She reaches into the escape helicopter to find a zombie arm reaching back. She wakes up. She's on an island, apparently having been lifted to safety in a misplaced reel.

Hackneyed and, you know,
deceptively fictional;
Quite entertaining.

[Also, with every passing year, you recognize more British Isles' faces in the crowd. Watched this large lump pretty much to remind myself what a big, dumb epic should look like (read: remedy for the tastes-of-sulphur Troy).]

At least the sparest of Altman's recent ouvre; Cartoonish supervillain/Ballet Administrator Malcolm McDowell's straight stereotyping bodes better than I'd expected (mostly because its great fun to watch him twitch and rant all over the place); Neve Campbell - though this film is reportedly her baby - is as muted as all of Altman's characters, both energizing and crippling the film: When its Altman, zooming the camera and missing pieces of dialogue - oddball characters shuffling in and out of the frame - its a terrific watch; When Campbell's story seems to stage and fail a coup (over and over again) for control of the picture, it becomes merely unfocused, a word that's hard to use correctly when describing any of Altman's work (although, let it be known - he has been unfocused before...(cough!Kansas Citycough!) Thinking I'd have to slog through the ballet scenes, I was pleasantly surprised to find at least two of them marriaged to at least a gimmick (if not an aesthetic); At the very least, they didn't feel tacked on. I've thought about it much more than I expected to when I turned it off after watching it yesterday morning. Good sign.

Though rightly criticized as a collection of suspense ringers posing as a movie, Torn Curtain - much like The Man Who Knew Too Much - also stands as a terrific relic of the riidiculous behaviors of "patriots"; a set of jaw-dropping - to my mind, anyhow - behaviors accepted in the name of communist paranoia. Newman finds himself posing as a defector - his girlfriend tagging along much to his chagrin - in order to steal a formula from a former Soviet scientist (now working in the GDR) that could - get this - render nuclear war obsolete. TThe side trips and secret trysts of spydom are especially fascinating from a post-Cold war perspective, but it is the film's centerpiece - the long, brutal murder of Newman's security shadow, done sans firearm - that lingers in the memory. Hitch had always said he wanted to show how hard it is to kill a man and here, as I'm sure it was in its time, the scene carries a haunting, savage power. Newman's performance - as a hunky physicist-turned-spy is of his fresh-faced gallery; His fiancé, played by Julie Andrews, however, is severely out of place. Greatish, offbeat Hitchcock moment: The broken heater on an ocean liner full of far off conference-bound physicists forces them to sit in their winter coats, unable to drink their coffee (it's frozen). (Newman and Andrews, of course, are rolling around in the sack keeping warm).

Sadly it falls somewhere between an A-Z telling of the submission/bondage trade by some really piss-boring and awkward-seeming narrators (the proprieteress and her kittens there at the Pandora's Box toilet-licking therapy/resort on Fifth Ave) and the much more interesting profile of the mentality of people who enjoy submission (although the mentality seems to match profile in each; All the people seem to have pretty much the same background and needs, which makes the subject seem dull and one-sided). It is, however, quite hilarious when they try to make Nick take a spanking towards the end. First time you'll ever see the no-shame champion of the sleazy documentary world look squeamish.

That first image is one of the best: A street cleaner, soaking the pavement of Paris as Bob (the high roller) stumbles out of his nightly ritual: Serial card games he can't seem to trump; Though beaten, he is ready to renew and begin the cycle once more. True, Melville would go on to dissect style almost exclusively (in Le Samourai and Le Cercle Rouge, for example), but in Bob le Flambeur he's keen on the world of the title character almost to the point of abstraction. Take my meaning: Bob - or Monseiur Bob, as he's better known - seems to transcend those he surrounds himself with (or so the film would have you believe), but his own creedo and flashy existence is one that's too dull to carry the picture. What sings is the way the people around him gather themselves with the kind of honor the film asks that we bestow upon Bob. (In other words, its as if everyone but Bob gets it). In part, Roger Duchesne seems to wear his gray hair above his personality, never seeming to be the charmer before the aged, or the comic before the thief. (Here comes blasphemy: In the remake, Nick Nolte nails the part to the wall, methinks). But Melville's also missing the spark of a major heist (the one in the film is planned to no end, but...). I'm carrying on as if I didn't enjoy it, though; The silk and flow of Melville is more than enough to cinch the whole ordeal. Oh yeah, and Isabelle Corey (in her first role) - as the drifting sass that is Anne, the girl as currency - is the best part of the film.

Totally underrated; If you can get past the obvious built-in implausibilities of seeing one's future, etc. (as you should - theoretical sci-fi, I've learned, must equal no less than a grain of salt), the premise is escapist gold (or, at least escapist platinum, at any rate). This is the shit Hitchcock would have eaten up with a spoon as large as the one in that episode of Ren & Stimpy where Stimpy gives Ren the all-purpose icky tasting medicine. (That is to say, a rather mammoth spoon).

Also, I'm not kidding.

