Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #1: The Singing Forest

Mixing a romance plot and WWII atrocities is tricky if you're not Alain Resnais - metascore 1

"Writer-director Jorge Ameer's bare-bones vanity project has one incredible premise, one that is so ridiculous and over-the-top it would have been difficult to take his film seriously even if the rest of the film's elements were top-notch (they are not)." - G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle

"At one point the dialogue is completely drowned out by the roar of the surf, and that is no doubt a blessing." - Ken Fox, TV Guide

"To describe this supernatural soap opera as inept and mawkish doesn't really begin to evoke the awfulness of "The Singing Forest" [...]. Exploitative, amateurish, prurient and pretentious are other adjectives that could also be applied to this film" - Stephen Holden, New York Times

If nothing else can be said of 'The Singing Forest,' it is assuredly fearless in defying credibility at every turn and on every level. - Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

1945: Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City)

Its technical weaknesses (including a real howler at 60 minutes) do little to hurt the overall quality of Roberto Rosselini's classic neorealist film about resistance fighters in German-occupied 1944 Rome, the nitty-gritty visual style of which may easily detract from the fact that the narrative is wholly conventional. It's an engaging film overall (7), but both the somewhat rushed way the story is told and the artless use of the camera create a feeling of looking at the film, rather than being in it, and if pressed, I'd recommend Ladri di biciclette over Rosselini's war film.

It's a nice little pastime to think about which songs one would like to hear covered by which artists or which films one would like to see remade by which directors. I vote for a Paul Thomas Anderson remake of Open City.

Fun fact: The film was banned in West Germany until 1961 for counteracting the cordiality between the European peoples (to clumsily paraphrase the original wording).

1976: Network

It has sometimes been said that Sidney Lumet's 1976 satire about a the inner workings of a struggling TV channel doesn't work as well as it used to anymore because by now actual TV has surpassed the satire. That's a fair point. If you compare, for example, the offerings of this muppet. . .



. . . with Network's fictional shows by Howard Beale, it is not clear which is the satire. However, there may be an entirely different aspect of current TV that takes away much more from today's experience of Network, namely that the idea to present interconnected lives of people who work together, and set much of what happens at the workplace, as Network does, is by now a standard strategy of many TV series.

Even so, a very well-done film definitely worth watching. Very weird cinematography, too, as though they'd drenched the celluloid in beige. (7.5)

2005: Caché (Hidden)

In Caché, possibly critic's darling Michael Haneke's most acclaimed film, a well-off, cultured couple suddenly get anonymous mail containing videotapes showing recent recordings of their house. More tapes and other stuff follow. That's a good premise for a film, the story has some nice twists and it's good to see this not develop into a Hollywood-style redemption movie, but the screenwriter Haneke decides to piss the story's potential up the wall in favour of artsy cleverness and the director Haneke, it appears, does not realize that film is a visual medium (a suspicion confirmed by his most recent Das weiße Band, the only other of Haneke's films I've seen). Badly in need of a remake. Even if it features Bruce Willis. (4.5)

1965: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

This unsentimental look at cold war espionage, chronicling the attempts of the British secret service to infiltrate their East German counterpart, suffers from being decidedly unfilmic - it's mostly conversations in boring-looking rooms. On the upside: the no-nonsense b/w cinematography and the screen presence that was Richard Burton. (6.5)

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #2: Chaos

Writer-director David DeFalco may have misunderstood the idea that works of art should be daring: metascore 3

"The first 30 minutes tread the usual genre path strewn with variable quality acting and wooden dialogue as two college-aged women are lured from a rave to a remote cabin before it plunges into an abyss of gruesome imagery so repulsive it precludes further watching." - Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times

"'Chaos' is ugly, nihilistic, and cruel -- a film I regret having seen. I urge you to avoid it. Don't make the mistake of thinking it's "only" a horror film, or a slasher film. It is an exercise in heartless cruelty and it ends with careless brutality. The movie denies not only the value of life, but the possibility of hope." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"The movie opens with a message announcing its mission 'to educate and, perhaps, save lives'—presumably a joke, although the portrayal of one girl's impossibly naive parents ("Emily was raised with good family values!"), an attempt at social satire so inept as to verge on self-parody, raises some doubt." - Joshua Land, Villlage Voice

"The only thing this so-called cautionary tale will inspire audiences to do is to never sit through another insultingly awful piece of exploitative trash 'conceived' by David DeFalco." - Laura Kern, New York Times

1942: Cat People

A man marries a Romanian immigrant despite her telling him some mumbo-jumbo about "cat people". Then she starts acting funny - is it just a mental health problem or is she turning into one of those mysterious cat persons?

