The Ladykillers (1955) – Mackendrick’s high-functioning comedy has seldom been bettered as an ingratiating meeting of sweetness and venality

Bona (1980) – Brocka’s study of misguided, exploitation-inviting devotion, realized with no-nonsense visual and emotional muscularity

Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron, 2006)

Murder, my Sweet (1944) – Dmytryk’s Marlowe flick lies at the lighter end of the noir spectrum, with a few distinguishingly edgier elements

On the Adamant (2023) – Philibert’s patient observation of marginalized but vivid lives, its small scale embodying its empathetic reticence

Le voyage en ballon (Albert Lamorisse, 1960)

At Long Last Love (1975) – Bogdanovich’s Cole Porter-heavy musical rarely clicks, being for the most part joy-deficiently miscalculated

Le mariage a trois (2010) – Doillon’s five-person country-house piece is often aggressively unlikeable, albeit not altogether unknowingly

Jour de fete (Jacques Tati, 1949)

The Subject was Roses (1968) – Grosbard handles the material ably enough, but it’s devoid of even mild surprises, let alone revelations

Piaffe (2022) – Oren’s strange, seductive film taps an electrifyingly intimate sense of fluid sexuality, identity, creativity, even of DNA

Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke, 2024)

Bleak Moments (1971) – Leigh’s all-too-aptly titled debut is however leavened with moments of playfulness, even of possible transformation

Le boum 2 (1982) – Pinoteau’s tumble of coming-of-age incident slides blandly by, its older generations providing a minimum of seasoning

Seven Veils (Atom Egoyan, 2023)

Teacher’s Pet (1958) – Seaton’s lightly comedic Gable/Day meeting is pretty sprightly and thematically well-considered, in its bygone way

Godzilla Minus One (2023) – Yamazaki’s very solidly built, if not genre-transcending, movie, marked by strong emotional undercurrents

Adam's Rib (George Cukor, 1949)

The Bible…in the Beginning (1966) – Huston’s film is epic primarily in its ill-considered passivity; the Noah episode is at least lively

The Kindergarten Teacher (2014) – Lapid’s original is more artful, provocative and ultimately despairing than the American remake

Phaedra (Jules Dassin, 1962)

Gwaed ar y Ser (Wil Aaron, 1975) torontomovieguy.blogspot.com/2025/09/gwae...

Breakout (1975) – Gries’ drama alternately rushes and dawdles but is solidly enjoyable overall, buoyed by some strangely high-end casting

Agony (2020) – Civetta’s moody, not very comprehensible psychological drama doesn’t do much right, other than keep the ordeal short

Compensation (Zeinabi irene Davis, 1999)

Speedy (1928) – Wilde’s aptly-named Lloyd comedy is an expertly-handled rush of big-city incident, albeit mostly more interesting than funny

Nosferatu in Venice (1988) – Caminito’s creation doesn’t amount to much, its brooding relative strengths undercut by recurring clumsiness

The Subject was Roses (Ulu Grosbard, 1968)

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962) – Minnelli’s undervalued, doom-ridden wartime spectacle, stunningly composed even at its flattest

Lumberjack the Monster (2023) – Miike’s film impresses in its proficiently psychopath-laden elaborations, although not that lastingly

Circus Angel (Albert Lamorisse, 1965)

Skip Tracer (1977) – Dalen’s minor drama at least impresses for the sheer sustained cheerlessness of its personal and societal outlook

The Queen of Spain (2016) – Trueba serves up lots of well-tuned movie-love pleasure, while soft-pedalling the underlying anxiety and threat

Prisoneros de la tierra (Mario Soffici, 1939)

The Match King (1932) – a diverting chronicle of venal rise and fall, too zippy though to fully land the tragically introspective finale

A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021) – Kapadia’s Marker-evoking reverie is strong and moving, although perhaps a little too studied at times

Cocaine Cowboys (Ulli Lommel, 1979)

Voyage of the Damned (1976) – Rosenberg’s drama isn’t gratingly bad, but its heavily star-driven narrative strategy is inevitably limiting

Simone Barbes ou la vertu (1980) – Trielhou’s diversely stimulating triptych of displaced desire is strangely and elusively captivating

Pump Up the Volume (Allan Moyle, 1990)

Abbott and Costello meet the Keystone Kops (1955) – a not too tired retro-themed A&C work, clearly enough executed, although hardly nuanced

Un prince (2023) – Creton’s exquisite film, delicately nourished by intertwining passions, feels at once unprecedented and inevitable

The Oldest Profession (Noboru Tanaka, 1974)

Caught (Max Ophuls, 1949) torontomovieguy.blogspot.com/2025/09/caug...

The Heavenly Body (1944) – neither Hall nor the actors can inject much spark into such a programmatic, if not outright grotesque, premise

Kaala (2018) – Ranjith’s fiery, righteous epic of modern resistance is excessive and exhausting, but also exhilaratingly urgent and relevant

Le concours (Claire Simon, 2016)

The Savage is Loose (1974) – Scott’s filmmaking doesn’t approach the abandon or daring to realize on its titillatingly primal premise

Peter von Kant (2022) – Ozon’s Fassbinder tribute/evocation is a sad redundancy, albeit poignantly sustained on its own wallowing terms

The Match King (William Keighley & Howard Bretherton, 1932)