Still hard to believe that anyone shot films that looked like this back in 1927. I mean, is there a single image that you don't want to rip off the screen and insert into the nearest wooden frame? Dreyer's film is so powerful, Falconetti's (only) turn so heartbreaking, the accompanying score so striking - why haven't I taken a crack at any of the films he followed it up with?

Yes, more Gollum! More Wormtongue! Yes, a scene with Denithor, Faramir and Baramir! Yes, Merri and Pippen drink the Ent juice and grow tall! And, unfortunately, yes, the length still allows this one to succumb to the same fate as the first and third film - so much telling, so little natural communication of concepts (though the theatrical cut, to be fair, had it's share, too).

Poetic realism filmed under the nose of the Third Reich during the occupation sounds kind of suspect, but Children of Paradise - one of those classic-y three-hour plus films where the time just flies by - is so full of terrific characters and clever wit, it practically ruined its director's career (he was unable to live up to it by any stretch).

The follow-up to Stolen Kisses is almost as delightful as that film. The bittersweet twist occasionally feels forced (the anguish of watching scenes where Antoine cheats on Christine with such an unpleasant girl - only to qualify it with "She's another world" - never quite feel like anything more thaan catalysts to third act reconciliation), but these films seem to me, to be mostly about the ordinary truths of life and the way personalities entertain us more than people do (sometimes).

No one has a market cornered quite like Guy Maddin, easily the best artist working in the classical style of his or her own medium (silent films) in the movie game. As preposterous as that might sound, in visual representation, sound reproduction, dialogue recreation and (best of all) mise en scene, I can't think of a filmmaker who has managed to master all of these - sometimes to a fault - with equal aplomb. His unsparing dry humor - especially when it is dark - carries the piece, which occasionally starts to feel story driven (the silent films tended towards less elaborate stories than his). Scene after scene of off-the-wall incest, camera tricks and violence may give you the sense that the whole thing is a bit thrown together - but Careful is the strongest of Maddin's narratives. Telling, that. I think I like what he did with black and white better in Archangel than what he does with color in Careful, but this one is a much stronger comedy.

Too much of it turns into a clip show - which is in horrendously bad taste - and often, even the new stuff feels like bridges between existing footage rather than new, exciting Antoine Doinel adventures. Some are a bit too generic by this, the fifth installment in this remarkable series (I still have to see the short film Antoine & Colette - though Love on the Run shows a good bit of footage from that film, probably because it hadn't been as widely seen). The first portion seems doubly annoying as it is deeply heartbreaking to watch Antoine and Christine get divorced - and then live their divorced lives without each other. As his life opens into a more episodic, wandering minstrel-like existence, Antoine finally achieves his goal: Enlightenment in love. Or is it?

I think, even if it were the most disappointing film ever made, Gangs of New York would be worth its A- just to watch the ballet of sensation and genius that is Daniel Day-Lewis' performance. (Though, you gotta admit, the general rarity of the subject matter is something very, very exciting).

It just seems like a big bowl of wrong not to let Albert Brooks be, you know, funny. (I made supreme peace with the Dori character this time, though; Its got that stench of pleasant, kind entertainment that's - at this point - synonymous with the bouncing desk light).

I can see this movie really annoying people, but the deliberate languor of Leone's movies - fusing with a rancor for dialogue so potent it renders speech nearly unnecessary - is so unique and so confidant, it almost pleases me that this is the kind of movie that will annoy people. No wonder Tarantino strives to be like him - - - in Sergio's world, stylism is king. It just so happens that he manages to capture the political machinations of Western expansion with just the right blend of matter-of-factness and dust, coupled with almost physically assaulting music and vistas of pure eye candy. Even the performances - which somehow transcend that general lack of necessity I mentioned earlier - are noteworthy: Bronson being Bronson, Fonda chewing it up against the current as a cold-blooded baddie with a one syllable name ("Frank," everyone says with mostly contempt, and sometimes a quiver), Robards goofing and philosophizing and the beautiful, beautiful Cardinale. Holds cards with McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Wild Bunch and Unforgiven as one of my favorite westerns.

