the rhapsodic cineaste

“Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream, it takes over as the number one hormone; it bosses the enzymes; directs the pineal gland; plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to film is more film.” – Frank Capra

I’m generally terrible about New Year's resolutions, both making them and keeping them. That alone should probably serve as a disclaimer, whatever my plans for this project, it will likely die from neglect in short order.

But, here’s the thing, I love film. From the crummiest low-budget disasters, to ridiculously silly comedies, blockbuster summer tent-poles, lavish period films, or beautifully-crafted award winners and treasured classics, I am infected.

Unfortunately, real life often gets in the way. And, as such, though I have an awful lot of films on DVD and a burgeoning collection of Blu-ray discs, I don’t watch as many movies as I’d like. Complicating things further, with a new daughter at home, time is an even more precious commodity than before.

Yet films are precious too.

So, in an effort to get more value from my film library, and more importantly to spend at least a couple of hours of each day doing something that I truly love, I have resolved to watch a movie a day in 2009. Afterwards, I will post my thoughts here.

The Ground Rules

1. In most cases I will screen films from my own collection of DVDs and Blu-ray discs. Some films may be downloaded to an AppleTV via iTunes. However, nothing showing on TV counts. Occasionally, I may go to see a current release in the theater, but with a new baby at home, that is not likely to happen very often.

2. Each selection will be a feature film which received a theatrical release. Just because I have episodic television or cartoon shorts on DVD don't qualify them for my daily quota.

3. Films will be screened in their Original Aspect Ratio (OAR). When possible the original soundtrack will be selected in favor of amped-up digital surround tracks. For foreign films, subtitles are preferred to dubbed soundtracks, when possible.

4. I may have seen my selections before, or they may be new to me. Familiarity does not disqualify a film from screening.

5. I will try to write down my impressions of each film right away, while it is still fresh in my mind, but I probably won’t publish to the site every day. I may post a week’s worth of entries at once, but the films must be watched one-a-day. No making up for missed screenings on the weekends.

6. I haven’t set any expectation for my commentary. An entry might be as simple as “Great film!” or “Colossal waste of time.” If I have a lot to say, I may compose a long-winded diatribe to articulate my feelings. But I suspect that most of my commentary will be more like brushstrokes—a few random observations about what struck me. Kind of like Zagat, I suppose, but with fewer hyperbolic adjectives in quotes.

I think that’s about it. These rules may be amended throughout the project, but I hope to adhere as closely as possible to this framework.

Fan mail, hate mail, comments, suggestions and recommendations can be sent to cineaste [at] rhapsodic [dot] com.

“Read my lips. Hollywood. You know, HOLLYWOOD, the Dream Factory, the Magic Store. Hey, don't you ever go to the movies?” – Bernie the Agent (Dom DeLuise)

Blame it on the proverbial New Year's Day hangover, but for my first film, I wanted to ease myself into this and watch something a bit fluffy. I didn’t want to think too hard. So I picked the cinematic equivalent of comfort food.

When I was a kid, I was allowed to watch only one television program a week. In the five seasons that it was on, my entire exposure to TV was The Muppet Show. So, obviously there is a huge nostalgia factor for me. As the movie started though, I realized this was a perfect pick because it’s a movie about loving the movies, and about chasing your dream.

Sure, it’s also a corny Hope & Crosby road picture, by way of Mel Brooks. It’s probably no accident that both Bob Hope and Mel Brooks have cameos in the film. Early Henson influence Edger Bergen, with puppet Charlie McCarthy, also makes an appearance.

Television programs that make the move to the big screen tend to fall flat. With the possible exception of Star Trek, they either devolve into self-parody (sometimes intentionally) or simply fail to expand on what was good about the show, becoming kind of redundant.

But The Muppet Movie walks this line perfectly. It doesn’t lose its vaudevillian influence, or the parade of popular celebrities for the Muppets to interact with, and it expounds on the illusion of life that make Kermit and his friends seem so real, from playing the banjo in an actual swamp, to bicycling and driving cars the complexity of the Muppeteering has been sufficiently ratcheted.

The illusion is so complete that, like Disney animation, the anthropomorphism of Kermit and his friend was probably an early influence to my eventual vegetarianism. Does anyone else not get depressed when Kermit envisions “…millions of frogs on tiny crutches?”

I think of all of the Muppet films, this one is, by far, the most entertaining. That’s probably for two reasons. First, the Paul Williams score is actually memorable. Who doesn’t know The Rainbow Connection?

Secondly, I feel like while all of the Muppet’s movies are silly and entertaining, this one actually has something very real to say. It’s about following your dreams and refusing to quit in the face of adversity.

There is a moment near the beginning of the film when Kermit’s nephew Robin asks, “Uncle Kermit, is this about how the Muppets really got started?” and Kermit replies, “Well, it's sort of approximately how it happened.” Hearing this, I can’t help but feel that this is really the story of Jim Henson and how he built his merry band of Muppeteers.

Kermit (Jim Henson) first meets up with Fozzie (Frank Oz), and, before long, they’ve added more characters, like Gonzo (Dave Goelz) Sgt. Floyd Pepper (Jerry Nelson) and Scooter (Richard Hunt) to their entourage. By the time the film introduces the Electric Mayhem, the talents of all of the Muppet performers have been thoroughly showcased.

And when we arrive at the film’s climax, with Orson Welles in the role of studio chief Lew Lord, we realize that Kermit was telling the truth, this is “sort of approximately,” how the Muppets got started. Lew Lord is a stand in for Lord Lew Grade, who famously produced The Muppet Show, when the American networks had all passed.

As the music swells Kermit and his friends, standing in for their more anonymous counterparts, sing:

Life’s like a movie, write your own ending,
keep believing, keep pretending.
We've done just what we set out to do,
thanks to the lovers, the dreamers and you.

I came into my first film looking for something light, and rediscovered an affirmative message about creativity, art and following your dreams. This project is going to be fun!

Bart: You are my guest, and I am your host. What is your pleasure? What do you like to do?
Jim: I don't know… play chess… screw…
Bart: [quickly] Let's play chess.

With a large movie collection, it’s sometimes difficult to figure out what you want to watch. Often, I will pick a handful of films and have my wife choose from my finalists, or vice-versa.

Last night, as I was choosing a handful of candidates, I impulsively grabbed Blazing Saddles, as Mel Brooks’s influence over, and cameo in, the previous night’s film were still fresh in my mind. More of a Mel Brooks fan than I am, this was my wife’s immediate pick.

I’ve already mentioned that my parents were very stringent with television privileges, and movies were no exception. I did not see an R-rated film until I was eighteen—for the record, it was The Godfather, which has definitely colored my tastes in film ever since.

As a kid though, particularly in high school, I feel like there was a period when everyone else discovered raunchy comedies, and then proceeded to walk around quoting them. A lot of the time, when I finally discover a comedy that, criminally, I’ve still never seen I find myself saying, “So that’s where that line comes from!”

Watching Blazing Saddles, with it’s reputation as a comedy classic, I’m always surprised there are not more of those memorable quips. The only familiar parts of the film, really, are Sheriff Bart’s, “Excuse my while I whip this out,” and “Badges? We don’t need no stinkin' badges,” which, yes, I do realize was ripped off from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).

Somehow, too, the famous campfire scene had long ago seeped into my consciousness, and I’m not quite sure how. It’s obviously harder to quote the bean eating cowboys than describe them—or just reenact their outlandish flatulence I guess. Then again, that is something I could see a room full of fourteen year old boys mimicking…

I don’t really have a problem with bathroom humor, and can laugh at a good fart joke as well as any guy. But really, there’s not as much of this as I expect in Blazing Saddles. I suppose Brooks was making a commentary on race relations in the 1970s, but what is most striking is how far political correctness has taken us. You simply could not make a film like this today.

The “N word” is used brazenly, and isn’t funny, as much as it is shocking. There are also a number of rape jokes that I can’t help but feel are in really poor taste. Apart from that, I smiled a lot more than I laughed.

I guess what it boils down to is that I tend to appreciate Mel Brooks films more than I actually like them. Though I might feel differently if I’d first seen them as a kid and they held an additional nostalgia factor.

The lame puns and sight gags are ok I guess, but before I discovered his zany brand of toilet humor, I discovered Monty Python. And while their blend of British comedy can also be ridiculously silly, there’s also an added layer of sophistication that I dearly love.

I give the film a pass, though, since Gene Wilder is always a delight to watch, as is Slim Pickens. And Cleavon Little’s performance as Sheriff Bart is terrific. Frankly, his reaction to the continually spewing racism is the only thing that keeps it from becoming too uncomfortable to watch.

And there is one pure comedic gem in Blazing Saddles that had me laughing out loud. Near the beginning, the cowboys demand that Bart and the other black men sing a traditional “work song.” Bart’s crooning rendition of I Get a Kick Out of You, with the other workers joining in on harmonies, had me in stitches and was the funniest gag in the entire movie.

Anthony: You told, you told your friend Bernice I'm some kind of jet pilot?
Grace: What was I supposed to say, they stuck you in an insane asylum?
Anthony: It wasn't an insane asylum, Grace. I explained to you back then that it was for exhaustion.
Grace: Exhaustion?
Anthony: Yes, exhaustion.
Grace: You haven't worked a day in your life. How could you be exhausted?

Watching Bottle Rocket last night I was really struggling to stay awake, but I must stress that this is no fault of the film itself. Waking up at 6:30 to feed the baby, and then not getting around to watching a movie until nearly midnight, I was running on fumes. This is a shame, because I have a real affection for Wes Anderson’s first film.

I wouldn’t exactly call Wes Anderson’s films surreal. They’re too linear and follow the rules of their own universe too well for that. But they are somewhat fantastical, filled with wonderfully strange characters and stories. Bottle Rocket is alone in this sense, in that the story and the characters are more grounded in our world than in Anderson’s carefully designed universe. I think, perhaps, that this is a more human and warmer film than Anderson’s later works. Which isn’t to criticize the others, but Bottle Rocket is a sweeter, simpler film.

But, like all great auteurs, Anderson’s trademark flourishes are already forming in his first film. His fetish, shared with Stanley Kubrick, for the Futura typeface, is readily apparent. So too is Anderson and Director of Photography Robert Yeoman’s quirky cinematography.

I hadn’t really noticed the composition the last time I’d seen Bottle Rocket, but Anderson’s fondness for tack-sharp, wide angle composition —the entire film was shot with a 27mm lens—and shots filmed at a 90° angle, with perfectly straight horizontal lines, is already prevalent here. And though colors are, perhaps, both bolder and more significant in later works, each of this film’s three acts have a distinctive color theme.

Speaking about color, I screened Bottle Rocket from the recently released Criterion blu-ray disc. I may be misremembering, but the colors all seemed more vibrant and intense. It could be the nature of the new high-definition master, or simply the fault of my memory, but the previous DVD seemed muddier and a bit dull.

Finally, a couple of random observations. Though they’re brothers, Owen and Luke Wilson do not look or sound very much alike and are quite believable as friends. A third brother, Andrew, plays Future Man in the film, and is equally undistinguishable as a blood relative. Owen Wilson’s Dignan has a manner and a lackadaisical cadence to his Texas accent, that greatly remind me of the characters in Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1991).

Miss Cross: Is this fake blood?
Max: Yes it is.
Miss Cross: You know, you and Herman deserve each other. You're both little children. Let me show you the door.
Max: I'll just go back out the window.

Kids tend to take everything too seriously. I think that when you’re young, before life throws you too many curves, you simply don’t know how to respond to crises, so everything just kind of becomes disproportionately important in your limited frame of reference. That about summarizes Max Fischer's story in Rushmore, Wes Anderson’s sophomore effort.

As a kid, my parents used to say I had a “one-track mind,” fixating on whatever my current obsession, to the apparent annoyance of everyone else around me. Well, Rushmore’s Max has a one-track mind too, fixating first on Rushmore Academy, the tony private school where he is a scholarship student, then onto befriending Bill Murray’s Herman Blume and finally fixating on one of Rushmore’s teachers, Miss Cross (Olivia Williams).

The film is played for laughs. Max’s obsession with school is harmless enough. He’s a terrible student, but involved in a parade of extra-curricular activities, each more absurd than the last. And his relationship with Herman, the wealthy father of two obnoxious schoolmates, also begins sweetly—two lost misfits identify with one another, in spite of their disparate age and experience.

Frankly, though, when Max falls for the teacher, the movie becomes a little unsettling. If Anderson had decided to make a dramatic thriller, Rushmore could have become a Fatal Attraction (1987) for the prep-school set. It couldn’t have turned out any worse that Mark Wahlberg’s stalker vehicle, Fear (1996).

Instead, it’s played very broadly with Max, after finding out that Herman is also in love with Miss Cross, cutting the brake line in Herman’s car, and later attempting to topple a tree on his older competition. And apart from spying on her, taking surveillance photos and trying to have her fired, Max doesn’t really do anything terrible to Miss Cross.

Still, more than once, I tried to imagine what I’d do if I were Miss Cross—here in the real world, not in Anderson’s more playful universe. And I can assure you, I’d have involved the police and a restraining order.

