Synonomous always with Wyler, The Little Foxes is no deviation: It is Hansomely Mounted. Bette Davis is terrifically venemous (and almost over-the-top at times) as she issues injunctions to nearly everyone in her family, hoping to hoist over her head a larger share of a deal her husband may not live to see. Her scenes with Teresa Wright are the most problematic thing happening in the film. Lillian Hellman wrote the script from her play, before being blacklisted. I don't know if the translation or the chemistry of the actresses is to blame (I suspect it's a bit of both), but Wright never really feels like Davis's daughter. On one level this is the point, I suppose, but, on another level, a deeper bond is never communicated. For the ending to work - methinks that is dire. Nevertheless, the film is never anything short of completely engrossing. Occasionally, if you pay attention, you can catch bits of dialogue that were clearly contributed by Dorothy Parker. The Little Foxes isn't acerbic - and it's never warm. An effectively cold film about greed, it's also a sharp observation on the whim of family.

The Gleaners and I is like a Channel 12 documentary as a pop masterpiece. Varda's is an immensely entertaining film about the multi-faceted world of gleaning, be it grapes and wheat after a harvest, images for a film, trash from the sidewalk in front of a stranger's home or produce from an open market. Using DV properly - to accentuate the story she's telling - Varda moves with such  attention to length, never veering from her topical exploration of herself and others - as both take what's left over in lifee. The personalities of her subjects also help to paint a fascinating vision of modern French attitudes towards their country, their world and their respective situations. In America, we rarely get a light-hearted look at the culture of France without at least some measure of sarcasm. Even most French films don't take their worlds seriously. More than anything, The Gleaners and I establishes Varda's wise old sage gaze - which is at once a child-like "Why" and a welcome air of positivity. It's a fun movie to watch.

Dare you question the genius of Mamet? See hithero the town he's created for State and Main. Then stand back, because you've got some awe to strike. (Clark Gregg's acceptance of the money in this, my third viewing of the film, seems to me to be one cuts-to-the-bone shot at Hollywood and politics too many. Otherwise, it's still nothing short of brilliant).

Yeah, it kinda falls apart when you realize how thrown together it is - and how, simultaneously, we wish we actually knew more about Joe Mantenga than the fact that he's a self-hating jew (is that repeated ad nauseum or what?) But the dialogue exchanges, most of them anyhow, rank among Mamet's finest work. Also a big factor in my decision to watch Homicide again was the suspicion that, in fact, Mamet actually strings his entire second act on a red herring that has almost naught to do with the first (technically, the film is strictly two acts). His intermingling of "things aren't always what they seem" and "often times, shit is exactly as it appears" works better here than in The Spanish Prisoner or Heist (because it's not hell-bent on dissecting con artists), but never actually succeeds on the emotional level House of Games or Glengarry Glen Ross (which he didn't, as I'm constantly footnoting, actually direct) seem to thrive on.

Legosi plays a crazed, brilliant (these words so often fit Bela's bill) surgeon, obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe and in possession of a number of torture devices he's just dying to try out. When he saves a beautiful dancer's life - and becomes infatuated with her - he decides to have a little party wherein he plans to manipulate an escaped convict and killer (played by Karloff) who wishes to elude authorities by having his appearance altered. The best news is that, in point of fact, there are some moments where The Raven actually lives up to the saliva-inducing premise set forth. (As par for the course, formula, exposition and censorship wreck most of the film's most promising aspects). The hidden surprise - as the film is post-Frankenstein and post-Dracula - is watching Legosi constantly overactting, trying to upstage Karloff, whose presence and popularity Legosi was openly paranoid about. Hearing Bela recite even small pieces of Poe's poem The Raven is worth your sixty-seven minutes in itself.

Works a whole lot better on DVD, where it feels more intimate and therefore, can exercise its character study muscles. Pacino may fret before he's lost sleep (which still detracts from the overall power of his insomnia), but watching him manipulate his surroundings on no sleep is actually a whole lot more interesting that I originally perceived. Williams is passable - I didn't find him any more or less annoying - and gets to say the best line of diallogue: "Life is so important. Why is it so fucking fragile?" Just barely missed being upgraded to a B;  there's still some huge problems with the film, namely, crap like Pacino's big disclosure scene to Maura Tierney (blinking light on his head that hums, "exoneration, exoneration") and Martin Donovan's performance (its as if he's acting with the foreknowledge that he's going to be shot). Nolan's widescreen composition and competent direction  guide this remake (that's still no better or worse than it's source material) into being one of the better crime procedural's (perhaps putting it next to other genre entries - Murder By Numbers springs to mind - made me realize that there are few really well guided versions of classical murder mysteries). When Pacino accidentally shoots Donovan, his partner, he finds himself bearing this sad news to Donovan's widow  (to which she reacts: "When you find him, don't you dare fucking arrest him!"), may be one of the most self destructively exhilarating moments of the year). I'd watch Insomnia again.

It's light - more soapy than his earlier work - and it nicely frames the semiotics off manipulation around the study of philosophy and art. It's a film about personal space, though - and by the time the main character weaves herself into far too many strange and impossible places and situations (with such little rationalization), the movie feels more than a little manipulative itself. Nice cinch at the ending; Rohmer could've shaved about fifteen or twenty minutes off it, though.

Christensen has levels of  Nick Broomfield's humor and self promotion in him as he playfully jokes about the customs of witchcraft and his actors begging him to try certain torture methods. It is just that clever sensibility that does a reversal on us as we watch an incredibly comprehensive, intellectually thorough study of Satan's helpers. It's a mixed bag of footage that ranges from the  painterly staging of the Middle Ages to rib jabbing recreations of Satanic ritual to dissections of torture methods to religious critique to eye bulging sets (and the list goes on and on and on). It's the kind of film that deserves its Criterion treatment.

"Whimsical. It means almost dumb", says Jennifer Beals, in a very random cameo. Something is certainly lost in the translation (erratic and free, components of the real definition, better describe the film). Moretti's is a film to watch first thing in the morning. In three parts, it chronicles a journey through Rome by Vespa, a tour of Italian islands and, finally, Moretti's own battle with doctors as they try to root out a terrible bout of itching. Every second of it is so simple and so pleasantly poetic, you'll wish you could give more of yourself to it. And Moretti is a major talent.

Much to my surprise, you can actually see, way off in the distance, a narrative cowering in the form of an epic poem, wishing someone other than Fellini had chosen to adapt it, in hopes that perhaps it could become more than a slide show of the Rome of expensive sets - and Bacchanal behavior. Alas, it amounts to nothing more than a loose form, the shape-shifting visualization of a time we realize all too well mirrors ours (or, did mirror ours, when it was made in 1968). The blonde-locked lead and his rowdy brunette partner are the closest relations to main characters, and their exploits keep redefining their personalities. Instead of saying their characters change (they'd have to actually be "characters" to do so), I lament the way they seem to be able to - if only for the most brief of seconds - raise their heads above the super indulgent world Fellini dwarfs them with. Point well taken, but Fellini Satyricon is just too damn noisy and cluttered to revere.

Oh, that I were ten again and that Carpenter's film wasn't constantly vying for my attention in two forms: horror film and super-low budget independent horror film. Oh, to be ignorant and blissfully terrified beyond my capable wits again. But alas - it is not to be. (Still, it's a technical masterpiece of organized fright tactics, starting - and peaking - with the simple, exhilirating piano score).