Pieter Brueghel’s “The Way to Calvary” is a large painting of many figures in a surreal landscape. With his master’s eye for detail and perspective, he packed the canvas with the almost hidden story of Christ bearing his cross to Golgotha. Part of the strangeness is that the scene is reimagined as taking place in 16th Century Flanders, and the Roman soldiers are replaced by the Spanish soldiers who currently terrorized the country, crucifying heretics (in the name of the holy church) across wheels jutting into the sky. Thus Brueghel combined an angry political statement with a nominally holy subject, creating a masterpiece with many levels of meaning in his typically beautiful, arresting, intense, numinous, almost grotesque style.

Although Christ is at the center of the picture, the viewer’s eye is distracted by the multifarious dramas around him, and this is part of the painter’s philosophy of how cataclysmic events happen almost unnoticed while life goes on. W.H. Auden expressed this idea in a famous poem on Brueghel’s “Fall of Icarus”.

Safe House is a lot of talent doing a whole lot of nothing. It offers a familiar premise (rogue spy wants to prove its the good guys, not him, behind all the dirty work) and one of the most bankable stars on the planet (two time Oscar winner Denzel Washington). In support, such stellar performers as Sam Shephard, Vera Farmiga, and Brendan Gleeson make up for Ryan Reynolds’ lack of gravitas. But in a clear case of one element destroying all others, director Daniel Espinosa misconstrues the slow burn for suspense. Even worse, he believes that handheld camera work and long sequences of star close-ups can cover what is basically a middling idea. With its far too desaturated color scheme (the entire movie is made up of shades of beige) and the lack of legitimate investment, what should be a nail biter becomes a mere shoulder shrug.

Washington is Tobin Frost, a wanted man who the CIA believes has spent the last decade selling off US secrets to the highest bidder. When his latest deal goes pear-shaped, he ends up being captured and carted off to the title location, a South African apartment building run by low level pencil pusher Matt Weston (Reynolds). Before you can say “lack of chemistry,” some assassins show up and shoot the Bejesus out of the place. Frost and Weston escape, and then get chased by the same group of goons. Hoping for some help from the inside, they contact their connections in the government (Shepard, Farmiga, and Gleeson) and are instructed to proceed to another safe house. Along the way, Frost tries to tell Weston that he is being used by his superiors, but the novice agent just doesn’t want to believe it. When the attacks continue, it is clear that someone higher up is pulling the strings.

From declarations of undeniable greatness to questions of legitimacy, the literary world continues to be fascinated by one William Shakespeare. The famed playwright remains a historical enigma, a question almost everyone can answer outright, but can’t fully understand completely. While the postmodern age has spent inordinate amounts of time trying to figure out if a failed actor in England really did create some of the most amazing theater pieces ever written, the various medias surrounding the stage have been more than happy to capitalize on their lasting success. There have been more adaptations of Shakespeare work than that of any other writer, living or dead, and while all have not been true to the famous Bard, almost all have been infused (directly or spiritually) by his signature style.

Still, the mythos continues. Just this past year, Roland Emmerich attempted to enter the awards season fray with his disaster-epic free look at the authorship argument, Anonymous. Even John Madden’s jovial, jokey Shakespeare in Love (out now on a brilliant Blu-ray) suggested a different source of inspiration. It even rode its likeable lark status all the way to seven Academy Awards, including one for Best Picture. Yet for many, the story behind these plays is far less important than what is actually happening on the page itself. This has lead to dozens of direct adaptations and perhaps hundreds of influenced approaches. Indeed, we wouldn’t have West Side Story, My Own Private Idaho, or Strange Brew without the ongoing sway of Stratford-upon Avon’s most famous son.

Calum Marsh: As you know, Jordan, the films we tend to gravitate toward in this column are mostly obscure or neglected, like forgotten late-career coups by otherwise canonical directors or great films considered “minor” by the high guard. Zabriskie Point, an English-language drama by legendary Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, represents a different sort of case altogether: widely available as an inexpensive, reasonably high-quality Region 1 DVD and unforgotten by anyone who’s seen it, Zabriskie Point‘s major problem isn’t that it’s lost or unseen—it’s that it’s hated. Other than perhaps Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and some of the most difficult Godard projects, no film we’ve written about in these pages is as intensely reviled or rejected as this one, which has been considered a definitive, irredeemable failure since its release in 1970.

Coming just a few short years after his commercial and international breakout Blowup, and only the second of a three-film deal with producer Carlo Ponti, Zabriskie Point had more hype and hope resting on it than that Lana Del Ray album. And it was received about as angrily: American critics tore the poor film to pieces, launching one scathing tirade after another until every last bit of Antonioni’s critical credibility was depleted. The movie was a box-office dud, which is especially disappointing considering the profitibility of his previous effort, which pretty much derailed his career (the last installment of the Ponti arrangement, 1975’s outstanding The Passenger, would be Antonioni’s last major work).

Still reeling from the sad news about Don Cornelius, it’s painful to acknowledge the loss of another irreplaceable master, Ben Gazarra. Some good tributes out there.

What can you say about Gazzara? He was relevant in every decade going back to the ‘50s. And it wasn’t just his longevity or his unique, idiosyncratic style(s); he was old school in the sense that he radiated that aura: above all, he was a man.That might not sound like much, or it may even sound silly (What does aura have to do with anything? These are actors playing roles and they can be transformed into heroes or villains depending on the script and the director), but back in the days when special effects did not do as much to determine what an actor could—and could not—do, it mattered when a man could bring that certain gravitas to a role. As such, he was never typecast (because he was too talented) but he did inexorably bring that aura to each role. These were days when directors counted on that aura, because it conveyed legitimacy that was understood before a single line was spoken.