Endlessly clever, but clearly not suited for home viewing (there's about three close-ups in this sea of medium-wide's); Kaye frays his hair with his charm here, even sporting the passionate eyes for the stiff-at-first female guard from a band of rebels led by a Robin Hood-esque bandit dubbed "The Black Fox". The love story reminds me a little of Ninotchka (or, perhaps the un-self conscious Kaye's wooing methods show a similar edge of consistency and clever wit to that of Melvyn Douglas); The satisfaction of the picture seems to depend upon as much on their romance as it does on his improvisatory antics as the title character. It holds up very nicely (as entertainment, that is), seeming almost diabolically fun: It's the living, breathing quintessential 50s era musical style: Big crowd scenes and goopy-ass love songs set to its painted technicolor glow. Do yourself a favor if you're bummed about after seeing Farenheit 911.

The grade this time, you'll see, is higher still. This time, I'm on a warpath to sort out all the particulars but, folks, I might have to bust out a fucking hyperbole: What he does oozes the same clarity that Shakespeare's language does. This doesn't mean I'm even comparing him to Shakespeare, though; Mamet just seems to sound like Old English pared to its very skeleton. And it's exhilirating every time.

Initially found myself tired of the ill-paced fate of the downtrodden main character. Every step was lower, every act more pathetic, every move a disposal of dignity and so on and so on. Murnau turns the story, though, into a kind of artistic statement as he sarcastically decries the author's ending (Is that bold or gutsy? Anyone?): "Here our story should really end, for in actual life, the forlorn old man would have little to look forward to but death. The author [Carl Mayer] took pity on him, however, and provided quite an improbably epilogue". Though dismissive and sort of snide, Murnau has drawn an interesting - and deeply depressing - comparison: The long suffering of life in poverty versus the quick burst of boorishness wealth breeds. The central performance by Emil Jannings, though, is undeniably powerful. His gigantic eyes and unruly beard say it all: This guy's sad. (He's also quite melancholy, to boot).

A definite entry in my proposed "Movies as Dope" book series. (Volume 3: Romantic films that overwhelm the senses with the desire to go out and fall in love; An influence so strong, it defeats even marriage itself! And there's a sequel!)

Even still, it's the combination, not necessarily the parts themselves that blow us away, of themes like the plight of the everyman - in both the specific and the allegorically abstract - or the chilling god-complex as television as reality (or, reality tele-Omigod! That 'Twilight Zone' episode-turned-feature film predicted the horrible, horrible future of primetime!), or the commercialization of life reflected in a repeating life imitates art-brand cinematic string. Also, Jim Carrey was born to play the title character.

Absolutely summer-minded simpleton that grows so ambitious in double-backs and switch-hits, but never oversteps its bounds as obvious fun, clearly remaining (head above shoulders) the most entertaining and worthwhile adaptation of a John Grisham novel to date. Dissenters voted The Rainmaker, even Runaway Jury as the newly crowned king - - but neither film flows as fluidly - or was as flawlessly cast - as The Firm. (My #2, by the way, would be The Gingerbread Man, as Grisham did come up with the basic premise).

The Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg (or, perhaps the inverse) of Belgium, the Dardennes strip their verite with a hair-splitting razor, leaving nothing but sweet, sweet bone. By bone, of course, I mean artful indulgence. By removing of painterly framing, guiding music (and, you know, general energy), I found myself basking in the how instead of the what (or where) and in watching the why seep through other channels entirely. Here, an off-puttingly introverted master carpenter, working in a post-juvie center finds himself in an awkward situation with one of the apprentices who did him some damaging wrong in the past. The situation's not really that awkward, to be truthful, and the wrong, though devastating, is not really the point. Interesting, still, to watch a melodrama using the teacher/pupil relationship as mutual healing (from one of those wounds that never really heal) with the drama muted; Unfortunately, while dodging one bullet, it gets hit with another: You can too easily spot the gimmick here: Revealing valuable information once every other reel or so, then being mock-shocked (in a way that feels like it's missing only the slow zoom of an afternoon soap). This in no way spoils the enjoyment of the exercise and, indeed, the very picture itself. Unlike Rosetta ("...almost an allegory - - of absolutely nothing") - in which I felt as if I were being pushed to invent emotion and meaning to everything - The Son didn't pressure me into attempting to feel anything except the drive of the method. You can tell they were documentarians, by the way (and. I mean that in a so-so way.)

[Social-consciousness obsessed director Ken Loach would be an even more apt choice for comparison, were it not for his love of whiny mood-setters in the music department.]

I sort of can never decide whether its the period alone that woos me into a lull or the fact that it's the period done well that bowls me over, but one thing is for sure: It never gets old.

My biggest concern while watching Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort was whether or not French high schools perform this musical on stage. Man, would
it be cooler to see this performed than the rotating stock of six musicals performed at high schools in the U.S. (Quick reference: 'Grease', 'South Pacific', 'The Music Man' (performed twice at my former HS in less than five years), 'Brigadoon', 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers' and 'Carousel'; I'm considering it a deviation that our HS performed 'Fiddler on the Roof' and 'Guys and Dolls' during my tenure there; I'll be ignoring e-mails that request the specificity of my participation in these musicals*). Dreamier, looser and much less stitled than most American musicals of the era, Rochefort barely carries its own skeletal narrative structure (boys arrive to promote the sale of motorcycles and boats in the town square and end up pursuing two aspiring singers who give dance lessons), often lapsing into playful dialogue vollies, completely out-of-the-blue musical numbers and a general, pleasant mist of pleasantry (I meant to say it). It made me say to my wife: "Is there anything more carefree than a French musical?" Her reply implied that I was gay.