Les Mistons is cute; Very, very short and not much of substance - prepubescent French lads trail and terrorize a girl they're not yet old enough to be stalking - but nevertheless, a terrific preamble to the Truffaut tightrope of bizarre everyday comedy and genuinely heartwarming romance. Antoine and Collette, on the other hand, bridges nicely Antoine's abandonment issues (in The 400 Blows) and his need for in-law approval ("I have to like the parents," he says in, I believe, every one of the films). Collette can't seem to catch the cool (that, admittedly, still appears a touch creepy) that Antoine has begun refining; His unending quest to love being in love is offset by a personality lacking a buffer between thought and blurt. Here, the die is cast for the next installment: Antoine and Collette isn't quite as charming as Stolen Kisses or Bed and Board, but it's close; Showcasing this character makes it hard for me not to give myself to it completely.

This is easily Kurosawa's best film. Both hands down. The use of flashback in the final scene, where a teary group of beaurocrats reminisces about the last days of the protagonist's life - a life that consisted of equal parts dusty diligence and suppression of nostalgia - is the perfect coda to Ikiru; the man's life, after it is over, swells by comparison to its size while earthly (Everyone praising the way he zigged when he should have zagged, and so forth). Kurosawa remains, I would say, one of very few who didn't seem capable of fumbling an ending. The rest of the movie is rather brilliant, too. The techniques - vividly realized montages, dreamy lighting and excessive tension (the character keeps his cancer from some, not from others, making the moments before he reveals the disease extremely edgy) - are what make Ikiru so noteworthy; Kurosawa's ability to stage a simple man's dying days as something equal in proportion (epic wise) to any of his samurai forays.

Once you get past the first thirty minutes (or, once everyone but Marilyn Burns is dead), the movie becomes a deft amalgam of horror, spectacular art direction and bizarre, hammy comedy. Aside from the corpse sculptures at the very beginning, Franklin - the wheelchair guy - makes every moment he's on screen somehow annoying rather than just tense (as would be implied, I'm sure, by the director: "He's there to get under your skin, to get you feeling a little wiggley").

I've had William Holden echoing in my head now for going on a month now ("Being right is my business! My business! Being Right is my business!") - a sure sign that I've neglected these notices far too long. Movie still holds its original fury (the energy in the way Peckinpah stages anything from a gunfight to a simple negotiation of terms ) and its ultimate hindrance (action, drunk/brothel, tense confrontation between compadres: lather, rinse, repeat).

Initially graded lower; it just goes on for so long so unecessarily, as if it was only equated with brilliance because it takes three and a half days straight to watch. Impossible, though, to deny how entertaining and universal the story is. Big extra points for a bittersweet finale that follows a thundering hour and change worth of nearly pure action. Mifune as the naughty samurais was a terrific casting idea. Can people really live on rice alone? (Summer says yes, but I just don't believe her).

I'm not apologizing but, for the record, I only really watched this because a friend wanted to borrow it and I wasn't sure when I'd get it back and, uh, I just couldn't bear the thought of being unable to satisfy a craving, were one to come upon me. (But, of course, the movie was so amazingly wondrous to watch again. That's right. Amazingly wondrous. I'm tired. Piss off. Really.)

Boyer's seduction of Bergman may seem like a forced hook on which all things hinge (it is), but Gaslight gives a false impression of itself. It's pretty much a straight-up film noir piece set the century before. Cotton is the daring detective who probes his miniscule suspicions long and hard enough to uncover (as film noirs often contain) a rather sordid and disturbing plot: Boyer married and psychologically assaulted Bergman in order to seek out a payload of jewels her former caretaker (and aunt) left behind. Since we're given this information fairly early in the film, the joy is in watching Cotton's investigation unfold. Oddly enough, it's so entertaining and so moody (much is gleaned from the sound of footsteps in various, foggy London settings), we almost forget that it was, in its heyday, a very Hollywood production.

Dear Grandma: Please send Prozac. I love you. (Seriously, send the prozac. It's so depressing here.) I love you very much. (Send the prozac already!). Chris.

It's an interesting concept - theater performers regaling an ignorant performer with the story of the play they were performing - but it is still Alfred Hitchcock directting a propoganda film. It's still never far from your mind that it's not meant to do any of the natural things that Hitchcock films do (like channel suspense, spin a good yarn and pop off offbeat humor). Basically, if I didn't tell you he made it - you'd could never tell merely by watching it. Sandwiched between my favorite of his older films (Shadow of a Doubt) and, doubtless, one of the riskiest of his films (Lifeboat).

This works every time not because of the accents, but because of the things they say: This is byfar the funniest of the Coen Bros. films.