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Second part of Fritz Lang's bizarre epic about Indian mysticism shot for television and cut into two features by the studio (the other part being The Tiger of Eschnapur); it's a brilliantly executed pulpy and humorous masterpiece, with breathtaking color cinematography and elaborate set design which rivals the underworld city in Metropolis. Lang really celebrates the artifice of film, and his uncanny sense for mise-en scene proves his mastery of the craft. It's certainly a strange work and perhaps a bit hackneyed, but one should keep an open mind and sink in to the vivid images and spectacular naive tale of power and magic.

"Everyone who sees this film will be absolutely astonished," Jean-Luc Godard once said, "because this film is really the world in an hour and a half." Robert Bresson's 1966 masterpiece defies any conventional analysis, telling a story of sin and redemption by following Balthazar, a donkey, as he passes through the hands of a number of masters, including a peasant girl, a satanic delinquent, and a saintly fool. Perhaps the greatest and most revolutionary of Bresson's films, Balthazar is a difficult but transcendentally rewarding experience, and the director is better able than in his previous work to put his philosophy of cinema into practice, that is is to say, the filming and meditation of that which is concealed. This is a gorgeous Criterion DVD with and excellent digital transfer, and it includes some fine supplemental material such as a French television program which includes commentary from such notables as Godard, Malle, and Bresson himself, speaking about the film. Never to be missed.

The second bizarre hippy satire from a young Brian DePalma (the first being Greetings), and featuring a remarkably spontaneous Robert DeNiro as a young Viet Nam vet new in the city and looking for work. The film (while noticeably dated), is practically an act of radicalism in itself as DeNiro boyishly tries to seduce his neighbors while simultaneously filming the act from his apartment to turn it into a work of explosive pornography. DePalma is clever here; he manages to transform the neighboring windows into fixed frames reminiscent of Hitchcock's Rear Window. Once a failure, DeNiro performs as a reactionary police officer in an all African American theater troupe's educational TV program, in which blacks offer liberal whites the opportunity to experience African Americanism as they beat and rape them in white-face; this sequence is particularly strange and not all together funny until DeNiro arrives as the cop. And finally, he transforms himself once again into a guerrilla revolutionary, bombing Laundromats and disguising himself as a bourgeois salesman. This final section is probably the most enjoyable and improvised, though it contains none of the creativity of the first section. The film is interesting if for nothing else, because one gets to witness DePalma and DeNiro stylistically severed from their current work. However, the film seems to try to satirize everything in our society, when in fact it comes across as though it has satirized nothing.

Jean-Luc Godard's episodic opus about a man who interviews various individuals about an unknown project called "Eloge de l'amour," which will involve three couples experiencing four stages of love. The first half of the film, shot in Paris, appears in 35-mm BW and displays some of Godard's most impressive footage. The second half, set in Brittany two years earlier, is shot in super-saturated, bright digital color, deliberately crafted to overwhelm the viewer. The film is oblique, contemplative, challenging, esoteric, and profoundly beautiful. Includes a haunting piano score from Ketil Bjornstad and Arvo Part. Not too be missed.

Jean-Luc Godard's follow-up to the ultra-Maoist Weekend, featuring Yves Montand as a former New Wave filmmaker and his wife Jane Fonda, as they become active in a factory takeover. The film is of course very sympathetic to Marxism and perhaps Leninism, but it's certainly toned down from the blood fest that is Weekend, perhaps regrettably. Godard insists on reinterpreting and imposing entirely new ideas about what a film can and ought to be, in this case an intellectualized espousal of the working class struggle. A few moments of daring misce-en-scene are worth mentioning; fist, Godard includes an awesome cutaway of the factory to reveal the power-dynamics of the uprising within, and an elaborate tracking sequence in a supermarket to reveal the gross stupidity of capitalist consumerism. Tout Va Bien is clearly a step-down from Godard's brilliant features of the 60's, but it's still provocative and worth any cinephile's time.

