Scarlet Street - 1945 - 4½ Stars

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett

Director: Fritz Lang

Scarlet Street could easily have been written and directed by the Coen Brothers. The twists and turns, the characterizations, the black humor - I'd be shocked if they haven't seen this movie. It's a near-flawless noir masterpiece. The way in which the characters continually deceive one another while also deceiving the audience (and themselves) - it's brilliantly structured.

A year before Scarlet Street, Edward G. Robinson was in Double Indemnity, where he played Keyes, the logical and confident insurance man. Here he plays almost the very opposite - a put-upon low-level employee trapped in a loveless marriage. He's perfectly believable as both. The shots of him with an apron on, washing dishes, had to be more emasculating in the 1940s, but they look pretty bad today, too.

One problem is that the print of this film is rather awful - colors are muted and there are some strange cuts. Ah well, such is the cost of enjoying largely unloved films from long ago.

The Fighter - 2010 - 3 Stars

Actors: Christian Bale, Mark Wahlberg

Director: David O. Russell

It is interesting that the popularity of the boxing film seems to have increased just as interest in boxing has gone down. I think it's easy to say that boxing is the most cinematic sport - renderings of other sports emphasize director fakery or accidentally highlight the tedium of the actual game by making the cinematic version nothing like the real thing. But boxing is pretty simple: two guys (or girls) beating the hell out of one another.

The Fighter is a good movie, but will I remember much about it in six months or a year? Probably not. It does have a memorable rendering of desperation - where desperate people hold on to one another without realizing they're strangling one another to death. Bale's performance as Dicky Eklund is hammy and sometimes distracting, and in general the film is an acting showcase. Obvious music cues don't help either - at least David O. Russell is back, and perhaps he will earn his way back to making a crazy film like I Heart Huckabees.

Grand Illusion - 1937 - 4½ Stars

Actors: Jean Gabin, Marcel Dalio

Director: Jean Renoir

I dislike watching Great Movies. Let me explain - it's hard to escape the fact that Grand Illusion is considered one of the great films of all time. I literally knew nothing about it other than that fact when I started watching. So about halfway through I'm wondering what the big deal about this movie is - maybe there were a bunch of film techniques invented for this movie, and we know that's something critics really get off on. I liked Citizen Kane a lot, but I didn't think it was the greatest movie of all time.

Then I remembered that Great Movies don't necessarily start well, and don't always have a great middle section - I'm thinking here of something like Ikiru. The Great Movies have great endings, and that's where Grand Illusion shines. Not only is the final third of the movie brilliant, but it puts much of the first two thirds into perspective. So I too won't reveal what it's about. I will only say that the 'Qwikster' summary of the film is terrible and not worth reading either.

Martin and Orloff - 2003 - 3½ Stars

Actors: Ian Roberts, Matt Walsh

Director: Lawrence Blume

Why had I never heard of Martin and Orloff until recently? It's written by and stars alums of the Upright Citizens Brigade sketch show, a program that rivals Mr. Show and Monty Python's Flying Circus as the greatest sketch shows ever. Not only that, but comedy favorites David Cross and H. Jon Benjamin also play prominent roles. Somehow this movie escaped my notice.

Like just about every comedy movie ever, Martin and Orloff is hit or miss, but one thing it avoids is devolving into a series of sketches - it's actually a movie. Roberts is excellent as the put-upon Martin, playing the straight man to Walsh's strangely confident and bizarre Dr. Orloff. Maybe I shouldn't recommend this so highly - Walsh can crack me up with a glance, as he does several times in this film. Regardless, it beats the hell out of Run Ronnie Run.

Prince Of The City - 1981 - 3½ Stars

Actors: Treat Williams, Jerry Orbach

Director: Sidney Lumet

I found out about Prince of the City when Sidney Lumet died earlier this year; it's the kind of movie I probably never would have stumbled onto myself. While it is an excellent movie, it really has no business being almost 3 hours long - had Lumet been able to cut this down to 140 minutes, he might've had an excellent film here. As it stands, his 2nd film about police corruption can only suffer by comparisons to Serpico, as it covers many of the same themes.

