Francois is a postal worker whose jealous obsession with his older girlfriend's ex-lover leads him to a flirtatious encounter with a younger woman. Rohmer's usual dialogue-heavy diatribes (which subtitles try, but cannot make boring) on youthful attitudes of amore do all the show-stealing that's to be done in his film. It's so resolute at being irresolute, it manages to miss key elements like developing believable relationships and presenting a greater sense of its own philosophy (which is usually encoded in Rohmer's thematic preoccupation - in this case, "Comedies and Proverbs", though, the theme is a little bit of everything and a great deal of nothing at all). It feels like a thinly conceived relic of the French New Wave (as a number of the director's latter films do), but it is, nevertheless, always entertaining, though never actually rewarding. All the principles are excellent, particularly the young lady who plays Lucie - she is at once so thrillingly bubbly and uncommonly mature - a surprisingly effective device for showing Francois's naivete.

Is it too much to ask that tastelessness be brought back to the art form it once strived so hard to reach? Watch Vegas Vacation, then tell me how much time you'd be willing to volunteer for my cause. Here's a button.

It's just too much neorealism, really; not enough of Antonioni's incoherently artsy composition and thematic abstaction. I was totally onboard with Aldo, but I never sympathized with him. So many of these films feature the aimless, soul-searchin' brand of wandering, that I'm not sure they're supposed to be taken at face value - at all. The metaphoric niche they've carved (not to mention their penchant for being long and dull) doesn't escape Antonioni and, the biggest tragedy here is that it's all but missing his personal stamp. Also, there's such a short time spent on the catalyst (not to mention the most interesting part of the film): the complexity of the relationship between Aldo and his live-in lover (who leaves him after seven years upon receiving that news that her real husband, whom she was merely living apart from, has died). Aldo dragging his little girl to and fro while his eyebrows lift at every short skirt he sees is all fine and good - provided his character change just a smidge by the time the end credits start to roll. Here, it seems underlined that post-war Italy was full of lonely men who were reasonably excited by women, but freakin' titillated by their own self-pity. Take it as you will.

The first half hour - one of the most ecstatic and beautifully alive acts in the cinema - explains Wes Anderson's ability to use voice-over functionally and to jump back and forth between miniature set-pieces; Generally, Jules and Jim gives the appearance that the filmmaker is having as much fun as he expects his audience to be having. Truffaut stages the happy-go-fun relationship between the title characters with the kind of verve that's so headlong, it's almost physically shocking when the war breaks out and the characters are separated (Could your head jolt? Maybe.) You don't expect what it's setting up and, even then, you question whether it was so much a set-up as it was an introduction of characters we'd watch flit and flail in the shackles of maturity. (In other words, would these characters ever have grown up if it wasn't for a catacalysmic experience like participating in war?). The second two acts subtly convey the powerful strain of war on relationships. This hourlong segment in Jules and Jim also stands as the only predominant chunk of a film wherein a couple break up, get back together, break up, get back together (and so on) that is - and here it is - almost entertaining to watch.

Ford's performance chews at the scenery like a pack of hyenas to a freshly killed zebra, but, try as he may, try as he might (armed with a script by Paul Schrader being directed by Peter Weir and shot by John Seale), he can't get the celluloid to spark. The biggest problem is how quickly we're ushered into his madness and how little Schrader and Weir seem interested in fleshing out his family. The problem then, is, that his actions, all of them of a morally ambiguous nature (particularly the murder of three white toughs in the jungle), never really resonate with the proper weight. Consequences feel less and less important; instead, the importance seems to be soley on Ford, who, while his character certainly performs the necessary arc - is, underneath, as flimsy as his radical ideals. We feel as if we know even less by the conclusion than we did at the start. His loud, "look at me!" raving is so exciting that performances by Helen Mirren, Andre Gregory and River Phoenix are visibly drowned out. It's a waste of resources - but, since Ford's features never seems to get above a whisper in nearly every other film he's ever starred in (even when intense) - it's a nifty experiment to watch his sshell crumble behind him, his ice melting into poison, his bleary eyes burn.

It's not really about the title case - or about happily married lawyer Keane's (Peck) crush on Mrs. Paradine (Valli, tapping Marlene Deitrich); It's not really about the British justice system or the backroom politics between colleagues who smoke too many cigars and drink too much cognac; Laughton is memorably despicable, but it's Peck who is really out of his league here - every scene seems to find him crumbling in the same meticulously melodramatic manner (take this alliteration and...you know). Hitchcock's camerawork is sometimes marred by the tight, correctly detailed set of a London courtroom (built on a soundstage in Culver City without movable walls, mind). He never seems to compensate for it, except in a brief visit to a countryside cottage that brings to mind scenes in Rebecca. Besides that brief flashback, this is a decidedly dull, open-and-shut case.

Sakes alive! There's gore afoot! Polanski undercuts the most interesting parts of the play (the witches, Lady Macbeth) for a screen adaptation that most thought more a horror film than an honest, story-driven Shakespearian film. (Of course, it was the first film Polanski made following his wife's violent death; bitterness may have played a role). For me, the film unfolds more in the wise of a character study, giving the main character front-and-center spotlight, a position he usually shares with his wife. Finch is a ripping good Macbeth - and it's a lucky thing, too; I shudder to think of this film with a bad actor in the central role. (Might have leaned more towards comedy) The film isn't uneven, exactly, but it is simplistic; there's never much more than surface, everything else left to dark, admittedly effective mood tricks. Scottish kings rarely do anything more than sit around, drink wine and plot to kill (or, in Duncan's case, smile like an fancy boy in his fur coat); wearing the crown on their head is, perhaps, the only tell that they've reached said position. The film has Polanski written all over it - obviously - and works almost exclusively as a curiosity piece. Those looking for Shakespeare may vomit - - - IN TERROR!

[Case you missed it, that last sentence was my attempt at creating a satirical horror film poster quote. Yeah. I didn't think it was all that obvious, either.]

Worth its weight because the pure craft and spectacle of the thing is - even when the pace is not - so precise and consistent; the characterization is first rate as Jackson, no stranger to the kind of marriage necessary between well-known actors and foreign locales, makes us believe in this world wholeheartedly - even if we don't become thoroughly lost in it; the pace moves at a stop and start: there's action and progression - but there's also a great deal of standding around and listening to vast explanations that would otherwise render subsequent scenes incoherent - this is problematic no matter how you slice it: you FEEL the three hours. Here's hoping The Two Towers moves. (And where was that handsome ring in the credits? It has more close-ups than the rest of the cast combined.)

Boils down to a tender collection of five stories fitted with a loose narrative. As is par for the course with Kurosawa, he manages to pull this off beautifully - using a palette of no less than three hours and only one scene of violence. A number of bowing elements here; Mifune's last collaboration with Kurosawa, the last time the director used color, the last time he used zoom lenses to shoot most of his film - and the last time Kurosawa was greetedd without turmoil (he'd attempt suicide after his next film, Dodes'ka-Den, was dubbed a failure). Red Beard feels like a transition piece, right down to the spirit in which it's made. From the score to the pace, from the acting to the dialogue - the film actually feels more American than any other Kurosawa film I've seen. Like one of the great, intimate Hollywood epics of the 1960's, Red Beard spans an unnamed period of time mostly because the time is less important than how the characters change (i.e. - we don't know how long it's been, therefore we cannot purport to pinpoint the accuracy of their progress). The film isn't without it's bumps: there are more than a few occasions where, because of Kurosawa's penchant for mixing indistinct zoom lenses and supreme widescreen composition, we can't make out which character is speaking; occasionally, we're lost in some of the situations which aren't universal to American viewers (a byproduct that's 50% foreign culture, 50% filmmaking, methinks) and, above all, the film is still three hours of emotional negotiation betwixt a mature doctor and a stubborn intern in an unforgiving small town clinic. But it's also intriguing, unpredictable, multi-tonal and often uncharacteristically unconventional (particularly in Mifune's performance: he never plays the title character exactly as you'd expect: in scene after scene he's constantly besting our expectations by just a hair; Red Beard is a complex character to say the least). Also, I'm soft for movies with flashbacks within flashbacks.

A nightmarish world via Lean's absolutely unsparing bleakness and visually stunning noir photography (I once heard it said, about which film I can't remember, that you'd half expect most of the frames in said movie to be on sale in the lobby as you exit). Guinness's Fagin is just as good as you'd expect (and more against-type than you can imagine); the entire cast is uniformly authentic, particularly John Howard Davies, who plays Oliver, and Francis Sullivan, who plays Bumble. Actors seem to have to be able to breath the Dickensian world and language much like actors must be fused to Shakespeare's mold. The second half is harder to follow - and sometimes feels as if no effort weere made to pare the intricacies of the narrative for a more concise vision. But nevermind all that. The film is in the chiaroscuro images, perhaps the most evocative of the period I've seen to date.

Sum is better than parts; as is usually the case with such tiny casts (three in this case), the bulk of the movie is needed to sketch out their motives and their personalities in absolute detail, leaving the payoff - way off in the distance - as a deciding factor. The way the film ends is masterful, its mood is a thing of wonder (all grey clouds and calm waves) - but these characters are so hard to watch even for a mere ninety minutes; each is a more sculpted stereotype than the last, the film's message standing front and center, easily outshining what little human traits these three possess. The highlight of the film is anticipation and the ending is well worth the wait. Tape clearly aped the manipulative, close-quarters effect Polanski seems to be flat-out wielding here. Knife in the Water is clever, but not blown away clever, exactly.

Still, bar none, the best portrait of adolescent turmoil and haunted nostalgia since The River's Edge.

As a showcase for Chaney's talents - it's kind of ho-hum, but, as a display of pure mood, The Monster dazzles. Story is serviceable. It's the usual silent film plotting: skilled guy and his rival compete over a girl while the genre spindle unspools. Supposedly launched the era in Universal Studios Horror Classics wherein mad scientist movies were all the rage. The surgeon's dungeon here was the jumping off point for the mad doctor's laboratory James Whale's Frankenstein. You'd never know it, though, to look at it. (Information divulged by Robert Osbourne preceeding the feature, on, as ever, Turner Classic Movies).

Opens much like Oliver Twist (this film preceeded it): same sharp contrast photography, same rainy night setting, same young chap on the brink of fate. Where Oliver Twist sustains most of it's charm in the way it looks, Great Expectations is clearly the better yarn. Some sweet little details throughout: Miss Haversham's dust-caked mansion, Alec Guinness's first appearance, The Aged Parent (who likes when folk nod at him) and, above all, Francis Sullivan, here playing Jaggers, the lawyer (and what better character for the gruff, to-the-point actor). Lean invests a staggeringly peppy momentum to his film (it never gets too complicated, like Oliver Twist does), losing step only in the water battle sequence, wherein Pip's benefactor is persued by his lifelong foe. The rear screen projection is not kind. Still cold, still ironic but, and without seeming sarcastic, Lean treats Dickens as if it he, Lean, had been the only boy in his high school class that was moved by the story.