A stunning documentary by Errol Morris which was absurdly written off as "pseudo-journalism," and "overly-subjective," by the critics at the time. Morris makes no pretense of being "objective," with his topic; in fact, the actual topic of the film is subjectivity. A man is convicted for murder in Texas on extremely thin evidence but the opaque wheels of justice simply crank him into death row without a second thought. Morris worked as an investigative journalist in uncovering the man's innocence, made the film, and eventually got his conviction overturned because of its persuasiveness. Scenes of the crime are reconstructed and dramatized by Morris to fill in the point of view of the interviewee (not to demonstrate the truth), and the film gradually and compellingly puts together the missing fragments of the case, and turns truth on its backside. This is a brilliant documentary, and I'm not employing hyperbole when I say it is the In Cold Blood of the cinematic form.

A very fine and intriguing documentary from Errol Morris about the life and work of physicist/celebrity Stephen Hawking, who revolutionized the way we think about the universe in his monumental book of the same name. The film is really divided into two stories, the life of Hawking as he struggles to overcome his paralysis, and the brilliant work he achieved in spite of his physical limitations. One gets the impression that had Hawking never became ill, he wouldn't have been as compelled to carry out the kind rigorous intellectual work that he of course did carry out, and (he himself notes that he was quite bored with life prior to his paralysis). Morris does a fine job with the material; the first half hour of the film suffers from a dry PBS feel, but the aesthetic and intellectual intensity takes off from there, the film never digresses into a mere sob story. Morris nearly always keeps the material more intellectually intriguing than it is uplifting and sentimental.

Dreadful and smart-alecky piece of closed-minded, nihilistic trash from hack-director Todd Solondz of Happiness and Welcome to the Dollhouse fame. Palindromes marks a noticeable departure in Solondz's vitriolic hate as he begins to enter the realm of the political, taking on the issue of abortion. He devotes approximately 1/3 of the film to discrediting extreme and irresponsible pro-choice people, which he demonstrates by including a monologue from a suburban mother who explains to her daughter the value of aborting a child when it has become an inconvenience. Another third is devoted to demonstrating the absurdity of the extreme Christian pro-life individuals (whom Solondz clearly despises even more), as he reveals a house run by Christian fanatics as they take in abandoned children and feed them with violent anti-abortion polemics. Clearly Solondz has many problems with organized religion, and many problems with suburban American life; however, he also seems to have a problem with humanity. He is unable to see anything redeeming in the human race, and all his characters exhibit weakness, evil, disability, stupidity, and deep-seeded depravity. This is a cruel and narrow vision of humanity and Solondz knows it, his films are simply a gathering of scenarios which are intended to shock and horrify, nothing more. Palindromes is also distinguished by a pretentious application of multiple actresses for the same empty character. Wow. What profundity.

George Clooney's black and white feature is about journalist Edward R. Murrow's effort to challenge the methods of Senator Joseph McCarthy during the 1950's when he actively investigated and indicted members of the entertainment, media, and military industries for communist sympathies and Soviet membership. The film is decent and well acted, David Strathairn plays a very convincing Murrow, and Clooney's directing is competent. However, the film takes an entirely too simplistic moral view of its subject, it fails to acknowledge the paranoia of the period and has the benefit of hindsight. Additionally, the film makes CBS and Murrow's efforts more heroic then they actually were, Senator McCarthy certainly didn't have as much power as the entire CBS Corporation, and the journalists who brought him down weren't really risking as much as the film implies. Furthermore, McCarthy was not attacked until he investigated individuals with real power like high ranking officials in the military; the film fails to make this clear. An average work on the whole, but worth seeing none the less.

Bennett Miller's biopic about author Truman Capote and based on the Arthur Clarke biography of the same name. The film focuses on Capote's time spent researching the killing of a family in Kansas at the end of the 50's which would later be the subject of Capote's classic "non-fiction" novel In Cold Blood, which quickly rocketed the young writer to super-stardom. The film's structure is a bit perplexing; a film could easily be made from a number of segments in Capote's fascinating life and this version chooses to elaborate on the 10 years he spent on this particular work, which is essentially the middle of his life. This period certainly yields a lot of interesting material, yet I feel that those who have not read Clarke's biography may feel a little lost as there is very little context included. The most awesome facet of the film is Phillip Seymour Hoffman's incredible impersonation of Capote; he managed to capture all of the complexity and vulnerability of Capote's character, and the film is very interesting in revealing how the young writer's efforts on this project may have ultimately destroyed him.

