Black Dynamite (Scott Sanders, 2009). An inspired spoof of nineteen-seventies Blaxploitation films, Black Dynamite stars Michael Jai White as the title character, who dispenses justice on the mean streets while searching for his brother’s killer. Sanders gets the tone exactly right, mocking the conventions of the subgenre without lapsing into condescension. There’s a clear affection here, a conviction that no matter what else the original films may have been, they were also fun. How many movies can have claim major climactic sequences taking place on Kung Fu Island? Clever as it is, it’s a hard conceit to sustain over the length of a feature, and the film invariably lags at times, even with a very short running time. Overall, though, I’ll gladly take this over any Austin Powers movie.

Bamboozled (Spike Lee, 2000). Lee’s splendidly sprawling, darkly daring film takes satirical swipes at the sort of demeaning portrayals of African American culture that are still prevalent in the media. At the time Lee wrote and directed the film “demeaning portrayals of African American culture” was practically the mission statement of fledgling network UPN. The film stars Damon Wayans as an erudite, highly cultured sitcom writer who responds to entreaties from his network executive boss to create more authentic programming with a corrosive parade of stereotypes that hearkens bad to the crude minstrel shows of the past. He expects that the show will expose the embedded racism of the media, but it instead becomes an enormous hit, inspiring audience members to don blackface and delightedly repeat the offensive catch phrases. This is Lee at his most ambitious, pointed and dynamic. He is fearless and insightful in making his arguments, taking his premise to extremes, both logical and illogical, in order to confront the audience (and his showbiz peers) with uncomfortable truths.

The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950). Huston’s film noir heist film is as direct and tough as a sock to the gut. Based on a novel by W.R. Burnett, the film meticulously tracks how the robbery comes together with a master criminal, freshly sprung from jail, pulling together a team, and then how it falls apart, mostly undone by the itchy scheming that the various suspicious characters almost can’t help but engage in. Huston’s directing is a model of unfussy efficiency, handling the many complexities of the plot with ease and allowing for plenty of room to get at the underlying psychologies of the various troubled souls onscreen. The performances are largely undistinguished, but it is interesting to see Marilyn Monroe in an early role, clearly trying to challenge herself as an actress before the understandable temptation of coasting on persona started to take over her approach.

The Legend of Lylah Clare (Robert Aldrich, 1968). This part of that peculiar breed of film from the Easy Riders, Raging Bulls era that involved old Hollywood pros pushing up against the rapidly changing mores and styles of the time and emerging with material that was uniquely awful. The plot centers on a despotic film director who tries to revive his flagging career by promoting an ingenue who happens to look exactly like his former movie star wife who died under mysterious circumstances years earlier. The actress is played by Kim Novak–clearly the go-to thespian for haunting doppelganger roles–who’s largely left adrift as she’s given more of a concept than a character to work with. The movie shifts wildly in tone, as if the filmmakers reconsidering how seriously to approach the material on a daily basis. The movie bumbles along awkwardly to the end, which happens to be a sharp freeze-frame in the middle of a satirical dog food commercial. That’s the kind of movie it is.

Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore-Eda, 2008). Kore-Eda, a dependable auteur of quiet sadness, builds this film around a family that reunites every year to mourn a favored son who died in somewhat heroic fashion over a decade earlier. The interplay between different family members is presented with great care and empathy, Kore-Eda clearly endeavoring to understand these people through his art rather than exploit their fictional anguish for easy emotional prodding. There are many simple moments throughout the film. Kore-Eda is not exactly finding greater truths within the mundane, but instead allowing that the mundane coexists peacefully with the tragic and the profound. There’s a plain-spoken loveliness to the work, especially in the conclusion, alluded to in the title, that enduring through difficulty is its own accomplishment.