I still get palpable, delightful whiffs of the intoxication I felt when I first saw Toy Story, as a budding adult (yes, I said it) attending a kid's movie with my girl, and being completely blown away by the shimmeringly fresh cleverness, the genuinely funny gags and the general nostalgia of caring about toys, one of the few things left untarnished by my rampant cynicism. Watching London in couchlock mode as it unfolded sure didn't hurt, either.

Appreciated in my coming-of-age filmgoing self, at a moment where taking things seriously felt right, but before having an opinion got in the way. I remember real admiration, too, at the consistency and lack, the glorious lack of retread and homogenization. This, too, was as sharp and immensely satisfying as its predecessor, and it does it with tricky things like new characters (who hail from "Woody's Round-Up", itself another great opportunity to bask in the decadence of toy worship) and devastating emotional conflicts (Woody's being shelved, Jessie's bitterness over her owner's natural maturity, Woody's intervention to prevent toys from going into Storage), but also seems to hint at self-awareness by staging things with more sprawl and stake, as a sequel would. (London deciding to unearth Victoria's toy Woody and Jessie dolls and then adding them to the already long list of stuffed toys she likes to sleep with didn't hurt, either.)

The closing sequence where Evelyn Glennie's xylophone playing is intercut with the throwing of the richter scale-like rolls of paper over the balconies of the warehouse sends us home in a state of jubilated repose; It's an almost calmed bubbling; That said, the brief, wrongly-pedastaled sequence where she is teaching another girl who cannot hear to play music seems almost laughable in this context. This is a film where the handicap seems to drive the force of art within Evelyn Glennie, itself a focus in no need of being sullied by a half-hearted stab at bleeding heart mentoring. It's not especially a character study, either, which lends a credence to my point against the scene in question. What makes it great - and unique - is the almost passionate sense it has thatt this music is too immense and beautiful not to share. Yes. I am about to be quite pretentious. Here it comes. The main character is the music.

Checking my perpetually confused yet resigned brand of atheism at the door seems easy, probably given my nostalgiac - let's call it spiritual - fondness for Scorsese's adaptation of Kazantzakis' punk-rock spin on all the far too vague and moral manifestation of the same story in The Gospels. The usual handiwork of detail lends a particular shade of anomalous spunk to an already overadapted event, now-realistic, now-patterened after art (films, books and paintings), now unsparing, now wholeheartedly moving, now thoughtful and always, always reverberant.

It's little more than a star vehicle, but the singlemindedness and drive of its main character reminded me of Zodiac (or, rather, the other way around, chronologically); There are certainly worse ways to spend your time than watching Robert Redford attempt to improve the prison system by first going undercover as an inmate and, later, by butting heads with everyone from local business leaders to his own staff. Feels a great deal like some leftover thoughts in the Cool Hand Luke vein that Rosenberg might have wanted to get up on the screen. As Greg pointed out, "It won't be [my] favorite movie of all time".

Deception and dialogue. Really exciting to watch how quickly it gets on its feet and how long it stays on them (a trait absent from Scorsese's The Aviator, no matter what the desired effect); In fact, short of feeling about a twist and a half (or, twenty minutes) too long, it has the fondish residue of Scorsese affairs of unspeakable genius (Goodfellas, Mean Streets) and of admirable excess (Casino, Gangs of New York). One thing is for certain: It's a helluva lot of fun to watch. Also: Yes. It bears comparison to Face-Off.

Breaking down the confines of the collective male psyche and the upending of The Establishment are hardly the deep concepts I'm proud to say I glean from both the TV show and the film. But here we are.

The violence is somewhat edgy for 1947, but the most striking thing about Brute Force - a run of the mill prison drama with bigger execution than idea - is the casting: Sensible, bookish Hume Cronyn as the sadistic, unrelenting prison warden. It doesn't always work, but it's always intriguing.

Sight-gagged 70s screwball of mock-pulp; If not for Caine's entirely boring turn in the lead role, the film might be reccomendable as a blueprint for the Fletch series, the most immediate line of sight I could draw. One thing's for certain: It's a confused aesthetic that isn't sure if its sending itself up, sending up movies like it or simply spinning its own low-key tale of murder and sleuthing. Watching it is a quiet, schizophrenic experience that never really satisfies.