accepted as perfunctory dialogue and staple behaviors slipped past the notion of simple observation and echoed deeply and sincerely, particular in a cluster of scenes where the camera observes his mourning process. “I’ll never understand the truth about you,” he tells the figure of his deceased wife before collapsing in a heap of raw emotion over her corpse. There is the moment where the entirety of his career can be absorbed in miniature, in a scene where all the conviction of his method is unleashed in a heartbreaking explosion of grief and confusion. How did he find the ability, or the strength, to transcend the notion of embodiment and become the very source of torment he was portraying? Where most actors simply repeat the words and actions to the service of a story, Brando became one with an identity.

Zelig / ***1/2 (1983)

Over a period of four years in the middle of his lauded creative boom, Woody Allen assembled the pieces of what would become “Zelig,” a faux biography about a man from the early 20th century who could physically change his appearance just by being in the company of others with similar attributes. At the time, the ambitious artifice was merely regarded as a self-contained display of his comic ability, a closed world of the sorts of wisdom and quirk than often ran unrestrained in his more mainstream endeavors. Looking back on it now, however, one uncovers a deeper meaning, particularly when we use the full hindsight of his career as the framework. Like the enigmatic Leonard Zelig, Allen harbored deep questions about his own value that were frequently sidelined in an attempt to “fit in” with the world’s perceptions, and making movies – much like changing identities – became an outlet to work through the impulses and behaviors. If the sum of his career can be seen as a series of destinations on a road to that discovery, then his strange, off-the-cuff “mockumentary” provides the most unlikely roadmap.

Climax / ***1/2 (2018)

Some movies announce themselves in celebratory spectacles. Gaspar Noé’s “Climax” lands in a howl of agony. Born from within a creative engine that relishes the pain it inflicts, here is the culmination of the director’s most masochistic instincts: a laboratory of excess that unknowingly becomes a living hell for all the unfortunate characters populating it. How strangely challenging it must have been for him to look at this material and find the desire to exceed his own trajectory. After “Irreversible,” containing the most painful rape sequence ever made, and “Enter the Void,” a visceral exercise that sickened (literally) many members of his audience, the chutzpah underlining his strange career seemed poised to linger in the corners, unable to escape into something more daring. But now he has orchestrated a work of genius that upstages all the unsettling rhythms that came before, essentially because he has now married the lurid tendencies of his style with an arc that is profoundly engrossing. These are people whom we share little common interests, yet who transition from one extreme to the next as if holding us hostage through a rapid descent.

Transit / **** (2019)

Well before the nomadic lead character in “Transit” lodges a place in our understanding, the movie observes him in a grind more akin to that of a noir protagonist: always in the wrong place at the wrong time. This trend is established in the first scene, during a dialogue exchange in which he is persuaded to deliver letters to an enigmatic source for a monetary reward. The situation: a provocative writer is in hiding as the German occupation nears Paris, and it would make more sense for a stranger to show up at his hotel carrying parcels than a known rebel who might attract the wrong attention. The letters, we learn, consist of information that would allow him to leave France (one indicates he has a wife beckoning him to meet her in Marseilles). On arrival at his room, however, he discovers the writer has committed suicide in the bathtub, leaving behind an unfinished manuscript (among other things) that he is compelled to take. And so he returns to the streets, now aimless as the Germans move in towards frightened immigrants, with no established identity to defend him… other than that of his deceased source, whose passport he has chosen to safeguard. After stowing away on a train with a wounded friend and narrowly escaping inspection, he arrives at the port and is mistaken for the deceased scribe, leading to a moral quandary: can his conscience allow him to play along in order to escape the fascists? Or will the arrival of a strange beautiful woman complicate the matter further, especially when he discovers that she is the wife of the man he is impersonating?

"American Beauty" Revisited

Like the French Algerian Meursault and Holden Caufield after him, the character of Lester Burnham has soared above the peak of lively resentment and been canonized as one of the great antiheroes of modern pop culture. His presence in “American Beauty” plays to the ongoing call for the everyman’s rejection of procedure, which has been necessitated by the steady decline of the modern workforce in a culture that imprisons them in cubicles and conforms their thoughts to a script of faux courtesy. Traces of that distinction were first visible in the comedy “Office Space,” released in the same year, but this was the moment where the ideology found its most unflinching force: a man whose brutal honesty felt like a nudge towards obliterating the conventional wisdom. Consider how much of the film about him involves the silent bewilderment of supporting players, right down to a wife and daughter who can only look on, in stunned silence, while a pathetic shell of a man suddenly discovers his voice. Perhaps they are surprised to find he still has a spine. Perhaps they are mourning the inability to continue using him as a scapegoat. Or maybe it’s because they can no longer see beyond the ceiling of what he is gradually tearing down.

You Were Never Really Here / ***1/2 (2018)

If most modern films consciously exploit a spiritual link to the past, then “You Were Never Really Here” shares its most fundamental detail with the great “Taxi Driver.” Both are stories in which men weather the curse of exhaustive past traumas, all the while using them to mask a brooding contempt for civilization. In relation to these worldviews, each sees children as victims of a corrupt paradigm that must be dismantled, be it through activism or slaughter. The conflicted antihero of Scorsese’s film kept the company of a young teenage prostitute as motivation to pick up arms and become her protector, and now comes Joe, played by Joaquin Phoenix, a loner who is hired by others to save teenage girls from human trafficking, and then murder their enslavers. At first the routine seems too coarse and vulgar, even in the framework of a film saturated in nihilism, but a thoughtful picture becomes clearer with each passing sequence: this is a man who was exposed to violence when he was too young to process it, and the psychological wound it created is more easily soothed through vengeance for the innocent.

Mary Poppins Returns / ***1/2 (2018)

Long ago in the alcoves of the purest childhood memories, a charming nanny fell from the sky over England and became a lynchpin for the ambitious daydreams of young moviegoers. Although five decades have come and gone since “Mary Poppins” instilled that impression and captivated many a heart, rarely does she escape the notice of those in the recent generations, who have stockpiled their own experiences as the film endures across all the traditional time barriers. It was perhaps always inevitable, therefore, that the legend would eventually inspire thoughts of a follow-up, especially given how eager the Disney brand is to repeat its own history. And now in the midst of a parade of live-action remakes and reboots comes “Mary Poppins Returns,” in which we are presented the opportunity to spend another two colorful hours in the company of an unassuming caregiver who whisks her subjects into the world of elaborate musical fantasy. It goes without saying that there was little possibility of anyone besting the great adventures of the first film, but the good news is that even cynics of this formula will leave the theater feeling thankful for the chance to engage with a delightful spectacle rather than a pointless retread.