The film is very engaging and often disturbing. However, a few inaccuracies are worth mentioning. The film seems to depict Capote as being uncaring and disinterested in Dick, the less intelligent of the two killers, yet the biography makes it clear that Capote devoted a great deal of attention to both killers as they awaited execution, despite his clear affection for Perry. Also, the film indicates that In Cold Blood's reception was universal acclaim; quite the contrary, many mainstream reviewers and writers such as Norman Mailer denied the book's literary merits. And thirdly, the title card at the end of the film states that In Cold Blood made Truman Capote the most famous writer in America (which is disputable), and that he never finished another book, which is blatantly false. Capote published Music for Chameleons in 1980, a collection of short stories clearly conceived as a complete book. Despite these problems, Capote is a very compelling film, and Hoffman's performance is one of his best yet.

Jean-Luc Godard's quasi-update of Dante's Divine Comedy set to the modern world. The first segment of the film is hell and it only runs at about 10 minutes. In it, Godard has cobbled together a devastating montage of scenes of human destruction from the holocaust, Vietnam, the American Civil War, and other scenes of warfare and destruction, all compiled from documentary and movie footage. It's an impressive sequence as he overlaps the scenes of horror over the sounds of a melodic piano score. Then the film moves into limbo, the section usually regarded as the least interesting of Dante's cantos. Godard spends the bulk of his time on this section. In it, a French Jewish journalist attends a literary conference and meets Godard as himself and meets the Palestinian poet Mohmoud Darwish and discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She travels to Sarejevo and witnesses the aftermath of Serbian destruction (a topic which Godard is clearly haunted with), and includes some direct views on cinema from Godard himself. The final section is in paradise. It features perplexing images with the protagonist in a beautiful forest guarded by American soldiers. Notre Musique is about the state of the world at the beginning of the 21st century. It is a powerful and esoteric rumination of the art and history of the past, and a foreboding insight into what the future may look like. The film includes a wonderful piano score from Sibelius and Tchaikovsky and beautiful color photography from Julien Hirsh. The film was shot in 1:33 aspect ratio so don't expect the DVD to appear in scope.

Clever mockumentary by Zak Penn and featuring director-legend Werner Herzog on his quest to make a true documentary about the human need to believe in myth. It takes off as your standard "making of" fare, but then it twists into something entirely different as Zak Penn begins filming a super model and the ship encounters what appears to be the real loch ness monster. A number of the crew members are humorous and provide some good material, such as Michael Karnow as the Crypto-Zoologist who is convinced that nesse is the real deal from the get go, and Werner Herzog is in excellent form as he imitates his own obsessed megalomaniac self. The film definitely caught me off guard the first time I saw it, the fakery didn't become apparent until the plot became especially preposterous as Penn pulls a gun on Werner, forcing him to film an idiotic model of nesse. However, it came across as a tad gimmicky the second time around.

Ambitious statement from writer-director Stephen Gaghan (Traffic) about the ongoing clash between America's oil companies and the Middle East. Gaghan's film incorporates multiple story lines which he is only barely able to hold together in his portrait of what is now called "The Clash of Civilizations," but the film's incoherence may in fact be its strength, as Gaghan correctly refuses to provide simple answers about the oil companies, the US government, and Islamic fundamentalism. He forces the viewer to immerse himself in a chaotic realm, a realm of greed, betrayal, and conflicting values. George Clooney gives probably his most likable performance to date as Bob Barnes, a CIA operative in Beirut who is captured and tortured, and then sold out by the government. Matt Damon is also good as a corporate analyst determined to make a splash off of a family tragedy with a Gulf prince, and Jeffrey Wright plays a corporate lawyer trying to aid the merger of two major oil companies. All of the acting is solid, and the footage of the Middle East is quite beautiful, yet it evokes the danger and uncertainty of the region. Syriana unfortunately suffers from largely poor and amateurish directing (Gaghan's first attempt at filming his script), employing I suppose a cinema verite mode of shaky cam, trying to recapture the feel of a documentary, but its only comes across as contrived and self-aggrandizing. Syriana is a triumph of content not form, and it is probably the most provocative and important Hollywood movie of the year.