But Anderson’s world is more precious than that. Max and Herman are both obsessive, but in a such an immature childlike way, they cannot possible be threatening.

I must admit when I first saw Rushmore I didn’t care for it very much. I felt that maybe it was a bit too precious. When it was first released, I hadn’t seen Bottle Rocket and in early 1999, when everyone seemed to be raving about Rushmore, I hadn’t heard of Wes Anderson and had no idea what to expect. Maybe it was the hype, or maybe it was my expectations for a comedy with Bill Murray, but this was not Stripes or Caddyshack.

I do like the film much more today. Escaping from the baggage of expectations, it’s a much smaller film than I remembered, more intimate. And in revisiting it, as with Bottle Rocket, I couldn’t help but marvel at Anderson’s gifts, more as a visualist than as a storyteller. His cinematic style is much more clearly defined here.

As I was watching, I repeatedly noted the composition and shots filmed at 90° angles I commented on yesterday. As I studied the balanced framing of characters, I thought to myself, Wes Anderson must have OCD. Then I realized that I was starting to fixate on the visual composition—studying horizon lines, admiring the placement of people and objects in the frame— and that I was precariously close to loosing track of the story.

Perhaps I’m the one with OCD. That one-track mind, I guess…

A final random note for today. The music in Anderson’s films is always top-notch and almost impossibly good. However, John Lennon’s Oh, Yoko is such a personal love note, that it still seems jarringly misplaced here. Then again, I suppose any popular rock song that makes it’s way into the soundtrack of a film, without any direct corollary to the action on-screen is a bit misplaced, when you think about it.

“Can’t somebody be a shit their whole life and try to repair the damage? I mean, I think people want to hear that.” – Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman)

I unabashedly adore The Royal Tenenbaums, and have ever since I first saw it in the theater. If Rushmore is, as I described yesterday, a smaller film, focused on the eccentric Max Fischer, The Royal Tenenbaums is a film so large and overstuffed, that it’s presented as a novel, with characters and situations so complicated, that perhaps we don’t even see all of them on the screen. It feels that we’ve come in on the middle of something, and that with more than its one-hour and forty minute runtime, we’d likely discover all sorts of untold stories about the Tenenbaum family.

In Anderson’s previous films there were whimsical characters, like Bottle Rocket’s Dignan, or Rushmore’s Max Fischer and Herman Blume, but then Bottle Rocket also had Inez, the housekeeper, and Rushmore had Miss Cross—I hesitate to call them ordinary, but at the least they were more conventional.

There is nothing conventional in this film. Anderson’s characterizations exist entirely in their own world here. The Tenenbaums, their friends, lovers and employees all feel fully realized, each more idiosyncratic than the last. And whereas his previous films were more intimate, the themes here are both big & universal.

Being a new parent, it occurs to me that the Tenenbaum children begin life as you hope your own kids will, they’re precocious, talented and ambitious. Unfortunately, Royal Tenenbaum is both the parent you don’t want and the one you never want to be. Simultaneously abusive and detached, Royal is responsible for the depression, fear and self-doubt that plagues his children as adults. He realizes this, but quickly denies it saying, “I’m the one that failed them, or anyway it’s nobody’s fault.”

Now in the twilight of his life, Royal is trying to make amends. When confronted by his estranged wife Etheline, he explains, “I thought I could win you back…plus I was broke. And I got kicked out of my hotel.” We’re never really sure of Royal’s true motivations, but that can be said of the people we know in real life as well.

And as fantastical as The Royal Tenenbaums is, it also speaks movingly about real life; of being a parent, or being a child, of love and loss, of finding one’s true self, and in making peace with those who we love.

They say that being a grandparent is a wholly different experience than being a parent. While all of Royal’s faults—his anathema to responsibility—make him a shitty father, he turns out to be something of a perfect grandfather. As he explains to Etheline, “…you can’t raise boys to be scared of life, you gotta brew some recklessness into them.”

The montage that follows is my favorite sequence in the film: Royal and his grandsons playing in traffic, shoplifting and gambling. And he’s the perfect antidote to their father’s life of fear and grief.

There is so much I haven’t talked about, but that would deprive you of experiencing this film for yourselves. This is one of the greats, and should not be missed.

Each of my commentaries on Wes Anderson’s films have contained a few random observations and I’ll continue this trend here.

Looking at the theatrical posters for each of the first three Anderson films, you can see that by this film’s release Anderson is in control of every aspect of his films, including the marketing. The posters for his first two films were clearly designed by the studios’ art departments. Here even the advertising tells us we’re getting a “Wes Anderson film.”

Anderson wanted to begin The Royal Tenenbaums with the Beatles song Hey Jude but could not secure the rights to the original track. Similarly, Paul Thomas Anderson wanted to begin his third film, Magnolia (1999) with the Beatles song Revolution 9, but also failed to secure the required permission.

A final observation about music. In each of his first three films Anderson has used Christmas carols on the soundtrack, in sequences having nothing to do with Christmas. Good King Wenceslas can be heard in Bottle Rocket, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing is played in Rushmore, and both the instrumental and vocal versions of Christmas Time is Here, from A Charlie Brown Christmas, are present in The Royal Tenenbaums.

Interestingly, or not, the television show Arrested Development also occasionally used the instrumental version Christmas Time is Here in sequences that had nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas.

Jane Winslett-Richardson: [speaking of her unborn baby] In twelve years, he'll be eleven and a half.
Steve Zissou: That was my favorite age.

Everyone in the Wes Anderson oeuvre is a bit lost. His characters constantly struggle with the road not taken, opportunities lost, good graces abused and chances squandered. Yet, as morose and unhappy as they are, often due to their own devices, Anderson treats his characters kindly. More than pity, Anderson shows a genuine affection for the sad, lonely populace of his world.

Steve Zissou (Murray) is an underwater explorer, a red-hatted, speedo wearing Cousteau caricature, and The Life Aquatic is ostensibly a revenge flick. Here, Zissou plays the role of Ahab, chasing the endangered sea creature that has eaten his colleague, Esteban du Plantier (Seymour Cassel). As Zissou explains, “…I'm going to go on an overnight drunk, and in 10 days I'm going to set out to find the shark that ate my friend and destroy it. Anyone who wants to tag along is more than welcome.”

But the shark is merely a device, used to propel the story forward. The Life Aquatic is more a meditation on aging, lost youth and attempting to recapture faded glory.

Watching The Life Aquatic immediately after screening Anderson’s previous films, I can’t help but think of The Max Fischer Players. In Rushmore, Max stages elaborate school plays with remarkable special effects, and with this latest film it strikes me that Wes Anderson is Max Fischer.

Anderson has built himself a repertory company of stock players, including Bill Murray, Anjelica Huston, Seymour Cassel, Kumar Pallana, and Luke & Owen Wilson. Whatever his story, he’ll usually find suitable roles for his cast. And with The Life Aquatic Anderson presents us with a film that is particularly theatrical. From a cutaway ship that’s obviously a set, to a ridiculously fake submarine and the fantastical imaginary sea creatures animated by Henry Selick, the film feels more like an elaborately designed stage play than a feature film.

There is also a stilted quality to this movie, particular in the performances of Cate Blanchett and Owen Wilson, who each perform their roles with exaggerated accents. Both actors come across as stagy in their delivery, and I can’t help but feel that the overacting is an intentional form of theatrical projection.

I seem to remember that when The Life Aquatic was released, it suffered from something of a backlash. Audiences, or critics anyway, felt that maybe Anderson has become too eccentric, his characters a bit too far afield. As a fan of the director’s work I can’t say that I agree. There is, however, a meandering quality to this film, and I think it might be better server by a slightly tighter edit.

To date, this is Anderson’s longest feature. In a departure, it’s also the first of his films not co-authored by Owen Wilson. This time, the writing credit is shared with filmmaker Noah Baumbach, which might help to explain the film’s more languid pace.

While not groundbreaking, The Life Aquatic remains a solidly entertaining entry into the director’s catalog. As a fan of Anderson’s style, I felt a poignance for Zissou’s funk. And the ruminations on being past one’s prime, and the wistfulness for lost youth remain genuinely heartfelt to me. The film resonates.

Only one random observation for today. Wes Anderson has an uncanny knack for hiring actors whose on-screen personalities I tend to despise, and working those personalities into surprisingly effective characters. Tenenbaums’ Chas (Ben Stiller) exaggerates much of the self-loathing neuroses that I’ve disliked in nearly every Stiller character, from There’s Something About Mary (1998) onward. And in this film, Jeff Goldblum’s Alistair Hennessey embodies the smug, self-righteous prick that Goldblum always manages to play. But in both cases the typecasting is surprisingly effective.

Patricia Whitman: What happened to your face?
Francis L. Whitman: I smashed into a hill, on purpose, on my motorcycle.
Patricia Whitman: I’m sorry to hear that. There are so many things we don’t know about each other, aren’t there?

There’s a moment in The Darjeeling Unlimited when a perfect storm of Indian muscle relaxants, flu medicine & painkillers, a poisonous cobra and a canister of pepper spray strand the protagonists, the Whitman brothers, in the middle of India. In the hands of a less assured talent, the events that result in the Whitmans’ banishment from their train would have been delivered as a zany slapstick. But Wes Anderson is a more nuanced storyteller than that and, as with his previous films, there is an undercurrent of sadness and longing to the Whitmans’ journey.

The Whitmans are Francis (Wilson), Peter (Brody) and Jack (Schwartzman), who have not talked in a year. Francis claims to have arranged their train travel through India on The Darjeeling Express to reconnect with his siblings, saying, “…I want us to become brothers again like we used to be, and for us to find ourselves and bond with each other.” But he’s also secretly planned a confrontation with their mother (Huston), who is living as a missionary nun, in an effort to find out why she avoided their father’s funeral.

As in Anderson’s previous films, familial dynamics are explored in depth here, with a focus on estrangement and abandonment. In one telling scene, Jack muses aloud, “I wonder if the three of us would've been friends in real life. Not as brothers, but as people,” as if these blood relationships are so fractured that it’s easier, more natural to co-exist with those whom he does not share a genetic bond.

It’s been said that men spend their lives either trying to impress or disavow their fathers. While some of this is evident in how each of the Whitman brothers cope with their father’s death, it’s is their maternal relationships that are more closely analyzed here.

Their reunion with Patricia, their mother, is particularly satisfying because it feels both subtle and remarkably true. It does not force a dramatic and unlikely turn of character. This is not surprising, though. Anderson is usually ambiguous when it comes to dramatic character growth, life-changing epiphanies or closure, offering few pat resolutions.

On the other hand, the climax in The Darjeeling Limited, with the Whitmans forced to abandoned their luggage, was a bit too tidy. My wife even jokingly remarked, “I get it! The baggage is a metaphor for baggage.”

One wonders, with Anderson’s continued focus on estrangement, about the director’s own familial relationships. His films are, of course, fabricated. But the character of Jack is a writer whose short-stories, we learn, are ripped wholesale from his life, despite his repeated claims that, “the characters are all fictional.” And Owen Wilson’s attempted suicide, shortly before Darjeeling’s release, further blurs, albeit uncomfortably, the line between fiction and reality. Francis, we learn, has also tried to kill himself. Watching a weary and broken Francis, in his desire to form some sort of connection, one can’t help but question how closely Anderson and Wilson identify with the sad, empty characters they’ve repeatedly brought to life.

Bringing to a close my commentary on Anderson’s filmography, at least until the release of The Fantastic Mr. Fox later this year, I have one final observation on Jack’s writing.

As the film draws to a close, Jack reads aloud from his latest story, explaining, “I wrote the ending, but I don’t know how it starts.” The ending he reads is a verbatim description of the events depicted in Hotel Chevalier, Anderson’s short film that played in front of The Darjeeling Limited in theaters.

After Jack’s impromptu reading is finished, Francis suggests, “…it’s hard for me to judge the ending without knowing the rest of it.” Though Jack doesn’t realize it yet, he already has his story’s beginning, and we’ve just witnessed it.

“You know what the fellow said—in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” – Harry Lime (Orson Welles)

The Third Man was filmed mostly on location in a bombed-out, postwar Vienna. And even if the story didn’t work, though it does, the film would be required viewing for Robert Krasker’s cinematography alone.

Filmed in inky blacks and harsh whites, with jarring camera angles, and countless shots of twisted, claustrophobically narrow Viennese streets—replete with wetted cobblestone to better capture the light—the movie is gorgeous. The atmosphere is particularly startling, having spent the better part of a week screening Wes Anderson’s films, with their mannered, almost staid, compositions.

This is not to say that The Third Man is merely a photographer’s film. Rather, the haunting camera work serves the story, a tale of intrigue and murder. Joseph Cotten plays Holly Martins, a pulp novelist, who’s come to Vienna at the request of his old school friend, Harry Lime. When Martins arrives however, he discovers that Lime has been recently murdered, run down in the street.

The official police report, and witnesses to the accident all claim that two men came to Lime’s aid after he was run down. But as Martins begins digging, he finds a man who saw the event unfold from his apartment, who insists that there was another person at the scene—a third man.

