...moves into the top ten of all time.

There is a distinctly unusual tone to The Stunt Man –at once hip and strangely confused. I tried to dance around the temptation to regard Rush’s film as a lampoon of filmmaking itself (in any case it sorta is, with all the reminiscent boorishness and redundancy of any vision that boasts a film director carrying on like a megalomaniac). Moreover, though, the film is a sturdy study (five times fast, now) in personality: O’Toole’s a large, theatrical one and Railsback a confident, snide one - and the two ever colliding. Rush gives these characters such a casual, desperate energy, playing off each other in undefined, but properly exciting terms (one lying to the other and vice versa, illusion and reality vying for screen time, the whole idea that O’Toole is, in a sense, making Railsback relive his Vietnam days by using him in wartime stunts). O’Toole hams it up, which is good because Railsback is a shrinking bore, saying every line with the same out-of-place purpose. Most of the film’s great moments actually take place between Railsback and Charles Bail, whose real life stunt work lends the laid back, sarcastic mentor he plays a wonderful, often very funny authenticity. As for the nonsensical debate over whether or not The Stunt Man is a theological allegory (with O’Toole’s Eli Cross as the God figure) – the trace elements of this theoretical idea are better left in the background (i.e. – They don’t hold much actual water). The movie itself, at face value, has such an inappropriately wacky, almost upstanding irreverence – you’ll scarcely want to do any thinking at all.

Because nothing else exists that it even remotely calls to mind - and because I find myself thinking about it at odd times, still picking it apart.

One simple phrase: Done with fish.

I value adrenaline over being genuinely moved - I think everyone does - and this second vviewing of Gangs of New York only confirmed that Scorcese's gory, off-the-wall, utterly bizarre "history" lesson belongs at the top of last year's list.

Confirming my suspicions that the American re-make had the distinct odor of a carbon copy, Nakata's film, as a cloth to cut from, is properly goopy, hyper-emotional and often, disturbingly empty. No secret by now that the premise - about a videotape that kills you a week after you watch it - is just galloping with stupidity, I can't imagine why I'd expected much more, but Ringu manages to edge out The Ring just slightly because: a) it is shorter; b) it has a much less obtuse backstory (there's none of that confusion with the horses); and, c) it still possesses the atmosphere of a Japanese horror film which, while quiet and conservative, at the very least, forgoes the pleasure of insulting the audience out of an obligation to clarity. I'm still concerned, though, that Nakata added what feels like the aesthetic equivalent to the ballet sequence in Killer's Kiss: A completely unnecessary five minute sequence (running time pad?), in which the main characters empty a well, bucketful by agonizingly slow bucketful. (Just when you thought you couldn't swallow one more self-contained rant that's off-the-subject almost entirely: Why not re-make some of the better Japanese horror films, like Angel Dust, Cure or Pulse? Christ, I'd even watch some poor, aging American actor lose a foot in an Audition overhaul).

When Smith inexplicably manned the low budget end of the independent film movement with funny, disposable dialogue and likable losers in Clerks., I used to brag to people on a regular basis that I had seen the film in the theater (Even venturing so far into unnecessary justification waters as to add an exaggerated addendum about the film showing through a Sunday art film program, regularly attended by the elderly, who found precious little to laugh at while my pal Randy and I cackled loudly and youthfully). The cackling part is true, and at age fifteen, I wasn't aware how right a fit that was (obviously): The film certainly plays unabashadely to a certain level and specificity of demographic that I feel more comfortable admitting to once inhabiting rather than currently incubating. Smith's films are (in terms of mass of audience, wisely) built on the assumption that his laymen's poetry in the form of raunchy, honest dialogue and campy comic book-style imagery, have an easier time impressing the viewer if - and here the e-mail's come - the viewer isn't yet old enough to purchase the very cigarettes that seem to control most of the business at Quick-Stop grocery. Aside from calling Smith out - probably at least two too many times by now - as the juvenile tinkerer that he is, I must submit, from my very depths, that the movie has managed to, over the years, worm its way into my nostalgic veins and, still works - despite horrific acting and often, insultingly low lowbrow humor - on me like a sappy sentiment. A dirty, sappy sentiment.

[NOTE: Under no circumstances should anyone ever read this review before viewing the film. You can read thefirst sentence. That's okay. But no further, you hear? Only read the first sentence (and perhaps the second). If you read further you will spoil a possible whopper of a surprise.]

Dadetown is a small NY town, one factory - and it is changing. As much a comment on that change - for a more corporate-driven, decidedly benign existence - as it is a comment on the filming and subsequent exploitation of these sorts of films, Dadetown feels like one of Errol Morris's documentaries: A non-fiction so theatrical, it almosts feels like brilliant fiction. (You were warned. Eyes off - unless you've seen the film, of course). Director Russ Hexter (who died before the film's premiere at the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema) uses the end credits as almost a twist ending - announcing himself and John Housely as thhe film's writers - and, finally, calling the film out as a staged, fictional account. Subtle and incredibly observant, the film is probably the single most successfully covert - and important - mockumentary ever made.

Scandalous highbrow
subtext-fest: Watercolor
style execution.