This setup makes the film into a strange hybrid of marriage drama and horror film, not really succeeding on either front. Yes, the film features some nice shadowplay and many examples of the trick of drawing attention to something because we don't see it (later perfected in Blair Witch Project), but it also features tedious dialogues and a poor narrative structure. (5.5)

1974: The Conversation

Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation, which follows a private detective specializing in surveillance, is the film you can try to like better than The Godfather if you think you have a deficit in the department of original opinions. And there's a reason for that - which doesn't mean at all that The Conversation is a bad film (7). Bill Butler's cinematography deserves special mention. It is as unspectacular as it gets, yet miles away from the anyone-can-run-a-camera photography that you get in much TV and some made-for-theatres movies.

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #3: Strippers

Jorge Ameer's film about a man who loses everything didn't win the critics' admiration - metascore 5

[O]ne of a barely acknowledged sub-breed of indie: howling-vanity amateur-work that finds its way into a theater only because the producers buy the room out for a week. Exotic-dancer-free, Ameer's sludgy ordeal entails the Job-like wreckage of an L.A. suit's life and finances; Kafkaesque chuckles might have been the goal, but it's impossible to tell. Rave about it to someone you loathe. - Michael Atkinson, Village Voice

The bizarre performances belong strictly to the "read the cue cards and emote like crazy" school of acting. - Anon, New York Times

The amazing thing is that this isn't Ameer's first film. Throw in a cheesy soundtrack and incredibly cheap production design that makes Ed Wood Jr. look like Max Ophuls, and you've got the makings of a turkey with all the trimmings. - Ken Fox, TV Guide

1938: The Lady Vanishes

Our young English heroine, about to get married, meets an old lady while getting on a train on her way home from a vacation in fascist Italy. The old lady suddenly disappears, and it seems none of the other passengers have seen her. Together with a playboy who seems to fancy her, she goes looking for the missing woman. - Though generally the kind of thing one calls "great for rainy Sunday afternoons", Hitchcock's last but one film before leaving for Hollywood suffers from special effects that are poor even by the standards of the time and a few lengths in the screenplay. Overall an agreeable experience, though. (6.5)

1934: The Man Who Knew Too Much

The original version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, later remade by Hichcock himself, for large parts looks like a filmed theatre play and lacks almost all of the production values of the 1956 version. It also lacks rhythm and is too short, almost as though the filmmakers couldn't wait to get to the final shootout, which in turn is too long. So no confrontation at the taxidermist, no child whistling "Que sera" so his mother can find him. Judged on its own merits, it seems like an o.k. movie (6), but if you've seen the second version first, the original looks like a mere sketch for the later film.

Finally, a Hitchcock movie the remake of which is better than the original.

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #4: Vulgar (2002)

The critics didn't think Bryan Johnson's provocative debut marked the arrival of a new Bunuel - metascore 5.

"Johnson [...] has a twisted mind and no evidence of talent." - Edward Guthman, San Francisco Chronicle

"Vulgar doesn't begin to describe it: Try one of the foulest, least amusing films ever made under the rubric of black comedy. At least, it seems to be meant as a black comedy; it's hard to tell, since this sordid tale of degradation and misery isn't the slightest bit funny." - Maitland McDonagh, TV Guide

"If Johnson has some piteous nightmare cum fantasy to work out, pray he does so in the privacy of his shrink's office next time around." - Marc Holcomb, Village Voice

"'Vulgar,' a movie that made me long for the competent lighting of 'Death to Smoochy,' seems to have been designed to shock the kind of people who once attended midnight shows. The only thing shocking about it, however, is the degree to which self-congratulatory gutter exhibitionism has become the degraded ash end of indie 'edge.'" - Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

"Mr. Johnson went to high school with the director Kevin Smith ("Chasing Amy," 1997), who was godfather to this film and contributes a cameo as a gay television producer. [...] As a movie, "Vulgar," which opens today in Manhattan, San Francisco and Los Angeles, is quite a tribute to friendship. It certainly has no other apparent reason to exist." - Bryan Johnson, New York Times

1943: I Walked with a Zombie

The nurse Betsy Connell is hired to care for Jessica Holland, who lives with her husband on a Caribbean island where they do the voodoo. Jessica appears to be caught in a state of constant sleepwalking. Is it a mental illness - or is Jessica a zombie? - The film is only 68 minutes long, but especially in the first half it appears that's too much for the little story there is. Though it's considered a minor classic, I found it to be just the B-picture that it actually is, although the last three or so minutes are really strong. (5.5)

1980: The Elephant Man

The David Lynch-directed film about a man suffering from severe facial deformities in 19th century London is very well photographed in black & white, but it is a little too slow-paced for my taste and the screenplay does not do that good a job at keeping the viewer interested in what happens next. Also: A mild case of what hencetoforth I'll call the "Blimey, mate" phenomenon, both screenwriters and actors going over the top when trying to portrait working-class Englishmen. (6)

