3rdMan

Despite the title of the DVD documentary on this movie ("Style As Substance"), "The Cell" is style over substance if I've ever seen it. The plotline is full of holes and the imagery -- while visually impressive -- is mostly nonsense meant to either shock or astound. Fine if you want that, but don't expect anything too intelligent.

A convoluted, drab, unexciting war movie. Law and Weicz do okay with what they are given, and the set design is impressive, but the script is a total dud. Boring and unengaging. Joe Fiennes does his typical overemotive thing, and Ed Harris is always solid when in steely mode. But the plot doesn't work and most of the dialogue is laughable.

Certainly not Fritz Lang's best film noir (try Hangmen Also Die or Fury), but a solid film nonetheless. Lang and his cameraman do a great job with the visuals, but the film is held back by a none-too-original script (though it does have a nice twist). Mostly good performances (especially Anne Baxter and Ann Southern) keep the narrative afloat.

Contrary to the other comments posted here on "The Wicker Man," Shaffer's film will appear quite goofy to modern audiences (the film culminates with Christopher Lee dancing around in drag, after all), but effectively creepy -- and an interesting precurser to films like "Blair Witch" that draw from pagan iconography. Well done, but marred by silly sequences like the may-pole dance/song.

A mixed result from a filmmaker still clearly very talented. But his vision of New York is pure fantasy. To quote Anthony Lane from The New Yorker:

"'This film takes place in New York City,' we are told; but it doesn't. It takes place in the New York of Scorsese's chivvying, red-hot imagination; just as Woody Allen keeps unveiling a city more blithe and harmonious than any we recognize, so Scorsese has dug in his heels and clung to the scabby, arousing plague-pit of Taxi Driver. That work was rooted in the known; this one blooms out of a perverse nostalgia, out of a refusal to admit that most people now walk the avenues in undramatic fear."

and later:

"'Someday a real rain will come down and wash all this scum off the streets,' said Travis Bickle to himself a quarter century ago. Not even as distinguished a fantasist as Martin Scorsese could have foreseen that the role of the rain would be played by Rudy Giuliani."

With singer/actor Charles Aznavour in the lead (his expressive face is priceless), "Shoot the Piano Player" is one of Truffaut's most charming and inventive works. Aznavour plays Charlie/Edouard -- a former concert pianist who becomes an anonymous piano player in a dive bar in order to escape his past. After his brother (Remy, who Truffaut also used wonderfully in "The 400 Blows") gets in trouble with some borderline inept gangsters, chaos ensues.

Truffaut's winsome camera and editing techniques blend perfectly with Aznavour's performance. A must for fans of the French New Wave.

From its opening shots of a typewriter slamming out the date to the closing Washington Post ticker feeding the epilogue, "All the Presidents Men" is a superbly directed and acted retelling of Woodward and Bernstein's account of the Watergate breakin and cover-up. Redford and director Pakula cast the film with some of the best actors around (particularly Robards, Warden, Balsam and Jane Alexander in a small role). Easier to follow than Pakula's "Parallex View" and as engaging as "the Manchurian Candidate", "All the President's Men" is political filmmaking at its best.

A stellar cast, lovely B&W cinematography, funny dialogue (mostly taken from Allen's play "Death"), a wonderful score of the music of Kurt Weill, a mild satire of Kafka, etc. Reviled by many -- I loved it.

An excellent example of how a movie can be genuinely frightening with barely a hint of gore. Good, if typically overwrought performances by George C. Scott, Brad Dourif and Nicol Williamson. A worthy successor to the Exorcist.