La Notte links Antonioni's 'L'Avventura' and 'L'Eclisse' together in its stark and very beautiful portrayal of the disintegration of a marriage. Although less magnificently esoteric than the great 'L'Avventura,' Antonioni's film is a necessary piece of the trilogy. Marcello Mastrioanni is the self-absorbed intellectual writer who falls for the beautiful Monica Vitti at a black and white party. His narcissism permits his own unfaithfulness to his wife. Jeanne Moreau's performance is probably the most interesting in the film; her weathered face bears the mark of a used and worn trophy, her aged beauty is no longer satisfactory for her husband, and her intellect has long since been forfeited for the sake of his ego. Antonioni was one of the most interesting filmmakers of the 1960's. His uncanny ability to incorporate setting and landscape into the thematics of the work was perhaps unprecedented. In La Notte, the story unfolds primarily in the modern house-party, which is both luxurious and stifling. Perhaps what bothered audiences most about this film was Antonioni's failure to achieve the aching sublimity of L'Avventura's final sequence, or the astonishing radicalism of the final moments in L'Eclisse. Nevertheless, for all of its shortcomings, La Notte is a remarkable film.

Godard's misunderstood film about a cell of Maoist students in 1967 France is not so much an endorsement of revolutionary politics as it is an exploration of it. Although the film clearly contributed to the revolt at Columbia uprising, and later the student May uprising of 1968, this is in fact a highly nuanced account of the variegated tendencies of radicalization among the French youth. We encounter an outdated renunciation of Marxism-Leninism, which sadly converted large swaths of radicalizing youths to Mao in the 1960's, and still has some resonance on the left today. This is a delightful mixture of politics and pop culture as only Godard can provide, that is, with passion and form.

Although Robert Altman is proficient in re-creating the scenery of Van Gogh's life through the eyes of the painter with striking color and a vaguely bohemian atmosphere, he still fails to present Van Gogh the man or the artist in with any genuine originality. He focuses on Van Gogh, the tormented saint-artist, who forges ahead on the canvas with a drive to present the "suffering" of humanity. However, Altman precludes Van Gogh's obvious manias, his periods of demented elation. It is impossible to believe that the Van Gogh presented here could have produced those vibrant wheat fields in Arles, or the Night Café. What remains in this fractured (though never incompetent biopic), is Tim Roth's virtuoso performance; he managed to literally crawl into the skin of Van Gogh, and the result may frighten you. However, his virtuosity always overshadows Paul Rhys' rather tepid presentation of his brother Theo, though there are other admirable performances in the film, such as Wladimir Yordanoff's amiable presentation of Gauguin. Altman seems to be commenting, rather uninterestingly, about the commercial dimension of artistry, and of the impossibility of true recognition of genius. This is a conventional portrait of the unrecognized genius, it is a tale told again and again. However, Altman's imagery is captivating (with the help of Storraro), the photography looks like vibrant halos emitted by Van Gogh's paintings, though the musical score is dreadful and morbid. Still you much watch this one for Tim Roth's inspired performance if nothing else.

Some have called this movie stupid, arrogant, pretentious, and brutal. Others swear by its greatness.

Gaspar Noe has offered a film which tops his I Stand Alone in its sheer ability to manipulate and horrify the viewer. Like Memento (although far more engaging), the film unfolds in reverse chronological order, and interesting technique which transforms a would-be-average revenge fantasy into a provocative meditation on the destructive nature of time.

The film begins with distracting camera movements and overwhelming violence as several men avenge the rape of a young woman (a 10 minute scene that drove many critics from the theater at Cannes), and then descends into the realm of these people in their normal lives.

