John Candy and Dan Ackroyd in the 1980s. Even without the nostalgia, its just awesome. (Note: Buy more cynicism. You're running out.)

Ultimately repetitious tale, beautifully shot, of a controlling older sister and the younger brother whose life she destroys. The wafting New Wave playfulness as they take part in their "game" as well as the forcefully amoral, devil-may-care delight the characters flit in for a time is terrifically entertaining but, unfortunately, finite. The film seems to run out of steam and continues on with banal, fish-in-a-barrel knocks at the bourgeoise, inspiring little interest and even less sense. Stands with minimal hashmark of Melville's stamp; Feels more like (author and narrator) Cocteau's baby being ushered by a third party only allowed to tinker with visual style rather than mise-en-scene.

"You're going to take this fight to bed with you for a long time - you don't gotta do it all now."

Fascinating mash-up of ideas that seems more about the mechanics of Pretentious Art Films (not a parody, but an example that reflexively seems to examine the psychology of itself). Painting with a disjointed chronology, a thread of successful cinema-as-essay flavor (thematically, its got the satisfyingly abstract chops of Haneke's Code Unknown), and a wonderful experimentation of sound and image, The Loss of Sexual Innocence sidesteps its own trap by pulling backward from itself to observe a moment as a "scene" rather than the part to a whole. It always feels like a thrilling rush of cinema every time a laughable metaphor gets rushed to the pedastal (like the blind woman accidentally walloping Saffron Burrows as she attempts to help her) because its staged that way. Figgis wants us to feel like we're reacting sense impressions, to our mind's tidy, sensationalist visage of these events - I never got the sense that he wanted us to stroll off with one, cohesive idea about the mind's dualistic affair with love and sex. My favorite slices feature Jonathan Rhys-Myers, Kelly MacDonald and Gina McKee: Adolescence fucking defined.