Killers of the Flower Moon (2023): Native Americans, especially the women, get murdered, but the movie is about white guys stealing native wealth.
The Substance (2024): Y’all had me hoping there’d be more to this than body horror. It isn’t allegory, it’s cartoons. See Sunset Boulevard instead.
Revenge (2018): Sexy chick has to fight. Sexy blood & gore. Not empowering.
Poetry (시) (2010): Director Lee Chang-dong. Working grandma is sliding into dementia when grandson in her care does bad. She joins a poetry class as she tries to resolve issues while she still can. Highly Recommended.
Peppermint Candy (박하사탕) (2000): Director Lee Chang-dong moves us backwards through a man’s life to see how he evolved, going back through and before the Gwangju Uprising of 1980. Highly Recommended.
To Live (活着) Huo zhe (1994): Director Yimou Zhang tracks married couple and the art of their shadow puppets through revolutionary times from landowner to peasantry and beyond. Recommended.
I also went on a Jacques Tourneur binge because Cat People was airing on TV and I love Out of the Past and Berlin Express, so I watched a bunch of his early stuff. They are generally well paced, well shot, and easy to watch without needing much search for hidden meanings. Before I list what I watched of his, here’s a bit on the man:
Tourneur began work as an editor and assistant director. He made his debut as a director on the French film Tout ça ne vaut pas l’amour [fr] in 1931. In 1934, Tourneur went to Hollywood, where MGM Studios put him under contract.
He was hired to run the second unit for David O. Selznick’s A Tale of Two Cities (1935), where he first met Val Lewton. In 1942, when Lewton was named to head the new horror unit at RKO, he asked Tourneur to be his first director. The result was the highly artistic (and commercially successful) Cat People (1942). Tourneur went on to direct masterpieces in many different genres, all showing a great command of mood and atmosphere.
Cat People (1942): First solo U.S. film by director Jacques Tourneur. Serbian émigré thinks a curse will turn her into a cat if she’s intimate/impure.
The Leopard Man (1943): Tourneur was told to make a sequel. Escaped leopard blamed for deaths, but is it?
Curse of the Cat People (1944): NOT Tourneur, but Gunther von Fritsch takes most the original Cat People cast and does an actual sequel. Lovely.
Days of Glory (1944): Tourney has Gregory Peck as lead Russian in guerrilla cell fighting Nazis.
Experiment Perilous (1944): (Tourneur) Mixed up bags give a man insight into a family’s dysfunction as he falls for the wife.
Easy Living (1949) : Doctors tell football star to ease up or die. His wife wants fame, so what to do? (Trigger warning: domestic violence – and it is excused).
Stars in My Crown (1950): Nostalgic look at a small town and its pastor from the POV of the orphan who loves him.
Great Day in the Morning (1956): Southern drifter wins Denver hotel in card game at start of Civil War. He’d rather make money than pick sides, and the women love him. This time the orphan is the fault of the lead. Worst of the Tourneur set.
I also went on a Jacques Tourneur binge because Cat People was airing on TV and I love Out of the Past and Berlin Express, so I watched a bunch of his early stuff. They are generally well paced, well shot, and easy to watch without needing much search for hidden meanings. Before I list what I watched of his, here’s a bit on the man: