I could watch this film every day of my life. By the way: Because no one from the future has ever come back to tell us they've created a time machine, is it safe to assume that it is impossible to travel back in time, or would it be more accurate to say that man will simply be extinct before he invents time travel? Either way: How bleak of me to mention.

Though similarly preoccupied with blunt topicality (this one shows a newsreel in the beginning to get us up to speed), Bullets or Ballots is dotted with a terrific turn by Edward G. Robinson in a performance that is mostly acting inside the role (as a cop who loses his job and, later, as an undercover cop). Bogart plays the cruel hothead who lacks the discipline to attain any real promotion in the organized crime, but finds himself upping the stakes as he straddles the line between ambition and out and out sadism. The ending is of particular significance to the genre and the period, although I won't spoil it.

Formally masterful, although its impossible not to feel somewhat overpowered by the context (released in 1949!) and underwhelmed by the actual text (the melodrama surrounding Robert Ryan's wife seems beneath the psychological profile of boxers and the probe of entangled desperation and honor). And just as it is impossible not to simply be impressed that something this visually ambitious and cruel might eek out in so conservative a time, it's also quite difficult not to call to mind the two great, modern films that clearly benefited from a leap to its shoulders: Raging Bull and Pulp Fiction.

In the end, its pretty great filmmaking, but the urgency to expose Christopher Plummer - all wrapped up in heist chops, racial observations and police procedural - never seems all that necessary. That pretty much everything centers around it (essentially), gives us the sense that the means are far more important than the end. That said, Inside Man is such great fun to watch and so hopeful; Please, Spike, please: More of these.

A film that hasn't outgrown itself. Every time its like a bucket of rocks being dumped on your head. Noticing this time, in particular, that there are little nods to the demolition derby that reportedly ends the book (a car in Billy Ansel's garage that looks distinctly like it serves this purpose, the shape of the dirt lot where the fair takes place). What gets me - and this is flat-out miraculous - is that Sarah Polley's reading of the Pied Piper as a bedtime story, as it melds as voice over into the film's world, never feels pretentious. Its insinuations must have occured to Egoyan to be somewhat less overt, giving the film so much more versaitility when it comes to reading it and examining the undertones. I suspect it means something different to everyone who sees it. That he dropped the ball so hard following this film is less a shame than a necessity: A film this powerful and this perfect can stunt anyone's progress. Here's hoping he returns someday with something less unceremoniously solid than an Ararat or a Where the Truth Lies.

I truly wish the very best prison break movie I've seen to date would end differently. "Poor Gaspard".

I have to admit I do kind of resent Cameron Crowe, fictionalizing memoirs of Mom (in Almost Famous) and Dad (in Elizabethtown) with so little clutter, he almost transcends a public therapy session. Almost. I agree with whomever I read who said the film should have centered around Philip Seymour Hoffman's Lester Bangs instead of one-note (or, merely adequate) Patrick Fugit. Not to worry. Watching Jack Black imitate Bangs in The School of Rock makes up for it. (Sort of.)

Second time around confirms the necessity in the roles of both The Jock and The Actress, but more importantly, their fairly peripheral inclusion gives Brick a great, well-needed cause to champion: An antidote for the too-familiar offbeat High School Film. I danced around it before, but let's just get there: The film is one-of-a-kind and that, in a big way, is its greatest strength. On second go-round, also, its kinda struck me as the film Scotland, PA probably would've liked to have been.

I believe it to be a little unfair to classify Pialat as the French Cassavettes. True: They both contain drunken confessionals and improvised scenes, but Pialat - at least here - dispenses equal time in sketching these relationships and in being playful. The people - aside from the cartoonish big brother - are all far more real than nearly any I can recall in recent films. Giving himself the best part in the film, Pialat is flawed in a way that makes you feel crestfallen and betrayed. His act of treason against the family and his fateful return steady far more weight than its predominant narrative wherein we watch Sandrine Bonnaire's sub-Rohmer escapades in the world of elusive True Love and casual sex. By the time the film winds into a family gathering - plopped down with a purposefully vague (at first) time stamp - its pitch doesn't exactly seem warranted (at all), save for the shades of Pialat's father, whom we end up simultaneously in love and at odds with. Though it helps to communicate Bonnaire's perspective, but I still had trouble giving a damn about her.

Though at times it seems reminiscent of both Antonini (long, philosophical discussions amidst impeccable frames) and Tarkovsky (mood transcending content to add a third, more complex dimension), more often it plays like a straight man's Maddin (awkward mechanics of visual form at odds with narrative limitations) or it apes the disconnected feel of early, dubbed Von Trier. At any rate, Damnation has some of the most gorgeous photography I've ever seen. It never feels like its in control of vision - everything that happens in the film seems to serve the camerawork far more than vice versa - but it really gets under your skin. I can't wait to flip over this guy's filmography.