7 Women (John Ford, 1966). John Ford’s final narrative film is set at a Christian mission in China in the nineteen-thirties. The women who staff the post are anticipating the arrival of a new physician, and they’re shocked when the medical practitioner in question turns out to be a fellow female (Anne Bancroft). For the first half of 7 Women, the drama comes from the disruptive influence of this scrappy, comfortably uncouth newcomer, beats that Bancroft plays with snappy zest. Everyone else in the cast overdoes it a bit, with Anna Lee giving an especially flibbertigibbet turn as one of the mission’s residents. The plot takes a turn when the mission if taken over by Chinese soldiers who ruthlessly persecute the women. The retrograde depiction of these Chinese people doesn’t sit all that well now, but Ford’s characteristic attention to the savagery of life remains compelling. He simply knew how to structure a story for the screen for maximum clarity and impact at the same time. If nothing else, the film’s final line — delivered venomously by Bancroft — is a helluva closing note for Ford’s career.

The Substance (Coralie Fargeat, 2024). Coralie Fargeat follows all the way through on her vision. I’ll give her that. In the twisty science fiction of The Substance, aging actress and media personality Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) counters her chosen field’s new disinterest in her now that she has a few more lines around her eyes by signing on for a mysterious treatment that springs a younger version of herself, kind of, from a massive gash that opens on her back. This 2.0 iteration goes by the name Sue (Margaret Qualley) and proceeds to reclaim the parts of Elisabeth’s professional life that were stripped away from here. The two forms can’t be conscious at the same time, and there are other strict rules about the process that are destined to be disregarded. That’s when the tremendous gory yuck starts. The Cronenbergian body horror is pushed to impressive extremities, but Fargeat accidentally argues that the morbid master’s well-iced veins are a necessary component to making this sort of wild ride work. The satire thunders too loudly, especially any time Dennis Quaid is on screen as an unctuous, chauvinistic entertainment exec, and the result is often clownish rather than cutting. The Substance is impressively ambitious but too much of a mess for its feminist fury to really leave a mark.

Rollover (Alan J. Pakula, 1981). Across his fine filmmaking career, Alan J. Pakula was better than most at movies about amoral guys in suits wreaking havoc within permissive institutional structures. In Rollover, Hubbell Smith (Kris Kristofferson) takes over the presidency of a New York City bank and quickly discovers that it is teetering on the edge of financial collapse. He immediately starts scheming ways to game the international monetary system to his bank’s benefit, a process that brings him into the orbit of Lee Winters (Jane Fonda), the widow of a murdered chemical company executive who has taken over the business’s leadership. Naturally, the pair fall into an affair even as they’re engaged in all manner of twisty machinations in their intermingled dealings. I’m not sure I followed the logic behind every finely finessed movement of dollars, and the daringly cast Kristofferson isn’t always convincing in this business maestro mode. Fonda is good, of course, even if she sometimes seems a little bored by the role. Among the supporting performers, Hume Cronyn is the standout, absolutely oozing confident, congenial evil as another banking boss.