The acting in the film is Lumet-y - stay away if you don't like overemotive shouting. Still, the cast is a who's who of character actors - you'll spend half the movie being like 'oh, it's that guy/girl'. Whoever scouted locations for Lumet in the 70s was brilliant, as this film rivals Serpico and The French Connection for best use of 70s New York City.

The Art Of The Steal - 2009 - 3½ Stars

Subject: A priceless collection of art's transition from being part of a private collection to being housed in a public museum

Director: Don Argott

Why do we mistrust documentaries that make no pretense about their position on a particular subject? Or I guess, why do I mistrust them? I suppose it's because it has an agenda - it desperately needs me to agree with its position. Also, there may well be some obfuscation going on behind the scenes; I may not be getting all the facts.

The Art Of The Steal is wonderfully one-sided - it takes a strangely elitist tack that it's difficult to disagree with. Everything is well laid out, the music is a fine Philip Glass knockoff, although I must take issue with having titles to various 'chapters' of the movie - that came off as amateurish. Regardless, it's an interesting story that touches on the importance of property rights and 'the greater good'.

Mad Dog And Glory - 1993 - 1½ Stars

Actors: Robert DeNiro, Bill Murray

Director: John McNaughton

Mad Dog and Glory is a film that exists in MovieLand but doesn't know it. Let me explain. MovieLand is where most movies are set - people have thoroughly exciting jobs, have sex with attractive people, and come into contact with an unending parade of interesting characters. Everyone always has interesting things to say. Just about all action films and comedies take place in MovieLand. One problem with films set in MovieLand is that it's difficult to empathize with the characters because everyone is so unrealistic. A lot of 'famous' films from the 70s try not to take place in MovieLand - characters may be bored or boring; they may be interesting people with nothing to say.

Mad Dog And Glory tries to be a 70s-type film, but the characters fall totally flat. On the one hand, the plot is completely ridiculous and implausible, but the dialogue is largely 'realistic' (i.e. dull). Are the characters funny? Some of the things they say seem like they're trying to be funny. I don't know. All in all, it's a giant waste of DeNiro and Murray, both of whom seem like they're miscast here.

This movie's direction and style feels straight out of the 1980s. It's therefore hard to believe that 5 years after this movie, Murray would be in Rushmore, and DeNiro in Ronin. One year later, Uma Thurman would be in Pulp Fiction. I also feel like I have a mental divide that exists in the mid 90s when I became a seeker of movies, rather than a passive receiver of them. Anything before that time feels ancient, anything after that time feels 'new'.

Encounters At The End Of The World - 2007 - 4½ Stars

Subject: Antarctica and the people who work there

Director: Werner Herzog

All the Herzog films I've seen have generally been about the individual's struggle against society. Antarctica is therefore the perfect place for him to film - there is a 'society' there at the McMurdo base, filled with souls who've fled normal life, and then there's the vast wilderness that surrounds. Herzog not only manages to film the beauty and strangeness of Antarctica's natural wonders, but he's also able to get some insight into what kind of people decide to come here. In doing so, he asks much larger questions about the animal kingdom, human civilization, and humankind's place in societies and on the planet.

One thing Herzog does in this film that he also did in Grizzly Man is that he either dupes a subject, or finds an unwitting one - he puts a moment in the film where it appears as though the subject thinks the camera is off. This makes the person appear quite awkward and bizarre. It's rather unfair of him to do this, but I can guarantee that Herzog does not care.

Blue Valentine - 2010 - 4 Stars

Actors: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams

Director: Derek Cianfrance

What's there to say about Blue Valentine? Don't watch it with the person you love.

Gosling and Williams play a married couple on the verge of disintegration, while alternately portraying their meeting and eventual union. The film is generally low-key - the stakes are small, but they're also the biggest stakes that most of us will face.

One thing I like about this film is that it (mostly) doesn't happen in New York or Los Angeles, and it's not about two artists or two actors or an actor and an artist, or a writer and another writer. I wouldn't say it's about 'real people; either, but sometimes I think the film industry feels that New York and LA have a monopoly on relationships disintegrating into petty bickering and glowering hatreds.