The second half of the film is undoubtedly superior to the first because it dares to draw the viewer in whereas the first half merely smacks you in the face.

The young actress Monica Bellucci, who is the recipient of appalling violence, is particularly exceptional in the final act. This film is difficult to place and will clearly be the subject of much discussion in the years to come.

How this piece of art-house schlock ever came to be seriously respected is totally beyond me. Darren Aronofsky's big claim to fame (along with Requiem for a Dream), features Sean Gullette as an obsessed math genius determined to find a pattern in the inner-workings of the stock market, I guess so that he can get really rich. It's implausible that an individual as devoted to "ideas" as he claims to be would be so motivated to apply his talent to such a parasitic end, but hey, I guess audiences don't think brilliance is cool anymore unless you use it to hit the big time, which explains the obsession with the Las Vegas card counting geniuses from MIT. Aronofsky's style isn't quite as obnoxious as it would later be in Requiem for a Dream, but it's certainly obnoxious all the same, preferring to film his subject with grainy BW photography and lots of film-schoolish trick shots and fast cutting. Aronofsky ultimately fails to heighten the tension to the extent that he so clearly wishes, he strives for profundity, but Pi remains a simple (albeit moderately clever) thriller, nothing more. The scenes with Gullette and his mentor are well done and kept me interested despite the repetition.

Fritz Lang's silent crime thriller pits a government agent (Willy Fritsch) against a scheming international banker who is stealing government documents. Considered an overlooked, but crucial part of Lang's impressive canon and an important influence on the thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock; it does have some first-rate cutting and painterly images of the city's dense layering. However, (this version at least) is simply way too long. One can anticipate what is going to happen later in the film with more than ½ hour to go. The film could easily afford to lose some where in the order of one hour of its footage. A necessary viewing for anyone interested in the work of Fritz Lang all the same.

Masterful work of Italian neo-realism by the grand old man, Roberto Rossellini and filmed in war-torn Berlin and widely regarded as the precursor to Rossellini's 50's masterpieces.

A young boy is manipulated by his teacher who later turns out to be an appalling Nazi sympathizer who manipulates the boy into murdering his father.

Mesmerizing and always stylized and breathtaking form. This film conveys the horror and destructive inevitability of war far better than the gross Hollywood extravaganza's of the Longest Day variety.

Rossellini was criticized by the neo-realists for injecting greater melodrama and lighting control than was though appropriate, but the film still exists in a magnificent documentary style, and it runs circles around DeSica's Umberto D.

In Jean Renoir's introduction to this film the great master cites Rumer Godden's book The River as the greatest work of literature about English colonialism in India. I can think of at least two books that are greater, E.M. Forster's A Passage to India, and George Orwell's Burmese Days, two works of literature which seem to indicate that Britain's endeavors in India produced more harm than a few damaged human relations among the English.

Never the less, Jean Renoir brings unbelievable beauty to this film, which was his first attempt at full Technicolor, and it's a glorious attempt, called the most beautiful color film (along with Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes) by Martin Scorsese.

The color has a warm subtlety and grace which can only be described as characteristic as his father's paintings, cheap as that sounds.

Is The River the Rules of the Game of Renoir's color period, as Andre Bazin claims? No, I'm afraid no movie is as good as The Rules of the Game, yet this is a wonderful and important work all the same.

David Cronenberg's Siamese-twin freak show with Jeremy Irons playing two gynecologists at the peak of their profession. One brother, the more manipulative of the two, seduces women and then passes them off to his brother when he grows bored.

However, they encounter a woman who manages to captivate them both; sounds conventional from here right? Come now, it's Cronenberg.

The film progresses into a totally bizarre pastiche of self-mutilation, deception, and murder, all set to the tone of the invasive nature of gynecology.

Jeremy Irons is absolutely excellent as the twin brothers as he is able to convey which brother is which in every scene of the film despite their identical looks and voice. The subject matter however, is simply too creepy for most tastes.