Properly haunting and visually arresting, Waltz with Bashir is yet another trek into turmoiled nostalgia marred by an idiotic framing device. The filmmaker – voiced by the *actual* filmmaker, Ari Folman - interviews his old friends after the description of a nightmare (by an old war buddy) reminds him of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, an event he can’t seem to recollect with any measure of vivid recall. Because this is all clear from the word go, it seems to me to be redundant when the psychoanalyst finally tells him that he needs to learn the details of the massacre before he himself can unlock and, subsequently, confront the memory. To me, this was not only obvious, but clearly the focus of Ari’s journey – both in front of and behind the camera. In fact, if he’d asked any one of the other folks he interviews, my guess is that they would probably tell him the same thing – possibly verbatim. That said, Folman is a whiz with imagery, flooding the screen with colors that look practically infected, giving the fury of war a sour feeling. The power the film’s final moments hinge on the rest of the thing, pontificating on the full circle of the Israeli Forces, whose behavior recalls the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto. It’s a fine subject for a film, even if the film itself is merely adequate.

Like inhaling the same, instantly relatable-to-youth fumes from Dazed and Confused - fumes which I hold to be immensely special. Busting off nothing more than crosscutting between gangs of drunken teens at a 1986 Judas Priest concert, the filmmakers have (unwittingly) turned up a slice of hilariously entertaining life. Far from any sort of intuitive potential, the film doesn't appear to be a documentary alerting the world to these pre-concert rituals so much as an Local Cable TV one-off that allowed two people - Heyn and Krulik - who would never fit in here to navigate their setting under the guise of TVs cult of celebrity trappings. It wouldn't have worked had it been released in 1987. Its a time capsule, short and sweet.

While it has that 1970s On The Cheap bent to it, Bogdanovich's film nails the lurid world of small town life. It doesn't just nail the world, it seems to spark in every corridor, with Bogdanovich's tight, well-decided direction at its peak in his lucid days. Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges are wonderful, but the whole cast is uniformely terrific. Randy Quaid's first performance. And hilarious.

The beauty of its lush, framed-painting forest washes over you, but its the minimalism that delivers the most effective medicine: In its scant seventy minutes, the film's inclusive animal perspective makes its seem like an almost alien world - save the comedic interludes. All in all, still one of the most impressive of the 40s Disney pictures.

Released during the Disney Renaissance, Aladdin sitssmack in between the two Heavy Hitters (Best Picture nominee Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, the highest grossing traditionally animated feature in history). The songs aren't quite as good as those in Beauty and the Beast, and this one's more of a comedy than anything, but its greatest claim to fame is not complimentary in the least: Its the first animated film I can remember looping a string of pop culture riffs into a characterization. It works gangbusters here, for nostalgic reasons, yes, but also because The Genie is genuinely well-written (he's not sloppy or lazy in any way shape or form).

15:20 - Fox sweeps up Wesley in a Red Dodge Viper.
59:42 - After using Fox's Gray Corvette as a ramp (he hits it head-on, mind you), Wesley flips his jalopy upside down, so that he can fire a midair straight shot through the open sunroof of an otherwise bulletproof limousine, killing his target.
1:14:26 - Wesley, dangling thousands of feet above a chasm and hanging only by the hand of his target ACTUALLY SHOOTS HIS TARGET and uses this man as a ladder to hoist himself up.

Yes, they're still making films that leave the unwelcome residue of Matrix in your mouth. Yes, Angelina Jolie is still playing the manly, silent killing machine as a hunk of walking, robotic irony. Yes, Morgan Freeman actually tells McAvoy that a gigantic loom tells their secret society who to kill. Yes, this film is based on comic books, but chose to excise the costumes (Bad idea, by the way). Yes, I could not separate the fun oil from its raging banality.