Let's face the mirror, here - I'm no anime junkie. What I can take away from these Japanese produced epics of blood, familiar story lines and young girls with gigantic breasts is usually an appreciation for the artwork. In 'Vampire Hunter D', the artwork is essentially a reminder of everything that stands for the eighties : cheap, dark and lazy feel animation, a whiny electronica score and a plot that doesn't conclude so much as it collapses on itself - not that it's a bad thing. Occasionally, the film does some wonderment and creates a surreality that mixes with the goofiness (and sometimes incoherence - which does not come from the English language dubbing). Most of it's running time, though, is spent showcasing just how obsessive these animators are with male dominance - which is no giant leap to any of us who have seen the likes of this brand of animated film before. The violence isn't really that unnerving, the dialogue is half hatched and the obligatory shower scene proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that 'Vampire Hunter D' is nothing more than a run-of-the-mill B-movie, luckily dressed up as nerd's paradise - anime.

They're thinking - is it possible that he found it in a theater still? No. Screener. I showed it to my brother - savoring the genius and what not. Little else to write about in the third viewing, always a nice film to watch with someone else, still the third best film I've seen this year. Find myself quoting it constantly since bashing my head into it's text. Reserved favorite things to think and or speak : a) "You'll pay big." - Jack Black to John Cusack regarding his vintage T-shirt; b) "McGooghan!" - Jack Black to John Cusack in answer to a question; c) "Of course you do, you have great lingerie, but you also have the cotten panties that have been washed a million times and the crotch has worn out. And so do they, but it's not in the fantasy." - John Cusack to Iben Hjelje regarding his fidelity (and whether it's high or low, right?); d) "I've started to make a tape. In my head. For Laura. Full of stuff she'd like" - John Cusack to camera, one of those "It's just clicks"-direct address uses. This is a fabulous fucking film.

The most pure installment to the "Mad Max" trilogy (and my favorite), it was nice to finally see it widescreen. This is an ultraviolent masterpiece of one of those univeral-type explosions : the civilized vs. the savage; mercenary in the middle. What I always loved about this film was that it could easily be called an action film from start to finish - and it sticks to that - and stands repeat viewings on the side. How many times in one rental cycle can one watch the thundering finale in which Gibson (sporting the accent - a great asset) drives a tanker full of sand, unknowingly creating a diversion, and showing us just how adroit this character is at staying alive. Imagine in today's multiplexes if just once a year, a film could come out that was short, sweet and completely pure. That's why it's my favorite. No sell-out shit. No real emotional discharges. No mercy.

This is honestly the seventh time since February that I've seen this film. Fast growing into the 'Dazed and Confused' of this decade, it's the film I'm destined to see too many times, know the dialogue to and force every single person who comes into contact with me to watch. I love it because it's on cheap VHS. I love it because no other film can simultaneously mock and celebrate it's subject in a way that allows everyone to keep their artistic integrity and their dignity. Bindler has made a great film and can walk away having respected this contest because he takes it just seriously enough to show off that, "Hey! You can win a truck - we mean business. Maybe a free truck warrants just a wee bit of compassion to the idiotic ordeal these people end up putting themselves through." On the other hand, these people are hilarious to watch. Particularly my two favorite characters : Benny, as Paul Swann calls him, the zen master of hand-to-truck endurance; and Janis's husband (the feller with no teeth), a man who can rouse an amazing amount of curiousity out of seemingly flawless and objective interviewers, causing them to do a double take and pursue that hint he drops about his megaton air conditioner that can bring his house to twelve below zero. The result : well-worth the deviation from the subject at hand. 'Hands on a Hard Body' is the party movie to end all party movies. Hard statement to swallow? No one who's seen the film would say that.

Having been slighted by Cocteau's 'Beauty and the Beast' in May, I thought it only fair to give him a second go of things. This time, the meandering and simplistic style pays off. In a bold adaptation of the Orpheus myth ('Hamlet' (2000) could take a lesson in adapting something interestingly), this film gives us at once the kind of film that we label surreal and, on deeper reflection, Cocteau also seems to be aiming his bow higher, attentive of the viewing audience and how it changes - and the film remains at first glimpse and at final judgement a work of complete and utter timelessness. As Orpheus, Jean Marais is the very face of an arrogant poet, ripe for an outside challenge of his own poetic side (which Cocteau makes clear, doesn't please Orpheus anymore). As the film begins to take on aspects of imagination (characters walking through mirrors, a counsel that judges the recently deceased in heaven, a car radio that seems to speak only to our main character), unlike 'Beauty and the Beast', the movie takes flight. It becomes somewhat more interesting. I kept calling to mind that short, one minute burst of creativity that David Lynch submitted to 'Lumiere & Co.'. In fact, what that thought led me to was Cocteau's similarity to Lynch. And that thought pleased me so. It made perfect sense.

