Below; The Truth About Charlie; Quai des Orfevres

Below Directed by David Twohy It's a haunted-ship story, but also a parable about the unethical choices made by a WWII submarine crew driven to paranoia by an atrocity they've witnessed. Bruce Greenwood, Olivia Williams and Matthew Davis head the talented, very watchable cast. (Perhaps the comeliest navy since Eisenstein put sailors in hammocks in Battleship Potemkin.) These well-etched characterizations rival what Ralph Fiennes and Emily Watson do in Red Dragon?two of the best screen performances this year. (Fiennes displays awesome erotic menace and Watson gives wondrous gumption to the blind-girl role that Joan Allen made frumpy in Manhunter. They're a bizarre, fascinating love match, exposing what's ludicrous in Punch-Drunk Love.) Not to be confused with the ridiculous Robert Zemeckis-produced Ghost Ship, Below proves that hastily dismissed genre movies can provide notable entertainment. Below deserves to be seen on the big screen.

The Truth About Charlie Directed by Jonathan Demme Because the world doesn't need a remake of Charade (easily available in faded public-domain prints on public tv and cheap DVDs), Jonathan Demme does something different and more challenging. He takes the plot of Charade (the romantic-comedy-thriller that Pauline Kael called "the best American movie of 1963") and spins off his own caprice. That's actually the title of a 60s Doris Day trifle, but in The Truth About Charlie Demme adds loopy modern politics, assorted ethnic romanticism and movie lore. It's multi-culti and world-musicky?and deliberately unprofound?yet it touches ground in ways that Demme's 80s caprice Married to the Mob did not.

Maybe it was courage he gained from the 1998 Beloved that moved Demme to blithely present Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton in roles the world associates with the legends Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, but his gamble pays off. It is cultural progress by fiat. Newton fits the Hepburn mode perfectly?she's delicate and resourceful, her prettiness turning into beauty often enough to keep one entranced. Through Newton's Regina (a young wife deceived by her late husband, an international smuggler), the world of Paris and its crooks and spies and police is seen freshly. Wahlberg's Joshua/Bartholomew is no Cary Grant, but a guy we're familiar with?a probably shady government operative?a prep school away from Whit Stillman's Barcelona characters. His street charm is a necessary, updated response to Grant's fantasy figure. How Wahlberg's romancing of Newton might scandalize Southies (or Hollywood) means more than simply supplying audiences with fake suavity (or the innocuous blandness of Matthew Modine and Michelle Pfeiffer in the facetious Married to the Mob). It's not often that one sees a movie and feels the gust of pure air, but The Truth About Charlie?a fantasy that sees through political deception as determinedly as it undermines cultural deceptions?offers a billowy morality.

Don't make the mistake of thinking Demme is simply playing Charades. The entire film is a reminder of the lift to be had from cinematic excellence. Demme pays homage to the pleasure of French film culture?to the sophistication of movie erudition that at one time made cultured people of those Americans who faithfully attended such a declassé (pop) art form. Believe it or not, movies once were thought of as part of modern civility. That explains the fleeting references to Alain Resnais, Jean Renoir, Jacques Demy and a cast of extras that includes Charles Aznavour, Magali Noel, Agnes Varda and Anna Karina. Those artists didn't just offer love wisdom but an open appreciation of the world (of ways of loving, trusting and moviemaking) that is extended by this film's motley characters and espionage chases. Refuting a cruel and crude action flick like Black Hawk Down (whose politics few people bother thinking about), The Truth About Charlie is suffused with a subliminal awareness of complex contemporary colonialism and crossed cultures. It's apparent in the mix of Aznavour and African highlife on the soundtrack, the orchestration of Wahlberg's blunt voice and Newton's unplaceable but appealing accent. His paleness, her color, Demme's emotional rainbow.

In feeling, The Truth About Charlie is less like Stanley Donen's Charade and more like Louis Malle's classic Parisian farce Zazie dans le Metro (the Hellzapoppin of the Nouvelle Vague). Demme achieves surprising emotional amplitude moment to moment; it's not suspenseful, it's beguiling. When Newton runs through the gray, crowded streets in a white raincoat, she isn't simply escaping bad guys but?strangely?is in pursuit of something ineffable: Demme's dream of movie utopia, a now esoteric ideal. Maybe the charm of Demme's humor, of Tak Fujimoto's limpid photography with its discreet visual puns, won't connect with audiences accustomed to violent sarcasm (this film is the antidote to The Bourne Identity), but it reminds me that even when Demme was making exploitation films like Bloody Mama for Roger Corman, he always looked toward something better, more humane. Like sweet Regina, he hasn't stopped looking.

Quay des Orfèvres Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot Crime-movie suspense is practiced more conventionally in Henri-Georges Clouzout's Quai des Orfèvres (1947), now restored in a new 35 mm print and brought back by Film Forum. But few crime movies are as spectacular as this. The black-and-white chiaroscuro (by Armand Thirard) seduces and glistens. The varied moral purposes of 1940s Parisians practically dance before our eyes?just like the frequent musical numbers that Clouzout films from offstage perspectives to give the impression of seeing behind/beyond what showbiz usually presents.

Louis Jouvet is Antoine, the grim police detective investigating a murder. Chief suspects are a whipped, suspicious husband (Bernard Blier), his flirty chanteuse wife (Suzy Delair) and their glamorous, multi-motivated lesbian neighbor (Simone Renant). It's Columbo-like, but Antoine shows the purposefulness of a philosopher exploring a crime of passion. Every interrogation gets at what makes lovers tick. Clouzout's showbiz references suggest a sense of humor about this usual Gallic obsession; they only make Quai des Orfèvres (also known as Jenny Lamour) more complex.

Clouzot is best known for the existential thrillers The Wages of Fear and Diabolique (the murder mystery whose dread is actually what most people think of as "Hitchcockian"). His cynicism is the exact opposite of Jonathan Demme's optimism, but his worldview is similarly expansive. Quai des Orfèvres (referring to a street near the Seine) recalls another little-seen Clouzot masterwork, Le Corbeau, which also dissected townspeople's motives. These amazing Clouzot films get at aspects of human behavior most movies ignore or misrepresent; they feature the poignancy of compulsive behavior and the pathos of self-deception. Grownup stuff, but filmed in such a dazzling way you wonder where the magic went in our contemporary, banal movie fictions.