When it comes to reinterpreting a classic Joan Crawford movie involving murder I just think—why mess with success? Todd Haynes has made a career out of deconstructing his campy pop cultural obsessions for his own films with pretty mixed results. Whether he’s aping Douglas Sirk, badly, as in the highly overrated Far From Heaven or making David Bowie and glam rock seem about as sexy and exotic as a night out with Adam Lambert (the atrocious Velvet Goldmine) he doesn’t pay homage to his influences and radically reinterpret their art so much as apply some critical theory ideas, slow everything down, and just kind of ruin what makes them fun in the first place. It has always been my suspicion that Haynes is rewarded more for his good taste than his skills as a filmmaker. He spends too much time focusing on things like “post-structuralism” and “the male gaze” when maybe he should think about things like “narrative cohesion” and “three dimensional characters.”

"I wish that my pupil could have understood me at this moment. I would have told him that his bite filled my soul with joy."

—Dr. Itard reflects upon his discovery of the feral boy's sense of justice in Truffaut's 1970 film.

The Wild Child, Francois Truffaut's fact-based tale of the discovery of a young feral boy at the turn of the 18th century and the subsequent attempts of an impassioned scientist to educate him, is a film both compelling and tender in its simplicity.

The film opens in a serene forest in France. The year is 1798. A lone, bonnet-clad woman collects fruit in the lush and peaceful surroundings when off to the side she hears a commotion emitting from some bushes. Startled, the woman drops her basket to the ground and flees. With the coast clear, a young boy emerges out from the shrubberies. Gangly, filthy, with long matted hair veiling his face, he runs naked and freely through the forest. The next day, hunters, with leashed dogs in tow, parade the forest paths, vehemently searching for the reported feral child. Upon hearing the clamor of the noisy pursuers, the boy quickly scurries, evading capture. However, when the hunters release their voracious hounds, he is forced up a tree to escape their clutches. Perched atop a branch above the barking dogs, the boy has a moment of respite before his ledge snaps and he plummets swiftly to the ground. As one of the dogs ferociously latches onto the boy's arm, he fights back vigorously and a spirited struggle ensues. It doesn't last long though, when with a whimper, the dog falls limp to the ground and the boy once again escapes. The hunters quickly regroup and, after a time, discover the boy again, this time cradled in a small hole in the ground. The hunters, experienced in their present trade, with a smoldering stick begin to smoke him out from his subterranean sanctuary. The ploy works, as after a few coughs, the exhausted fugitive finally surrenders.

The culty acclaim of Martin Scorsese’s 1976 Taxi Driver is mostly deserved; the film is made up of some of the greatest scenes and moments of the decade. But with that there are some scenes and moments that don’t work as well. Really what Taxi Driver is is a good ol’ fashioned 70s exploitation flick, gussied up with a big-time director and cast. It’s a perfect combination of two of the era’s most potent B-movie formulas, “the crazy Vietnam vet” flick and “the New York city loner vigilante” saga. Two genres of exploitation pulp that go together like peanut butter and chocolate, after a while you can’t imagine one without the other. Like Scarlet O’Hara or Forest Gump, the name Travis Bickle has become a cultural definition of a type. Robert De Niro, at the peak of his thespian prowess, plays the lonely city taxi driver who prowls the street in search of some kind of meaning for his life. Teaming with Scorsese for the second time (after the brilliant Mean Streets, and with six more collaborations to come), it’s one of the great actor’s most iconic roles, and still a signature film for the director.

Less standard follow-your-dreams dancical than sleek spandex-clad killing machine, the movie Flashdance is as exhilarating as it is nihilistic. Jennifer Beals has a honeyed glow and a natural, sexy charisma in the role of Alex, the hot young welder who moonlights as an exotic dancer at a Pittsburgh dive bar. Her dancing is her “art” and though I think it’s supposed to be erotic it’s really more schizo-aerobic.

The girls who dance with Alex at the club all have some kind of new wave performance art aspect to what they do and the set pieces are hilariously elaborate. One girl goes for a zany kabuki new wave effect and, well, it’s just weird.  For a movie about a dancer in the sticks hoping to make it big we don’t get much of a sense of dance as an art form revolving around the body. The dancing is really about the editing which is best described as epileptic while the film’s narrative goes forward at such a robotic, lockstep pace – with plenty of music video-like detours comparable to commercial breaks – that it’s not so much a movie that you see as one that you have done to you. In that sense, you might say it’s ahead of its time because the film provided a basic blueprint for the way Hollywood movies are made now.  The characters’ emotions are signaled with delicious Giorgio Moroder-produced instrumentals and the clichés of the basic kid with a dream story who must “risk everything” are cheerfully, mindlessly, and ferociously utilized. 
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 "The problem is I got a fifty-year-old lust and three-year-old dinky."

—Baby Herman's irreverent response to being labeled a ladies' man pushes the envelope of cartoon decency in Disney's groundbreaking film from 1988.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Robert Zemeckis's noir/fantasy/crime/comedy/animation is a complicated one to boil down. In large part, it is an homage to the classic film noir genre with the archetypal down-and-out private eye (scarred by a troubled past) trying to solve a crime and, ultimately, redeem himself. In another sense, it is a fully animated film, with over 50 minutes of complicated animation filling the screen. The two worlds are brought together through breathtaking special effects in this strikingly original and innovative vision.