Trying not to fall behind again, here’s the last few movies I’ve watched.

300 – Going in I figured it would either be really great or really terrible, but definitely nothing in between. I was sort of right: it’s both really great and really terrible. Over the top across the board, which works great for the action scenes and the general Spartan speechifying. But there’s way too much of the Queen’s actions on the homefront, trying to rouse the Spartan Council to war despite the evil presence of Jimmy McNulty. Any attempt to look at the film as a political statement is bound to end in fascism or worse. Let’s be kind and just call it politically irresponsible. Several images though, lifted straight from Frank Miller’s graphic novel, I understand, are breathtaking. Gerard Butler, as the King Leonidas is surprisingly good in a role that basically requires him to cause mayhem, shout and look at the sun. Rodrigo Santoro is simultaneously awesome and hilarious as Xerxes. And, hey, Faramir’s there too!

Abraham Lincoln – Well, that didn’t really help. I was trying to erase thoughts of DW Griffith’s paean to the KKK by watching this, which I’d heard some good things about. It’s a fairly conventional biopic, and Griffith pretty much entirely avoids the subject of slavery entirely: the cause of the War comes down to Walter Huston repeatedly glancing skyward and in a stentorian tone announcing that “The Union must be preserved!”

Visually, it’s obviously an early sound film. The sound quality was really terrible and the camera hardly ever moves (early sound cameras were to big to float around in the ways they did in the late silent era). Griffith manages to condense Lincoln’s entire life to an hour and a half, mainly by structuring the film as a collection of short scenes connected by fades. Lincoln rarely has anything more to say on an issue than a sound bite or a short folksy anecdote. Lincoln’s most famous speeches are elided together or eliminated altogether: the “House Divided” line is inserted into the Lincoln-Douglas debates (which consist of, IIRC, 6 total lines), “Malice toward none and charity toward all” from the second inaugural is moved to some remarks before Our American Cousin starts (along with the final lines of the Gettysburg address). The War is nothing but crushing defeats, until suddenly the North wins.

It’s better than BOAN in that its not actively evil, and there are some very nice framings. But Griffith’s silent work was all movement and kineticism, both in camera and in editing. This film just kind of sits there.

Le Procès de Jeanne D’Arc – Robert Bresson’s film of the trial of Joan Of Arc is a fascinating contrast to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion Of Joan Of Arc because passion is exactly the thing that Bresson attempts to remove from all his films: the kind of actorly emoting that tells the audience how to feel that is so powerful in the close ups of Maria Falconetti’s performance in Dreyer’s film is entirely absent from Bresson’s. Bresson uses the actual transcripts of Joan’s actual trial to tell a short story (only 68 minutes) that is exactly what the title proclaims it to be and nothing else. Florence Delay (perhaps the cutest Joan yet, maybe too cute) says her lines with the total lack of emotion Bresson demanded from his non-actors, unlike the intense performances Flaconetti and Milla Jovovich (in Luc Besson’s underrated The Messenger) have given in the role. not as powerful as the other Besson’s I’ve seen, but I think that’s largely a matter of the familiarity with the subject matter and the literalness of the film. Au Hasard Balthazar and Diary Of A Country Priest and even Pickpocket are open-ended narratives that leave the question of if the story is an allegory and if so, about what, up to the viewer. In Le Procès, the mystery is in the historical events, less so the film. The #5 film of 1962.

The Slow Century – Rock documentary about the band Pavement that’s fairly conventional as these things go. You don’t really learn anything about the band that you couldn’t learn listening to the albums and reading their Wikipedia entry. the film is largely valuable for an extensive collection of archival footage of the band’s performances, especially their early, chaotically messy shows. The #22 film of 2002.

The Missouri Breaks – Weird Western directed by Arthur Penn (Bonnie & Clyde, The Left-Handed Gun) and starring Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid and Harry Dean Stanton. Nicholson, Quaid and Stanton are a gang of horse thieves in Montana and Brando’s the crazy guy who gets hired to hunt them down and kill them. The film never seems to decide if it wants to be serious (Stanton, various speeches about the morality of capital punishment) or comic (Brando’s overthetop wackiness, the jaunty score) or something in-between (Nicholson and Quaid). The result is a disjointed mess of a film that never feels right. It’s more jarring than interesting. The #11 film of 1976.

I Know Where I’m Going! – Another low-key romantic masterpiece by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Wendy Hiller plays a determined golddigger who gets stuck by a storm an island away from her wedding in the islands off the Western coast of Scotland. There she meets Roger Livesey, a naval officer on leave and resident of her destination island. Thanks to some traditional Scottish culture, a bit of superstition, some magic an uncooperative eagle and a very bad boat trip, they, of course, fall in love. Not as successful as the very similar A Canterbury Tale at building a romantic, quasi-mystical epiphany out f the mundane details of country life, but still a terrific film.

I think I’ve seen all the most important Powell and Pressburger films now. They’re all oustanding, but here’s my ranking:

1. The Red Shoes
2. Black Narcissus
3. A Matter Of Life And Death (Stairway To Heaven)
4. A Canterbury Tale
5. The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp
6. The Thief Of Baghdad
7. The 49th Parallel
8. I Know Where I’m Going!
9. Tales Of Hoffman

Since I’ve got a massive backlog, here’s a quick roundup the last 60 films I’ve watched. If you want to know more about any of them, please ask in the comments. I’ve just got to get through this list:

Curse Of The Golden Flower – Not as good as the last couple Zhang Yimou period pictures. It out-ornates even Marie Antoinette. Great performances from Gong Li and Chow Yun-fat, though Chow’s still missing his charm. Not as much action as Hero or House Of Flying Daggers, but the second most Shakespearean film of 2006, after The Departed.

Tea And Sympathy – Vincente Minelli drama about a young man who may or may not be gay and the older woman he may or may not love (played by Deborah Kerr). Brightly Technicolored complex swirl of subtexts, fascinating. The #7 film of 1956.

Rancho Notorious – Tremendously fun revenge Western directed by Fritz Lang. Marlene Dietrich stars as the proprietress of the eponymous hideout. Arthur Kennedy’s the weak link as the protagonist out to kill the men who murdered his fiance during a holdup.