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #5: National Lampoon's Gold Diggers (2004)

It's another comedy that didn't find its way into the critics' hearts - metascore 6

"In the world of gross-out teen comedy, "Gold Diggers" is less offensive than embarrassing, at least for the chagrined performers" - Sean Axmaker, Seattle Pi

"By the time a rattlesnake ends up attached to a neighbor's genitals in "Gold Diggers" -- or maybe when Lasser shackles a naked Owen to the bed and covers him in dessert toppings -- you'll be rooting for all the characters to find success in their attempted murders so the audience's pain can come to an end." - Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle

"Some movies leave a bad taste in the mouth. This one causes full-on halitosis." - Jen Chaney, Washington Post

2002: 25th Hour

Not the first movie to show a man spending his last hours with his friends before going away - here it's a drug dealer about to leave for prison - this Spike Lee offering convinces with strong cinematography, a very powerful ending and yet another original look at New York, the city that apparently can't be photographed to death. (7.5)

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #6: The Hottie and the Nottie (2008)

"One would think that after increasingly embarrassing forays into reality television, the Internet and the penitentiary, Paris Hilton might have taken a moment to reflect on her choices. Or perhaps not: with “The Hottie & the Nottie” Ms. Hilton proves yet again that introspection — not to mention shame — is as alien to her as a life without paparazzi." - Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times

"Hilton is Hilton — smirking, squinty-eyed, thoroughly without charisma, and saying things like, 'Our bodies are earth suits, vessels to help us pass from this planet to the next'" - Maitland McDonagh, TV Guide

"Scripted by Heidi Ferrer and shat onscreen by director Tom Putnam, this strong contender for The Worst Movie I've Ever Seen follows Nate's attempt to woo the 'hottie' while suffering the rancid foot fungus, oozing facial blisters, and hideous tooth decay of her best friend, June Phigg (Christine Lakin). Which leads to such hilarious antics as the yoga-class mishap in which Nate, inching his nose into Cristabel's downward- dogging, spandex-clad ass, gets a whiff of Phiggian foot funk instead. Guffaw!" - Nathan Lee, Village Voice

"Although the credits claim that Tom Putnam directed The Hottie & the Nottie and Heidi Ferrer wrote it, it wouldn't surprise me - based on the quality of the evidence - if Paris didn't have a hand in both of those areas as well." - James Berardinelli, Reelviews

"It suggests that maybe, just maybe, the best movie stars are not those first made famous for penetration scenes." - Keith Phipps, The A.V. Club

1946: The Killers

Although much was made of the film's being an adaptation of the Hemingway short story of the same name (e.g., the poster), the picture takes the story's plot only as a starting point for a look back on the killee's life, asking why he was shot. In other words, a Rosebud type of story, a format I'm not particularly fond of. Coherently connecting all the usual noir elements, the movie's great strength is the stylish, contrast-rich cinematography. (7)

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #7: Screwed (2000)

No love for the Danny DeVito comedy from the critics - and a metascore of 7 as a result

"Just how and why Grover is lured into this kidnapping plot is too boring to go into. Suffice it to say, he is offered a large sum of money to find a matching corpse on which another character's identification will be planted. The body Grover selects to impersonate a much younger and healthier man happens to be that of an ancient white-bearded dwarf." - Stephen Holden, New York Times

"As bad as the title, and much longer." - Maitland McDonagh, TV Guide

". . . gives stupid, vulgar comedy a bad name." - Bob Graham, San Francisco Chronicle

2002: The Mysteries of Love

A well-done documentary about the making of Blue Velvet, based on old and new interviews with the main people involved. (6)

1972: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (Aguirre, the Wrath of God)

Werner Herzog's widely acclaimed film about a 16th century expedition into the Southern American jungle looks like some hippie commune happened upon a bunch of costumes and a camera and decided to make a movie because "everybody can do it".

Klaus Kinski, in the title role, does his wild-eyed Kinski routine, overshadowing in the process the rest of the cast who seem to be on a mission to demonstrate that acting's actually hard.

The editing is poor. The results of the complete post-production sound overdub range from the o.k. to the ridiculous.

All aspects of the camerawork are done really badly. As for choices of frames and camera movement, nothing in particular seemed to motivate the former except for the desire to show the person that's speaking most of the time and the latter makes you remember that it's not easy to hold a camera still when you have one leg in the river, the other on an uneven stone and nothing to stabilize the camera. The lighting and colours? Well, you can see everything alright.

