Mamet's language, his complex plotting and, ultimately, the light as a feather tone he extracts from his cutthroat expose on the corruption of Hollywood film crews shooting on location, these are the things I treasure and have begun to realize are the backbone of his genius. It isn't merely the presence of his dialogue. Not just the con on top of con on top of con weaved into his stories. Let's not lean too hard on tone either. The presence of all three are what make him a successful film writer/director. His best films (Glengarry Glen Ross, American Buffalo, House of Games) are all great because they exploit all three of the crucial Mamet-ian elements. State and Main may be the best film he's made since Glengarry Glen Ross and certainly, in my opinion, the best he's directed. Bring on the hyperbole accusations. I dodge them all. Go you Huskies!

It is fun, and utterly macabre. Devolving into nothing more than a whodunit - and one that really isn't all that compelling - some of the best moments in the film come when we look into Price's eyes and see the very picture of his genius: he could turn evil into charm without ever missing a beat. Originally made as a 3-D motion picture, some scenes (most notably the carnival barker doing yo-yo tricks into the camera) are downright laughable in how obvious their gimmick is being forced into the story. That the gimmick is being forced into a story that, all told, isn't all that interesting at heart, shouldn't make you laugh nearly as much.

A hilarious film about the meticulous steps taken to fake an injury and collect a bunch of money. On the money whenever Matthau is scheming with Lemmon, often a pretty timeless statement, occasionally a rather trite message about guilt comes through. Naturally, it doesn't work as well as some of Wilder's other films where wild, elaborate schemes come through without distortion (Some Like it Hot, Double Indemnity, The Apartment). Reminded me of The Seven Year Itch in how its proximity feels like its taking place on stage even though the whole affair seems to be busting out of its britches with ambition.

Clever, original and unassuming, The Apartment not only houses Lemmon's best performance, but makes the sufficient and fascinating claim that the world of office politics is more complicated than the actual work that goes on there. A revelation to me, a very funny movie and terrific, romantic ending that, for once in the history of American Film, feels just right.

The edgy, probably most un-Tarkovsky work from the Russian director. Cuts and wayward long shots come more frequently as does the sentimentality. Though he keeps us in the dark, shadowing perspective (and often, changing it from scene to scene) and shifting focus, ultimately, the effect of the film is wrenching and while we're not sure if Ivan really had a childhood, we know that whatever he did have was taken away from him in a brutal fashion we're invited to witness via a high ranking officer's imagination. Tarkovsky examines the evils of war through the symbolism of the lost innocence of youth and comes up with a film that is as experimentive as he'd likely get in later years, but as simple as he'd ever be. When I watch it again, I'm certain it will be a flat four star affair.

A stirring motion picture. Not simply magical because of scope and tenderness of it, but because of the masterfully effective structure which Tarkovsky wields, always displacing normal, linear thinking and creating an abstract, more personal account of a marginally unknown fifteenth century religious icon painter. Since the film pushes three and a half hours, one would almost wonder how Tarkovsky managed to get the film down to that length at all. It feels so comfortable that when it ends, we're almost saddened that the surprise of vaguery Tarkovsky turns each corner to find, probe and vitalize comes to a halt. What steals the picture and, in one of the great, risky conclusions in film history, is the passionate color sequence in which Tarkovsky uses as his long takes to pan across the work of Roublev before briefly encountering the world through Roublev's eyes. An objective account that almost mathematically shows us how personal it is through the life's art of a man who wandered through life searching for its meaning to him. A great, extremely important film.

A startling montage of sense impressions, rendered interiors whose presence is felt and the raw view direct from the incapability of memory to distinguish between storytelling, feeling and context. A brilliant set of images, ideas, words (poems read by author Arsenii Tarkovsky, Andrei's father) and sounds that paint a non-linear picture of one's most cherished comfort zone (childhood) from the perspective of that harsh reality known as maturity. How I would want my childhood to be captured on film is how this film breathes.