The Mortal Storm – Interesting 1940 anti-Nazi film by Frank Borzage that manages to run it’s entire length without ever mentioning that the people the Nazis are killing are Jewish. Great cast including James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, Frank Morgan and Robert Stack.

Death Takes A Holiday – The remake, Meet Joe Black is a guilty pleasure of mine. This, the original, directed by Mitchell Leisen, stars Fredric March, who isn’t half the actor Brad Pitt is. Think about that.

The Last Hurrah – 1958 John Ford film starring Spencer Tracy as an old school politician on his way out as the world changes. Basically a low-key American version of The Leopard. There’s a tracking shot towards the end that’s one of Ford’s best. The #7 film of 1958.

The Barefoot Contessa – Dreamy Joseph L. Mankiewicz film that’s the perfect Technicolor counterpart to his All About Eve. Ava Gardner plays a young dancer who gets cast in a Hollywood movie, becomes rich and famous, marries a Count and has everything fall apart. Also stars Humphrey Bogart (“What’s the Spanish word for ‘Cinderella’?”) and Edmund O’Brien.

6ixtynin9 – Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s Tarantino-esque comedy-thriller about an unemployed girl who has a fortune fall into her lap and her attempts to keep it from the hoodlums who keep killing each other in her apartment while trying to retrieve it. A lot of fun, but never as sublime as his Last Life In The Universe. The #12 film of 1999.

Children Of Men – Entertaining, but flawed dystopian action film by Alfonso Cuarón. In the not too distant future, the human race can’t reproduce which causes repressive anti-immigrant hysteria in England as the last bastion of civilization on Earth. Clive Owen has to escort a miraculously pregnant young woman out of the country. The art direction is clever and inventive, and the film is already famous for its impressive long tracking shots. The technical virtuosity combined with the political allegory establishes a serious mood that’s undermined by the humor of the mise-en-scène and the inherent silliness of the film’s central remise. The incongruity leaves the film neither fish nor fowl, but platypus. The #5 film of 2006.

Platform – Director Jia Zhangke’s semi-autobiographical film about a traveling musical comedy troupe in post-Cultural Revolution China. Wistful, nostalgic and more than a little confusing at times (it can be hard to keep all the characters straight on first viewing) the film’s at heart a generational coming of age story along the lines of American Graffiti or Dazed And Confused. The #5 film of 2000.

Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler – Four hour Fritz Lang silent that was the first in his trilogy of films about criminal mastermind psychologist Mabuse. It’s fun to see Lang inventing both film noir and the crime thriller in general bit by bit as he goes along, the film is archetypal. But it’s hampered by what has to be one of the dumbest detectives in film history.

13 Ghosts – Low-budget British horror film from 1960 directed by William Castle. Like seemingly all horror films, the lower the budget, the more effective it is. A very creepy haunted house movie with some mediocre acting, cheap special effects and some rather confusing, if silly, plot twists at the end. The #12 film of 1960.

Last Year At Marienbad – Alain Resnais’s masterpiece about a pair of lovers who may or may not have met one year before at the same palatial estate/luxury hotel. One of the most beautiful black and white films ever made, filled with long tracking shots through the house and its surrounding grounds. The plot, such at it is, is a puzzle that may or may not have a solution. Unlike the tick movies of the last decade, however, it’s a film that grows and deepens with every viewing. A must see for any film fan. The #3 film of 1961.

The Proposition – Bleak, Peckinpaugh-esque Australian Western written by Singer/songwriter Nick Cave. Some nice landscape photography, particularly the sunsets. Fine performances by Ray Winstone and Guy Pearce, but doesn’t really add anything new to the genre, aside from the accents. The #18 film of 2005.

Elena And Her Men – Charming Jean Renoir romantic comedy with Ingrid Bergman as a Polish princess with a variety of suitors. Effortlessly fun and enjoyable, the Technicolor costumes create a mood of vibrant buoyancy. The #5 film of 1956.

The Long Goodbye – Another in a string of Robert Altman masterpieces from the early 70s (along with MASH, McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Nashville). Elliot Gould turns Raymond Chandler’s detective Philip Marlowe on his ear in a post-hippie adaptation of the author’s hard-boiled crime novel. With pitcher Jim Bouton as Marlowe’s murdered friend and Sterling Hayden as the drunken great author who may be a suspect. The #4 film of 1973.

Portrait Of Jennie – Joseph Cotton stars as a starving artist who meets a girl (Jennifer Jones) in the park who inspires him to paint some salable pictures. He becomes rather confused as each time he meets her, she appears much older than before, but he heedlessly falls in love with her anyway. The film, directed by William Dieterle, won a special effects Oscar thanks to some cool-looking dissolves as the film frame gradually gains the texture and grain of a painting on canvas.

Goodbye South, Goodbye – Hou Hsiao-hsien’s gangster film is about as far away from the pyrotechnics of Scarface as you can get. The set up is familiar enough: veteran gangster is trying to go straight but the younger gangster he’s got to look out for keeps screwing things up for the both of them. You may remember that from such films as Mean Streets and Wong Kar-wai’s As Tears Go By. But the film’s told in Hou’s unique style: long deep focus shots with multiple planes of character and movement always keeping things interesting. Only in a Hou movie can you see a five minute-take and not realize there’s a character at the bottom of the screen until the fourth minute. The #10 film of 1996.

Hamlet – Michael Almereyda’s version, with Ethan Hawke as the melancholy Prince, Julia Stiles as Ophelia, Bill Murray as Polonius and Geoffrey Wright, Kyle McLachlan, Liev Schreiber, Steve Zahn and Sam Shepard along for the ride. The play’s recent in the world of a contemporary corperation, with Hamlet as a video artist. Self-consciously artsy, it’s the kind of adaptation people who call things “pretentious” would hate. The actors are fine, but the only thing that stands out is the vaguely silly mise-en-scène. The #11 film of 2000.