It would be unfair to spoil just who that third man is, or all of the other twists that the plot takes, but it’s probably not a surprise to anyone that Lime, played by Orson Welles, eventually makes an appearance. His entrance, accompanied by a fickle cat, is one of cinema’s classic scenes—a master class in shadow and light.

The film’s extended sewer chase is also beautifully staged, particularly a shot of Lime’s fingers reaching up through a grate, to the Viennese street above. Welles refused to film in the actual sewer, so a replica was built on a London soundstage, where his close-ups were filmed. Body doubles were used for many of the long shots filmed on location.

Also notable is the film’s final scene. Director Carol Reed was worried the static, nearly 2-minute shot was too long. It isn‘t. it is a note perfect ending to a near flawless film.

Much has been said of composer Anton Karas’s jaunty, and incongruous, zither score. It gives the film a lightness that it doesn’t necessarily deserve, but that it might just need. Considering the weighty subject, war profiteering from diluted penicillin, the bouncy zither manages to soften Lime’s blasé detachment, making him seem a bit less vile, in spite of the despicable nature of his crimes.

Watching The Third Man again, the music almost feels like an inspiration for Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. David’s character, an exaggerated version of himself, while not as loathsome as Harry Lime, does do some pretty awful things through the course of his TV series. While played as comedy, albeit a black one, David too juxtaposes a bouncy, carefree soundtrack against his character’s darker personality.

“He was disappointed in the world so he built one of his own, an absolute monarchy.” – Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten)

“Rosebud…” Perhaps the single most important and simultaneously insignificant word of dialog ever uttered in a motion picture. Important not only because of the film’s stature, but because of its own place in the lexicon of cinema. Apart from “No, I am your father,” is there another plot spoiler so ingrained in the collective consciousness?

If you’ve spent your life in a hermetically sealed bubble, or otherwise shielded from popular culture, Citizen Kane tells the story of newspaper mogul Charles Foster Kane, a somewhat fictionalized version of William Randolph Hearst. Told almost entirely in flashback form, the film opens with Kane’s death at his Florida estate, Xanadu—itself a stand-in for Hearst’s La Cuesta Encantada, in San Simeon, California.

As Kane lay dying, he whispers the single word, “Rosebud,” which triggers the film’s structure. Kane is presented as an enigma, famous but ultimately unknown. Who, or what, was Rosebud? Why was it so important to Kane? And so a reporter, Jerry Thompson (William Alland), is sent to find out, to unlock the riddle.

I won’t spoil the identity of Rosebud for anyone that doesn’t already know. But part of the genius of Citizen Kane is that Rosebud really doesn’t matter very much. It’s what Hitchcock referred to as a MacGuffin, it moves the story forward, but Rosebud itself is ultimately unimportant. As Thompson explains at the end of his investigation, near the films close…

“…Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn’t get or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn’t have explained anything. I don’t think any word can explain a man’s life. Nah, I guess Rosebud is just a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, a missing piece.”

Thompson is exactly right. For though he never finds Rosebud, the viewer is privy to the missing piece in the film’s final frames. Though, by itself, Rosebud doesn’t explain Kane’s life, any more than the personal recollections of an ex-wife, former employees or estranged friends.

And this is why Kane remains so watchable, even after we know the ending. Because Kane’s story is told from varied perspectives, whether in the persona of Mr. Kane, Charles or Charlie, the American, the idealist, the fascist, the communist or the media barron—we’re provided with many, often contradictory, accounts so that we take measure of the man for ourselves, draw our own conclusions.

One of my favorite reveals is Kane’s weary observation, when forced to relinquish control of his empire, “…if I hadn’t been very rich, I might have been a really great man.” But is Kane correct?

Would he have been a great man? Or would his life have been lonely and poor rather than lonely and rich—the result of spending that childhood with an abusive father and emotionally detatched mother? We’ll never know for sure, because the movie doesn’t provide easy answers. Welles and company knows they can’t paint the entire picture, and so are content to simply offer brushstrokes.

Another great moment occurs when Kane is confronted by his friend Jed Leland (Cotten)…

“You just wanna persuade people that you love 'em so much that they oughta love you back. Only you want love on your own terms. It's something to be played your way, according to your rules.”

With candor and remarkable self-awareness, Kane responds flatly that, “…those are the only terms anybody ever knows, his own.”

The film’s reputation is earned, of course, for more than it’s jigsaw puzzle assembly. In some circles it is respected more for its technical achievements than for its storytelling.

Chief among these is Gregg Toland’s pioneering cinematography, which used narrow aperture lenses that provided deep focus throughout the frame. Toland also staged many shots from very low angles, with the characters dwarfing our perspective. This technique also let to the innovative inclusion of visible ceilings in many shots.

The film’s art direction, led by Van Nest Polglase, is also quite groundbreaking. The Xanadu’s Landlord newsreel’s historical recreations weren’t really exceeded on film until 1983’s Zelig.

Regarding the sets, apart from the Overlook Hotel in The Shining (1980), Xanadu remains the single creepiest building in cinema history. From the film’s establishing shots of a sprawling estate in disrepair, to late scenes of Kane and his wife Susan existing—but not really living—in extreme isolation, the estate is eerily unsettling. Whenever the film’s story returns to Xanadu, Kane takes on the feeling of gothic horror.

In closing, there’s a moment of particular resonance in Citizen Kane that I suspect is more iconic than intended. For me, it sums up the movie’s place in the pantheon of cinema history. Kane is running for governor of New York, and he's giving a campaign speech under an enormous poster of himself, labeled “KANE” in big, bold letters.

Kane, that larger-than-life persona, has swallowed the idealistic young newspaperman, Charlie, who had drafted a declaration of principles. And it’s already destroyed that poor boy who could have grown into a “really great man.”

But Welles too was dwarfed by Kane. The portrait enraged Hearst, who had tremendous influence in Hollywood. And in the aftermath of the film’s release, Welles was never again awarded the artistic freedom that he enjoyed on his first film.

Even today the impact of Kane leads to wistful “what ifs” about everything Welles touched, from his fabled cut of The Magnificent Ambersons to Touch of Evil, free from studio manipulation. One can’t help but fantasize about what we might have seen if only his talent had been nurtured instead of thwarted.

“The cities are full of women, middle-aged widows, husbands dead, husbands who've spent their lives making fortunes, working and working. And then they die and leave their money to their wives, their silly wives. And what do the wives do, these useless women? You see them in the hotels, the best hotels, every day by the thousands, drinking the money, eating the money, losing the money at bridge, playing all day and all night, smelling of money, proud of their jewelry but of nothing else, horrible, faded, fat, greedy women… Are they human or are they fat, wheezing animals, hmm? And what happens to animals when they get too fat and too old?” – Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten)

Actor Jospeh Cotten once observed that, “Orson Welles lists Citizen Kane as his best film, Alfred Hitchcock opts for Shadow of a Doubt and Sir Carol Reed chose The Third Man—and I’m in all of them.”

The legacies of both Citizen Kane and The Third Man are secure today, but what of Shadow of a Doubt? Coming from the director who gave life to Psycho, North By Northwest, Vertigo and Rear Window, labels like “best film” feel a bit audacious, particularly for a somewhat more obscure title from the Hitchcock canon.

Having stumbled across Cotten’s comment after my back-to-back screenings of Kane and The Third Man, it occured to me that I’d never seen Shadow of a Doubt, or if I had it was so long ago that I scarcely remembered the film.

So the choice for my next film was made easy. I had to find out, is Shadow of a Doubt as good as Hitch himself seemed to think? The answer, sadly, is a resounding no. Instead, I found Shadow of a Doubt something of a slow burn. I suppose the kindest way I can describe the story is that it’s mannered.

The film centers around Charlie Newton (Wright), a restless teenager, craving some excitement in her monotonous life. That excitement comes to town in the form of Uncle Charlie (Cotten), her namesake, who may just be a serial killer the police have called “The Merry Widow Strangler.”

Story credit on the film is given to playwright Thornton Wilder, most famous for Our Town. And frankly, I suspect that most of my problems with the film are related to the writing. Shadow of a Doubt is, or should be, a thriller. But significant portions of the film are devoted to characterizations that do nothing to advance the plot.

Charlie’s sister Ann (Edna May Wonacott), a bookish little know-it-all, is given a significant amount of screen time, but nothing to do, really, except annoy Charlie. In fact, the characters all seem written simply to drive the thesis that life in small town America is dull and uninteresting. And, in case we’ve missed it, there’s quite a bit of ponderous rumination to that effect.

The only sub-plot that works really well is a humorous back-and-forth between Charlie’s father Joseph (Travers) and his friend Herbie Hawkins (Hume Cronyn). Both fans of detective stories, the two nicely weave an amusing banter, about how to get away with murder, throughout the film.

Because there’s never really any doubt that Uncle Charlie, if not the “Merry Widow Strangler,” is at least hiding something awful, the film is lacking in dramatic tension. There’s a scene where young Charlie is rushing to get to the library before it closes, to find an article that Uncle Charlie has ripped from the family’s paper. The scene is structured for suspense, but we’ve already seen Uncle Charlie’s attempt to hide the news from his family. Young Charlie has already been visited by detectives, indication their suspicions. The only tension remaining is whether Charlie can beat the clock—another meditation on the mundane nature of small-town life, perhaps?

There is a turning point in the film, where things get a bit more interesting. It begins with Uncle Charlie’s dinnertime soliloquy about elderly widows. It is the moment in the film where there is no longer the shadow of a doubt. Uncle Charlie, it is now clear to us, is a violent sociopath. Apart from young Charlie, no one seems to notice that he’s compared women to swine, and is advocating their slaughter. It occurs to me that Uncle Charlie alone probably helped to cement Hitchcock’s reputation as a misogynist.

I said earlier that the film is mannered, but perhaps dated is a better word. Sitting quietly, sipping your sparkling burgundy, while a family member rants about killing greedy, slothful women seems antiquated at best. Watching today, much of the film rings similarly false.

I mean, does anyone really keep knowledge of a serial killer to themselves, to protect the feelings of their mother? Was this considered good manners in the 1940s? And are we to accept Mother Emma’s (Collinge) blithe ignorance because, after all, Uncle Charlie was in a personality-changing accident as a child?

Likewise, did it not seem strange to contemporary audience when, after a single date where they mostly talked about her Uncle’s suspected crimes, that detective Jack Graham (Carey) pledged his undying love to Charlie? Perhaps it worked then, but today the film’s hollow romance strains credulity.

Still, this is the Master of Suspense, and there are a few moments of nail-biting tension. Two stand-outs are the surprisingly taught scene with a running car in a locked garage, and the film’s climax on a moving train. For me, though, Shadow of a Doubt is third-tier Hitchcock, nowhere near the caliber of his finest works.

“Do you think the dead come back and watch the living?” – Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson)

I still remember the collective groan that rang out when, in tenth grade English class, our teacher, Ms. Stout, passed out copies of our next reading assignment. The book was Daphne du Maurier’s novel, Rebecca. At the time I knew nothing of the story, but was incredibly skeptical.

The trade paperback, with its title in gilded script, lavender spine and pastel drawings of lovers embracing and a woman’s sad face, gazing wistfully off into the distance, did nothing to inspire. It seemed, in a particularly cruel joke, that our complaints about Bram Stoker’s mind-numbingly dull Dracula had led Ms. Stout to assign a harlequin romance for critique. She was mocking us. It was as if she were saying, "See, it can get worse.”

I’m loathe to appear trite, but in this case, the cliché is simply true, “you cannot judge a book by its cover.” Rebecca begins:

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate.”

Manderley, we soon learn, is the Cornish country estate of Maxmillian de Winter. As the narrator, the never-named second Mrs. de Winter, described the estate from her dream, recalling the house and grounds, the rhododendrons and azaleas, I was drawn in.

Looking back, I realize that silly harlequin book cover, though unintentionally I’m sure, was the perfect metaphor for Rebecca. As the story progresses, we learn that whatever we think we know, whatever we believe to be true, nothing is as it seems. Of course, this is also what makes the mystery the perfect adaptation for Alfred Hitchcock.

I selected Rebecca as my next film for two reasons. First, after being disappointed in Shadow of a Doubt I was eager to revisit a superior Hitchcock film. And as Doubt’s contemporary, lensed only three years earlier, Rebecca seemed a good candidate.

Secondly, I’d been thinking a lot about Manderley after writing about Citizen Kane, and the eerie atmosphere of isolation that Kane’s Xanadu provided to that film. Xanadu, I suggested, lent Kane an air of “gothic horror.”

Manderley provides Rebecca with a similar atmosphere of haunted isolation. In this case, it’s not the physical structure itself, but rather the home’s omnipresent ghost that shrouds the proceedings with oppression and dread. Rebecca too is a kind of horror film, but this is a ghost story.

Manderley’s ghost is not literal. Rather it is the specter of memory that fills the house, its master and servants, and, of course, its new mistress. Though we never see Rebecca, the first Mrs. de Winter, she is unescapable, her legacy is everywhere. She is the most significant character in the film.

