Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940), directed by Norman Taurog.

What can you say about Broadway Melody of 1940? My first response is to wonder why there’s no “year” movies today–where’s the Glee-like Tap Dancing Teens of 2012? (Not that I would want to see that.) Instead of all these sequels, why not call ’em Vampire Lovers of 2011? Trainwrecking Transformers of 2010?

That aside, my other initial response is: how good can these movies be? After all, aren’t they just bizarre, episodic amalgamations of Broadway talent? Hoofers and vaudevillians strutting their stuff, connected only by the flimsiest of plots, stretched to a full two hours?

Melancholia (2011), directed by Lars von Trier.

Lars von Trier’s new film, Melancholia, concerns the end of the world. Not “the end of the world as we know it”, but the literal end of the world–a planet that some scientist has dubbed “Melancholia”, that has been “hiding behind the sun” (do not even attempt to wonder if any of the astronomy is legit) has bounced free and is swooping near earth. Will it crash into us?

Oh, it fucking crashes all right. This is a Lars von Trier movie, so you can bet that this Goddam planet is going to totally smash into ours, causing any number of disturbances.

What exactly is noir, anyway? Its name suggests that the movie must be in black and white, and yet, who can deny that Polanski’s Chinatown is a noir masterpiece?

Others think that noir is specific to a time, namely the years following World War II, and that it reflects the seedy underside to America’s sudden power and prosperity following the Big Fight. I agree with all that, but I think that commentary can be applied to modern crime films (not to mention crime movies from other countries.)

The reason is simple: that postwar malaise lingers even today. To me, noir reflects the rot that exists beneath the surface of every prosperity, it examines the desperate measures people take to try and make their lives glamorous or wealthy. Money seems to be at the root of virtually all noir, though in one case below, fame is also a motivating factor.

The five movies I’ve selected below all reflect great noirs since 1990. This has been a fairly dead period for great crime movies, though I know the world loves L. A. Confidential, I think that one, though entertaining, pales terribly compared to Chinatown or any other minor noir, including Kansas City Confidential. The five listed here are personal choices that simply blew me away at the theaters, even if they’re often deeply flawed.

J. Edgar (2011), directed by Clint Eastwood.

“If it were all in the script, why make the film?” –Nicholas Ray

Dear Mr. Eastwood,

I’m writing this open letter that you undoubtedly won’t read, because I have a question: why did you make J. Edgar?

Seriously. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the above quote by Nicholas Ray, a director who worked his ass off to tell stories without too much intrusive camerawork, who seemed content to direct what the studios gave him, but had some beautifully composed shots, brilliant editing and, above all, great performances.

Have you seen any of them, Mr. Eastwood? Rebel Without A Cause, They Live By Night, In A Lonely Place, Bigger Than Life. Maybe it’s hard because, deep down, you know that you’ve never made a movie that can rival even one frame of any of those. Not even close.

There he is, in Act of Violence, Joe Parkson, limping, gat in hand, desperate and obsessed with blowing away clean-living Frank Enley, maybe even taking Enley’s wife out in the process.

You can’t get that one out of your head, and then there’s Crossfire, and he’s Montgomery, the anti-Semite, a vile, vicious bully, who kills a man simply for being a Jew.

He was a womanizing projectionist with a mean streak in Clash by Night. The racist happy to beat a cripple in Bad Day at Black Rock, and the racist who’s just as eager to throw over his black accomplice in Odds Against Tomorrow. His men were cowardly, they were hateful, they were mean to kids, to women, to minorities.

But most of all, they seemed to hold a special loathing for themselves.

In honor of the arrival of our new kitten, Baby, named after you-know-who (see below), I’d like to give a brief shout-out to that most unheralded of movie creatures: the cat.

Everyone loves dogs, see, but the cat, well, the cat is a beast that conjures up mixed emotions. People love cats… or they hate them. Actually, people that love cats often hate ’em as well.

My stinky lunatics are a great joy in my life, and I love torturing them with aggressive affection. But I also think that cats make for interesting characters in movies, or interesting props. Dogs have a tendency to be a bit one-note for my taste (in movies, that is–in real life I think dogs are the cat’s meow.)

Most of the films mentioned below have house cats, or house cats playing big cats, so for that reason you won’t see The Lion King or The Ghost and the Darkness, both of which feature the biggest of cats, and both of which are the biggest of yawns in my opinion.

Hail the Conquering Hero (1944), directed by Preston Sturges.

Was there ever a comedy as deeply honest as Preston Sturges’ Hail the Conquering Hero? The question is rhetorical. For here is a tale made and released when World War II was still white-hot, that skewers military worship and even the idolization of mothers, for gosh sakes. That makes people look like fools while acknowledging the genuine goodwill that exists in all of us. A picture about a small town gone crazy, while at the same time celebrating the inherent cozy joy of those small towns. A movie that is at once totally hilarious, then sends you reeling with its heartfelt emotion. In Hail the Conquering Hero, people are idiots, and thank God for those people. Without them, where would we be?

I’ll say this: Hail the Conquering Hero is a movie that should be remade for every war. I’ll also say this: there’s not a filmmaker alive who could remake Hail the Conquering Hero today. It’s just too damned honest.

Moneyball (2011), directed by Bennett Miller.

Baseball fans have always loved to imagine the great “what-ifs” of the sport. What if Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio had been traded? What if Buckner hadn’t let that ball go through his legs? What if the Red Sox signed Willie Mays and Jackie Robinson? What if Bill Veeck had put a team of Negro League All-Stars in Philadephia in 1944? Every season, baseball fans wonder if things had been just a little different, how might the fortunes of their team have changed?

Baseball fans have a new what-if scenario: what if Steven Soderbergh had directed Moneyball?

Drive (2011), directed by Nicholas Winding Refn.

Drive, Danish film director Nicolas Winding Refn’s first American movie, opens with one of the most assured sequences I’ve seen in movies in a long, long time. Ryan Gosling plays the Driver (a nod perhaps to Two-Lane Blacktop’s unnamed heroes), a man in total control of his world. He’s a driver–on the racetrack and in the getaway. He has communicated his terms to a gang of robbers via the telephone: they get him for five minutes, he wants to know nothing about the job save for where he’s to pick up the thieves, and in that five minutes he will drive them to safety. Nothing more, nothing less.

Contagion (2011), directed by Steven Soderbergh.

It starts with one person, as I suppose it always does. Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) is an executive at a multinational headquartered in Minnesota. She is returning from Hong Kong, has a layover in Chicago and is fighting a cough. She has red eyes, flushed cheeks, and a fever. During her five-hour layover, she met with a former lover at a hotel for a quick fling before returning home to her second husband and her child from a first marriage. In a few dozen hours, she will become the first victim of a worldwide pandemic that will kill millions, if not billions, of people.