I wondered aloud if these Cop Movie Cliches were Cop Movie Cliches in 1985. Answer: Yes. They were. Friedkin's movie is big on muscular imagery - and a car chase that he believes topped the one in The French Connection (it doesn't) - but short on original spins. Where the aforementioned film (which I'm comparing because, um, he brought it up) seems content to thrive on languor and while in its tone, To Live and Die in L.A. is built for the cocaine 80s, zip-cutting through a revenge saga with William Peterson's rogue cop act approaching overboiled almost immediately and Willem DeFoe's bizarre artist/counterfeiter falling somewhere between arty and crazed.

It works stylistically, and because its funny, but mostly, it's between a shrine and valentine.

This meditative journey is completely and utterly unclouded by commercialism or vanity. It's my favorite road movie of all time.

Punching me in my quip hole won't stop me from quoting Bob Dylan, and here goes: "And he started into dealing with slaves and something inside of him died..." In Cobra Verde, Kinski's title character never had anything alive in him to begin with, shuffling from the criminal life to impregnating the sugar magnate's daughters three, to staging a war between tribes to reopen slave trade. For nearly two hours, he remains a hollow, casually poetic degenerate. On normal terms - and certainly on paper - the whole thing likely seemed ideal in every way (the narrative, the actor/director pairing, African locale with expected bizarre shooting conditions, etc.), but despite the grandiose imagery, Herzog's film seems to be completely dead inside, never reaching the pitch of mad passion that Aguirre or Fitzcarraldo seem to attain so effortlessly. Still, Herzog is Herzog: A world starved for images could certainly do worse. Except for that last image. That's just plain obvious. And embarrassing.

Faster and looser than he'd ever be again - and talkier, to great results, I might add - it manages to seem unique even in a decade when cinematic reinvention was peaking at a constant, thrilling rate. Kit and Holly aren't simply indelible characters, but their unreliable narration gives rise to that same stoned bubble all of Malick's films seem to exist in, because: The world as we know it - as you know - is always at odd with the world as we know it.

Fincher has a way of prolonging an icky feeling that's almost like a dose of almighty suspense, instead morphing into a spurt of procedural downerism; At times, the film is quite frightening, too. The sprawl still sells the thing (It's call the "The More There Is, The More Genuine It All Seems" effect), but the actors are its bread and butter - the cast as a unit is amazing. Gyllenhal underplays boyish charm in a fit of quiet intensity, Downey Jr. chews scenery and cigarettes and Ruffalo seems at the end of the perpetual rope with himself; But there's also Koteas' cracked hardass shell, Logue's Straight Up Movie Cop, Edwards' Haunted Family Cop, Sevigny as the spokesmodel for a Nerdmatch.com wet dream, John Carroll Lynch's quietly kept layer of ice, Cox's hammy Melvin Belli, Dermot Mulroney's self-consciously young police Captain, Adam Goldberg's short-lipped newbie reporter, Baker Hall's (confused?) handwriting guru and, in the film's creepiest turn, Charles Fleischer as projectionist Bob Vaughn, whose house - despite conflicting California tradition - has a basement. It bothers me that so few are excited about this film.

It was kind of funny to think about underrating American Beauty, even after seeing something like Little Children just a few months ago. Here, in Mendes' world, we're caught in the updraft (someone punch me for using this word, please) of what I would call the launch of HBO television drama (it's at precisely that pitch, methinks) - something of soapy origin with a constant modern application (in this case, suburban debauchery). Spacey's lead character drives the thing (without question); He won an Oscar because its a rally-behind-me sort of role, but it really is a magnificent performance: Every released knot in the quest to let go of peacekeeping ways in order to restore to himself this peace is a kink of satisfaction - a little dose of relief from two hours of the highly condensed social problems we seem so hellbent on gleaning from our own community over and over again. Attention goes everywhere - it's calculated to have all performances fly over the top - but it's Frank Fitts, the vicious, pent-up ball of a mood swung Marine (ret.) who acts as the catalyst, here; He's a polar opposite to Lester, whom he ironically lusts after - a goony irony which is the big bell that this material is meant to be exaggerated, in my opinion - and Cooper tears into it with a fluid stiffness, investing in Frank a huge, definitively stubborn, post-military code. It's still a pretty great film, despite how quickly - and overwhelmingly - its conceit seemed to become fodder for a smaller screen.

It's by no means a great film, but the camp is all kinds of enjoyable - and only in very specific (read: my wife's) company. If we hadn't both learned the dialogue as teens (we thought there would be a test), seperately, before meeting each other, I think I would probably hate the fuck out of it. As is not the case, we felt confident showing it to Victoria, who promptly lost consciousness and groaned "I don't want to finish it" the next morning.

Obviously top five (or three, perhaps) cinematography exercises of all time, but also a deviation from the multi-narrator layering he'd employ in the late career films, Days of Heaven is seen through only one pair of eyes (God's) and heard through only one voice (a character who is, unlike in Badlands, peripheral to narrative focus). This kind of dazzling storytelling - at any elbow of the cinematic canon, but especially the 70s - seems both timeless and, ultimately, remarkable. I can't deal enough hyperboles to this thing.