[*With the exception of 'Fiddler on the Roof', in which I took photos for the yearbook, including one of our (female) Fiddler - played by a future Playboy poser, to boot - that I, to this day, consider the best photograph I've ever taken. How'd we get on this subject again?]

There's some promising scenes of male cameraderie (haven't used that word in awhile, have I?) early on in The Men, but even these scenes end up slipping into the general agenda of the film, which seems to have been made to either: a) appease a tiny minority (namely, parapalegics and the women who love them), b) as a public service announcement that there are, in fact, parapalegics in society (hence the long pointer scene detailing the harsh do's and do not's of loving the legless), or c) as a film we could refer to as Brando's first screen role, one as mediocre as most first screen roles go. (I think it's a combo of the three, that's why I brought out the list of three structure.) Brando is quite good (his method was lying in a VA bed for a month before shooting started), but he's almost constantly drowned out by his shrill counterpart (Theresa Wright, whose whining was a little more apropos in Shadow of a Doubt, here it's just grating); There's a great scene at the beginning that promises much more than this silly film can deliver: A doctor goes to each and every bed in a VA hospital, deconstructing the process of rehabilitation; It's an odd scene to follow the pointer scene I referred to earlier: A textbook comparison of right and wrong ways to use exposition. (The review, I know, doesn't really match the grade, but the film is so laughable and so unbelievably over-the-top, that these small pros don't really make too much of a ripple while you're wading through the thing).

Movie shifts gears a couple of times - from the fear of occupation in a small town by a motorcycle gang, to the reflexive morality of mob violence and all the way back to the perils of image versus reality (in Brando, that is) - but never bests its glaring inadequecy, namely, the lack of any sort of specific threat in the gang's so-called intimidation. The subplot about a police officer who isn't up to his job (because he doesn't hold with the edgy, eye-for-an-eye politics of the town leaders) dissolves at the foot of his daughter's flirtatious - and incredibly powerful - sequences with Brando's gang leader with a heart of gold. His range here, as a different
sort of inarticulate lout (I stole that from EW, by the way) than he played in Streetcar, is a discerning, exasperating thing to watch; As in the best of Marlon's performances, the film itself becomes almost immaterial once he opens his mouth. By the time he realizes that he ought really to grown the hell up, you're almost mourning the general aura encompassed in the genius of his answer to the question "What are you rebelling aganist?" (Answer: "Whaddaya got?")

A scathing critique of a system that builds criminals, doesn't train their police and then judges both, nightly, on the news (all intregal parts to a horribly functioning society), Bus 174 is another terrific entry in last year's seemingly endless collection of slam-bang brilliant documentaries. Disturbing images abound: Thirty-five men jammed into a jail cell meant for one or two (and a title that reads: "Any jail in Rio, 2002") and footage and testimony from those present at a vicious massacre of street kids in 1993. Most chilling, though, are the many, many angles of the actual standoff (called the "Bus 174 Incident") which not only define the problem (because we can see the media creeping up on the bus, empowering and inadvertently securing the hi-jacker), but illuminate it: We can see this thing going down from every conceivable angle. Whether this is meant to be taken at face value, or as a metaphor for the many, many factors weighing the situations' blame and meaning - is up to the viewer. By the end, I was so dizzied and disgusted with pretty much everyone from the hostage taker who caused it all (after being neglected for years and years) or the ill-trained police whose brutality is flat-out sickening or, in fact, the city, who successfully segregate rich and poor without discomfort or care. The last twenty minutes - when the extreme slow motion starts and this whole nightmare comes to a head - reminded me very much of the scary, spare-no-horror topicality of Waco: Rules of Engagement or Terror in Moscow.

Aside from the outstanding Brando performance, Julius Caeser is absolutely enthralling for the first hour or so. The plotting, the murder, the long speeches - - all of it staged with such electricity, such passion and such integrity. The play drops off after Brutus and Cassius leave Rome and Marc Anthony and Octavius begin pursuing them; Mankiewicz seems to lose steam, too - everything becomes drab and endless: The quarrels in the tent, the lame excuse for an ambush, the mountaintop finale(s). Nevertheless, the film itself is a wonderful testament to the skill of major Shakespearean actors (Gielgud's Cassius weighs uncertainty and foolhardiness in terrifically sharp contrast) or just major actors (Mason's Brutus - who loves poetry, world domination and long walks on the beach - is an endlessly wrong-headed patriot while Brando's Marc Anthony is the strong, overachiever who rights Caeser's murder as if there were no other course of action he had even considered). Julius Caeser is that good kind of 50s stage-piece; It's shot in a varied and filmic manner (at least most of it), almost lifting it out of the realm of the theater.

I had a bitch of a time trying to decide if this sad, almost brilliant tale was straight up film noir or cockeyed neorealism (I looked it up - it's called poetic fatalism and these guys - Carne and his co-writer, Jacques Prevert - pretty much invented it as an answer to the empty optimism of between-the-war American films). Ultimately, the thick atmosphere and clean-cut personifications of the characters surpass Shadows' aimless tendencies; But there's a moment, even before all that, when we begin to care - - and that moment contains the most beautiful French woman ever created (Michele Morgan). The ramshackle plot is just a delivery device for fleeing gestures of down-on-your-luck collisions (you could predict the ending now, even though I've told you nothing of the narrative). Looks bangin', too. Michel Simon's Rasputinesque beard is one of the creepiest in beard film history.

To commemorate Mamet's meditation on the ease with which lies pass over the public, here's s'more from the quote bin: "You've got all the slack in the world until I leave this room - - then I'm going to zero you out...It's gonna be what it's gonna be...Do you want to talk about it? If you want to talk about it, I will give you one minute...I think you're a stone cold whoremaster".