Fitting comfortably in the same sweet indent wherein the best of Godard's 60s pictures rest, Masculin Feminine is another grand road-burner, gleefully mixing critical essay motifs on anti-Vietnam sentiment in Paris and the torrents of romantic warfare within its denizens. It's trimmed with all the perpetual whimsy of a pop revolutionary youth scene you expect to find in these films, you ask: Why so glum, man? It's so hard to tap out a review that doesn't stink of homogenized passivity. (So hard, I'm complaining about having to do it again. See also: Weekend.) Here's the deal. I don't have time to sit down and pick these things apart and come up with conclusions. And Godard demands that. He practically takes the experience away from you if you let it waft through your lungs rather than inhale and hold it. Someday, when I have broken my leg or retired or (god forbid) hit the lottery, I'll fire up the coffee pot and take notes and do research and write some choice stuff. Until then, you'll have to swallow this: Masculin Feminine is led by the New Wave's unofficial host, Jean-Pierre Leaud, doing exactly what I crave: A full-on Doinel variation.

You know you're in the presence of genius when a callous, old world conductor, who is capable - he thinks - of the most horrible revenges, gets off the hook so easily at close that you almost want to applaud the directorial choice. This is a black comedy that only pretends to redeem itself, when all along what it's really revealing to us is a terrific contrast between the literal savagery of a man scorned (as a hilariously self-important Rex Harrison believes his wife has strayed and imagines three ways to "get" her) and the underlying ice of the so-called privelidged mindset, where it was once perfectly acceptable for a man to mistrust his wife at the drop of a hat, treat her like garbage without evidence, and be forgiven without question. Sturges peppers the thing with some of his most stinging zippers ("That's Russian Bank. Russian Roulette's a very different amusement which I can only wish your father had played continuously before he had you!"), while leaning ever so slightly on a gush of slapstick in the film's most wildly absurd/wholeheartedly funny sequence (Harrison trying to find and program a recording device as he slowly destroys his living room). Structure, by design, makes it harder to lose yourself in; It doesn't matter, though: There's always another joke.

Here's the thing: I know the film is viewed, in some quarters, as great exploitation (and it is low budget trash to the letter: tons of fantasy sex, cadmium blood, gratuitous slow motion) and in other quarters, as fiery women's lib (two females stick up banks with dynamite and subjugate men at nearly every turn) but, unfortunately, it doesn't operate smoothly as both (and, to my mind, it simply cannot be both). The most interesting component is the uncanny resemblance Thelma & Louise bears to it. Corman is so forgivable, though, for producing/inspiring some of the greatest talent of our time. And you just know Tarantino breaks in new friends with this thing.

Taking a brief detour from his more regular toilings within the wrist-slitting genre, Bergman was once quoted - according to TCM - as saying (paraphrasing): "I could either make this film or kill myself". In it, we find a mound of melodrama - a philanderer whose wife has yet to consummate their marriage after two years tries to go back to his mistress, ruffling the feathers of her equally married benefactor and the philanderer's own son (from another marriage) - that unfolds somewhere between dry humor and social satire, married by Bergman's lovely evocation of the actual summer season. What makes Smiles of a Summer Night so pleasing, you see, is how gently the line is blurred between the atmosphere and the environment of regimented, easy-to-swallow small town life during the warm, sunny months. Because Bergman was never shy about giving seasons metaphoric rights on the tumult of modern life - and it was something he was able to do quite well - the mildness of Smiles of a Summer Night (even though one character tries to kill himself and fails while another gets "shot" in the face) is all but the lion's share of its charm.

As if reading my mind, Maddin suddenly eschews all dialogue, freeing up the title cards to work the way they do in silent films natural to their period. Results: Stupendous. Part of the fun is how off-the-wall this one seems; Chapter stops about reliving a honeymoon fisting, a wax museum full of hockey players that need to be fed and come to life when our hero needs them, a phony hand transplant, and - crammed in between - kaleidoscopic hockey/sex footage galore. In short: Maddin grafts the modern sensibilities into his silent-esque stylization with a purity he's been inching towards lo' these many years. This is easily Maddin's best film.

It opens nicely, as if it might adopt an Altman/Shaggy Dog policy, profiling everything and nothing at the same time; Later, it erupts into a terribly misfired character study (complete with ailing grandpa, tragedy begat by idealism (over and over and over again) and unconventional courtroom antics). There's also a scene where Jack Warden takes a helicopter out and tries to get the gas tank as close to empty as possible before (crash) landing. But mostly, ...And Justice For All is, probably, the first instance of what Owen Gleiberman calls the "Loud Voice Al" picture, a dismal scenery chewing exercise that has all but swallowed the actor's career in recent days. It finally arrives at the, (ahem), ultimate realization that the legal system: a) doesn't work, b) produces more deceit than it processes and, finally, c) can be used against itself in certain instances. That it uses the Pacino Shuffle to come to these revolutionary conclusions is just absurd.

I'm keeping the "one off" at the front for a reason. And that reason is: I think it would make a great tagline for future re-releases: "Comparisons to Taxi Driver are unavoidable. Comparisons to a horror movie are outrageous." One of the reasons the grade is so high (despite the groaning disdain of those I watched it with) is the early snapshot of Ferrera's talent for excess: Long sequences of him yelling and screaming about god knows what, constant inclusion of the Velvet Undergroundesque Roosters (the band that lives below him) and, without a doubt, the roving BumCam, which captures the filthy occupancy of NYC's streets in a kind of indie reversal of Taxi Driver's art film pathos. The title, and all the faux-gore drilling that ensues, is misleading and petty. Its place in an otherwise raw stream of frustrated urban consciousness serves a marketing purpose - we imagine - that discredits the film.

The grand spectacle of Suspiria, with some of the most sumptous cinematography ever put on film, is so strangled, so stranded, partly because the film is dubbed, I suspect, but also, in part, because it so studiously pursues the many facets of its plot, cheerfully ignorant of how close it really is to mirroring the cheap effects of a straight-up slasher film (bare definition: people are offed, one by one, until they're not). As if moving a switch back and forth, Argento creates moments of pure terror (the arm bursting through the window, a room full of razor wire, the moments leading up to our protag's meeting with the head witch) and intersperses moments of pure silliness (the bat leaps readily to mind, but also the characterizations: Manly witches, a goofy exposition pop-up by Udo Kier, the chase into what looks like ancient Rome). I kept wanting to rank it higher in my mind, but my head was shaking too consistently for that to possibly stick.

Not as cruel, gritty or tragic as it pretends to be; There's nothing less menacing than breakdancing gangsters. Seriously.

Terrific, fun trash from start to finish.

Gets skit-y, but it's another one that's so "too soon", its existence alone makes it powerful. I swear there are a bunch of knocks at Triumph of the Will.

Chris Nolan is, likely, the best Hollywood crossover success story in recent years.

The simplicity of Lubitsch's tale (best friends become enemies then friends again while pursuing the same dame) plus the snap-crackle wit of his very pre-code dialogue makes this a film I'd call - in the privacy of my own home, of coursee - An overlooked classic on par with the best screwball comedies of its time or some such shit.

Disappointing, by-the-numbers wartime drama; Greece, Crete, et al: Just doesn't make a great film. (See also: Catch-22 and, to a much more heinous extent, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, a film I don't feel comfortable reminding you exists).