Hell In The Pacific – A can’t recommend this forgotten masterpiece highly enough. Sometime in World War 2, two soldiers are stranded on a deserted island: one American and one Japanese. The American is Lee Marvin and the Japanese is Toshiro Mifune. neither speaks the others language, and Mifune’s dialogue is not subtitled. At first the two are antagonistic: Marvin trying to steal the water Mifune’s gathered, trying to upset all the machines Mifune’s built, generally trying to kill each other. Eventually, they decide to work together to build a raft and escape. The direction, by John Boorman and the cinematography by Conrad Hall are Malickian. The #5 film of 1968.

The Women – The Desperate Housewives of 1939. Gossip and drama in the lives of rich, catty women. It’s got a great all-female cast though: Norma Shearer, Joan Fontaine, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell and Paulette Goddard. Ably directed by George Cukor.

Curse Of The Demon – Mediocre horror film in which Dana Andrews is called in to find out whether or not a demon has been conjured to murder people, who conjured it, and why. Director Jacques Tourneur made some great low-budget horror films in the 40s, but this is more The Leopard Man than Cat People or I Walked With A Zombie. The #13 film of 1957.

Sylvia Scarlett – Cross-dressing adventure comedy with Katherine Hepburn as the daughter of a embezzler on the lam. She disguises herself as a boy and falls in love with Cary Grant, a con artist they meet along the way. The three of them manage their escape, pull some cons start a variety show and meet an annoying artist. The film was a tremendous flop, Hepburn was labeled “box office poison” and it was years before she regained her stature. Directed by George Cukor.

Taste Of Cherry – The first Abbas Kiarostami film (and the film Iranian film) I’ve seen, and it’s mesmerizing. A middle-aged man is thinking about killing himself, so he drives around the outskirts of tehran looking for someone to come to a specific place the next morning (a hole he’s dug in the side of a hill) and help him out if he’s alive and bury him if he’s not. He first tries a soldier, who runs away in fear, then a religious student who tries to talk him out of it and finally an old taxidermist who agrees but only to help his sick child. The ending is one of the more astounding things in film history. The film is shot almost entirely from the interior of the car, alternating shots of driver and passenger. Apparently the dialogue is largely improvised, with Kiarostami playing the opposite part of whichever actor was being filmed at the time. The #5 film of 1997.

The Criminal Code – Minor Howard Hawks film about a DA (Walter Huston) who gets a kid convicted for murder then becomes the warden of his prison. He takes a liking to the kid and makes him his valet. The kid falls in love with Huston’s daughter and witnesses a murder in prison. He’s got to choose whether or not to rat out the killer. The direction is fine and Huston’s always great, but the rest of the cast (aside from Boris Karloff) is pretty mediocre, and the film lacks the fierce energy Hawks would bring to Scarface a year later.

The Banquet – A loose Chinese adaptation of Hamlet, starring Zhang Ziyias the Queen and Daniel Wu as the upset son. Zhang isn’t Wu’s mother, which eases some of the incestual tension of the play, and makes the film more f a tragic romance between the two. All the principals and events are there from the play, in slightly altered form, but the tone of the thing is different. Whereas the play is a brilliant mixture of comedy and tragedy, the film is dark and moody to the point of hysteria. The sets and costumes are elaborate, but the direction and cinematography are rather pedestrian. The #11 film of 2006.

A Canterbury Tale – I don’t know how it is that Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were able to do it: take the simplest stories an wring the profoundest emotional experiences out of them. During World War 2, an American soldier on leave, a British officer and a young girl find themselves in a small village outside Canterbury. There’s an odd criminal on the loose: some weirdo likes to pour tar in girls’ hair late at night. The three set out to capture the crook and along the way learn the joys of small-town life, and eventually, the wonder of life in general. No filmmakers have ever glided more elegantly from the mundane to the transcendent. The Archers were magicians.

Last Of The Mohicans – I was surprised at how closely Michael Mann’s version followed this 1936 adaptation starring Randolph Scott and directed by George B. Seitz, who went on to direct many an Andy Hardy film. It’s a terrific action film, but never approaches the poetry of Mann’s version. Some of the dialogue I’d always credited to 80s action movie tropes in Mann’s film are actually in this one (“Someday you and I are going to have a serious disagreement.”)

The Man In The Iron Mask – I’ve never yet read a Dumas adaptation I liked, and even the great James Whale couldn’t manage it in this 1939 film, though it’s easily the best of them. Louis XIV is an evil tyrant with a twin brother. The famous four musketeers maneuver things such that the evil twin is replaced by the good one. I’ve read a fair amount of Dumas (The several Musketeers books and The Count Of Monte Cristo) and they are cinematically written but have yet to be well-adapted. We need a four hour Three Musketeers directed by Quentin Tarantino or something.

Bill Of Divorcement – Well-made melodrama with John Barrymore as a patriarch returning home suddenly after 15 years in an insane asylum to find his wife has divorced him and his daughter’s about to get married. Katherine Hepburn plays the daughter, who increasingly becomes afraid that she’ll go nutso as well. George Cukor directs, but the film doesn’t quite escape from its theatrical roots.

Dragnet – Jack Webb’s film adaptation of his popular and ground-breaking police procedural TV series. Essentially just a 90 minute episode of said show, the only thing it really added was color, which I guess was a bigger deal then than it is now (especially since I’ve only ever seen the TV show in color). As an early attempt at a color noir, it fails. But then noir and the procedural genre only have a tangential relation. The #14 film of 1954.

Faust – FW Muranau’s adaptation of the timeless story has a delirious mise-en-scène and some fine campy scenery chewing from Emil Jannings as Mephisto, but the plot doesn’t entirely make sense (the end is literally a deus ex machina) and the lead actress, while pretty, is fairly poor. It’s not as great as the best Murnau films (certainly not Sunrise) but is still pretty terrific.

This Could Be The Night – Chalk my viewing of this mediocrity to my, understandable I think, infatuation with Jean Simmons. She plays a nice, college educated girl who gets a job as a secretary at a low-class night club. She’s charming to most of the regulars and staff, but Anthony Franciosa doesn’t like her, until, of course, he loves her. Directed by the great hit and miss director Robert Wise. The #14 film of 1957.

