‘The Bouncer’ (2019)
It was very easy, for quite some time, to dismiss Jean-Claude Van Damme as just another blank-slate action star. But something truly fascinating has happened as he’s grown older — in his best roles, he’s leaned into his vulnerability, playing his age rather than ignoring it. He no longer seems like a guy who can win every fight, so his fights are far more interesting. His face, like Clint Eastwood’s, has grown richer as its lines grow deeper and harder, and like Eastwood, he does his best acting when he seems to be doing nothing at all. This rough-and-tumble crime thriller from the gifted action director Julien Leclercq (“Sentinelle”) gives Van Damme plenty of character moments — it’s quieter and moodier than your typical bone-cruncher — but when the action beats arrive, they’re lean, mean and effective.
‘A Bigger Splash’ (2016)
With the director Luca Guadagnino’s new film “Queer” on the fall festival circuit, it’s a fine time to check out this sun-soaked psychological thriller, which also serves as an excellent adieu to the summer season. It finds the rock star Marianne (Tilda Swinton) and her boyfriend, Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts), relaxing poolside on the Sicilian island of Pantelleria when they’re visited by two unexpected guests: the music producer Harry (Ralph Fiennes) and his recently discovered daughter, Penelope (Dakota Johnson). Sparks fly, tempers flare and libidos follow; every performance is a stunner, and Guadagnino navigates each turn of events with sly grace.
‘Pearl’ (2022)
The writer and director Ti West, and his muse and star Mia Goth, recently concluded their trilogy of throwback thrillers with “MaXXXine,” but this middle installment remains the highlight of the series — a prequel to the initial entry “X,” detailing the early days and psychological descent of that film’s bloodthirsty villain. Shot during the pandemic and ingeniously set in 1918, during the country’s last one, West’s film features Goth as a farmer’s daughter who sees stage and film stardom as her ticket out of Texas, and will not let anyone get in her way. “X” took its cues from ’70s slasher movies, and “MaXXXine” liberally quotes ’80s erotic thrillers; “Pearl” draws its emotional and aesthetic inspiration from the lurid melodramas of Hollywood’s golden age, but with a healthy shot of bloodthirsty cynicism, resulting in an inspired and ghoulishly entertaining movie stew.
‘Suitable Flesh’ (2023)
The screenwriter Dennis Paoli and the actress Barbara Crampton memorably collaborated, in the mid-1980s, for the director Stuart Gordon’s H.P. Lovecraft adaptations “Re-Animator” and “From Beyond”; here, they team up again for another Lovecraft riff, with the gifted genre director Joe Lynch stepping in for the deceased Gordon. (Crampton is also among the film’s producers.) Heather Graham stars as a psychiatrist whose treatment of a young paranoid schizophrenic (Judah Waite) spirals into a series of body switches, sexual encounters and graphic murders. Lynch directs with a wink, gleefully tossing in elements of ’80s body-swap comedies and ’90s erotic thrillers, along with gore by the gallon.
‘Climax’ (2019)
The French filmmaker Gaspar Noé is both a provocateur and a sensualist. Each of those philosophies gets a workout in this pulse-pounding combination of musical extravaganza and drug hallucination. It follows a group of dancers who spend a long night partying, fooling around and getting high, only to watch their party (and their senses) spin wildly out of control. The narrative is secondary; “Climax” is a sensory experience, of thumping music, sexual confrontation and out-of-nowhere violence, and those who will give themselves over to it are in for quite a ride.
‘Submarine’ (2011)
The English comic actor Richard Ayoade (“The IT Crowd”) made his feature directorial debut with this clever, witty and ultimately tender coming-of-age story. Adapting the novel by Joe Dunthorne, Ayoade introduces us to Oliver (Craig Roberts), a 15-year-old Welsh schoolboy, as he navigates his first love and a schism in his parents’ marriage. Many a critic compared Ayoade’s style to Wes Anderson (not always favorably), but the influences and ideas run deeper than such simple homage, and the director proves himself an adroit chronicler of the midteen years, and a certain kind of semi-outcast.
‘Spermworld’ (2024)
Far from the medical mainstream, a Facebook “Sperm Donation USA” group is used by both donors and seekers who either can’t swing the high cost of sperm banks, or dislike their impersonal nature. This engrossing documentary, inspired by a 2021 New York Times article by Nellie Bowles (and produced by The Times) focuses primarily on a trio of donors, with contrasting backgrounds, methods and motives, as a way to detail the specifics and logistics of these transactions, and the complications that invariably ensue. The director is Lance Oppenheim, who also directed the recent docuseries “Ren Faire,” and he shows a similar flair for spotlighting the absurdity of his subject without condescending to its participants, while deploying a beguiling cinematic style that makes “Spermworld” look less like a documentary than a charming indie dramedy.
‘The Thief Collector’ (2022)
In 1985, Willem de Kooning’s painting “Woman-Ochre” was stolen, in broad daylight, from the University of Arizona Museum of Art, a clumsy caper that was nevertheless successful; the painting was not recovered until 2017, when it was found in the home of a pair of retired schoolteachers. In this delightful documentary, the director Allison Otto makes the case that those retirees, Jerry and Rita Alter, pulled the heist as part of a double life of crime — hilariously dramatized in sequences with Glenn Howerton (“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) and Sarah Minnich (“Better Call Saul”) as the Alters. It makes for a pleasurable combination of art documentary and heist comedy, but the closing passages, detailing the painting’s recovery and restoration, are surprisingly and effectively poignant.
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