The story’s protagonist, Joan Fontaine’s the second Mrs. de Winter, is drawn with so little self-esteem, hopelessly intimidated by the memory of her predecessor, that she’s never even provided with a proper name. We live the film from her perspective, and feel all of her angst and insecurity. At one moment in the film she compares herself to Rebecca thusly:

“I dare say I’ve been stupid, but every day I realize the things that she had and that I lack—beauty and wit and intelligence and oh, all of the things that are so important in a woman.”

I mentioned earlier that in Rebecca nothing is as it first appears, that the story defies our expectations. This is largely because we first arrive at Manderley with the second Mrs. de Winter, we share all of her assumptions and expectations.

For his reputation as the greatest actor of a generation, Laurence Olivier’s Maxmillian has very little to do but appear cold and distant. Fontaine, on the other hand, must carry the film’s psychological weight, responding to characters and events that happened before she arrived, and which she knows very little about. The film is a mind game, and Fontaine reacts beautifully to the things she cannot see. Though, part of the credit, or perhaps blame, rests with Hitchcock himself.

When Olivier was cast as Maxmillian, he advocated that the part of Mrs. de Winter go to Vivian Leigh. Leigh was Olivier’s lover, and when Fontaine was cast in the film, Olivier treated her very badly. Fontaine brought the matter to Hitchcock’s attention, who told her, falsely, that it was not just Olivier, but everyone on the crew that hated her.

Hitchcock was notorious for the psychological abuse of his leading ladies, in an effort to coach their performances. By alienating Fontaine from the crew, he was essentially placing her into the shoes of her character, surrounded by people whose true motivations and feelings it was impossible for her to know.

While much of the film’s terror is self-inflicted, due to assumptions based on half-truths and lies, the movie does have one corporeal villain. Mrs. Danvers (Anderson) is Rebecca’s obsessively devoted servant, who spends the film protecting her mistress’s legacy, mostly to the detriment of Rebecca’s successor. Anderson is excellent in the role, and her character’s cold machinations add an element of real danger to the plot’s psychological manipulations.

Rebecca tells its story so efficiently and with such dramatic tension, that it’s hard for me to believe this was helmed by the same man who directed the underwhelming, comparatively ham-fisted Shadow of a Doubt.

“Silence please! Ladies and gentlemen, this is your host, Mr. Owen speaking. You are charged with the following crimes…” – the voice of U.N. Owen (uncredited)

And Then There Were None, based on Agatha Christie’s novel Ten Little Indians, is something of a psychotic precursor to both Survivor and MTV’s The Real World. Here, an anonymous host has summoned ten strangers to spend the weekend at a secluded island estate off the English coast.

Their host never arrives, but instead delivers a message that each of his guests is guilty of a horrific crime. A short time later, just as in the grisly English nursery rhyme, someone begins systematically murdering the guests, one by one. Can anyone outwit their anonymous host and survive?

Christie’s Ten Little Indians, was an enormously popular whodunit, which spawned a stage play and no less than four screen adaptations, including a Russian version of the film. Excluding the Russian film, I’ve seen each of the adaptations, and this original 1945 version is the best.

That’s not to say this is an extraordinary film. It isn’t. It is a decent, workaday little thing with some good performances, and a few that are over-the-top. Fortunately, the lesser actors tend to get knocked off early.

And Then There Were None knows what it needs to do and does it. I hesitate to call it forgettable, or ordinary, because I think it’s better than that.

The film moves along at a good pace, and the dialogue is smart. There’s quite a bit of gallows humor, bringing a necessary lightness to what is essentially a serial killer film. Importantly, the twists are clever and surprising. The nicest compliment I can pay it is that, as a kid, this movie scared the shit out of me. Even today it creeps me out a little.

I’ve never cared for horror films really. I can’t abide slasher flicks, and have never seriously entertained a film with Freddie, Jason, Michael Myers, Chuckie or any of the other murderous undead psychopaths that always manage to reincarnate for yet another cartoonish gore-fest.

What frightens me is a film like this one. It’s not bloody—save for a poisoning, the violence never occurs on screen. It’s mostly about fear, the unseen. And while the film plays out as a psychological horror, there is a murderer on the loose. At one point in the film, a character wryly observes that there’s nothing “supernatural” at work, they’re facing an actual killer. I think that sums it up nicely.

There’s just something innately creepy about the idea of being trapped in an isolated place, knowing that there is a killer on the loose. In fairness, there’s also something a tad unrealistic about the premise.

If I were trapped with nine other people, and we all knew there was a killer amongst us, I’d argue the best chance for survival would be for everyone to stick together until help arrived, without exception. But that’s nitpicking.

There are two moments in this film where everyone we know to be on the island is accounted for. And yet there are footsteps in the house, an ominous whistling can be heard—it’s the tune that accompanies the macabre nursery rhyme. Someone else is on the island, but who?

While a by-the-numbers whodunit, in and of itself, that’s not a bad thing. And those few scenes where we know the killer is out there lurking, lying in wait, elevate it a bit. Especially when I want to give myself a good scare, this a film I enjoy revisiting from time to time.

Because this title has fallen into the public domain, the copies available on DVD are all low-budget affairs, made from terrible prints, with crummy sound. While not ideal, for a film like And Then There Were None, this almost adds to the charm.

Miss Marbles: The murderer is…Good God! Gas!
Miss Withers: I’m sorry. I can’t help it, I’m old.
Miss Marbles: No, no. The other kind of gas, the kind that kills.
Miss Withers: Sometimes my gas…

After nearly a week of noir thrillers and murder mysteries, it seemed like a good time to shift to something a bit lighter. Watching too many bleak or intense films can get into your head after a while, so tonight I opted for some goofy fun. And what better way to follow a prototypical English country house murder mystery, than with a spoof of the genre?

Murder By Death, written by playwright Neil Simon, doesn’t mask it’s aspirations. The slapstick comedy gently mocks crime novels, and in particular the works of Agatha Christie, Earl Derr Biggers and Dashiell Hammett. It’s silly fun that, it just so happens, is performed by a few cinema legends.

Peter Sellers, one of my all-time favorite comedians, is very funny as Chinese detective Sidney Wang, a parody of Charlie Chan. Sellers, outrageously costumed and in heavy make-up, spends the film spouting tiresome fortune-cookie wisdom. At best, it’s merely mocking a racist performance, if not itself offensive—but I can’t help but chuckle whenever Sellers is onscreen.

Even funnier, perhaps, is author Truman Capote, in a rare screen performance. Capote plays Lionel Twain, who has summoned the world’s greatest detectives to his home, in an effort to embarrass them with an unsolvable murder. Forget the plot though, it’s intentionally absurd. The film is more interested in setting up jokes. For instance, Lionel Twain’s house number is twenty-two, so the sign at the door reads two two Twain.

Yeah, it’s dumb. But I defy anyone not to crack a smile when the literary legend rants at Sellers’s heavily accented detective, “I will tell you, Mr. Wang, if you can tell me why a man who possesses one of the most brilliant minds of this century can’t say his prepositions or articles!”

Nevin and Smith are perfectly amusing parroting Nick and Nora Charles. And Lanchester is fine mimicking Christie’s Miss Marple. Falk’s Bogart impression is okay, I guess, but for me he’s been forever typecast as Lieutenant Colombo. Apart from Capote or Sellers, the real standout here is Alec Guinness as the butler, Jamesir Bensonmum.

As a member of the Star Wars generation, Guinness for me was always Obi-Wan Kenobi. Thanks to his amusing performance here, however, my horizons were broadened. I eventually found my way to the Ealing Studios comedies, and Guinness’s work in The Ladykillers, Kind Hearts and Coronets, and The Lavender Hill Mob. For that alone, I’ll always have a particular fondness for Murder By Death, but the movie’s worth watching for the unrepentant silliness alone.

“Oh, it’s the hardest, when someone has a notion about you, and it’s impossible to convince them otherwise. Ever since I was a child, folks have though they had me pegged because of the way I…the way I am. You know, the way I talk. And they're always wrong. You know what I mean?” – Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman)

Capote begins as a kind of “fish out of water” story, with the renowned author Truman Capote traveling to Kansas to investigate the grisly murders of the Clutter family. Because of his unusual voice and flamboyant mannerisms—not to mention a curt, cosmopolitan directness—Capote does not endear himself to local law enforcement, particularly when he tells lead investigator Alvin Dewey (Cooper) that he doesn’t care whether the murderers are ever caught.

A story about a less complicated figure might have been contented to focus on Capote’s efforts to win over the locals, relying on the help of friend and fellow author Harper Lee (Keener) to soften public opinion and persevere over prejudice. That may have been a more heartwarming story, but also a somewhat disingenuous one. Capote also developed a relationship with one of the murderers, Perry Smith (Collins, Jr.), the impact of which had lasting consequences.

It’s the film’s narrow focus on the writing of In Cold Blood that makes Capote a remarkable film. Unlike a traditional biography—the litany of “greatest hits” milestones, which steer our opinion of the subject, we gain our insights into Capote by watching him work, manipulating people and events to his favor.

We see the author’s dependence on Harper Lee, and the wives of the local sheriff and police investigators, to gain both access or information. As an avowed gay man in the 1960s, we see that Capote understands his role as distrusted outsider. The author cunningly identifies who might perceive him less threateningly, or more sympathetically, and then exploits those relationships according. Once the murderers are caught, Capote’s manipulations take an even darker turn.

There’s a moment in the film when, in an effort to secure unlimited visiting rights with the prisoners, Capote offers the prison warden a cash bribe. In and of itself this seems like a simple act of greasing the wheels, doing whatever is necessary to get an interview.

But as the author interacts Smith and Hickock, things become increasingly unseemly. Smith has been on a hunger strike, and Capote nurses him back to heath. He also finds legal representation for the pair’s appeal, angering law enforcement. It’s never perfectly clear what Capote is thinking, but then the writer himself seems unsure of his feelings toward the young men.

And as loathsome as it may be to identify with, and come to the defense of, the cold-blooded killers, Capote’s behavior becomes even more repugnant. The author’s focus has shifted entirely to his book, denying Smith and Hickock further legal aid when he realizes that their death will make for a tidy resolution. Capote hopes for their quick execution because he doesn’t want to think about the murders, or his writing, anymore. He’d like to move on.

As shockingly brutal as the murders were, they are not the focus of the film. It is Capote’s callous indifference to anything but his own agenda that earns our contempt here.

It is to Hoffman’s credit that he manages to present Capote as an empathetic figure, even though he is characterized as a self-absorbed egomaniac. And yet, Hoffman manages to interject enough insecurity and guilt into his performance that we find ourselves questioning Capote’s true feelings for killer Perry Smith.

When discussing with Lee his attraction to Smith, Capote’s answer defies belief. So much so, that she asks whether he’s kidding. The fact that Lee, a close childhood friend, has no insight into Capote’s true motivations makes it easier to accept the frustrating fact that we learn almost nothing about why Capote does what he does.

Though Capote himself is mercurial and most of his exhibited behavior is unlikable, Hoffman’s award winning performance is sublime, and filled with enough compassion for his subject to keep the film engrossing.

“Everyone’s blessed with one special thing. I want you to know I plan on being a star. A big, bright shining star. That’s what I want. That’s what I’m going to get. ” – Eddie Adams/Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg)

I realize that this is unfair to Paul Thomas Anderson, but when I watch Boogie Nights, I can’t help but compare the writer/director’s sophomore effort to films from other talents. Mostly, I am reminded of Quentin Tarantino.

Prior to directing Boogie Nights, Anderson had one smaller genre picture under his belt, Hard Eight (1996), before tackling his ambitious tribute to the adult film industry. Similarly, Tarantino had made only one film, the intimate and gory crime drama Reservoir Dogs (1992) before releasing his breakthrough opus, Pulp Fiction (1994).

I mention all of this, because I believe the success of both Boogie Nights and Pulp Ficton were defining moments in the trajectory of each director’s career. Both films were bold and cocksure—sprawling, densely populated epics set to vintage soundtracks. And each was responsible for the resurrection of a faded star’s career, those of Burt Reynolds and John Travolta respectively.

For me, however, Pulp Fiction remains a high-water mark. It was a feat Tarantino’s never repeated. Boogie Nights, on the other hand, gave us only a glimpse of Anderson’s ambitions. Each of his films since has represented a new level of artistic maturity, outperforming what came previously, though perhaps subtly.

I think this has a lot to do with each director’s tastes and interests. Whereas Tarantino seems happiest reinventing the genres he grew up with: pulpy crime stories, poorly-dubbed kung fu movies, blaxploitation flicks and grindhouse cinema, Anderson seems to have spent his youth studying the works of masters like Altman and Scorsese.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with either approach. Personally, though, I find Tarantino’s tastes to be the cinematic equivalent of junk-food, hardly worthy of revisiting, let alone reinventing in homage. Without sharing his nostalgia, Tarantino’s work feels increasingly gimmicky and irrelevant.

I mentioned earlier that my inevitable comparisons to other directors is unfair to Anderson, and so it is. I’ve written about Boogie Nights for several paragraphs without really mentioning the film, its ambitions or even how good it is. So let me be clear, the film is incredibly ambitious. It also happens to be pretty great.