Arrowsmith – Mediocre early John Ford biopic about a doctor trying to cure bubonic plague. He neglects his unfortunate wife for his work, and so, of course, she ends up dying from plague. Stars Ronald Coleman and Helen Hayes and based on a Sinclair Lewis novel. Ford’s always great, but this isn’t exactly the top of his game.

Hangmen Also Die – Surprisingly terrific war film by Fritz Lang. The Nazi ruler of Czechoslovakia is murdered and the Nazi establishment tries to solve the crime. The assassin escapes to the home of a local professor (and his hot young daughter). Despite random arrests and murders, the whole Czech populace unites to protect the assassin. A moving and entirely effective war film with a co-story credit for Bertolt Brecht. the cast includes an unrecognizable Walter Brennan, I literally did a double take when I realized it was him.

The Life Of Oharu – Man it must have sucked to be a woman in medieval Japan. In Kenji Mizoguchi’s classic film, everything that can go wrong for poor Oharu actually does. She sleeps with Toshiro Mifune, who’s below her class and gets her family kicked out of Kyoto, she gets a decent life as the second wife of a nobleman, but so angers the first one that she gets thrown out, she marries a decent merchant out of love but he dies too young, eventually she ends up an old prostitute, mocked by monks. the film would have been more moving if it wasn’t so schematic. Oharu isn’t a woman or a character, she’s a type, a political statement. Mizoguchi would make better indictments of the fate of women.

Lord Love A Duck – A truly weird high school film with Roddy McDowell as a genius who makes it his mission to fulfill every wish the ridiculously hot Tuesday Weld (the new girl in school) happens to have. Dark and satirical, the film parodies teen movies in general, along with the beach film genre, the Disney Merlin Jones series, and anything and everything serious. I don’t know if it’s brilliant, but it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The #15 film of 1966.

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – I’ve seen this referred to as Sidney Pollack’s best film and a great film in it’s own right, but I ain’t buying it. I liked it a lot until the ending, which seemed forced and unmotivated and depressing for the sake of seeming deep and serious. Give me Out Of Africa any day. Anyway, the story is that jane Fonda and red Buttons and Bonnie Bedelia and Bruce Dern are all in one of those endless dance marathons of the Depression. They’re poor and desperate and exploited for the entertainment of others, but that’s show business. The #6 film of 1969.

The Killer Is Loose – Joseph Cotton stars in this procedural about a cop who captures a bank robber and gets him placed behind bars. When the psychotic crook escapes, he goes after Cotton and his wife. A taut, no nonesense thriller that doesn’t resonate much beyond basic suspense. Directed by Budd Boetticher, and reportedly one of his lesser films. The #12 film of 1956.

El Dorado – I’d occasionally heard that this Howard Hawks film was superior to his film it is a remake of, Rio Bravo, but I never believed it. But, honestly, now that I’ve seen it. I think it might be. Te premise is the same: John Wayne, an old man, a drunk and a young kid have to hold off a gang of outlaws until the marshall shows up to take away a killer. This version trades Robert Mitchum for Dean Martin and James Caan for Ricky Nelson, a acting improvement in both cases. It also adds some interesting backstory and vulnerablizes the heroes. For example, Wayne, instead of the superpowered John T. Chance of the first film is a flawed man who accidentally kills someone in the first 15 minutes of the film and isn’t necessarily always on the side of the law. Both films are great, but this may very well be better. The #6 film of 1966.

On Dangerous Ground – Odd little Nicholas Ray noir with Robert Ryan as a cop so close to the borderline of police brutality that he gets sent upstate to help solve a murder in a small town. Ward Bond plays the father of the murder victim, anxious to shoot the killer, but Ryan’s heart warms when they track the killer to Ida Lupino’s house, a pretty blind girl who takes care of her disturbed brother, the murderer. Simple and moving.

The Spiral Staircase – Horror noir about a serial killer on the loose who prays on invalid young women. Directed by Robert Siodmak with some nice POV shots and a spooky mise-en-scène that elevates the rather simple story and pedestrian acting by Dorothy McGuire, George Brent and Ethel Barrymore.

Tears Of The Black Tiger – A Guy Maddin version of a Sergio Leone story, in Thailand is director Wisit Sasanatieng’s action film. A frenetic, melodramatic score, some over the top violence and lushly colored visuals amke for a highly entertaining culture and genre mashup. The #9 film of 2000.

Lost Horizon – A group of Brits are kidnapped and crash-landed in the mysterious land of Shangri-la, where they experience a paradise that literally too good to be believed. Director Frank Capra’s idealism infuses the film, but the cast led by Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt and Edward Everett Horton isn’t quite up to the task. An odd misfire of a film, a complete version doesn’t appear to exist, there’s a long, slow-moving middle section and some 1930s nudity. And the ending doesn’t really work.

Hamlet – The 1948 version by Laurence Olivier, and I’m not a fine. It’s well-directed, with a noirish mise-en-scène that’s entirely appropriate to the material and some elegant tracking shots between scenes that establish the space of Elsinore Castle quite nicely. But I have two major problems with the film. First, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are almost entirely eliminated, along with my favorite speech from the play (“I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself the king of infinite space were it not that I have bad dreams.”). Second, and most importantly, the acting is the worst kind of Shakespeare there is: recitation, not performance. This was a problem in Olivier’s Henry V as well, a film about passion that was totally lacking in passion. Here, Olivier manages to play a line like “Now could I drink hot blood!” as if he had a hankering for a nice cup of tea. Give me Mel Gibson and Franco Zefferelli any day.

Street Of Shame – A more realistic Mizoguchi feminist film, this time set in the present as anti-prostitution laws are being debated by the Japanese government (supposedly this film helped get those laws passed). The film centers on a single brothel and the various trials the girls that work there are put through. Not as poetic as Hou’s Flowers Of Shanghai, made 45 years later, but more effective as a political statement, not that the two are not interrelated effects. The #6 film of 1956.

Hype! – Documentary on the Seattle music scene of the 1980s and early 90s. Some interesting interviews with now unknown members of that scene, but there’s little that’s insightful to someone who grew up during the grunge explosion. There’s the familiar Northwest paradox of everyone trying to be rich and famous while disdaining all things rich and famous as sellouts or lame or whatever. Also odd that the film manages to go one for 75 minutes before it ever mentions drugs, the prime mover that corrupted and eventually destroyed the whole thing. A fine record and worth watching. The #26 film of 1996.

