AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, dir. David Lynch
After working with seriously fractured, ambiguous narratives, Lynch returns to something with a bit clearer narrative. But he's unable to leave his own tastes behind, and transforms one of Agatha Christie's most famous mysteries and elevates it into something of a brilliant, unforgettable nightmare where sin and death are inextricably linked.
ASSASSINS, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen
Sondheim's dark, cynical musical about the various individuals who attempted to assassinate the President of the United States (and in a few cases succeeded), brought to life by a pair of directors with a similarly black sense of humor and who tend to explore the dark side of the American subconscious.
THE HERETIC a.k.a. AKHENATEN, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
Continuing his fascination with religious fanaticism--THERE WILL BE BLOOD and THE MASTER--Anderson turns his attention to a past era, to the Egyptian ruler known as Akhenaten, who abolished the dominant cults and established a new one, with himself as fully divine incarnation of the sun god, the Aten.
LOST IN THE COSMOS, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
Inspired by Walker Percy's book of the same name--a send-up of the "self-help" book which seeks to explore philosophical questions--Anderson takes his cues from the latter portions of the book, which establish a very loose science fiction narrative about an expedition in search of extraterrestrial life. The team finds it, only to be rejected by the alien race as too dangerous, and are sent home to a world that has been almost completely destroyed.
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH a.k.a. RED DEATH, dir. Yimou Zhang
Zhang turns his eye to Egdar Allan Poe for the source of his next tale, which he adapts as a period piece set in ancient China. A feverish, nightmare story with almost overwhelming grandeur, it serves as an interesting companion piece to his CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER for its sheer visual excess, though in theme, it's decidedly more existential: a meditation on the ever-encroaching nature of death.
THE MAGUS, dir. Bernardo Bertolucci
John Fowles' THE MAGUS was adapted once, as a lousy feature starring Michael Caine. But Bertolucci, whose sensibilities make him a natural for this strange, erotic story, takes a shot and produces a late-career masterpiece full of atmospheric photography of ancient Greece, intriguing conversations, all leading up to a twisted, surreal climax where the difference between reality and fiction is no longer discernible.
THE ODYSSEY: A MODERN SEQUEL, dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky
THE ODYSSEY: A MODERN SEQUEL is an epic poem by Nikos Kazantzakis, perhaps best known for writing ZORBA THE GREEK and THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. But make no mistake, his ODYSSEY is his true masterpiece, an astonishing work that at once honors Homer's creation while using it as a jumping point to explore the spiritual crisis of contemporary man. Jodorowsky would deliver like gangbusters, both on the spiritual tension at the center of the work and the film's strange, grand visuals.