What struck me most about this film was the way it defied my expectations of it so very much. Imagining Tina Turner in any role can be a blood clot waiting to happen, but "surprise! surprise!", she's used sparingly and she's quite good. A more epic-feeling saga than it's two predecessors, 'Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome' is one of those films that you just sit back in awe of most of the time. Occasionally it gets silly ("Wherever you go, there you are" is a real line of dialogue). Often, it's brilliant (I am a sucker for the vision of a crashed plane in the middle of a desert - something very haunting and powerful about it). For most of it's running time, it's just a notch below 'The Road Warrior' in it's purity. Certainly both films capitalized on 'Mad Max' and ran with the ball, creating a much better set of films. What I continue to love about George Miller (this includes the 'Babe' movies), is that he understands and is skilled at the balance between a great story with original spins and purist entertainment. 'Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome' may not be as start-to-finish-deliver-the-goods as 'The Road Warrior', but it comes as close as one could possible hope.

The ultimate trip in journeyman's symbolism, created at just the right moment in history to include itself as the prime contributor and raging first burst of the oft-used and nearly cliche "French New Wave" movement. As expected, it earns every fucking drop of praise I've ever heard showered upon it. I had a friend once that told me if I watched one Truffaut movie, I'd be hooked and that I had better clear my schedule because I'd instinctively have a whole truckload of films to watch. From the first frames which seem to give us the speedy entrance to our setting (a moving set of establishing shots if you will); we're hooked. The odyssey of young Antoine Doinel, one of the great characters of cinema, isn't so much a front to back narrative as it is a recollection and a universal tribute to the youth of the world. If rebellion were to have two films, I would like them to be 'Easy Rider' and 'The 400 Blows', with a side of 'Dazed and Confused'. Along with 'Throne of Blood' and 'The Passion of Joan of Arc', this is the best classic film I've screened thusfar in the new millenium. I can't wait to bleach my eyes with Truffaut's subsequent creations.

Alright, I admit it - I had only ever seen the 'Odessa Steps' sequence (not once, but five times in 'film school'. That should be an urban legend - 'Go to film school and be haunted by five minutes of a film you'll likely never see in it's entirety'). And yeah, giving it three and a half stars is mighty ballsy of anyone considering themselves in direct relation to cinema as an art form - but there's something about this piece of Leninist propoganda that doesn't make it mindblowingly compelling. Though it's beautifully crafted for it's time and wonderfully acted and paced - clocking it at just over an hour, it never feels long - the thing that kept me from pulling out my member and paying homage to it's breadth was the simple fact that it really is nothing more than propoganda. It's never more than a repetitive means justifying it's own end with a humdinger of a climax. Admittably, I'll be fired from wherever I end up working in this industry when this leaks out - but I found the convictions of Eisenstein, easily the best silent film era editor without competition, to be grounded a little too much in persuasion rather than documentation and narrative construction. On the other hand - I love 'Triumph of the Will'. The difference? Riefenstahl's style manages to serve Hitler's wicked purpose and still be a document of an event and an entertaining romp through the political garden. Eisenstein seems only able to serve Lenin's cause with the document instead of documenting the cause and thereby serving it. (takes breath) I hope I've been more than clear.

What a month. Add this to that list above, entailed in 'The 400 Blows'. 'L'Atalante' is probably most famous for it's inclusion on 'Sight and Sound's many lists of the best films of all time (most often, it appears on the director's lists, thereby proving just who has the access to old films in Hollywood - - - this is a tough film to scoop up). Another one of those small stories, the easy on the mind stuff that's done with such an eye for stylistic whimsy and jaw-dropping character sketches (reminiscent of, perhaps, 'The Earrings of Madame De...'). The story of a barge captain, his new wife and their on-again, off-again romance during the waning first months of their relationship. Features great supporting characters like the prankster that catches her eye in a bar and the first mate that practically re-invented the grimy "old salt" look for me. But (out with it!) the daring motivation that seems to bring this movie to a head (and no subjectivity, please, it's not as if I've just been married nearly two months ago), is a deep understanding for the openness and depth that's not often expressed onscreen these days. Usually, when we see marriage, it's cliched or played up for it's "warning" aspects instead of the grand old truth that finds it being a journey of both the positive and negative that never stops educating or defining you as a person. Hence, the great characters in 'L'Atalante', defined and always learning, interact among the tinkerings of utter genius.

