Essentially the cinematic equivalent of a Ween album, Planet Terror simultaneously parodies and paints in the colors of 70s splatter flicks of the lowest grade. Extended cut simply piles on more of what was shown in theaters during the revolutionary Grindhouse experience - but it doesn't necessarily flesh the film out or change its pacing or trajectory. It never needs to keep a logical base (scenes go unfinished and inconsequential backstories are unspooled), which helps to encapsulate its charm: Unabashed nonsense squares the focus on the aesthetic, which is constantly teetering between out-and-out hilarity and gooey horror homage. Say what you will of the Weinsteins - but who else is spending $53 million on (two) features that are scratched and whose film is discombobulated multiple times?

It always amazes me, returning to it, that something this easy to follow, this comprehensive, something this - dare I say - economical, is based upon a James Ellroy novel. James Cromwell stood out this time: He's super-evil, burying himself in a hyper-lying, rational Irishman's ambition. It seems to capture the generally reverant nature of Ellroy's world, viewing this universe as if through the eyes of an adolescent who is in the process of making a supreme memory. Hanson would make one more great film before lapsing back into the world he came from: Star-powered genre drivel.

To further subvert the time-shifting narrative pretzel of Tarantino's masterwork, Summer and I watched the first half of the film as it jumped onto IFC and saved the second half for the following night. This gives one time - if one has seen the film more than twenty times, that is - to go back over what will come (in half #2) and juggle its placement among that which one has already seen (in half the first) and attempt, yet again, to imagine the film in plain ol' linear order. The ability to sculpt in time isn't an express requirement to enjoy everything the film has to offer, but it occurred to me - maybe for the first time ever - that its necessity comes in observing The Big Picture, so to speak. We must see Vincent take Mia out and become terrified of her husband Marsellus's wrath should he catch wind of her overdose (on Vincent's drugs, no less) in order that we fear - without question - for Butch's safety when he double crosses Marsellus. And because it almost seems unfair that Vincent gets blown away, Tarantino's resurrection of the character isn't merely a gift, its a chance to see his twin follies (accidentally shooting Marvin and failing to acknowledge Jules' religious experience with the vim Jules demands), belying quite simply that Vincent is of no more substance than his surface - a drug-addicted hothead who is fun to havve around, but has no real connection to his own soul. It's something I never actually thought of before, but it's true: Travolta's big comeback has him playing a character similar to the spectre of his career at that moment: Burned out.

Its peppy, but the key thing is the way Hepburn seems to exorcise her philosophies on both people and marriage, coming to the conclusion that, while lovable Jimmy Stewart is the most exciting match, Cary Grant's character more correctly fits her in a philosophy I believe Andre Wescott coined: "We break up, get back together, break up, get back together - sooner or later you realize we're the only ones who love to hate each other". Nearly all of it is delightful, particularly when its simply absurd. Cukor lends a more formal atmosphere that Howard Hawks would easily have disposed of, but it never melts the film's many charms.

Seems to exist in a fringe; Everywhere we gaze within the frame we expect to see tragedy and hopelessness and, at every turn - even while watching characters engulfed by a seething depression - we see the opposite: Hard working people,, fun-loving people, helpful, civil people. Its as if Burnett were representing the spirit of Watts and attempting to prove that the riots of 1965 were not the defining moment of this cluster of neighborhoods. That said, the filmmaking is pretty mind-blowing: Edited with a passive flow, as if observing just the right, random specks of human existence necessary to summate human nature. It's a safe bet that David Gordon Green has seen this film: It not only features a boy that wears a grotesque animal mask for most of his screen time (when he's not goofing off with the other youths), but the film also seems to coast on fumes of hazy tone poem organization, moody music wafting in and out, bursts of achingly natural dialogue on which whose every audible word we hang, and impeccably sumptuous photography. I would've watched it for hours and hours, but it caps at a scant eighty-three minutes.

As haunting and disconnected as the first viewing, with Herzog still front and center; Steve Zahn's death - a moment of jolt and despair - was something I slept through in the theater and something that really completes the circle of suppressed trauma Bale has to endure. Like most films about long-playing survival treks, death looms large. There's no bust-out heroics, though, which is what makes Rescue Dawn so special. Everything seems to depend entirely on casual circumstances and genuine luck, whiling in a half-starved existence that feels muted, like its on painkillers. Despite his success and my accolades for them, I wish Herzog made more films that weren't documentaries.

Was tempted to give it low marks despite how much I enjoyed the picture (and the experience), but I sincerly believe the skill with which our emotions are tapped and manipulated is worth noting. This film does just what it sets out to do (jerk tears) and it pulls it off unsparingly. Grant and Kerr are terrific, but this part comedy/part soap opera is stolen away - if only momentarily - in a scene without laughs or histrionics: Cathleen Nesbitt's appearance as Grant's Grandmother Janou, who maintains a small chapel in France and quietly makes the case for humility and warmth, simply through her mannerisms and kindness.

Choppy, but there's some great musical numbers in between the cursory romances. The most memorable sequences are, without question, the "I Left My Hat in Haiti" dance number (where Fred Astaire all but moonwalks) and the great moment where Astaire dances to "You're All the World To Me" on the walls and the ceiling, lifting the film - for just a few moments - out of its rut and into a splash of magic realism that's practically infectious.