From the opening tracking shot, uninterrupted for nearly three minutes, Anderson’s technical mastery is clear. And, pretty quickly, it’s obvious that the director has a thematic grasp to match.

On the surface, Boogie Nights is about the rise and fall of the adult film industry, told through the career of Dirk Diggler (Wahlberg), himself something of a John Holmes pastiche. For a film about pornography, though, it’s remarkably tame.

And in retrospect, the film’s single shot of Dirk Diggler’s oversized member now feels unnecessary and tacked-on. It’s designed as something of a payoff, a money shot if you will, but the scene is actually one of the film’s few missteps. Today the scene seems designed merely to ratchet up the titillation factor in a fairly reserved film, particularly when accounting for the racy subject matter.

But then, Boogie Nights is as much an elegy for the 1970s, as it is the story of the adult film industry. After nearly thirty years of derision, the music and fashions of the 70s are being remembered more fondly, with the once revered 80s—the decade of unrepentant greed, now viewed with a more critical eye.

There is a sense of dénouement in Boogie Nights that arrives rather early, about halfway through the film. It is quite literally the end of the 1970s, New Year’s Eve 1979. The scene is a party, to ring in the 1980s, and amidst the revelry there is a moment of shocking, but not altogether surprising, violence. The era’s end is marked with clear finality. Everything that comes next is epilogue.

It has been said that Boogie Nights chronicles the rise and fall of Dirk Diggler. This is true, but only superficially. For though we witness both Diggler’s hubris, as his star is rising, and his humility, after his arrogance and indulgences have exhausted his fame and wealth, the downfall is larger than Diggler, or his ego. The film realizes that history is larger than these characters.

Among the film’s characters, producer Floyd Gondolli (Philip Baker Hall) uniquely understands the adult film industry and the nature of change. He arrives at the New Year’s Eve party, to visit with director Jack Horner (Reynolds) arguing, “…there’s one little thing I want to do in this life, and that is I want to make a dollar and a cent in this business. Jack, I'm not trying to hurt you. I’m trying to help you stay one step ahead of the game…the territory we’re in is the future.”

Though never specifically mentioned in the film, the future is AIDS. It’s also the mainstream acceptance of pornography, with the advent of the VCR. It’s the rise of amateur performers and the move from shooting on film to capturing on tape, as Gondolli rightly predicts. Released in 1997, Boogie Nights could have never predicted that the future is also camcorders, YouTube and sexting.

In this sense, though it doesn’t exactly glamorize pornography or shy away from showing us the industry’s dark side, Boogie Nights almost seems quaint today. It’s a throwback to a more innocent time and place, an exuberant valentine to a bygone era.

“There are stories of coincidence and chance, and intersections and strange things told, and which is which and who only knows? And we generally say, ‘Well, if that was in a movie, I wouldn't believe it.’ Someone's so-and-so met someone else’s so-and-so and so on. And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that strange things happen all the time. And so it goes, and so it goes. And the book says, ‘We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.’” – Narrator (Ricky Jay)

P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia is a beautiful film. I’ll dispense with my usual gushing, because I’m not sure there are any superlatives left that could describe how dearly I love this movie.

There’s a scene about two-thirds of the way through the film when Aimee Mann’s Wise Up begins playing, though it is not clearly being broadcast. The scene cuts to each of the films major characters who are shown singing along to the film’s soundtrack:

It's not going to stop,
it's not going to stop ’til you wise up.
No, it’s not going to stop ’til you wise up.
No, it's not going to stop, so just give up.

The sequence is a pure conceit of cinema but, dammit, it works. And it summarizes quite nicely the overarching themes of Magnolia. This is a film about lonely and broken-hearted people, slaves to their past sins, unable to move on. The characters are interconnected and entwined, in some cases directly and in others, more peripherally. Every one of them is both damaged and alone, looking for some connection to the world, no matter how small.

Released only two years after Boogie Nights, this film could almost be it’s twin…almost. It shares the earlier film’s sense of self-assuredness, most of its ensemble and much of the creative talent behind the lens as well. It’s much less literal though. I don’t think of Boogie Nights as pedestrian, but here Anderson has reached for grander themes, and in the process crafted a bolder, more poetic story.

Magnolia begins and ends by showcasing a series of urban legends, the hanging of three men, a scuba diver and a suicide. They’re called, “stories of coincidence and chance, and intersections and strange things told,” and in the film’s climax, we learn of their importance. There is a rainstorm where frogs begin to fall from the sky. Is it a plague, designed by God as some form of release? Or is it as one of the characters suggests, simply something “that happens?”

Magnolia never answers this question, but if I were to guess, I’d suggest it is the latter, simply a coincidence. It’s something that merely happened. The film repeatedly references the line, “we may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.” To my mind, this is true. The frogs offer no release. As much as they want to be, the characters will never be completely free.

Also revisited frequently is the idea that, if we were watching a movie, events would unfold a certain way. We are watching a movie, of course, but the film doesn’t think of itself in that way. And Anderson’s structure supports this.

When the credits roll, most of the character’s fates are unresolved. There are no tidy endings, no conventions of closure. As with reality, we don’t know what’s going to come next, who will find happiness, which people will heal. Things happen. We happened to witness some of these things. What they mean, I cannot say, but now that I’ve witnessed them, I will not soon forget them. As the fella said, we may be done with the past, but it ain’t done with us.

“I don't know if there is anything wrong because I don't know how other people are.” – Barry Egan (Adam Sandler)

The best way I can think of to describe Punch-Drunk Love is that it’s a kind of tone poem. This is not a intricately plotted film, but rather a collage of images and sound. As essential to the movie as its story or acting are Jon Brion’s harmonium score and the Jeremy Blake video interstitials which are scattered throughout.

Punch-Drunk Love is a compelling mood piece. It also happens to be one of the darkest, most surprising and utterly original romantic comedies that I have ever seen. It’s hard to say a lot about the film’s plot, because there isn’t very much of one.

Though inspired by the true story of David Phillips, a civil engineer who exploited a loophole in a Healthy Choice pudding promotion to rack up more than one million frequent flyer miles, the film is actually a quirky courtship between Barry Eagan (Sandler) and Lena Leonard (Watson), with a bit of phone-sex extortion thrown into the mix.

Sandler, who too often plays the same loud, unfunny jerk, is surprisingly good as Barry, a troubled loner with seven henpecking sisters that drive him to fits of rage. Though Barry is clearly mentally ill, with signs of an anxiety disorder and compulsive behavior, his sister Elizabeth (Rajskub) doesn’t seem to notice, and sets him up with her coworker, Watson’s Lena.

To the film’s credit, the relationship between Barry and Lena is both fresh and believable. This is not the typical “boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back” story that we’ve seen play out countless times before. And Watson plays her role with enough eccentricity to make her interest in Sandler’s Barry feel entirely honest.

After Boogie Nights and Magnolia, it seemed that Paul Thomas Anderson had settled into something of a comfort zone. He had developed a style, large Altmanesque canvases filled with interlocking characters. Like Wes Anderson, he had collected a cadre of actors (Luis Guzmán, Philip Baker Hall, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ricky Jay, Alfred Molina, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly & Melora Walters) that it was easy to imagine the director finding roles for in his next ensemble.

It was forgivable, I think, to assume that Anderson would continue to revisit the same themes of his previous two pictures, that he would essentially tell the same story over and over again. Many auteurs, particularly those in decline, seem to fall into the trap of self-parody. It seemed, if not probable than at least plausible, that this is exactly where Anderson was headed.

Instead, with Punch-Drunk Love, he delivered a much less ambitious story, but took more than a few risks to deliver a surprisingly original film. Any of his bold choices, from the harmonium, to the interlaced video artwork, or even Shelley Duvall on the film’s soundtrack, singing as Olive Oyl, could have helped to turn this into a trainwreck. This is easily the sort of film where expectations, both from Anderson’s previous work and from Sandler’s typical one-note goofballs, could ruin one’s enjoyment. But, with assumptions managed, Punch-Drunk Love plays as a bold step forward from an incredibly self-assured talent.

Daniel Plainview: I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.
Henry Brands: That part of me is gone, working and not succeeding. All my failures have left me. I just don't…care.
Daniel Plainview: Well, if it’s in me, it’s in you. There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking. I want to earn enough money that I can get away from everyone.

It’s difficult to discuss P.T. Anderson’s There Will Be Blood without revealing something of the ending. I won’t spoil the film’s climax, except to say that it closes with oilman Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) crying out, “I’m finished!”

While this could have been presented as an epiphany, the realization that his actions have ruined him, it is not. Plainview’s weary utterance is more a statement of fact, his life’s work is complete. Not his career in oil, but his singular determination to sever ties with or outright destroy everyone that he encounters. Plainview is aptly named, for he has a simple abiding principle, misanthropy. He explains:

I see the worst in people. I don't need to look past seeing them to get all I need. I've built my hatreds up over the years, little by little…

Loosely based on Upton Sinclair’s Oil!, There Will Be Blood is an exceedingly grim film. Whereas the original novel was a political satire, the film has pared the story to it’s core. It’s not really even a critique on capitalism. It is now something resembling a character study, except that Plainview isn’t a character as much as he is a brute force of nature. He represents a single idea, that men are essentially evil. As such, the film becomes a meditation on the nature of man.

While very occasionally veering a bit too close to his Bill the Butcher from Gangs of New York (2002), Day-Lewis provides a mostly mesmerizing performance. The cadence of his speech, based on the voice of John Huston, is strangely captivating. It demands attention. The performance is more than the voice though. There are moments of shocking brutality. And, in what makes the character particularly engrossing, moments of real tenderness too. The character that Anderson and Day-Lewis have created is something more than a mustache-twirling villain.

Plainview never denies his dim take on humanity, describing his contempt as something that is ever growing. Though the film is not entirely pessimistic. As the story progresses, Daniel’s view is not entirely cemented, there is still the change he will be proven wrong.

We see this, particularly in his actions toward family. He takes an orphaned boy (Freasier) as his own son, later insisting it was because he needed a sweet face to buy up land. His tenderness to the boy belies this though. It’s only later, when he feels betrayed by his now adult son, that Plainview suggests his affections were a farce.

When a man arrives, claiming to be Plainview’s brother, Henry Brands (Kevin J. O'Connor), Plainview is at first skeptical. Eventually, Plainview begins to trust Brands, suggesting that he needs someone to share his life and empire with, someone that he can trust. Plainview wants to connect to someone, to find out he’s misjudged anyone. It is, again, only when he feels betrayed, that the oilman’s darker instincts take over.

Plainview’s third significant relationship is with a religious zealot, Paul Sunday (Dano). Like Daniel, Paul is aptly named, Sunday. For though he appears devout—building a church and congregation—Sunday is simply a pious charlatan. Though he honors the sabbath, he too is ultimately corrupt.

Daniel recognizes this immediately, but indulges Paul, when necessary, to grow his empire. In a pivotal scene, mirrored at the film’s climax, Plainview allows himself to be baptized at Sunday’s church, in an effort to acquire needed land rights. Daniel indulges Paul because he has no choice, but he is biding his time, waiting. He knows that Paul will fail, because he knows the nature of man. Paul’s eventual downfall will be Plainview’s final validation.

With There Will Be Blood Paul Thomas Anderson is beginning to remind me of Stanley Kubrick, which is, perhaps, the highest compliment I can pay him. As was typical with Kubrick, Anderson has delivered a masterpiece unlike any of his previous works, and yet one clearly imprinted with the director’s visual and thematic identity.

This is an artist at the very top of his game, in complete command of his talent. Whether or not you agree with the film’s bleak commentary, it is profoundly thought-provoking. I cannot wait to see what Anderson does next.

“It feels like I’m shitting a knife!” – Angie Ostrowiski (Amy Poehler)

Baby Mama is a fairly routine romantic comedy/buddy picture. It’s perfectly serviceable, and doesn’t really offer any surprises. You know what you're getting going into it, and if you enjoy Fey and Poehler’s schitck, it’s good for a few laughs. After a few weeks of more cerebral films, we wanted to watch something light, and this was exactly what we were looking for.

Fey plays Kate Holbrook, a vice-president for a new-agey Whole Foods stand-in, who has put her personal life on hold for her career. But now her biological clock is ticking. Kate wants a baby, but probably can’t have one because of her “T-shaped uterus.” So, Kate opts for surrogacy, which is where Poehler’s Angie Ostrowiski comes in.

Ostrowiski is presented as a foul-mouthed, gum-chewing, Dr. Pepper swilling, white-trash denizen of South Philly. Frankly, the character is played less broadly than the film’s trailers suggested. Watching Ostrowiski urinating in a sink, unable to operate the child-safety lock on the toilet, I was expecting something along the lines of SNL’s Appalachian Emergency Room. Though I suppose if Ostrowiski had been that ridiculous a caricature, it would have been totally unbelievable for Holbrook to choose her as a surrogate, no matter how desperate.