A Star Is Born – This, the original 1937 version of the oft-remade story directed by William Wellman I liked a lot better than the more famous remake starring Judy Garland and James Mason and directed by George Cukor. This time, Janet Gaynor (Sunrise) plays the young girl who makes it big in Hollywood as her big star husband descends into drink and obscurity. There’s no way I’d ever choose the cedarian Fredric March over James Mason, one of my favorite lesser stars, (and likewise Wellman over the great Cukor) but this film works a whole lot better with Gaynor and a lack of musical numbers. It’s a great story and hard to do wrong (though i suspect the Barbara Streisand version manages it). The two-strip Technicolor process gives a quite unusual look to the film that’s worth watching just to see.

Sisters Of Gion – My favorite of the Mizoguchi anti-prostitution film, this time he boils the story down to two “sisters” who share a house and a struggle for clients. One gets screwed over by a man she thinks loves her and the other sees her manipulative schemes fail and create misery for everyone, but most especially herself. It’s also got a fair amount of humor, something which Mizoguchi’s other films aren’t especially successful at.

Story Of The Last Chrysanthemums – I managed to see this and A Star Is Born in the same day, which was rather serendipitous, as both films are about the difficulty and costs of an acting career. This is easily my favorite of the Mizoguchi films that played here recently that I’d yet to see, and not just because there wasn’t a prostitute in sight. It’s less schematic and obviously political than the others, but just as fundamentally humanist. It’s about a young kabuki actor who sucks but no one will tell him because his father is famous and successful. He falls in love with his nephews servant, who has the nerve to tell him he isn’t very good, and the two of them run off to hone his acting kills on the road. You can imagine the course of the melodrama from there, but it’s nonetheless tremendously moving and effective.

Monsieur Verdoux – A terrific late Chaplin film about a serial killer just trying to support his family in the years before the Depression. He charms old ladies, marries them and then inherits their money after murdering them. Totally lacking in the sentimentality that colors far too many of Chaplin’s films, it also avoids the nostalgia of the otherwise great Limelight or the political aggressiveness of The Great Dictator. Chaplin’s too old for the best of his physical comedy, but the movie still manages some moments of hilarity, especially in his interactions with Martha Raye as his most obnoxious wife.

Speedy – On the basis of this, my first Harold Lloyd film, I’d say there’s no way his in the class of Keaton or Chaplin as silent film comedians go. A collection of set-pieces, on a couple actually work: Lloyd as a terrible cab driver who ends up scaring the hell out of Babe Ruth, Lloyd and his girl in Coney Island in a sequence that has a lot in common with the amusement park sequence in Sunrise, except the Murnau is sublime while the Lloyd is mediocre, and the final race against the clock as Lloyd high-speed drives a horse-drawn train all the way across New York.

Cleo From 5 To 7 – Agnes Varda’s chronicle of two hours in the life of a singer who things she might have cancer. The film starts off has a lot of fun as the singer and her old friend go hat shopping and ride around town in a cab, turns a little weird as she fights with her songwriters (one of whom is played by the great film composer Michel Legrand), and picks up again as she meets a soldier in a park. It’s the only Varda film I’ve seen thus far, though I’m a huge fan of two of her husband’s movies: The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg and The Young Girls Of Rochefort, The #6 film of 1961.

Pandora’s Box – GW Pabst’s famous silent film about a sexy girl and the havoc she wreaks on a decent family. She marries the father and drives him to kill himself on their wedding night. The son falls for her and helps her to escape in a scene reminiscent of a Bob Dylan song. The daughter’s not too subtly gay and in love with the girl as well: all three of them, along with the girl’s father and a variety show producer end up in a gambling den where they not so slowly go throw away all their money. Eventually they end up destitute and victims of a serial killer. Louise brooks is radiant as the heroine, Lulu, and her haircut was the model for Anna Karina’s in many a Godard film.

The Circus – Classic Chaplin silent has the Tramp join a circus. Closer to his manic shorts than his more ambitious features like City Lights or The Gold Rush, it also manages to avoid the sentimentality that drives me crazy in those otherwise great movies. I’ll take the ending of the Circus over City Lights any day, but that’s just the kind of guy I am.

Objective: Burma! – A very fine Raoul Walsh war film with Errol Flynn as the leader of a group of American paratoopers trapped behind enemy lies after a successful attack on a radar station in World War 2. Made in the midst of the war, it’s an obvious propaganda piece, not just in the opening and closing titles, but also in the generic demonization of the Japanese enemy. A Pacific theatre version of William Wellman’s Battleground, or an inland Sands Of iwo Jima, it works to set the archetype of the WW2 movie that so many folks have been demolishing for the last 60 years.

The Leopard – Luchino Visconti’s elegiac story of Sicily during the wars of reunification in the 1860s. Burt lancaster plays the Prince Of Salina who sees his old order collapsing in the wake of political turmoil and does what he can to ensure his family’s success in the post-Garibaldi world. Alain Delon plays his nephew, who’s marriage he arranges to the daughter of a vulgar, corrupt local politician for whom he foresees great wealth and power. He doesn’t hurt that the daughter’s played by the ridiculously beautiful Claudia Cardinale. If the scenery reminds you of The Godfather series (especially the Sicilian parts) that’s no coincidence. The #8 film of 1963.

http://www.ifilm.com/efp

It’s awards time once again. Just like last year I’ll present my predictions for who will win the various awards, along with presenting my own winners for each category. Also like last year, I haven’t seen a great many of the contenders (I’ve seen one of the twenty acting nominees, for example). Unlike last year, I’ll be following the Academy’s eligibility rules, so a movie like Three Times, from 2005 but released in the US in 2006 will be winning some awards.

