The Great Silence (1968)

An outstanding Spaghetti Western from Sergio Corbucci, the director of Django, previously unreleased in this country. Jean-Louis Trintignant and Klaus Kinski co-star as good and evil bounty hunters. To keep from being arrested, neither will ever draw first. Things get complicated when a beautiful widow hires Trintignant to kill Kinski. Corbucci uses the same wide-open spaces as his colleague Sergio Leone, but goes much deeper under the surface, using snow and bitter cold to beautiful advantage. Ennio Morricone provides an excellent score. Dubbed in English. (Fantoma's DVD features an essay and a video introduction by Alex Cox and the alternate "happy" ending.) read more...

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Crimson Gold (2003)

Abbas Kiarostami once again provided the story/screenplay for his pupil Jafar Panahi's newest film, Crimson Gold as he did for his amazing 1995 feature debut The White Balloon. But it's clear that even without his mentor's help, Panahi is the most promising of the new Iranian directors. read more...

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• Overall Depth ▶ Deep or penetrating

Foxcatcher (2014)

Cinema has always been viewed as a lesser, a vulgar art form. In the early days, actors didn't even take credit because they feared it would tarnish their reputation on the legitimate stage. That stigma lasts up to today, and so narrowminded filmmakers and tastemakers assume that, since cinema has no inherent value outside of spectacle, it must be shaped to look like something more profound, i.e. an important novel, play, or -- more common these days -- a "true story." read more...

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• Rules ▶ Rigid or strongly constrained

Red Road (2007)

Jackie (Kate Dickie) looks a bit like Chrissie Hynde (of the rock group the Pretenders) in a kind of homely/sexy way. She sits gazing into a bank of video monitors. For her job, she watches, godlike, all the people who pass by the myriad of video cameras planted all about Glasgow. If trouble arises, she makes a call and someone (hopefully) shows up on the scene. It seems like the perfect job for her, hovering over other people's lives without the slightest interest in her own. She appears lost, or hollow, and the director Andrea Arnold pulls off the admirable task of making her interesting without immediately giving away her secrets. When those secrets finally come out, they do so in such a way that avoids the obvious "Shyamalan twist." Refreshingly, Red Road is a movie about a person and not a gimmick. read more...

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Le Cercle Rouge (1970)

The Jean-Pierre Melville resurgence is moving slowly, but is definitely underway thanks to this John Woo-presented re-release of his penultimate film Le Cercle Rouge (The Red Circle). Made in 1970, it has never before been released in this country -- at least not in this complete, 140-minute version. read more...

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• Innocence ▶ Seasoned, Savvy, Streetwise