[Sorry Crider, if I had seen it on an airplane, I would not have hoped for a quick crash to avoid watching it. (Although I've already snuck the suspicion that this notion was plotted on the hilarious side of exaggeration.)]

Cool because it has characters called Rocket, Knockout Ned and Carrot. Cool because these characters inhabit a fictionalized version of a fact-based account, told in linear fashion with freeze-framed titles acting as chapter stops. Cool because Meirelles' editing is fast and loose, his cinematography of-the-moment but decidedly artful (i.e. - he frames so it looks like he hasn't takeen the time to frame; like a shaggy dog shot wizard, he is). Cool because these characters - even some of the minor ones - are more developed and full-bodied than those in a predominant amount of feature films in circulation. Cool because the social message is handled just right: It doesn't glorify this world - and it's not pushy. And, on top of all that, it's entertaining. And subtle: Drumbeats that go into gunshots, uncharacteristically cut and dried - not blinking - portrayal of a gun obsessed youth ("the rrunts") sneaking in, side stories abound but never mar the focus and, without a doubt, easily the least cliche-heavy crime film of recent memory. Where else does the good guy not get the girl he wants, but loses his virginity in an incidental way? Where else does a supposed assassination attempt end with the assassin - having killed the wrong guy - escaping, only to be killed by his target's rival? Need I go on?

He's fascinating, that Val Kilmer - and Spartan is utterly watchable because his departure into the great, great world of Mamet is one of the best discoveries the writer-director has made since he invented Joe Mantenga. I'd be a liar and a communist not to admit that the dialogue is the very major attraction to this film (when this is true, though, it's usually cause for celebration, not eye rollin'); But the twisty tale's big second act shift - and how much it doesn't undermine everything that came before it - is the real reason to see the film. When rebel finds his cause, its not just saying something about the irony of how a free-thinking mentality can blossom from a many-numbered spread of formalities - - it's also using the Mamet slight-of-hand to casually compare characters who appear loyal to a cause and characters who are loyal to a cause. That Kilmer does turn makes the movie something less abrasive, something of a hopeful ray of more valuable humanity and character security than Mamet's con artist or crime pictures. It stays grim, too, maintaining a tone much like Homicide (but with a more fluid pace). Also, as I stated after the first viewing, it's a minor miracle that a film about the President's daughter being kidnapped feels too fresh and too intelligent to be described with such a logline. I'm lining up for round three. (Okay, I yield: This has been the marquee screen saver on my PC since at least mid-March: "Now you're going through the looking glass. Is it fun? Is it more fun than miniature golf?”  Q: “How long have you been up? A: "That's insignificant." “I want to speak to the Chinaman. Tell him it’s the only man he ever heard call on Jesus.”)

Anna Karina, the perpetually undecided heroine of Godard's deconstruction of American musical comedy, doubles as an energy ball, making A Woman is a Woman fun from the hair to the feet. A bag-of-tricks lighter than those in the more abstract period of his career (Sympathy for the Devil) or the downright crappy period of his career (In Praise of Love), his second film bridges the gap between the fluffy dialogues of Breathless and the collection of casual, arcane references that are Band of Outsiders (his best film). His first full-blown avante garde piece, it's confidence might be its most charming aspect: Every single moment is as solid and as clever as the last. More pleasant, I think, because it has that vibrant, wacky slapstick edge to it; Also, there's much less brooding and wallowing.

It wears its offbeat charm on its shoulder like a badge (and doesn't really go much of anywhere, really), but The Station Agent - fueled by a terrifically distracted performance by Peter Dinklage that is never confirmed, really, as a reaction to being a dwarf - pretty much overrides any cynical notion you could bring to the table by the end of its first reel.

Basically, if Maximus had never been banished to Gladiatordom and had remained Commodus' good friend (and had also had a hot love affair with Commodus' sister, Lucilla), you'd get something like The Fall of the Roman Empire, the ambition of its title saying all: It's mostly long. What's worth salvaging (and what almost earned it the so-bad-it's-funny D+ rating) are the performances: Christopher Plummer's mayhem-crazed, wildly over-arched Commodus; James Mason's hilarious writhing (as Timonides) in a scene where he's being burnt but must keep quiet; Sophia Loren's radiant sexuality and repeated desperate whisper of her lover's name ("Leeeeveeeus! Leeviiusss!"); Mel Ferrer as the creepy, unscrupulous blind soothsayer Cleander and, of course, Stephen Boyd's spacey boyishness as he conforms and conforms (and then conforms some more) for the greater good of Rome. While the whole of it is universally silly, Alec Guinness (surprise, surprise) manages to keep his dignity - playing the aging Marcus Aurelius as the sage accepting his sundown, meandering about trying to please everyone and failing to clinch peace before his demise. His is a terrific performance stuck in a film that's famous primarily because it boasts the largest outdoor set ever built for a film (1312 by 754 ft). Kubrick may have felt cheated in making the simliarly themed epic Spartacus, but at least it didn't, you know, suck.