Best Picture:

Me: Three Times
Oscar: The Departed

Best Director:

Me: Hou Hsiao-hsien, Three Times
Oscar: Martin Scorsese, The Departed

Best Actor:

Me: Sasha Baron Cohen, Borat
Oscar: Forest Whitaker, The Last King Of Scotland

Best Actress:

Me: Shu Qi, Three Times
Oscar: Helen Mirren, The Queen

Best Supporting Actor:

Me: John Ortiz, Miami Vice
Oscar: Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls

Best Supporting Actress:

Me: Gong Li, Miami Vice
Oscar: Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls

Original Screenplay:

Me: Three Times
Oscar: Little Miss Sunshine

Adapted Screenplay:

Me: The Departed
Oscar: The Departed

Cinematography:

Me: Dion Beebe, Miami Vice
Oscar: Emmanuel Lubezki, Children Of Men

Film Editing:

Me: Thelma Schoonmaker, The Departed
Oscar: Thelma Schoonmaker, The Departed

Foreign Language Film:

Me: Three Times
Oscar: Pan’s Labyrinth

Animated Feature:

Me: Cars
Oscar: Cars

Feature Documentary:

Me: Dave Chappelle’s Block Party
Oscar: An Inconvenient Truth

Short Documentary

Me: NA
Oscar: The Blood Of Yingzhou District

Art Direction:

Me: Curse Of The Golden Flower
Oscar: Pan’s Labyrinth

Costume Design:

Me: Princess Raccoon
Oscar: Dreamgirls

Makeup:

Me: Marie Antoinette
Oscar: Pan’s Labyrinth

Original Score:

Me: Princess Raccoon
Oscar: The Queen

Original Song:

Me: Kazakhstan National Anthem, Borat
Oscar: Listen, Dreamgirls

Animated Short:

Me: NA
Oscar: The Little Matchgirl

Live Action Short:

Me: My Dad Is 100 Years Old
Oscar: West Bank Story

Sound Editing:

Me: Miami Vice
Oscar: Letters From Iwo Jima

Sound Mixing:

Me: The Departed
Oscar: Dreamgirls

Visual Effects:

Me: Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
Oscar: Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

The subject came up somewhere on the internet today of the best film performances of the decade thus far. As a bit of a prelude to my upcoming Oscar picks, if figure I might as well post my list here. Split into the four categories, the nominees for the best performances from 2000-2006 are:

Actors:

Tony Leung – 2046
Steve Coogan – 24 Hour Party People
Tadanobu Asano – Last Life In The Universe
Johnny Depp – Pirates Of The Caribbean
Bill Murray – Lost In Translation
Will Farrell – Anchorman
Clint Eastwood – Million Dollar Baby
Sasha Baron Cohen – Borat

Actresses:

Maggie Cheung – In The Mood For Love
Shu Qi – Millenium Mambo
Audrey Tautou – Amelie
Zhang Ziyi – House Of Flying Daggers
Zhang Ziyi – 2046
Zhao Tao – The World
Julie Delpy – Before Sunset
Q’orianka Kilcher – The New World

Supporting Actors:

Ian McKellen – The Fellowship Of The Ring
Daniel Day-Lewis – Gangs Of New York
Seu Jorge – City Of God
Andy Lau – House Of Flying Daggers
Jason Bateman – Dodgeball
Mickey Rourke – Sin City
Ian McDiarmid – Revenge Of The Sith
Jack Nicholson – The Departed

Supporting Actresses:

Zhang Ziyi – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Gwynneth Paltrow – The Royal Tenenbaums
Cate Blanchett – The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
Faye Wong – 2046
Michelle Williams – Brokeback Mountain
Maria Bello – A History Of Violence
Michelle Yeoh – Memoirs Of A Geisha
Gong Li – Miami Vice

And the winners are:

Actor: Tony Leung – 2046
Actress: Q’orianka Kilcher – The New World
Sup. Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis – Gangs Of New York
Sup. Actress: Michelle Williams – Brokeback Mountain

I’ve always hated David Lynch. Not personally, he seems like a perfectly pleasant guy, but his films, more specifically, the fans of his films. I caught a couple episodes of Twin Peaks on the TV when I was a kid, but I had no idea what was going on. I saw the Twin Peaks movie on TV a few years later, and it seemed alright, but there was a scene early in the film where some FBI agents explain some complicated symbolic sign-language to Chris Isaak that bugged the hell out of me: my teenage sophistication chalked it up to pretension, weirdness for the sake not just of weirdness but with the sole goal of making me feel stupid.

A year or two later, I watched Blue Velvet, and to this pretension was added a brutalizing of the audience that I found both insulting and disgusting. It’s my own personal prejudice against films that try to give me the cinematic equivalent of a kick to the groin (a genre that includes Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, Takeshi Miike’s Audition and Blue Velvet, among others). Some people like that kind of thing though, I make no value judgments about them.

The last Lynch film I watched was Dune, a disaster of a sci-fi adaptation that doesn’t work on any level: dramatically pointless, visually ugly, totally without action, suspense or philosophical interest. Even Patrick Stewart wasn’t enough to save it. A projectionist friend of mine was running Dune many years ago, and he’d miscued the middle of the film such that it changed over to the other projector one reel too early, cutting out 20 minutes of the film. After the film, he waited at the exit for the expected complaints from the audience, but not a single person mentioned it. He did, however, overhear one customer tell his wife “I don’t understand why everyone thinks it was so confusing, it made perfect sense to me.”

That was it for me with David Lynch. For a decade I refused to have anything to do with him. Through sold out showings at my theatre of Eraserhead, Lost Highway and The Elephant Man, with their crowds hipster yuppies that plague Seattle like mixed metaphors in an English 101 class. Many people tried to convince me of Lynch’s singular genius and I rebuffed them all. What the Lynchheads seemed to like about his films was an open-endedness that allowed them some control over what they could say the film was really about, and what it really meant, feeding their egos and making them feel smart and superior.

But, like most things, I mellowed with age and a few months ago decided to give Lynch another shot. I watched Wild At Heart and actually enjoyed the goofiness of the performances and the overblown hyperbole of the direction, at least for the first half of the film. As the film went on, I grew tired of the shenanigans and began to suspect the old weirdness for the sake of weirdness crime. But, I’ve grown fonder of weirdness in middle age, so it didn’t seem to be such a big deal as it was 15 years ago. My reaction was boredom instead of anger. But, all things considered, I enjoyed the film enough to give Lynch yet another chance with Lost Highway.

