‘Sisu’ (2023)
You have to congratulate the Finnish filmmaker Jalmari Helander for his commercial savvy: With this sleeper hit, he’s concocted a lean, mean mixture of the most joy-buzzer elements of “John Wick” and “Inglourious Basterds.” Set in the final days of World War II, it tells the story of a gold prospector (Jorma Tommila), who looks, at first, like a harmless soul. But he has a past. A former commando, he’s described as a “one man death squad,” and when a Nazi platoon steals the gold he’s recently recovered, he sets about getting it back — and killing anyone who gets in his way. Helander stages his action with grindhouse glee, cheerfully breaking bones by the handful and spurting blood by the bucket, and indulging his audience in the simple pleasure of watching Nazis squirm.
‘Final Score’ (2018)
Stream it on Amazon Prime Video and Peacock.
“Die Hard” is approaching its 40th anniversary, but it still casts a large shadow over action cinema (as we’ve seen). Yet the quality so few of its imitators manage to replicate is the unique charisma of the star Bruce Willis, whose John McClane was both an action hero and a relatable, vulnerable Everyman. This taut thriller, which is essentially “‘Die Hard’ in a sports arena,” boasts a rare, successful match for that protagonist. Dave Bautista’s compelling mixture of soul and brawn is a good, clean fit for Knox, a vacationing retired military man battling Russian revolutionaries who have taken over a London stadium during a high-profile football match; he’s likable and charismatic, which keeps the stakes high. Scott Mann’s direction is energetic, executing crisp action beats, including a motorcycle chase down the arena’s corridors and an especially memorable kitchen brawl. It’s somehow both ingenious and ridiculous, and that’s just as it should be.
‘Jazzy’ (2025)
The director Morrisa Maltz burst onto the indie scene with her 2023 narrative debut, “The Unknown Country,” which was playing art house theaters as its star Lily Gladstone was accumulating plaudits for her work in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” “Jazzy” is something of a spinoff, with a brief return for Gladstone’s character, while focusing on a minor “Unknown Country” character, Jazzy. As played by the wonderful Jasmine Bearkiller Shangreaux, Jazzy is a young Lakota girl in South Dakota who does some serious growing up over the course of a surprisingly expansive 86 minutes. The picture has a messy, offhand quality, as if we’re eavesdropping on these lives, rather than seeing them carefully staged for the camera. Its conflicts are relatively minor — such as a schism between Jazzy and her best friend, Syriah (Syriah Fool Head Means, also excellent) — but “Jazzy” understands how, at this age, every moment feels revelatory.
‘Mid90s’ (2018)
The actor Jonah Hill quietly pivoted to directing with this seemingly autobiographical memory play that focuses on a young man named Stevie (Sunny Suljic) on the precipice of his teenage years. Stevie has trouble fitting in — until he falls in with a group of young skateboarders and begins appropriating their style, slang and bad habits. Hill wisely chooses not to simply set his film in the mid-90s; he apes the look and style of that period’s indie cinema, shooting on super 16-millimeter and recalling low-budget sleeper hits like “Kids” and “Welcome to the Dollhouse.” He sands down some of the rough edges of those provocative pictures, but nevertheless crafts a snapshot of a specific time and sensibility that’s undeniably evocative.
‘Remember’ (2015)
Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.
Six years before he died, Christopher Plummer played one of his final leading roles — and a juicy one at that — for the gifted director Atom Egoyan (“The Sweet Hereafter”). Plummer stars as Zev, an Auschwitz survivor hunting an official there who escaped justice; Martin Landau is a friend and fellow survivor who plots their shared mission of vengeance. The catch is that Zev is succumbing to dementia, which makes him less reliable (and perhaps more dangerous). Benjamin August’s twisty screenplay is kept together by the fine performances of Plummer and Landau, two pros who can make any scene convincing.
‘Garbo: Where Did You Go?’ (2024)
These days, even among certain circles of cinephiles, Greta Garbo is remembered less as an actor (much less a human being) than as a mystique, an embodiment of celebrity malaise and zealous privacy. The director Lorna Tucker attempts to break through the persona to the person in this fascinating biographical documentary, using film clips, interviews with experts and associates, archival audio and deliberately artificial dramatizations. Tucker uses multiple unconventional framing devices (plus narration by Noomi Rapace) when one would probably do, but it’s a welcome respite from the typical bio-doc tropes, allowing her to follow Garbo’s trail through Hollywood’s studio system and New York’s socialite circles, and even to observe the reflections and regrets that haunted Garbo late in life.
‘Ernest Cole: Lost and Found’ (2024)
Ernest Cole was a gifted South African photographer whose images of the horrors of apartheid, collected in his influential 1967 volume “House of Bondage,” were an essential chronicle of that period. But his life was something of a mystery — he moved to New York City shortly before the book’s publication and continued taking photos, but never published a follow-up and slowly disappeared from public life. The esteemed filmmaker Raoul Peck (“I Am Not Your Negro”) attempts to solve that mystery with this fascinating documentary. Coupling his photos with narration (the photographer’s own words) read with searching intensity by LaKeith Stanfield, Peck constructs an essential tribute to a vitally important artist.
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