As it is, the premise is pretty ridiculous. But then, I’m probably thinking way too much about a movie that was simply designed to offer a few laughs. Which it does. I laughed out loud when Ostrowiski goes into labor. I thought her thrashing and cursing in the hospital were hysterical, although my wife tells me this is only because I’ll never experience the pain of childbirth.

One other thing that struck me about Baby Mama was the caliber of the cast. Several of the performers were better than the material. Steve Martin was particularly amusing as Holbrook’s boss Barry, the ponytailed CEO of a health food chain, obsessed with mantras. And Sigourney Weaver was also very funny as a surprisingly fertile surrogacy coordinator. On the whole, though, while a pleasant enough way to kill some time and have a few laughs, this was a largely forgettable film.

“Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends—hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism—these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility—a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.” – President Barack Obama, Inaugural Address

I had planned to watch something uniquely American on January 20^th, perhaps 1776 (1972), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) or The American President (1995)—a film to celebrate the sacred democratic process, to honor the peaceful transfer of power that has endured for more than two-hundred years.

I began the day with my attention fixed on the television, to the throngs of ordinary citizens gathering on the national mall to bear witness to this unique moment in history, then to the oath sworn on Lincoln’s bible, the lofty rhetoric and sobering challenges cited in the inaugural address and to finally the sight of our new President and First Lady walking down Pennsylvania Avenue to become the first African-Americans to make their home in the White House.

I realized as the day wore on that I had yet to decide on a film to watch. But it occurred to me that it didn’t matter much. I had wanted to watch something uniquely American, and in fact I did. I love film, but some things are simply more important than the movies. I decided to celebrate, to savor the moment.

This project resumes with a new film on January 21^st.

“Like an urban vision quest I have allowed the elements of nature to teach me divine truths. My well-being was in direct relation to my ability to creatively survive within this fabricated wilderness. My senses sharpened and tolerances increased as I transformed into my inner beast, as I became Landman.” – Andrew Brehm

Landman and the Thunderbird is an art film in the truest sense of the word. Part performance piece and part documentary, the film captures a three day experiment by filmmaker Andrew Brehm. A Philadelphia artist, Brehm commandeered the abandoned lot next to his studio, literally transformed it into an urban wilderness and lived there for three days.

Brehm entered the performance space with not even the clothes on his back, depending on found objects for garments, shelter and tools. He also relied on assistance, and resistance, from two “deities.” Described as the Goddess of Everything Good and the Director of Unfavorable Events, the unseen performers were instructed to aid or hinder Brehm as they saw fit. The Goddess of Everything Good utilized the eponymous thunderbird to send the artist tools and food, while a pack of roving hairy beasts were employed by the Director of Unfavorable Events to wreak havoc, steal food, destroy Brehm’s camp and occasionally attack the artist, with shocking ferocity.

Unlike a traditional film, with stunt men and trick shots that create an illusion of violence, the fighting here is real. You can see the anger rising in Brehm’s face, when his shelter is destroyed. You can sense the hostility and raw aggression in the combat. After each encounter, the many cuts and bruises he endures are clearly visible—no makeup here.

When I began a film a day in 2009, one of the ground rules was that a film must have a theatrical release. So, does Landman and the Thunderbird really apply? Probably not. On January 19^th the film had a one-night screening at the Fleisher/Ollman Gallery in Philadelphia, which I didn’t even attend. Fortunately, I was able to screen a DVD of the film because my brother-in-law happens to be the Director of Unfavorable Events.

But this is my project, and they’re my rules, so I’ll bend them as I see fit. Frankly, Landman is a breath of fresh air. This is not the work of a corporate entertainment property, manipulated in response to test screenings and focus groups or designed to target the tween demographic, but rather the result of a single artist’s passion, determination and hard work.

While this makes the film something special, it also makes it more difficult to critique. How does one say something remotely negative or critical, when the artist worked so hard to present his vision? That’s not to say that the film is bad, or uninteresting. Quite the opposite, actually.

The film is engrossing and has a creepy, post-apocalyptic feeling. While some have described him as an urban caveman, Brehm explains simply, “that is what modern people look like when dirty and stripped of their products.” And he’s right. These are all labels. No matter what the metaphor the real question remains, is the filmmaker’s journey interesting? For me, yes. Absolutely.

Aided by the pervasive nature of reality TV, it’s not as jarring as it might once have been to basically watch a guy go about his primitive daily routine. The fact that Brehm has been stripped entirely of his creature comforts certainly makes this more interesting than say watching an ironically titled show that chronicles a group of housemates drinking themselves into oblivion and trying to get laid. Though come to think of it, there is some of this in Landman as well.

As I mentioned earlier, Landman and the Thunderbird is something of a hybrid, part film, but also part performance piece. As a result, unlike a more traditional film it does not feel the need to rely on a traditional narrative structure.

Things happened in the performance that are not captured in the finished film. This is entirely understandable because, let’s face it, a seventy-two hour film would probably be mind-numbingly dull. Unfortunately, I think, the film does miss an opportunity to step outside of the project, to interview Brehm before going in, to gauge his expectations, and to set ours. We only learn of Brehm’s ground rules from ancillary printed material. The roles of the deities, or the thunderbird, are never clearly explained on film.

While I certainly don’t need a film’s events to be telegraphed, I feel that the filmmaker has missed an opportunity to demonstrate how well orchestrated this project really was. It’s hard to appreciate how much time and effort went into creating the environment, and providing instruction to the deities and their minions. Brehm has created his own universe, with it’s own inviolable rules. Going into the film cold, I fear the real depth of this project might be lost on the viewer, which would be a great pity.

My only other real criticism, which is clearly a nitpick and was probably unavoidable, is the occasional noise from the urban soundscape that seeps into the film—a car’s blaring radio, a plane’s engines overhead. In their absence Brehm’s location, both time and place, is much less clear. While I realize such interruptions can’t really be helped, the film momentarily looses a bit of it’s unsettling vibe when the real world rudely interrupts.

As I said, though, this is nitpicking. Landman and the Thunderbird is an impressive achievement, and makes for compelling viewing. Honestly, I’d love to see an even longer cut. But then, I remain fascinated with the Dawn of Man segment from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), so I suppose my tastes already lean toward the documentation of primitive behaviors.

Unfortunately, unless you have a connection to Brehm or the production, it’s probably going to be difficult to see the entire film. There is however, a ten-minute clip of the film available on YouTube. If this project sounds like the sort of thing that would interest you, I’d strongly urge you to check it out.

I have a drinking problem? Fuck you, Peck! You’re a Mormon. Compared to you we all have a drinking problem. – Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich)

Accepting the Oscar for Best Director, awarded for their work on No Country For Old Men (2007), Joel Coen explained:

“Ethan and I have been making stories with movie cameras since we were kids. In the late '60s when Ethan was 11 or 12, he got a suit and a briefcase and we went to the Minneapolis International Airport with a Super 8 camera and made a movie about shuttle diplomacy called ‘Henry Kissinger, Man on the Go.’ And honestly, what we do now doesn't feel that much different from what we were doing then.”

It is an interesting perspective on their career, but not one that I necessarily share. Of all of the working directors that you could reasonably label auteurs, the Coens, for me, are the most erratic. I wouldn’t say they’re hit-or-miss exactly, but the Coen brothers brand seems particularly volatile. One film often feels very different from the next.

Perhaps this is just the schizophrenic result of having two co-directors on every picture, rather than a single, uncompromised artistic vision. While the Coens are actual siblings, and ostensibly share the same artistic perspective, I often wonder if their films are subtly shaded when Joel’s opinion wins out here, or Ethan’s input takes hold there.

I should be clear that I always find the Coen brothers interesting, even when I don’t necessarily think their work is great. In general, though, I find that the funnier and lighter their work, the less compelling it is. Recent humorous fair, like Intolerable Cruelty (2003) and their remake of The Ladykillers (2004) are merely middling. And, though it may seem blasphemous, I find both Raising Arizona (1987) and The Big Lebowski (1998) highly overrated. It probably wont come as a surprise that the gangland epic Miller’s Crossing (1990) is my favorite Coen film. So what, then, about Burn After Reading?

Burn After Reading begins with Osbourne Cox (Malkovich), a CIA analyst who has just been fired. And though he doesn’t yet know it, his wife Katie (Swinton) is about to divorce him. In a preemptive effort, she begins collecting financial information off of Osbourne’s computer, some of which ends up in the hands of two bumbling gym employees, played by Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand. Clooney’s philandering Harry Pfarrer is thrown into the mix as Katie’s lover, who happens to be a U.S. Marshal.

Essentially, the film follows the characters’ antics as they relate to Osbourne’s tell-all CIA memoir, discovered in a gym bag, alongside his financial data. It wouldn’t be fair to spoil any of the film’s twists and turns, as a few of them are particularly surprising.

At least one of these twists, a moment of accidental violence, marks a jarring change in tone. I blame this on the fact that the film has no idea what it wants to be. Part screwball comedy, part espionage thriller, the film’s two halves are nearly irreconcilable.

It’s almost as if half of the actors are playing in a dopey comedy, but then a character from the spy thriller interrupts, violently jumping into the picture. Perhaps it’s the dilemma I mentioned earlier, of two directors with competing sensibilities, that causes problems here.

For the most part, the leaked CIA memoir is handled so broadly that it’s really more a farce than a satire. It’s impossible to believe that even the dumb, self-absorbed gym employees don’t realize the legal implication of offering state secrets to the Russians, or the danger of blackmailing a intelligence operative. On the other hand, Osbourne is played as a psychopath whose rage seems misplaced in a comedic farce.

It doesn’t help matters that none of the film’s characters are redeemable, or particularly likable. There is no one to root for, which would be fine if the film were a true farce. With the inclusions of darker elements, however, I couldn’t help but feel a bit empty at the end. Depressingly, the film’s only truly decent character suffers the most grisly fate.

As I said earlier, I always find the Coen brothers interesting, even when the final product is sub-par. I also find that their films tend to play better with subsequent viewings. And perhaps that will be the case here. Now that I know where the story is headed, perhaps the tonal shifts won’t be quite so jarring.

“This trial…the whole world…it’s all show business.” – Billy Flynn (Richard Gere)

People seem prenatally disposed to either loving musicals or to hating them. I suppose it’s the absurdity of spontaneously breaking into song that puts people off. I don’t really know, as I’ve always loved musicals. On some level all cinema is absurd, musicals just expound on the fantasy.

Winner of the 2002 Academy Award for Best Picture, Chicago tells the story of two women, Roxie Hart (Zellweger) and Velma Kelly (Zeta-Jones) who have murdered the cheating men in their lives. Each hires flashy lawyer Billy Flynn (Gere) to craft their legal defenses. Along the way there are lots of catchy tunes about adultery, jailhouse kickbacks and show business.

How you feel about Chicago probably depends a lot on how you feel about musicals. Or maybe not. My wife usually doesn’t care for musicals but felt somewhat differently about Chicago largely because of the way it was filmed.

Though the film takes place in the real world—that is to say on realistic sets designed to resemble 1920s Chicago—when the musical numbers begin the scene shifts to a theatrical stage, as a bandleader (Diggs) introduces each performance. Rather than obscure its theater roots, Chicago embraces them. Because it does not take itself too literally—or seriously—for that matter, it’s easier to just go with the flow and enjoy the performances.

The Kander and Ebb songs are catchy, and the performances are uniformly excellent. Director Rob Marshall also served as choreographer on the film, and in addition to quite literally staging the songs, delivers some fantastic set pieces. My favorite, the imaginative We Both Reached For The Gun, has Billy Flynn speaking for Roxie Hart as a ventriloquist dummy, and manipulating the press like puppets.

Richard Gere was surprisingly good as Flynn. But, as much as I enjoyed his work, I couldn’t help but wonder about the original Broadway performance. On the stage, Flynn was portrayed by Jerry Orbach, best known as wisecracking cop Lenny Briscoe on Law & Order. I am so familiar with Orbach as an world weary, alcoholic tough guy, that I’d love to have seen his take on the theatrical flim-flam artist Flynn.

Chicago is well-acted and produced. I’m not sure it’s worthy of the Best Picture moniker, particularly when compared to the other nominated films in 2003, but if you enjoy musicals I expect you’d have fun with this one. It doesn’t break any molds and isn’t particularly groundbreaking, but it is solidly entertaining.

“I yam what I yam and I yam what I yam that I yam
And I got a lotta muscle and I only gots one eye
And I'll never hurt nobodys and I'll never tell a lie
Top to me bottom and me bottom to me top
That's the way it is 'til the day that I drop, what am I?
I yam what I yam.” – Popeye (Robin Williams)

My first instinct was to label Robert Altman’s Popeye an interesting failure. But the more I thought about it, I realized that the film isn’t a failure at all, it does exactly what it sets out to do. Namely, it uses real actors and sets to deliver a live-action cartoon, complete with comic book sensibilities.

This concept might seem quaint today, in the age of computer animation, but I suspect that Popeye was the first of its kind. Sure, there were earlier Batman and Superman adaptations, and Dick Tracy was serialized long before Warren Beatty reinvented him. Even Blondie was successfully translated into a series of twenty-eight feature films prior to Altman’s take on the comic-strip adaptation.