I watched it about a month ago, after having had it saved on my Tivo for most of 2006, and it is a masterpiece. In Lost Highway, Bill Pullman plays a saxophonist who kills his wife (Patricia Arquette) because she was apparently cheating on him, and is so guilty over the murder that while in prison he goes insane and creates another reality for himself, one in which he’s a young mechanic (Balthazar Getty). Pullman’s fantasy world is something out of the 50s or early 60s of American Graffiti, with its car obsession, decent suburban family, right down to the cute girl next door (Natasha Gregson Wagner). Unfortunately for Pullman, his subconscious won’t quite let him forget his crime, and soon Getty’s hanging around with a gangster (Robert Loggia) and his femme fatale girl (Arquette again). As in a typical film noir, Getty falls for the bad girl, conspires with her to commit some crime (including a murder or two) and comes to a bad end.

It’s the elements of the noir genre that save the film from becoming another Lynchian disaster. While the film has more than its share of weird, seemingly inexplicable imagery and dialogue (not to mention Robert Blake), the genre grounds the film in a familiar structure that gives the viewer a basis for attempting to understand what the hell is going on. At the same time, genre does nothing to limit the virtues of Lynch’s non-linear, dreamlike style. The flashback, circular structure of a narrative about a doomed man is an essential feature of film noir (see Sunset Boulevard, Out Of The Past, Detour, Double Indemnity, etc) and Lost Highway is structured like a Möbius strip, coiling back on itself in a way that reflects the disturbed consciousness of the protagonist, condemned to replay the tragic events of his life in an endless loop. Occasionally the film cuts to a blurred image of what appears to be Pullman shaking his head and screaming, to me looking like Pullman in the electric chair, apparently referencing Ambrose Bierce’s famous short story An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge in which a convict about to be hanged imagines an entire last minute escape and flight home in the microseconds before his death. Thus the entire second narrative of Lost Highway (and probably the first too) occurs in the final instants of Pullman’s mind.

So, what we have in Lost Highway is a film noir in which the protagonist, in order to escape his past (the goal of many a noir hero) invents a world in which he’s the protagonist of a 50s sitcom, but gradually his invented world becomes infected by noir, until he’s just a sap in yet another noir story. Like the film’s characters and structure, the subtexts and possible interpretations of Lost Highway circle back on themselves. The medium itself is an essential motif in the film, not only in its generic characteristics and references, but also as an object that twice sets the film’s crimes in motion. In Getty’s story, it’s porn films starring Arquette that lead directly to murder. In Pullman’s story, his happy home is disturbed by the appearance of anonymous videotapes made by someone prowling about his house (a device appropriated, some might say ripped off, by Michael Haneke for the quite overrated Caché). It is unclear where the videotapes come from in Lost Highway, or what purpose they serve. My theory is that the entire early section of the film is another dream by Pullman. The film is in fact two dream realities conjured by the same murderer, two scenarios in which he tries to imagine away his crime. The circle is neverending; where Getty’s story ends, Pullman’s begins, and vice versa. In this interpretation, the videotapes are, like the noir plotline of the Getty narrative or the personification of Evil played by Robert Blake, interruptions of Pullman’s dreamstate by his conscious mind (conscience mind?). Like alcohol, film is the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.

This was written to be part of the Lynch Mob blog-a-thon organized by Ryland and the guys over at Vinyl Is Heavy. Check it out for more Lynchie goodness.

It appears ymdb (your movie database) has returned from the dead. So I’ve revived the sidebar link to the list of My Top 20 Movies. The freshly revised list is as follows:

1. Seven Samurai
2. Chungking Express
3. Casablanca
4. The Rules Of The Game
5. Touch Of Evil
6. Manhattan
7. Singin’ In The Rain
8. The Searchers
9. Pierrot Le Fou
10. The Big Lebowski
11. Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb
12. Do The Right Thing
13. The Empire Strikes Back
14. Three Colors: Blue
15. Millenium Mambo
16. Once Upon A Time In The West
17. Playtime
18. 8 1/2
19. Au Hasard Balthazar
20. Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans

Courtesy the good folks at The House Next Door, where you can also find a nice piece by Ryland on the sadly disappearing art of the double feature.

I’m officially naming this my Number One Favorite Song Ever:

It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) by Bob Dylan

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.

Temptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover
That you’d just be
One more person crying.

So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing.

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it.

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not fergit
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in.

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him.

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only.

I’ve managed to build up a massive backlog of recently seen movies, so I’m going to try to blow through them as quick as I can.

Flowers Of Shanghai – Another Hou Hsiao-hsien masterpiece, this one set in the brothels of 1880s Shanghai. The story follows four or of of the prostitutes and their interactions with each other and their clients, wealthy young men who spend their time at meals, playing drinking games and exploiting women, much like a certain subset of college students. The flower girls alternately fight amongst them selves for power and prestige and try to get the young men to marry them. The whole film is shot in Hou’s trademark tableaux style, with the camera floating up down and side to side along a fixed plane. The whole frame is in focus and highly detailed, with multiple actions occurring simultaneously. Thus despite the length of the shots and often apparent lack of action in them, new details continually emerge (as when a vague immobile shape you think is furniture or something suddenly comes to life as a serving girl). Stars Tony Leung, Jack Kao (Millenium Mambo, Goodbye South, Goodbye), Carina Lau (Days Of Being Wild, 2046), and Michelle Reis (Fong Sai-yuk, Swordsman II, Fallen Angels). The #4 of 1998.

The Tall Target – Anthony Mann film noir set on a train as a detective tries to foil an assassination plot against Abraham Lincoln, who’s on his way to his inauguration in 1861. Apparently based on a real event, it stars Adolphe Menjou and Dick Powell (who’s a much more successful noir hero here than in Murder, My Sweet). Tight plotting and Mann’s mastery of the expressive noir blacks and whites make this an above average genre film.