Going to preface this with a great big "see below". Tarkovsky's answer to the American success of 2001: A Space Odyssey, an unmatched achievement to date, is a great big bore in the bluntest of terms. While I admire and am often mesmerized by the long takes, slowly spiraling camera set-ups and absence of pretension, in Solaris, everything that could be bad about the style he employs, is just that - bad. The film has a few dazzling images. The Solarian sea, a wonderfully creepy Rohrshack-esque design that looks like a colorful ocean placed in a bathtub and slowly draining to create Fibonochi swirls. The movie's closing image, which I won't ruin, but will say, is deeply haunting. The film itself, most of it taking place on a space ship that looks like three conjoined sets which are occasionally replaced to house different settings, doesn't do all that much with its lack of space. The claustrophobia is ditched for an interesting - yet failed - premise regarding the mind control and hallucinations brought on by testing this strange sea with X-rays. The main character, Chris, is haunted by his ex-wife and mistresses almost to no end, giving us long sequences of thoroughly unimpressive psycho babble (although, to the film's credit, the subtitles are sparse and often we miss lines of dialogue which may have been deemed "not pivotal"). What happens to Tarkovsky's magic as the film drones on is something that is immeasurably sad to watch. Here is one of the greatest film directors of all time doing a film that appears to have a great deal of relevance and depth, but feels pointless and empty. His slow pacing only makes matters much, much worse. Truth be told, I had to finish the film in several sittings due to nodding. See this only if you wish to see how Tarkovsky can falter. See the below film to see how a sci-fi premise can be a winning expression of mental anguish and.....well, (see below)

Recent events make Thirteen Days more relevant than it was when I saw it before, but this time around, the sheer pleasure of the mechanical inter workings of the political machine appealed to me most. Bruce Greenwood, Steven Culp and, surprisingly, Kevin Costner, are all towering as JFK, RFK and Kenny O'Donnell (special advisor to the President), each contributing to a peaceful resolution in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Every scene is staged with the utmost suspenseful language, crackling with sparks of intelligent dialogue and careful structure. Only in the closing scenes, when the film becomes sappy - leaving its beautifully impersonal tone behind - does it slide out of brilliance. For the most part, I can't see why people didn't make a bigger fuss about it. This is a solid, extremely entertaining - often downright exciting - motion picture. This is a pro-politics statement that also showcases historical fact undercut with patriotic fiction. Will open the floor to question why we hated Communism so much, answer questions about our Cuban relations and give an audience an idea of just how ridiculous imaginations can be humans realize they have the power to kill for power. This is the film we should be watching in order to understand world politics in the wake of the WTC/Pentagon disaster.

Though comparably lacking in substance (even when viewed against The Mirror, which only contains a feasible narrative for one third of its running time), Nostalghia, as much as Andrei Roublev even, is breathtaking in the way Herzog would have categorized as satisfying a viewership "starved for images". The story of a Russian poet who travels to Bologna, Italy to write a book about a famous composer, turns itself inside out with imagery relating to the protagonist's negotiation of his past. The film has remarkable, almost unfathomably complex shots, some lasting more than ten minutes. What it lacks, besides a straight line to connect what plays like randomness, is the fiery tone Tarkovsky usually hits us with like a sledgehammer. Watching Nostalghia, we're envigorated by the slide show of potent imagery. When it ends, however, we're not enveloped in the camera trance nor are we reeling in reflection. We're just there. And so is Nostalghia. It passes as an extension of Tarkovsky's brilliant eye and little else.

I saw Following after Memento for the same reason we'd see anything a director has made before or completes after his magnum opus. I saw the film on a rainy Sunday afternoon. It was late afternoon so that when I emerged from the theater, in point of fact, it was no longer light out. What I'm attempting to impress upon the reader is that the film was as much a part of my own atmosphere as it was the atmosphere of Memento. Same slick, twisty, masked gimmick. But also, an independent set of attributes. Nolan's use of classical film noir lighting, in dreamy black and white no less, to give the film a more Samuel Fuller feel, less of a neo-noir edge. The desperation of the characters mysteriously drained, a palette of wooden, almost Bresson-like performers (though, to the discredit of the affair, its sole flaw is the amateurish direction, probably a byproduct of keeping all the marionette strings encased in the narrative from becoming entangled). A use of time shifting that starts out feeling like The Limey, but closes having been compiled in a way that is more like The Usual Suspects in the way the incriminating loose ends feel like they've been covered from step one, but are only revealed after it is too late; that, "did I miss something?" feeling shining through. Despite the countless feelings of homage I came away with, Following is a decidedly compelling affair. With a minuscule running time, it still feels feature length, and, like Memento, has enough information to satisfy multiple viewings. Unlike Memento, however, the film doesn't jump out and astonish us with its secrets and surprises. They're admirable because they connect and because they reflect off of one another, but, as in The Big Sleep, eventually we start taking the film's word that plot strands connect because we're unable to concentrate and rifle through the curves. In Memento, we get a sense of a man's world and are left with ambiguity only to be sorted by ourselves, our perception left to interpretation. We could watch it again and again to study the way we react to it. In Following, everything is definitive and, like The Usual Suspects, will stand repeat viewings only to revisit information. Our reaction won't be all that varied. Following, like watching Memento again and again performed a monumentally effective task: it made me appreciate Memento..