Capote

With his fair hair, pale skin and faint voice, Truman Capote cast somewhat of a ghostly appearance. So does the stark winter countryside portrayed in “Capote,” the 2005 film that examines the creation of the novel “In Cold Blood.” The spectral nature makes sense, since the novel, and the film, deals with a quadruple homicide. As Capote becomes infatuated with the murderers, the rural Kansas setting, painted in long-distance shots and moments of ambient sound, harbors the ghosts of the murdered, so that we don’t become too infatuated ourselves. It’s a brilliant device, moments of art within a creepy story.

Wild Orchid

What if you made a Brazilian tourism video that was also soft-core porn? (Redundant?) What if a Trump-like mogul used real estate deals to mask the fact he’s a closet perv? (Redundant?) What if you had Jacqueline Bisset and Carre Otis in tank tops? (Redundant?) Well, that’s pretty much all there is to “Wild Orchid” (1989), an early version of filmmaker Zalman King’s safe-for-soccer-moms style of screen screwing. This film is basically a practice run for every episode of “Red Shoe Diaries” and all the Skinemax ripoffs that followed during the 1990s (I mean, not that anybody was complaining). Redundant.