I was worried as I began to watch Limbo that I might not feel the magic I'd felt during previous viewings. The dialogue montages outlining the characters and their environment are more succinct and revelant than those in Sunshine State or Casa de los Babys, but its the sense that even the characters know they fit a certain mold (hence the constant banter about being resigned to a sort of "brand" of human being - a serial lover, a man broken, an afflicted adolescent). Continuing on that path, the ideal of storytelling - Noelle's improvised diary entries, Donna's hooking into the feeling of each song, several of the characters existing only to relive episodes from the past - is floated as text and, in that shockingg love-it-or-hate-it moment at close, subverted, as if to reveal that what is unknown is the only reality for these people, despite their assertion otherwise. Strathairn gives his best performance to date.

Charmingly self-aware, One Fine Day has the prestige of being the one film in recent years that has come the closest to evoking the tone and energy of 1940s screwball films. From the hopelessly contrived plot - one convenience follows another - to the bracingly rehearsed dialogue, Hoffman's below-radar film, wrongly sold as a 1996's Big Holiday Romantic Comedy, seems to thrive on being a film of complete foregone conclusion, upended repeatedly (We know Clooney and Pfieffer will end up together and the film's running gag is putting unbelievable - but delightful - obstacles up to stop them).

Though the least lived-in and the most staged of Tarkovsky's films, Ivan's Childhood is ripe with images completely unique to its time, a harbinger of similarly grandiose visage to come. The idea is topsy-turvy: Our title character is casually thrust into adulthood, copes, is given the Antoine Doinel treatment (whisked to boys' school) and then escapes back into the fray of a smoldering war. Traditional soldiers - lusting after women, drinking, squabblinng in pangs of fear - carry on this bizarre policy naturally and in step with a traditional narrative. What's astonishing in Ivan's Childhood is that first moment when we taste the dreamlife Ivan is living in. It's parlay - jarringly - into reality is essentially a Tarkovsky thread, appearing repeatedly in his films - the orgy in Andrei Roublev that ends in savage violence, Solaris's realization of an artificial dream world, the title action of The Sacrifice being laced with the reality of it  - but born here with a kind of stark, confrontational horror. Nikolai Burlyayev is compelling to the last, and would appear as Boriska, the bell caster, in Andrei Roublev; In both films, he accepts the responsibility of a man, despite acknowledging the damage it will inevitably do.

As an afterthought, Andrei Roublev is easily the best depiction of an artist that I've seen, but its the concept that really dazzles. The film is told in chapters, each vying for "Best Setpiece" in an unofficial, deeply inappropriate contest I was holding in the basement of my brain: Will it be the 360' pan around the stable with the soft voices over the soundtrack, the plummeting hot air balloon, the tartar raid on Vladimir, the orgy and its aftermath, the eye-gouging in the woods, the presentation of Roublev's surviving works (in bright, eye-stinging colors) or, is it definitively The Bell Casting sequence (my personal fave)? Thing is - what happens to give all of these great sets of moments an edge is their otherworldly - both in literal and in filmic terms - sense. There is quite simply no epic as loosely structured but deeply satisfying. It's a gamble of meandering ideas, barely connective tissue and characters of seemingly no modern relevance that feels as fluid and exciting as anything that exists in convention. It's one of a very few immediate, genuinely and massively entertaining art films.

I love it and everything - and it's hilarious, don't get me wrong (built of wall-to-wall-gags, fervent audacity and just plain looniness). It's downright inspired. And inspiring, apparently, as Airplane!'s humor has evolved into all sorts of strange and wonderful genres over recent years. And despite the fact that and there's more narrative dead air in it than I remember, its preposterous, unofficial contention for "The Funniest Movie Ever Made" seems apropos. Like another gag.

As dark and razory as Sweet Smell of Success, but on a grander, more openly satirical scale. Watching Douglas in this mode is a particular thrill; This is easily his best performance (of the 8 I've seen, I mean). Billy Wilder takes a potshot, sure, but who better to make the most respectable fish-in-a-barrel cautionary maybe ever?

Wim Wenders' simple question regarding the future of cinema (with obvious implications attached, of course) gets put to some of world cinema's masters (folks like Fassbinder, Antonioni and Godard) who proceed to bore us to death. Not one questions the validity or stupidity of the question itself, leaving us to watch 16 flattered artists attempt to encapsulate their mission with maximum pretention. I'm disappointed to report: They all succeed.

Still crackles and pops. Found myself really drawn to Pacino's performance and the scenes at CBS; Doesn't hurt that the whole thing behaves like an interviewee - giving an extra slice of ham to an already heightened, camera-conscious atmosphere.

Might be my favorite of the fun Polanskis, which tend to float on a positively terrific irony: The absurd must be taken seriously to the point where sincerity and goofiness seem to riff on each other. I keep saying it and saying it and saying it: It's a comic adventure - save the ending - of very Indiana Jonnes proportions.

Navigating with ease through the harsh realities of the postwar Ginza Strip life, Naruse weighs the price of each - both morally and emotionally - through the genuinely remarkable main character (the "a" in the title hints at the film's omnipotent perception). Credit Hideko Takamine, whose performance as Mama (equal parts winning perserverance and unwavering bad luck) puts us deep into her dilemna: Consider a marriage of convenience to be a way out into a mediocre life or continue with a measure of independence constantly diminished by exploitation. Full confession: I found myself actively rooting for her to find a third solution.

One Missed Call is hackneyed in the same way Ringu was: You roll your eyes into a frenzy of "yeah right" almost immediately. Miike's film may contain some genuinely scary setpieces - the reality of what took place in the appartment, The Big Corpse Hug - but it also contains all the tired elements of J-horror's pointlessly convoluted corridors: Long, sordid familial connections, intricate "top-this!" death scenes and an ambiguous, sequel-wet conclusion. Miike is easily a better filmmaker than Nakata, but it's more likely because, over the last decade, Miike has made an average of 5.4 films per year to Nakata's 1.