But in each of these examples, even with a more fantastic character like Superman, there is some acknowledgement of the real world, of physics. Actors aren’t caricatured, people don’t resemble drawings. Whether necessitated by rudimentary special effects capabilities, or simply due to a failure of imagination, comic book adaptations hadn’t been particularly cartoonish. Altman and his terrific cast changed all of that.

The stand-out in the casting is Shelley Duvall, a dead-ringer for Olive Oyl. Accentuating her tall lanky frame and large eyes with a garish costume and hair, the actress looks more like a cartoon than a real person here. Robin Williams seems quite a bit less like the animated Popeye, but has the squint and muttered malapropisms down pat. Outlandish prosthetic forearms help to seal the deal.

One of the real surprises is Williams’s performance here, his first feature film role. Williams is uncharacteristically reserved, relying on mimickry alone, with none of the manic ad-libbing I’ve come to expect from his comedic performances. Apparently, his muttering on set was so quiet that all of his dialog had to be re-recorded in post-production.

I suppose the real question is whether Popeye is any good. Honestly? Not really, no. It’s cuter than it is entertaining. If you’re the type of parent that tends to indiscriminately set your kids down in front of movies that you’d never watch yourself, then I suppose you could call it a children’s film.

Watching it, I couldn’t help but thinking of Steven Spielberg’s Hook (1991). Both films are based on beloved children’s properties, but mostly designed to tap into adult nostalgia. Each star Robin Williams as the revered icon, and both were filmed on expensive, elaborate sets, which look exactly so. You can almost feel the dingy backlot, lurking just outside of every shot. Most importantly, neither film is effortless. They are trying much too hard to have fun. Everything feels labored, like it was a chore to make. As such, either film is mostly a chore to watch.

For me, this may be the fault of mismanaged expectations. I first saw Popeye years after I’d developed an appreciation for Robert Altman. This is the filmmaker who brought us M*A*S*H (1970), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Nashville (1975), The Player (1992) & Short Cuts (1993). To put it bluntly, the bar had been set insanely high.

Actually, let me rephrase that. Normally I’m something of a vulgarian, but for this project I’ve been trying to pass myself off as marginally couth. Sometimes though, your base instincts show through. So let me rephrase my original thought.

We’re talking about Robert Fucking Altman—a goddamned maestro of American cinema! Mediocre just doesn’t cut it here. Every single film had better be a fucking grand-slam home run! This guy was manifestly better than making poor—let alone average—movies. Or so I thought.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, my naïve, younger self was wrong. Altman was more than capable of delivering a lackluster film. If Popeye doesn’t convince you, seek out Dr. T & The Women (2000).

On the other hand, I think this film was groundbreaking, perhaps revolutionary. Without it, I don’t think we’d even have seen Beatty’s take on Dick Tracy, or even Sin City (2005), itself a technical masterpiece. And so we circle back to my original summation. I don’t think Popeye is a failure, because it was exactly as Altman intended, a living comic book. And though it helped spawn a new generation of films, I’m just not sure that’s enough to forgive its cringe worthiness.

I have just one final observation about my screening of Popeye. While watching, I found the Harry Nilsson score shockingly terrible. Each song basically, and repetitively, described the action happening on screen. There was no poetry in the lyrics whatsoever. So it surprised me when my wife began singing along, song for song, note for note. She sheepishly explained that the film was a childhood favorite of her sister’s and as a result, she has watched it countless times.

I can tell you that after a single viewing, those damned jingles have now been rolling around in my head for almost a week. The cloying soundtrack, while poorly constructed, is certainly memorable. Be forewarned, otherwise you might find yourself singing about hamburgers purchased on credit.

“Turn the right corner in Sin City, and you can find anything…” – The Salesman (Josh Hartnett)

Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City is an amazing technical achievement. It’s a groundbreaking stylized film, the first real instance of cartoon noir. Though, like Popeye, I think Sin City is more innovative than good, and in this case I am already weary of its innovations.

Adapted from Frank Miller’s comic book, Sin City tells several intertwined stories about dirty cops, murder, gang wars and waging a hopeless fight against corruption. In other words, it’s a fairly traditional noir, but shot in a rather unique way.

Real actors were filmed, mostly against a blue screen, and then digitally painted to more closely resemble Miller’s original paneled artwork. If you’re not familiar with the original work, I’d urge you to view some comparisons with the final film.

I don’t dispute that Sin City is well crafted, or entertaining. It is incredibly gory, but the violence is so stylized that it doesn’t feel particularly gratuitous. I do have some problems with Sin City, but they have nothing to do with the movie itself, and everything to do with film culture today.

Let’s start with the source material. Frank Miller’s original “books” are often referred to as “graphic novels.” Um, sorry, no. They’re goddamned comic books. Get the fuck over yourselves. This isn’t Shakespeare, and it isn’t high art.

Look, I enjoy lowbrow entertainment. I don’t need for every movie to be a cinematic masterpiece, or to have it say something profound. Sin City is noir, and it knows this. Each of the film’s stories is clumsily narrated. The language, quality of the writing and delivery all resemble classic noir—that is to say, it feels like a cheap detective novel.

As an example, let’s look at the prototypical film noir, Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour (1945). It’s considered a classic of the genre, but it’s a B-movie, made on a shoestring budget. It’s poorly crafted, with sub-par results. On the other hand, it’s widely considered a masterpiece. When Roger Ebert wrote of Detour in his Great Movies column, he explained:

‘Detour’ is a movie so filled with imperfections that it would not earn the director a passing grade in film school. This movie from Hollywood’s poverty row, shot in six days, filled with technical errors and ham-handed narrative, starring a man who can only pout and a woman who can only sneer, should have faded from sight soon after it was released in 1945. And yet it lives on, haunting and creepy, an embodiment of the guilty soul of film noir. No one who has seen it has easily forgotten it.

Detour wasn’t aiming for greatness. It wasn’t running away from its roots. It just happened to epitomize the form. Today though, you can’t draw a comic book, it’s a graphic novel. You can’t deliver a modest genre picture on a budget. Instead, you develop Sin City, for a reported $40 million. You hire some big names to draw in the kiddies, market the shit out of the thing and hope for big opening weekend grosses. If not, there’s always the home video market, and if it’s a hit, the inevitable sequels, merchandising rights, spin-offs and knock-offs.

Which brings me back to my original point. As I said earlier, Sin City is a remarkable technical achievement. It pushed the boundary in integrating actors with digital backdrops. And it sticks fairly closely to its noir roots, making for an entertaining series of pulpy crime stories. Unfortunately it was a success.

So naturally, it was followed by 300 (2007), The Spirit (2008) and soon, Watchmen (2009). The studios are now spending millions and millions on these comic book movies. Fine. They’re OK. But whatever happened to B-movies? Innovative filming due to budget limitations or technical constraints? Throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks? Instead, Hollywood just uses money and special effects to transform every idea into a big-budget, tentpole cartoon.

I appreciate Sin City. I like that it’s true to its pulpy heritage. But when I watch the film, it is with more than a little contempt. Because I know that lots more derivatives will continue to follow. Progress marches forward, I guess.

“We're all unlucky in love sometimes. When I am, I go jogging. The body loses water when you jog, so you have none left for tears.” – He Zhiwu (Takeshi Kaneshiro)

When tasting wine, connoisseurs will cleanse their palates between vintages. On finishing Chungking Express I immediately thought that it had served as the perfect palate cleanser. But thinking more clearly about the film, this is absolutely wrong.

A true palate cleanser is light and devoid of its own character. It’s designed to be bland and uninteresting, and this was totally untrue of the film.

More accurately then, Chungking Express was simply refreshing. It was a shift away from my comfort zone, from American and British films, in English, that follow not only the conventions of Hollywood, but also of Western culture.

Set in Hong Kong and filmed in Cantonese, Chungking Express tells its hyperkinetic tales of the urban jungle with lots of neon and time-shifting camera tricks. The project was developed by writer and director Wong Kar-wai during a break in the production of Ashes in Time (1994), who explained, “I wanted to make a very light, contemporary movie, but where the characters had the same problems.”

I admit that I went into Chungking Express with false expectations. I knew only that it told the tale of two police officers, and that the film received its U.S. release thanks to Quentin Tarantino’s Rolling Thunder production company. I assumed that I'd be watching an ultra-violent tale about street gangs and martial arts, essentially all of the things that Tarantino himself later delivered in Kill Bill (2003).

I certainly wasn’t expecting a superstitious, lovesick cop trying to free himself from loneliness by collecting canned pineapple. I also wasn’t expecting the pixie-like waitress, obsessed with the song California Dreamin’, or the frequency with which she breaks into an apartment, not only to clean it, but to be close to its occupant, Badge # 663 (Leung Chiu Wai). At its heart, Chungking Express is about love and about connections. Some are made and some are missed. They may last a night, or they may lead to lasting relationships, we really don’t know.

Apart from the surprising subject matter, this is the most gratifying aspect of Chungking Express, it defies expectations. Even after realizing that it was not in fact a bloody police procedural, the film still had the capacity to surprise and to keep me guessing. It does not end tidily, but with an open question about a hand-drawn boarding pass.

By far the most pleasant surprise of the film a day in 2009 project so far, I believe I will be amending the resolution to include not only more films that I’ve never seen, but also more foreign films, which are less likely to follow the cinematic and cultural conventions that I’ve come to expect.

Chungking Express was wonderfully unexpected, and it left me happy, nearly giddy, for days. I love when movies have the capacity to do this. And I love that Criterion, with its “series of important classic and contemporary films,” continues to deliver such beautiful transfers of obscure titles, far outside of the Hollywood mainstream.

I cannot recommend this film highly enough.

“She was already thinking of herself as a kind of expatriate, not smothered by what she believed to be America’s puritanical and materialistic culture, which she had little patience for. She saw herself more a European soul, in tune with the thinkers and artists she felt expressed her tragic, romantic, freethinking view of life.” – Narrator (Christopher Evan Welch)

In high school the first filmmaker that I really discovered was Woody Allen. Watching his films, I started to sense that they shared a thematic identity. I began paying attention to which films Allen wrote alone, and those where he employed a co-writer. I’d analyze the subtleties and nuances that identified his favorite cinematographers; Willis, Nykvist and Di Palma. Studying Allen’s films I first learned of the auteur concept. With regard to my cinematic education, Allen was my first adult love. To this day, second only to Coppola’s The Godfather (1972), Manhattan (1979) remains my favorite film.

I mention this because lately Allen reminds me of my late grandfather. I don’t mean to be maudlin, but my grandfather passed away in 2004 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. President Ronald Reagan described his own battle with Alzheimer’s as “the long goodbye,” which perfectly describes my experience not only with my grandfather, but also with Allen’s late career.

At first you don’t want to admit that there is anything wrong. You ignore the symptoms, hoping they’ll just go away. But little by little, things get worse. The habits you fondly remember have started to disappear. Soon it’s painful because the person you loved is all but gone, occasionally there are flashes of the old self, but more often than not, you simply don’t recognize what you see.

If it seems glib or insensitive to compare Allen’s films to a debilitating neurological disease, then I apologize. That’s not my intent. As I mentioned earlier, Allen’s films represent one of my longest cinematic loves, and film is sacrosanct to me. I simply mean to explain that in recent years I am saddened, because someone that I once deeply admired now seems creatively impotent. Very occasionally there’s a glimpse of the artist I once loved, but too often I can’t escape that I’m facing another long goodbye.

So what, then, of Vicky Cristina Barcelona? Some might suggest that I am deluding myself, or that I am in denial. But to me it feels, for the first time in a long time, that Woody has something important to say. Let me elaborate.

I’ve long felt that Allen needs a muse. In my mind his filmmaking has several distinct eras, mostly defined by his leading ladies. First we have pre-Keaton, which really only covers Take the Money and Run (1969) and Bananas (1971). The Keaton era runs from 1973’s Sleeper through Manhattan. A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1983) through 1992’s Husbands and Wives define the Farrow era. For a long time I’ve believed that everything from Bullets Over Broadway (1994) forward represented the precipitous decline. Now though, I’m beginning to wonder if 1994-2004 was not simply the wilderness decade, with 2005’s Match Point representing the beginning of a new Scarlett Johansson era.

That isn’t to imply that the Johansson films are all great. I found Match Point a surprisingly capable genre thriller, whereas Scoop was just another of Allen’s cringeworthy late comedies. And Johansson herself is not particularly good in any of the three films.

In Match Point she is the breathless femme fatale, where she merely feels insubstantial. In both Scoop and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, however, Johansson is the obligatory Woody stand-in. Lots of actors have attempted to imitate Allen’s speech affectations and wild gesticulating. John Cusack, Kenneth Branagh, Jason Biggs, and even Seth Green have all stammered through roles that you can’t help but imagine that Allen wrote with his own voice in mind.

