A Mike Leigh film about a black lower middle-class family in London, Hard Truths (2024) shows us not that the world is too much with us but that we ourselves are too much with us. Pansy Deacon (a remarkable Marianne Jean-Baptiste) never ceases to be frustrated and bitter and has no idea why—why she can never enjoy life. She forces her husband Curtley (David Webber) to be too much with himself: a man paralyzed by his wife and in his misery. It is much the same with their shy son Moses.

The picture flows naturalistically without a plot (but you won’t miss it) and unconcerned about race. Armond White has correctly observed that the film “goes so far beyond the ‘people-who-look-like-me’ cliches that the emotional specificity of [Pansy’s] familial and social distress is scarily recognizable—and universal.” Which is another way of saying Leigh is an artist.

Kudos to his cast. Michelle Austin gives a sinewy and moving performance as Pansy’s sister Chantelle. A nice vitality arises when Austin is with the two young women who play Chantelle’s daughters—and Ani Nelson (Kayla) is lovely. In all likelihood, this is one of Leigh’s best films.

The Candidate—not the Michael Ritchie film of 1972, but one from 1964—stars Mamie Van Doren as a glamorous pimp, Christine, employed by the destructive campaign manager, Buddy (Eric Mason), for a bachelor Congressional candidate, Frank Carlton (Ted Knight). As it happens, Christine falls for Buddy—the worst path she could take—while Frank meets and caves to his weakness for a British noncitizen named Angela (June Wilkinson). Buddy is a would-be government official who, we come to realize, doesn’t stand, or deserve, a chance.

The film is quite serious with some sophisticated dialogue (borrowed from a source novel, I take it), but as well it is thin and has scant drama. Indeed, there is not enough here for even an 80 minute movie. Near the end the piece gets silly and phony. It transpires that Angela was willing to appear in an utterly stupid stag reel.

Van Doren and Wilkinson cannot act. Mamie tries but it doesn’t pan out. She’s a blond marvel, though; her looks are extraordinary. As for pretty June, her bosom is extraordinary. Mason’s acting is probably passable but rather mechanical. The Candidate loses.

An ex-coffee salesman, Rosen, strenuously tries to help a young mother whose husband has died. He is not in love with her, or lusting for her, he wants only to help her; but the financially sinking woman keeps refusing.

This is what “Take Pity” chronicles. It’s a Bernard Malamud short story, so the characters are Jewish. And they aren’t happy. The woman is refusing to accept the norms of society and the Jewish community. She is unwise, but another fait accompli in the story is that a particular man ceases to be an angel, so to speak, and turns into a devil. In Malamud, Jews let down other Jews. The woman, I say again, is unwise. Rosen becomes worse.

The ten pages here are tough and crisp and fascinating.

Babygirl (2024), by director-writer Halina Reijn, concerns the female CEO of an automaton, or robotics, company and the sexually perverted affair she enters into. I agree with Kyle Smith that Nicole Kidman‘s Romy, the CEO, is like the “fully realized character from a literary novel or a memoir.” She is married with two daughters, and her dalliance is with a young male company intern, Samuel (Harris Dickinson).

Though not without banality, the screenplay is sharp and probing and weird. It’s weird because of Samuel’s kinkiness but also such details as Romy’s young daughter dancing the tarantella—and being named Nora (like the wife in Ibsen’s A Doll House). Too, it is non-woke.

The three main actors—Kidman, Dickinson, and Antonio Banderas—never make a misstep, which is a very big deal in Kidman’s case since the role is certifiably difficult. Not that the men’s roles are easy, though.

Blake Edwards‘s Experiment in Terror (1962) is about a bank teller (Lee Remick) forced by a murderer to rob her place of employment. A vivid thriller, it is very much a police drama—with Glenn Ford‘s John Ripley on the case—which somewhat anticipates Klute, The French Connection and Dirty Harry. Edwards did some admirable directing here and got some scary lighting from cinematographer Philip Lathrop. There is beauty (and decent acting) from Remick, sexiness from Stefani Powers as the bank teller’s younger sister.