The planes whizz by me. Tom Cruise makes me blush with embarassment when he speaks. And Goose, why did they have to go and kill off poor Goose? Nevertheless, thanks to USA showing it twice last weekend, my curiosity was sparked again and I decided to revisit the film of my youth with my new toy - the one you never get tired of hearing about - the DVD player. Great surround sound (topped only two nights later with the DTS 'Jaws') and finally, the widescreen I needed to make me a film snob enjoying the guilty pleasures of my youth in high qualityville. Somehow actually hearing Tom Cruise say to Val Kilmer, "Bullshit, you can be mine", just goes to show that Cruise has a career and Kilmer doesn't. And just hearing anybody curse in this movie takes me back to the time when it was still cool to do so. Then the nineties erupted. 'Top Gun', though goofy and ridiculous as hell, is still so entertaining I could shit (giggles like a schoolgirl).

Wow. It's more than the sound. It's more than the goony "Experience-it-again-for-the-first-time" crap (I watched it last year, for Christ's sake). I think what really knocked it through the loop for me was the realization that I could watch a movie get worse (you can tell far and away that the shark is fake now that the picture is crystal clear) - and better (the USS Indianapolis speech benefits from staticless sound - all the mouth noises Shaw puts in are inspired as anything) - at the same time. Spielberg's runaway hit - and maybe the only film with a premise like "Shark terrorizes coastal town" that can be considered an art movie - is as relavent as it ever was. I still get a little shaky about getting in the ocean with all of those sharks. Buy it, folks. Buy it with DTS 5.1 surround. Now.

This movie reminds me so much of a guy I know, it's uncanny. However, I suspect that's why I was able, at last, to jump on the bandwagon and adore the film : we all know someone like Max Fischer: ruthlessly ambitious, unconventionally charming and constantly lagging behind in the normality of work-a-day routines. Maybe that's why the last shot, of him dancing with the twenty-years-his-senior crush, in slow motion, is so unbelievably powerful in such a whimsical and inciteful - without being heavy or sad or just plain funny. For that scene to work, the rest of the film has to be dead on. I can remember in both my reviews, wondering aloud to myself whether or not it deserved the rest of the film deserved to live up to that masterful shot (most likely ripped off of another director, somewhere. The Criterion edition affords us the chance to hear director Wes Anderson lamenting about how he stole the people-showing-up shot before Max's final play from Kubrick's 'Barry Lyndon' - of all fucking places). And now, watching this film, maybe the most aquired tastes of films, for the fourth time - I can honestly put it on a top ten list, give it four stars and call it a masterpiece. Because Max mistakenly calls the Scottish kid Irish? - No. Because Max truly wants to use the word 'Mick' in a derogatory manner - and because the film knows exactly how to make that hilarious. After all is said and done - Bill Murray's Oscar snub, the addictive soundtrack/score and the 2.35:1 cinematography that correctly balances observation and stylization - it's Max that wins us over. And 'Rushmore' that wins.

This is unpleasant and misleading. Pollack's movie starts off exactly like 'The Firm', juggling ball after ball in the air to the pounding piano of Dave Grusin. About twenty minutes into it, precisely after the plane crashes (an unintentional metaphor for this film that I'm sure the producers are a tad embarrassed over), 'Random Hearts' gets into a repetan of a groove in which Kristin Scott Thomas (can someone get this woman another kind of role please!) begins speaking exclusively in rhetorical questions and Harrison Ford finds inadvertant (and often unimportant) details to obssess over. The only real solace, one would think, would come when the wires get crossed and Ford falls for Thomas. Buyer beware - you haven't seen such icy and repulsively awful chemistry since Lyle Lovett and Julia Roberts. And for the love of God Sydney, give yourself a part that you can carry. Seeing you play the same character you played in 'A Civil Action' and, (gosh!) 'Eyes Wide Shut' makes me worry that I'll lose an ounce of my beloved passion for the latter film. I've probably seen 'The Firm' close to ten times - it's extremely entertaining. Get the fuck back to making films that evoke that one. Abhorrant.