It felt like a tighter "comedy" this go-round - my simply looking forward to these characcters and their mannerisms. Writing this after viewing something like Wimbledon, which has a Britcom sensibility gently laid over an intense, aggressive American marketing central nervous system, I think I'm inclined to give Shaun of the Dead even MORE props; Though I remarked before that it was aimed toward Yanks, I think that statement may not have been very well informed (it's been quite awhile since I inhaled anything as airy as a Britcom, let alone something so keen on charm above all). Shaun of the Dead starts out with terrific camera moves and hip music, but what drives it - and this is very much in opposition to my original take - is the universality its nationalism belies: It's straight-up British, but it doesn't seem foreign or unfamiliar. In a way, I think it's less a case of Wright's comedy being attractive to American audiences because the accents and word choices are goofy (although this is still a factor), but simply that it doesn't seem at all uncommon for these social customs to be our mirror. I still err on the side of chagrin when I call to mind the third act (it's the weak point, no doubt), but it was growing on me. Even the fart jokes caused the unconscious acknowledgment/chuckle/embarrasment.

The hysteria of Nero's call to arms against the Christians (he blamed them for the fire that burned Rome - a fire he started) is downright silly, which goes hand in hand with DeMille's over-the-top everything (costumes, sets, props, the acting). This is consistent - but still irritating. Top Rome cop Frederric March, the Christian woman he's crushing on (Elissa Landi) and Nero's vamp wife (Claudette Colbert, taking that memorably sexy milk bath) all keep the affair feeling too modern to be a period piece, leaving only Nero himself - played with a angry fat kid's poetry of madness by an extremely young Charles Laughton - to disappear into the wine and silk of period decadence. The Sign of the Cross is a great example (if you need one) of pre-code sex and violence, a near-constant flow of semi-nudity and people being mercilessly beaten and murdered; It's matinee glamour is in high spirit as well - although it seems to draw away from what's interesting instead of being what's interesting - - even on the other side of a 70+ year vantage point.

One of the most purely entertaining of Oscar's declining barrage of prestige films, Erin Brockovich seems to work better than most of the last five years' obvious crowd-pleasers because Soderbergh invests so much in the cinematic language without discounting safe bets like a formula-driven screenplay or constant scenery chewing. It works, most likely because he - and Roberts, whom I dislike pretty much so that I may continually state that I like her and have it seem like a big deal - are able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, from moment one, that the title character would have probably been an even larger scenery chewer herself. Nevertheless, it's Albert Finney's Ed Masry, stealing every scene he's in, that holds the film together. There's authority, and warmth, and genuineness; Whenever the film seems to veer into dangerous, familiar waters, he seems to be there to whip it back into shape. His - and, to an extent, biker boyfriend Aaron Eckart's - presence, is such a terrific counterbalance, we wonder why they weren't nominated for Oscars alongside Benecio Del Toro, who won that year for Soderbergh's equally melt-in-your-mouth entertaining Traffic.

Madcap wordplay and zoinks!-absurd twists abound (I originally wrote "twits" - - Freudian?); The Beatles have the zealous indignance of youth down pat and Lester milks it at every turn. Didn't quite wring out with the same beautiful pace I remember when I watched it before, but it could be that I was more focused on the music this time than the filmmaking (having recently had my yearly Beatles' renaissance). Whet my appetite for another viewing of The Knack...And How to Get It, a better film by Richard Lester.

My oft-referred to "Best Film of All Time" (though in circles where I want to get beyond the college wall poster crowd, I usually list Citizen Kane and The Night of the Hunter), a two and a half hour montage, is probably the most watchable piece of cinema ever made. I'd like to get all deep and what not, pointing to the humanistic and managerial filters I embodied upon this viewing, but I'll spare us all. Little to say that hasn't been said already.

The first half of the film - a gay love story of sorts - seems to be experienced through memories exclusively, rather than a third person observation, making it a very subjective tangle. It occurred to me more than once that our lives only exist in our memories and that this was a statement more of accuracy than philosophical undertones (because, technically, everything we've ever done is only remembered and half-remembered; we never re-experience anything). The layered effect, wherein scenes transcend their seemingly random construction, existing through both main characters' consciousness is a complete yin to the second half's yan. The story of a shaman whose spirit is trapped in that of a tiger's (though he can still assume both forms), though it interrupts it's sequential unfold with a lengthy dream sequence, it is meant to be a linear transition (the spirit enters the dream of a soldier commissioned to kill the tiger) that awakes only a few feet from the original trajectory. The idea is "conceived" (just as Weerasethakul is credited with conception rather than as director) that we all embody one another in the end, leaving the link between the first half of the film and the second half to be buried in the idea of overlapping memory: If we all share the same consciousness, the story of our lives can only be experienced through our memories, some of which overlap, but all of which are, in the end, the same. I go back to Dustin Hoffman's speech in I Heart Huckabee's: Here's the blanket - and here's you, and here's me and over heere, here's the Eiffel Tower in Paris - but it doesn't matter because we're all the same. Tropical Malady is a lulling, incredibly adept work of free-flowing poetry. I've heard it referred to as "pure cinema" (though the critic immediately backed out of such a claim): That's exactly what it is. I can't wait to watch it somewhere other than on a Region 2 DVD on my PC.

