Bad for Each Other (Irving Rapper, 1953). This chintzy melodrama follows Dr. Tom Owens (Charlton Heston), who returns from military service to practice medicine in his working-class hometown. His upstanding ethics are eroded away after he becomes romantically entwined with Helen Curtis (Lizabeth Scott), a socialite who connects him with another physician (Lester Matthews) who prioritizes lucrative services for wealthy clients over more important work that would help people in need. Director Irving Rapper tries to bring the rough-hewn sensibility of film noir to the proceedings, especially in portraying Helen in a manner akin to the average femme fatale casting shadows across a detective story or crime thriller. Bad for Each Other simply doesn’t have the right dark soul for it. The strategy might have worked better with a different actor in the leading role. Heston is hopelessly stiff, bulldozing through scenes with the plainest, most aggressive expressions of the character’s emotions when more complex, nuanced acting is called for.

Take Aim at the Police Van (Seijun Suzuki, 1960). This lean detective thriller, filmed and first released in Japan, is tough as galvanized steel. A prison guard (Michitarô Mizushima) is suspended from his job after inmates under his supervision are killed when transport vehicle they’re all traveling in is ambushed by gunmen. Suddenly flush with spare time, the guard takes it upon himself to investigate why the attack took place, which leads him into an eddy of underworld double-crosses. Take Aim at the Police Van has the dense plotting of one of Howard Hawks’s relentlessly twisty film noirs, where it starts to seem as if every new scene takes all that’s come before and spins the viewer’ understanding of it like a well-oiled revolving door. Like the best of his Hollywood counterparts who made similar fare, Seijun Suzuki compensates for any narrative confusion by directing with an abundance of style which is further bolstered by a gift for inventive shots. Cinematographer Shigeyoshi Mine fills the movie with strikingly gorgeous black-and-white photography.

The Greatest Night in Pop (Bao Nguyen, 2024). Acknowledging right up front that I found The Greatest Night in Pop to be consistently engaging and entertaining, it certainly is strange to see a documentary that’s a hagiography of a single song. Director Bao Nguyen effectively conveys how momentous it felt when, in 1985, dozens of the biggest stars of U.S. pop music convened to record “We Are the World,” a single that raised money to address famine in Ethiopia. No matter how formidable the assemblage of talent, noble the intent, or successful as a instance of fundraising, I think the clear consensus on the song itself, reached with the comfortable hindsight of almost forty years, is that it’s not very good. The fact that it’s nowhere near the playlists of most radio stations that slavishly honor the music of the nineteen-eighties is a compelling argument that the art has not endured. Except for a glancing statement from interview subject Bruce Springsteen, whose assessment of the song deftly sidesteps into a commendation of it achieving its charitable goals, anyone watching this documentary would think it rises to the level of “Strange Fruit” or “Yesterday” among venerated classics. The film does give Sheila E. the space to say she felt like she was being used by the organizers, who were clearly hoping her presence would lure in the participation of her friend and collaborator Prince, but that’s about the extent of the negative commentary. Nguyen expertly assembles the voluminous behind-the-scenes footage of the event to achieve a genuinely impressive you-are-there feel.