Shall We Dance – Totally generic Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film. The plot is ridiculously complex, there’s too much screen time for the supporting Eric Blore and Edward Everett Horton and not enough dancing. It doesn’t have the sublime sequences of the best Astaire-Rogers films, which leaves it closer to lame than great.

The Blue Gardenia – Anne Baxter gets dumped by her long-distance boyfriend on her birthday, she decides to go out with Raymond Burr’s slutty photographer. She gets good a drunk, goes back to his apartment, fights him off as he tries to date rape her and passes out on the floor. When she wakes up, he’s dead. A great film noir setup from director Fritz Lang, it starts to flag in the last two thirds, but is still pretty good. Also stars Ann Southern, Richard Conte, George Reeves and Nat King Cole.

Guys And Dolls – Joseph Mankiewicz’s big film of the Broadway musical about gambling hoodlums stars Frank Sinatra, Marlo Brando and Jean Simmons. I’m generally not a Broadway musical fan, and this is no exception, the songs are mediocre at best, the characters are caricatures and the whole thing is way too silly for me. And it’s two and a half hours long. Bleh,

Stage Door – Classic chick flick with Katherine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers in a battle of wills as they share a rooming house with a bunch of aspiring young actresses. Some excellent performances from the leads (and some of the supporting cast as well: Lucille Ball, Ann Miller, Adolphe Menjou, and Eve Arden), flashes of brilliant screwball dialogue and Gregory La Cava’s efficient if uninspired direction make for a solid film. Based on a play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman.

Baby Face – Barbara Stanwyck is incendiary in this pre-Code melodrama about a low-born woman viciously sleeping her way from the mailroom to the top of a big corporation. The first two-thirds of the film are terrific, as Stanwyck escapes from her fathers abuse (she works as a barmaid in his bar and apparently pimps her out on occasion) but the momentum slows towards the end as Stanwyck’s swath becomes more and more destructive.

Angel Face – A mediocre Otto Preminger film noir with Robert Mitchum as an ambulance driver who gets himself ensnared in the evil wiles of Jean Simmons. She wants him to help her commit murder (sound familiar?) but he doesn’t want to go along with it (not so familiar). This, of course, only makes her devilishness more complicated, and Mitchum’s doomed no matter what he does. An intricate noir, with great performances from the leads (Mitchum’s understated resignation is perfect for the role), but the best part is the ending.

You Can’t Take It With You – One of the Frank Capra Best Picture winners, overlong, but pleasant enough. james Stewart plays the son of rich snobs who falls in love with and wants to marry Jean Arthur, the daughter of a bunch of wacky proto-hippy eccentrics. Essentially, it’s Dharma & Greg with better actors, writing and direction. Also stars Lionel Barrymore, Edward Arnold, Ann Miller and Mischa Auer.

Judge Priest – The earliest John Ford movie I’ve seen, and one of the three he made with Will Rogers. Rogers plays the eponymous judge in a small Kentucky town. He dispenses common sense in the face of his blowhard enemies, helps hook his nephew up with the hot girl next door and hangs around with Stepin Fetchit and Hattie McDaniel, exploiting and more or less subtly critiquing the racist stereotypes those actors were famous for. It’s a fine little movie, and Rogers is as good as I’d hoped he’d be, but Ford would deal with the same kind of thing to much greater effect later in his career: the film’s an obvious precursor to Young Mr. Lincoln, right down to the folksy conversation with the dead wife. A must-see for Ford fans.

The Nutty Professor – Sometimes you can wait too long to see a movie. This is the first Jerry Lewis film I’ve seen (I’m not counting Scorsese’s The King Of Comedy), but it’s inescapable in pop culture. I’ve read and heard so much about it and him that there’s not much room for surprise when watching the film for the first time, there can only be disappointment. Especially with a performer as controversial, and as parodied as Lewis. Anyway, this adaptation of the Jeckyll and Hyde has Lewis as a nerdy scientist (Professor Kelp) who invents a potion to make himself cooler, in order to woo one of his students. He transforms into a vicious parody of Lewis’s former comedy partner, Dean Martin who goes by the name Buddy Love. Love’s a massive jerk, which of course makes him incredibly popular. An extremely dark film, dense with potential meaning, I can see why thew New Wave era critics liked it and Lewis so much, but I can also understand the common complaint that the biggest problem with Lewis’s comedies is that they simply aren’t funny. Maybe you had to be there. The #8 film of 1963.

Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia – Sam Peckinpaugh at his most nihilistic. A Mexican gangsters daughter is knocked up by the owner of the eponymous cranium. He puts a sizable bounty on his head and Warren Oates (a local piano player) is hired to track him down and kill him. Oates does it for the money, so he and his hooker girlfriend can retire to a life of peace and quiet. Of course, things don’t turn out for the best. Very dark, and occasionally funny, featuring a weird appearance by Kris Kristofferson in a small role and a terrific performance by Oates (Though he’s better in the superior Two-Lane Blacktop). The #6 film of 1974.

Sword Of The Beast – The last in the films of the Criterion Rebel Samurai boxset is also the least. As part of a plot to reform his clan, a samurai kills one of the corrupt leaders, only to discover he’s been setup and has to flee a whole army of samurai out to kill him. He escapes to a mountain where he encounters another swordsman panning for gold as a pawn in another villainous scheme. The two join forces to fight their corrupt leaders. Directed by Hideo Gosha and starring Mikijiro Hira and Go Kato, it lacks the star power and great directing of the other films in the set, though Tatsuya Nakadai and Masaki Kobayashi are a high standard to hold anyone to. A fine and entertaining film, but it really can’t compare to the likes of Samurai Rebellion or Kill! (not to mention Sword Of Doom, Harakiri or Yojimbo). The #9 film of 1965.

It’s Always Fair Weather – Unusually dark and pessimistic musical by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, featuring some terrific songs from Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Three soldiers return from WW2 and agree to meet up again ten years later. Turns out none of their lives have turned out the way they had hoped, and that not only do they not have much in common, they don’t really like each other either. But Cyd Charisse wants them to appear on her TV show, and one simply can’t say ‘no’ to Cyd Charisse. A fine film that entertains while also working as an examination of mid-50s disillusionment. It’s no Singin’ In The Rain, but then, few films are.