There's so many films like this one, though; I find when a central performance is of the clear central focus and all else is not only expendable but, often, cheap and self-serving, the performance either thrives or gets tainted. The great thing about Lumet's The Pawnbroker is how Steiger's radical transformation off screen is all but ignored: He's so lived-in, it's all you can do to convince yourself it really is him for the first half hour or so. The complexities of his character are often a bit too well-etched for the scenario he's in (running a front for an insulting, dangerous Harlem crime lord while coming to grips with an unfolding relapse of concentration camp memories), but Lumet's insistence on putting the thing in a time-stamped urban wasteland, laced with Quincy Jones' ultimately defining bee-bop jazz score, gives the thing such a easy flavor to digest, you can see why actors love to be in his films: He makes them look fucking great.

The grade probably doesn't reflect the presence of a "Director's Cut" looming about, but probably comes closer to representing what one might feel about the film when one can remove oneself from feeling the need to understand it (having seen it before, I'd already known to do that). I'm saying this because Summer - seeing it for the first time - had most of the same complaints I did (laack of focus, indie sensibilities in a bad way, the "I don't get it" factor). What I found exciting about it this time around (aside from its correct aspect ratio) was how humorous it is and how dead-on its perception of high school youth seems. Sarcasm and youthful arrogance that pushes the envelope ("I hope you get molested" is a favorite), the loung-ey tendencies of wealth-raised youth, unconventional-style teachers (a Drew Barrymore performance I don't hate: That makes two!) and the constant lack of vision (everything is right in front of you - the trait Donnie defies, and pays for...)

It's too comfortable with its sitcom simplicity to embrace it's own truly brilliant stab at satirizing modern office culture. I caught about a half hour of Swingers the other night and you know what: I really like Ron Livingston. It's one of those films that you catch late in the afternoon and either fall asleep watching or see only the same twenty minutes while you're waiting for someone to arrive at your house.

Still one of the greatest motion pictures of all time, still gives me flurries of chill every time I watch it, still a hugely contradictory love for me: I'm practically an aetheist and yet the passion of one of the most duplicitous, uncannily hypocritical religions the world has ever seen (Christianity) continually bowls my socks over. As at odds with this as I am, every time I watch it, I'm blown away by just how disorganized and chaotic the preliminary ramblings of Jesus are, how perfect DeFoe seems cast in this role, and how staggering the feeling is to wish you could be on board with what is, essentially, a symbolic philosophy people consistently read as something they are supposed to believe as literal and tangible. (Every sentence that starts this way is suspect, but here goes anyhow:) As John Lennon said, "God is a concept by which we measure our pain...I don't believe the bible...I don't believe in Jesus...I just believe in me".

A more searing treatise on its title than either of the two previous films in Antonioni's loose trilogy (L'Avventura and La Notte), L'Eclisse is pretty much all about its mise en scene. From the opening break-up sequence that blends into Vitti's flirtation with an unscrupulous stock broker to the apocalyptic ending that dumps all the main characters in favor of mood and location, Antonioni gathers every possible set-up that reflects alienation and begins to drive a wedge between the audience and the film. It's a terrific technique: Both structurally and experentially, L'Eclisse is the very picture of disconnect; It's a slow film, full of cues that only reward those willing to accept the thesis of its essay, which appears to be that nothing in this world is really connected, especially our own comfort with it. Vitti is in typical brood-mode, achieving a similar effect to that of both L'Avventura and Red Desert (my favorite of her performances, if you want to call a favorite). It's one of those great films that you have absolutely no desire to watch again unless its projected on a large screen.

Gregory Peck's first performance is commanding, and for awhile, the cobbled-together family of resistance fighters surviving in a bunker seems like it will lead to interesting places. Later, however, Days of Glory goes for the big sympathy push, making martyrs of EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER. Not only are they all killed in the name of freedom, but they are all given these little patriotic moments (they're Russian, by the way), framed by brutish - borderline antithetical - portrayals of Nazis. So, it's a broad film. Days of Glory has some great, redeeming moments: Despite its irritable nature, the final death of a teenage boy is set in a small village that comes alive with that 1940s snowbound-set feel that only comes out of Hollywood, a tense sequence with a bucket of water and a hostage is a standout, and the opening sequence, where a female sniper takes down a Nazi, only to find the corpse being raided for liquor by one of her comrades, has the bracing, human tone the whole movie seems to be failing to reach.