Like First Blood, its full of broad strokes of complete and utter convenience that would never exist in conditions this ideal (Will's oppressive religious upbringing, the scarcity of parental figures in Lee's household, a lack of, um, death during many of these stunts). Much of this is quashed by its genuinely irresistable reflection of art-inspired youth (in this case, private schoolboys hellbent on winning a British homemade movie competition by staging their own retelling of First Blood). While Will accidentally sees half of his first film ever while hiding in a storeroom, its Lee who makes The Big Change via a series of events lacking even a smidgen of humor/subtlety/transition. That the ending is doused in such a dark alley-oop of unrelenting sentimentalism is a shame, really, as the film plies such a great barrage of light, exceptionally well-observed comic moments all the way up to said self indulgent finale. Jules Sitruk's Didier Revol, the uber-glam French exchange student, brings the culture of the 1980s with the same all-encompassing, you-can-never-go-back verve that the monolith brought the concept of the tools to the monkeys in 2001. If Garth Jennings had an ounce of gumption, there would be a spin-off movie called "Revol: The Him" already in the works.

Crafty, symmetrical, and theatrical, with Laughton in Fat King Cynic mode while his daughters are Just. Not. Having. It. The exaggerated class and sex disparities make for a dynamite comic tone. It's also a satisfying, unfiltered pleasure to watch justice get served and the deserving outwit the dunderheaded. This would make a clutch high school play imo.

Alternately creepy and profound, Ordet relegates its continuing religious debate to loyalty and blind faith, giving Preben Lerdorff Rye, the lecherous son from Day of Wrath, a most dynamic and unsettling agenda. He's extraordinary, prancing in and out of frame (all but precursing Brando in Apocalypse Now with random dialogues) as the serene threat - and reminder - to conventional, everyday religion that empassioned lunacy awaits those who don't keep perspective. It's really just one slam-bang stunner after another, culminating in a final scene ripped off by everyone from Von Trier to Reygades. Easily my favorite Dreyer.

Christ do I feel at home in this movie.

Still hilarious, but best when its chugging along, unspooling with a numb gape at Stern's antics; The attempts to round the biography into a feel-good narrative seem at odds with the persona of Howard. Odd reversal, though, and one that only works retroactively: Howard's subsequent divorce only makes the romance in the film seem more fictional, which both enhances the crass casting of a more attractive "actress" (who only halfway connects with him) and makes the whole damn thing appear like some goo-goo eyed daydream where The Jester marries The Princess.

Both times I've walked away wishing it was called Herlof's Marte, but there's plenty else. There's the unsettling marriage of a decrepit old minister to a twentysomething woman who may or may not be a witch, her humorless pudgeball of a mother-in-law (who carries on as if she's still nursing him) and the son who falls madly in love with his stepmother. Dreyer's thematic updraft - meant to mirror the Nazi occupation of Denmark in 1943 - is at once gripping and genuine, the output of a man both religious and progressive. It was just a warm-up, though.

Add this title to the list of compulsions: It can be quoted freely and watched daily. And I've watched it, like, a million times. Are you mad at me?

Dreyer does Bresson, but I felt completely locked out: Its more an essay than anything, despite Rosenbaum's absurdly detailed defense of it in Placing Movies. Draining the vitality from a character plagued by her embrace of a perfect ideal of love is a point-maker (we must be flexible and willing to sacrifice in love), but JESUS FUCKING CHRIST does it feel like a slow motion plane spiraling in descent. The coda - while Gertrud and Gabriel interact in a context that's more interesting than any that have come before - plays out on an island, detached from the rest of the thing like the tacked-on plum that it is.

Dan Hill's "It's a Long Road", tinkling over John Rambo's inevitable Long Walk Through The Crowd at close, pretty much sums up the tone of First Blood: Dated time capsule of a Reagan-era hero. The film itself isn't much more than B-movie satisfaction with a budget and a decaying star, the kind of standalone that spawns three sequels on the promise of GO USA Porn. Its got camp value to spare, with Stallone in mumbly-joe mode, pissing off The Man (Dennehy, in great, "Who gives a fuck if we're fat?" mode) by returning to town after being ejected from it, beating to a pulp his cronies and working to exorcise his war demons by living out that war atop Mount Oregon. I can see why this ridiculous film became so popular. You can eat it up with a spoon.

Raw for '51, but also overplotted and roundly cinematic, it never veers into an assaultive realism or a philosophic haze - though it has elements of both. Gene Evanns is exceptional, giving what just barely amounts to an osmotic performance, trudging about as the skillfully hardended soldier in a perpetual state of stark, cynical gruffness. His relationship with William Chun's Short Round is one of the most complex and emotionally abundant of the Fuller canon imo.

These Tati films just wash over me, skimming the surface of genre by washing their hands of same. Because the satire is wholly broad, their visage king above all and their hero practically admirable, there is the sense that they are interchangeable. For me, its what Wes Anderson did with his last three pictures: Acquired funding for grandiose-looking, obtuse "comedies" that appeal to precisely the narrow crowd he would count himself among, were he watching the films he was making. In short: This is some sweet tunnel vision.

There have been a great slew of these sorts of pictures over the years, giving this one a retroactively homogenized feel. The characters are marginally complex, each behaving and philosophizing in sometimes opposite directions. Stamp doesn't care if he dies, Hurt seems at odds with his purpose and Roth is a cowboy - or are they? Frears film is clearly a minor gangster picture, small and content to be so, typically enjoyable to listen to and featuring a genuine sense of surprise in every pocket. Would love to know the story surrounding Fernando Rey, and why he's relegated to a dialogue-less cameo. Bizarre, that.