And now we have Johansson, who has parroted the director’s neurotic delivery through two films. In both cases she is totally unnatural and flat, coming across as a much poorer actress than she is. The film’s second Allen stand-in, Rebecca Hall, fares much better with the director’s cadence.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona, as it’s poorly constructed title suggests, tells the story of two New Yorkers, Vicky (Hall) and Cristina (Johansson), who spend a summer abroad, in Barcelona. In typical Allen fashion, it’s mostly a movie about dysfunctional relationships. Story aside, the film is beautifully lensed. Cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe captures the city’s beauty in romantic golden hues.

I’ve heard the criticism that because the city of Barcelona helped to finance the film with public funds that it feels like nothing more than a state-sponsored travelogue. I don’t see that, though. For decades, Allen has been much better received in Europe than in the United States, and I feel the film’s narrator is really speaking of Woody, when he says of Cristina, “she was already thinking of herself as a kind of expatriate, not smothered by what she believed to be America’s puritanical and materialistic culture, which she had little patience for.”

Allen’s love of Europe in general, and Barcelona specifically, seem genuine to me. And the films gorgeous sun-drenched photography seems appropriate, just as Manhattan’s use of black & white tones best represented New York as Allen has always romanticized it.

Surprisingly, I found the film to be fairly nuanced. Too serious to be considered a comedy, it is also, unlike Allen’s infamously ponderous and morose dramas, both funny and moving.

Apart from Johansson, the acting is uniformly good, particularly Bardem, as the seductive artist, Juan Antonio, and Cruz as his fiery ex-wife, Maria Elena. Cruz’s performance here was recently nominated for an Oscar, and deservedly so. The dynamic between Cruz and Bardem is excellent, especially their frequent arguments in Spanish, which I've read were mostly improvised.

I am not fluent in Spanish but the subtitled text, though translated, felt more natural than any of the native English dialogue. As I mentioned earlier, Rebecca Hall, as Vicky, handles Allen’s writing very naturally.

Even so, it’s sometimes impossible to deliver the stilted, novelistic language well. At one point Vicky mentions that she does not find Juan Antonio’s personality “winning.” Coming from a woman in her 20s, her speech feels entirely false.

Similarly, when Vicky and her husband Doug discuss a bridge game, it occurs to me that Allen simply does not get out much. If these characters have any relationship to reality, it’s to that of the sophisticated, well-healed Manhattanites of Allen’s youth— the monied socialites that he idolizes in The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) and Radio Days (1987).

Allen has always been a creature of habit. He still records his films in mono. Since Annie Hall, the credits for his films have simply been white text, set in Windsor Light Condensed, appearing on a black screen. He eschews contemporary music for his favorite scratchy jazz recordings or the occasional classical piece.

He’s seldom evolved past his comfort zone, happy to churn out another picture every year. I don’t have any real issue with the method, but lately his jokes seem tired, not very far removed from Henny Younman’s Borsht Belt shtick. Allen now seems a relic from a different age. And with every creaky gag he feels just a little bit older.

What surprised me most about Vicky Cristina Barcelona, despite the sometimes jarring language, was how relevant it seemed. For the first time in a very long time, it feels that Allen has something to say. It’s not simply a series of well-worn gags, it’s a meditation on relationships and on love.

Some of the things that spoke to me; Bardem’s father, a poet who refuses to publish his works for a world that has not learned to love and the subtly highlighted difference between European and American cultures—particularly in how Allen addressed his hostility to technology. From someone who otherwise is out of touch, here Allen is remarkably aware. He doesn’t come across simply as a ranting luddite, but rather as an artist, sounding a note of regret. He realizes that with all we’ve gained from progress, we’ve lost something important as well.

Finally, there’s the bittersweet ending. The final shot of Vicky and Cristina is beautiful, and vintage Allen. Pessimistic but not exactly cynical.

While definitely not a perfect film, it was a pleasant surprise. It gave me a bit of faith that Woody can still be relevant, maybe just not once every year.

“I Need to know who he is. I…I need to stand there, I need to look him in the eye and I need to know that it's him.” – Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal)

Zodiac is steeped in the 1970s. Not the story, which traces the lengthy investigation of the infamous Zodiac Killer who terrorized Northern California in the late 60s, nor the production design, which recreates the period in exacting detail. What’s most interesting about the film is how it precisely recreates the atmosphere of, not the decade itself, but rather the cinema from that era.

To me, the film feels like a spiritual kin to All the President’s Men (1976). Focusing on both the police investigation and the involvement of journalists from The San Francisco Chronicle, the movie shares the earlier film’s ominous, slow-burning vibe. In both cases, the focus is on the zeal of the investigators and their search for truth and justice.

We know there is something dangerous lurking out there, but we never confront it face to face. It’s always hiding in the shadows, just out of sight. In the case of All the President’s Men, it was the “cancer on the presidency.” Here it is a mysterious psychopath, taunting his hunters, evading prosecution.

Remarkably Zodiac showcases a murder investigation where the killer was never caught, and the crimes were never satisfactorily explained. The film has no real heroes, only players. A throwback to the darker, more cynical films of the post-Wategate era, Zodiac is a story mostly about obsession and failure.

I find the marketing for most films predictably lame. But the tagline for Zodiac, that, “there’s more than one way to lose your life to a killer,” sums up something basic and profound about the film. Highlighting first the work of police inspector David Toschi (Ruffalo) and crime reporter Paul Avery (Downey Jr.), the story gradually shifts to the obsessive interest of Chronicle cartoonist cum Zodiac expert Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal). To varying degrees all three men are haunted by the Zodiac, and none entirely escape his lure.

Zodiac was based, at least in part, on Graysmith’s book, and both the author and Toschi were consultants to the production. And while I appreciate the film’s ambiguity, something of a resolution is suggested. This is based on the opinions of Graysmith and Toschi, who believe they have positively identified the murderer, even though forensic evidence has proved inconclusive.

Fincher’s film is undeniably gripping, which is no small feat considering that it runs for more than two-and-a-half hours, and chronicles grisly serial killings that were never solved. I wonder, though, if the film might have been even stronger if it did not ultimately align itself with a specific criminal theory, instead refusing to give its characters the closure there desperately crave.

“I know what you're thinking. ‘Did he fire six shots or only five?’ Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question. ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?” – Inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood)

What does one say about a film as ingrained in the collective consciousness as Dirty Harry? Oft quoted and frequently imitated, it’s now just simply a part of our cultural heritage. Whether it’s good or bad doesn’t really matter. As it happens, though, Dirty Harry is good, really good.

Clint Eastwood plays Police Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan, a cop more interested in results than in rules. His nickname comes not from the taint of corruption but because Harry is assigned all of the dirty jobs that no one else wants to clean up. One of those jobs is to chase down a serial killer who has dubbed himself Scorpio.

I already knew that Dirty Harry was based on the Zodiac murders. But watching the film immediately after screening David Fincher’s Zodiac, I was surprised as just how many influences from the actual story were adapted in Dirty Harry—or for that matter, how Callahan’s case managed to capture the zeitgeist of its unsolved real-world counterpart. Prior to Fincher’s film I had no idea that Zodiac’s letters threatened schoolbuses. I had always figured that Scorpio was just a riff on Zodiac, but Dirty Harry’s climax, with a bus full of abducted schoolchildren, feels a bit more resonant to me now.

There’s not very much to say about Eastwood’s Callahan. For most of his career, the actor’s had two basic roles, the cowboy who is a stoic loner and the world-weary cop that breaks the rules to get results. He’s never much more than just Clint Eastwood, and you either like his on-screen persona, or you don’t.

In one sense Dirty Harry is particularly formulaic, but then I’m too young to have seen it outside of the context of its four sequels. In each Harry argues with his superiors, makes a lot of wisecracks and gets a new partner that he doesn’t want. Just as Harry starts to warm to the new routine, the partner ends up wounded or dead. Ignoring all of this, Dirty Harry is well paced and solidly entertaining.

Dirty Harry is a very dark film, but I’m not referring to the movie’s plot. Frankly, though Andy Robinson’s Scorpio is suitably creepy, having seen the incredibly nihilistic Seven (1995), this serial killer story almost seems quaint by comparison. No, when I say that Dirty Harry is dark, I am speaking literally. The movie has several sequences that are drenched in shadow.

Considering that “the Prince of Darkness,” Gordon Willis is my favorite cinematographer, I find Surtees’s work here surprisingly excellent. Particularly striking are the scenes where Scorpio is leading Callahan on a wild goose chase through San Francisco. Dirty Harry jogs through a tunnel and we can barely make out his profile in the inky black. He later tracks the killer into a football stadium, soaked in darkness, the occasional silhouette barely detectable. Too often, I think, cinematographers artificially brighten the scene, so we can follow along. Here there is something more realistic, something vérité, about the exposure. It may not be particularly popular, but I love the camerawork.

Sometimes I feel a bit guilty that I enjoy Dirty Harry as much as I do. Sure it’s escapism, but Callahan advocates a kind of vigilante justice that in reality is pretty chilling; torturing suspects, violating civil liberties and ignoring the rule of law. Maybe I’m over-reacting, but in a way Dirty Harry is a precursor to Jack Bauer on 24. It’s scary when pro-torture entertainment, designed as nothing more than right-wing masturbatory fantasy, inspires a U.S. Supreme Court Justice to cite Jack Bauer’s tactics as the basis for sound legal philosophy. It makes me wonder just how many people fail to grasp that Dirty Harry and his progeny are exaggerated and, more importantly, fictional.

“Come on, now. Don't be naïve, Lieutenant. We both know how careers are made. Integrity is something you sell the public.” – Walter Chalmers (Robert Vaughn)

Whatever else you may think about Bullitt, it certainly is an interesting case study on how much the crime drama has changed in the intervening forty years. My wife found the pacing labored, whereas I’d call it deliberate. I suppose essentially we’re really saying the same thing. Though I enjoyed the more languid tempo and she didn’t.

Interestingly, while I don’t put too much merit in the Academy Awards, the technical categories are always interesting, because the winners are selected only by their peers. Bullitt won the 1968 Oscar for film editing. So, even though the film’s pace may feel leisurely today, it’s telling that it was highly regarded by film editors in the late 60s.

The film’s plot is simple enough. Steve McQueen is Lieutenant Frank Bullitt, selected by Senator Walter Chalmers (Vaughn) to protect a witness for an upcoming Senate subcommittee hearing. While being protected by Bullitt’s men, the witness is murdered, leaving Chalmers furious and Bullitt eager to find the killers.

Bullitt, like Dirty Harry (1971), pays homage to San Francisco’s infamous Zodiac murder investigation. Here McQueen based Bullitt on homicide detective Dave Toschi, even copying Toschi’s fast-draw gun holster, a fact mentioned in Fincher’s Zodiac (2007).

McQueen oozes a badass cool, but the film itself is not wall-to-wall action. At the time of its release, it was apparently noted for its realistic portrayal of police and coroner procedures. While an interesting footnote, that’s the sort of detail that gets lost today. For better or worse, it also contributes to the film’s leisurely pace.

Bullitt does become exponentially more intense as it goes on though. Its much heralded car chase through the streets of San Francisco is still exhilarating. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the sequence is not scored. Today, I’m sure a film’s big set piece would be paired with bombastic music, but Bullitt is better than this, and allows us to simply watch the spectacle unfold, unaccompanied. It almost has a documentary feel, and is the best part of the movie, worthy of its reputation.

Bullitt’s airport climax, involving a terminal stakeout and a runway chase, is also fairly suspenseful. And I really liked that, while the case is resolved, the film ends somewhat ambiguously.

Bullitt and his girlfriend Cathy (Bisset) have a dialogue thoughout the film. The detective is closed off and won’t let anyone in. Cathy worries that he’s become desensitized to the violence that surrounds him. The movie’s final scene touches on this argument obliquely, but offers no closure. The quiet moment in Bullitt’s apartment is note perfect and the sort of thing you just don’t see anymore.

There is one final little bit of awkwardness that I want to touch on. The film deals with a mob hit, but never uses the word mafia. Instead it continually refers to to the organization. I've read that The Godfather (1972) never used the term mafia because the studios feared organized crime’s influence over the labor unions instrumental to the film’s production. They were paranoid about work stoppages.

I wonder if the same sort of issue was at play here. Either way, the phrase the organization feels clumsy watching today, more like badly written science fiction than dialogue from a gritty urban cop flick.

“Suppose Nancy sees me coming out of the shower and decides to come on to me. I’m looking good, got a luscious v of hair going through my chest pubes down to my ball fro. She takes one look at me and goes ‘Oh my god, I’ve had the old bull now I want the young calf’ and grabs me by the weiner.” – Dale Doback (John C. Reilly)

I don’t really have anything to say about Step Brothers. It’s essentially a one-note joke stretched out for ninety minutes. Expanding on the conceit established in The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Step Brothers goes a step further, with two 40-year-olds (Ferrell & Reilly), both still living at home, forced together when their parents marry.

The movie essentially takes what happens when two eight-year-olds are forced to cohabitant, and translates their behavior to grown adults. It’s incredibly stupid, but I laughed, a lot. Full Disclosure: I’d had some bourbon.

I happen to like both Reilly and Ferrell. If you enjoy Ferrell’s previous comedies, you’ll probably find this amusing.