The first hour is a crackling feast of dialogue and manipulation, with Johnny rolling into a remote casino only to find himself smack dab in the center of an expansion dispute between what seems like the entire town and the proprietress of said house of gambling and ill repute. It unfolds into a series of strategic moves that all seem to be timed just perfectly to go wrong. The technicolor, obviously used to tart up the whole sordid affair (it's gaudy and then some), is almost as stunning as the bold attitudes of the characters (for '54, that is); Supposedly the thing is debated as a "parody, a political McCarthy-era allegory, or a Freudian exercise" (by Videohound), but despite the second guessing implied its admittedly suspicious-seeming context, at face value, Johnny Guitar is entertaining to the last, often vicious, and fresh: Crawford is probably the most menacing character onscreen.

From the very second the film starts, tragedy looms over blossoming lovers Granger and O'Donnell. Everyone talks in a cool, hoody shorthand (a trait I've come to recognize as specific to Nicholas Ray, much as dialogue is specific to Tarantino or Kevin Smith), scheming to the last as Granger finds himself stuck in what turns out to be a very boring place: Proving he's a man versus staying true to himself. The frank depiction of De Silva as an alcoholic psycopath is pretty memorable (his quick-draw murder of a highway patrolman is particularly telling and brutal for the time), but the film itself is lacking real stock in itself: As I said, we're pretty dead-on from moment one.

Filled with the same love of a specific time and place in film history as The Dreamers, CQ is similarly impotent to express that love without sounding like a rabid fanboy. None of the zing and pop that ought to be present in a film about an editor who lives with one hot European chick, lusts after another and edits (then directs, briefly) a 60s sci-fi vehicle by day, shooting his own personal 16 mm black and white cinema journal of sorts in his spare time. Most of it looks pretty spectacular and Davies is charming (albeit, in an off-kilter, internalized kinda way). Billy Zane and Jason Schwarzbaum's goony cameos show the piece up in its proper light: A just-for-fun explosion of movie love so specific and so gloriously detailed it fails to connect us with anything that's going on. (I'm all for this, by the way, but in CQ, it's clear that Coppola is pretty much either barely trying to flesh this thing out or, worse, he's exploiting his own inner fantasies which, while practical, seem so outlandishly curved to misdirect us; In other words, he believes the Davies character is more complicated than he is, apparently equating this type of regimented disallusion with being a cool movie geek. All I'm saying here is: I shouldn't be able to see right through it.)

The whole thing is pinned to its sense of adrenaline. We wade through a steady flow of terrifically silly shades of anachronism (every casting decision, despite Val Kilmer, feels like a failed experiment that's slowly melting as we watch) to get to the great, violent scenes of bloodshed and machismo. In the end, it all comes down to how much you're willing to tolerate in Kurt Russell's steely, hard-nosed evocation of a man with a very fake moustache in exchange for Kilmer's consistently hilarious turn as Doc Holliday, whose penchant for mixing his well-spoken vernacular with excessive liquor and arrogance makes everything else that's happening in the film seem downright alien. We found ourselves very fond of shouting the phrase "You tell them I'm coming - and Hellzcumminwithme!"

The gags are great, but I think I prefer the subversive qualities in this one (the out-and-out lies Lloyd tells his girlfriend, never coming clean) to the more cartoonish ones in Speedy (a legion of aged Civil War veterans wallop some young toughs in a rather brutal street fight), and that's partly why Safety Last! seems to work better. The string that holds it together is the same one that seems to hold most of the great silent films together - and it's because it's a more abstract one (namely, proving yourself to your girl). In Speedy, the whole thing revolves around saving a rare trolley car (i.e. - a relic of old New York amidst the yawning modernity). Here, we're faced with a steady stream of Lloyd's set-ups, nearly all of which reach the kind of slapstick peaks that put him near the same sport as Buster.

The most exciting thing about Speedy, watching it 77 years after it was released, is the snapshot flow of Lloyd's backdrop: The New York of blossoming skyscrapers, still-dirt streets, Coney Island lights and Babe Ruth. There are some fine gags: Lloyd and lady setting up house in the back of a moving furniture truck is inspired (and glows with warmth), the dummy cop who salutes the real cops as Lloyd speeds across town in the horse-drawn trolley, the riot Lloyd starts with the words "It smells like rain"; But it wanes on more than it should, often following its dimwitted evil-railroad-baron-wants-to-take-over-trolley-line storyline.

[The short, Get Out and Get Under is right hilarious, with Lloyd's self-centered, quietly egotistical tendencies (like those in Safety Last!) in full display, a car his passion and a great, sad gag where he realizes too late that his girl is married. And then - I wasn't sure - was he still wooing her or what? Or were they different chicks? Never a good sign...]

It's still easily the most entertaining film I saw last year. It's equal parts: Film tricks that look like they were long, extensive set-ups made to seem one-off and verite-esque, obviously improvised dialogue reset into the mix by clear comrades and devilishly indulgent filmmaking - and I mean unapologetically (hence the Vincent Cassel laser dance, still the best part of the film). I'd sit through it again tomorrow.

Trumpet in the ending scene has been haunting me since I watched it.

Now currently re-re-re obsessed with The Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Easiest film to repeatedly forgive ever.

Full confession: The story alone is not enough to compensate for how bored I'm becoming of flawlessly staged, but rarely surprising set pieces. (The echo game, on the other hand, as well as the love scene between the cop/mole/House of Flying Daggers die-hard/jerk who stabs eye-meltingly hot Ziyi in the final scene, make the film's globular-assed love story almost worth trudging through.) Also, it personally offends me that Yimou has all but completely fled from the potent air of historical detail and the repuatation as one of the best makers of significant period pieces that don't contain digi-kicking.)