The complete absence of a narrative arc, the lack of motivation for some scenes (during one I got the impression that the actor was wondering when it would be over so he could finally scratch his arse) and the quality of the dialogues might lead the naive observer to believe that they just made the story up as they went along, but no:

Herzog wrote the screenplay "in a frenzy", and completed it in only two and a half days. Much of the script was written during a 200-mile (320 km) bus trip with Herzog's football team. During the bus trip, his teammates got drunk after winning a game and one of them subsequently vomited on several pages of Herzog's manuscript, which he immediately tossed out the window. Herzog claims he can't remember what he wrote on these pages.^[3]

The screenplay was shot as written, with some minor differences.

When people say that something's "so bad that it's good", they usually mean that a work of art is unintentionally funny, and indeed I had to laugh when I watched some of the death scenes, which seem like reenactments of something out of The Simpsons. But what kept me watching was the fascination with the yawning gap between the film's renown and the real thing. Incredible. (2)

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #8: Miss March

Neither male nor female reviewers were convinced by this teenboy comedy - 7/100 on Metacritic's scale.

"Only a moron would expect a dude road-trip-sex comedy to be more than an aggressive expression of male sexual anxiety. But really, when did women become such vile creatures that they must be stabbed in the face with a fork after a botched blowjob, become near roadkill, and drink dog pee (and love it!)?" - Melissa Anderson, L.A. Weekly

"The problem with "Miss March" isn't that it disrespects women: It's that it disrespects poo and tits." - Stephanie Zacharek - Salon

"Zach Cregger and Trevor Moore, who wrote, directed, and star in this crap comedy, are adenoidal smart alecks from the sketch-comedy series The Whitest Kids U Know. As it turns out, they're also the meanest and least inspired kids U know" - J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader

"You know, we’re the country that gave the world jazz and abstract expressionism and Orson Welles. We invented basketball and hip-hop. Now we export adolescent comedy garbage and hope the world won’t notice. No wonder everyone hates us." - Jeff Rosenblatt, Austin Chronicle

1981: Scanners

The scanners of the title are the few people on earth who can read and control minds and make your nose bleed in the process. Naturally, there are a few persons interested in using these people for their own means. So, what's not to like?

Set in the (early 1980s) present, David Cronenberg's first modest box-office success is filmed in large part in run-off-the-mill locations, but nevertheless manages to create a world of its own, the style of the film making it seem a little like mainstream cinema's reaction to Eraserhead (which was released four years before). On the downside, the plot is sometimes somewhat hard to follow - who's infiltrating whom right now? - but then, the plot is not really the film's point. (7.5)

1973: Sisters

A man and a model meet and take a liking to each other, but she does not tell him that she has an ex-husband that looks like John Waters' mean brother and a - formerly siamese - twin. Soon a reporter and a detective are investigating a case. - This is one fine screenplay by Brian De Palma and Louisa Rose, quite deliberately written in the Hitchcock mode, but the director De Palma's work, although by no means bad, is not of the same quality as is on display in the later, and equally Hitchcockesque, masterpiece Dressed to Kill. Certainly recommended, though. (7.5)

2004: Spider-Man 2

Let's talk about the special effects first: At times it seems director Sam Reimi was aiming to create a comic-like look, but these elements don't mesh well with the more realistic-looking elements. The animated Spider-Man's movements look stop-motion and the back-projections look ca. 1969. Apart from that, this may be the most formulaic story I've seen for quite a while. Which means that the film didn't get boring. (6)

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #9: Transylmania

The vampire spoof receives 8/100 from Metacritic

"The film is filled with fart jokes, jizz jokes, anal violation jokes, weed jokes, premature ejaculation jokes, and topless vampire chicks, yet somehow fails to amuse." - Cliff Doerksen, Chicago Reader

"It’s destined to spend a short and painful life in theaters and then join the ranks of the DVD and late-night-cable undead." - Mike Hale, New York Times

"Romania had it bad enough under communism without seeing one of its atmospheric old castles be location-molested for a moronic college comedy with topless vampires, a leather-clad vampire huntress and horny, pot-puffing American exchange students of indeterminate age." - Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

"Transylmania is so inept that it even fails as an adolescent breast-delivery device—teen boys either will have to sneak into theaters or desperately count the weeks until the “unrated directors’ edition” finally arrives at its proper home in the darkest, most disreputable corner of the local video store." - Steven Hyden, The A.V. Club

1956: The Wrong Man

Not only dealing with someone wrongly accused of a crime, but even called The Wrong Man, the 1956 film starring Henry Fonda might sound like the quintessential Hitchcock movie. But it is not; there are no McGuffins, no showdowns in famous places, no breathtaking blondes and there is next to no suspense. Rather, it is a small, nitty-gritty b/w film shot almost entirely in closed spaces and led one blogger to speculate that Hitchcock may have been influenced by Italian neorealism. Also, it is no stretch to read the film an indictment of the workings of the 1950s US criminal justice system. All in all, it is pretty much the antithesis of Hitchcock's previous offering, the Technicolor blockbuster that was The Man Who Knew Too Much, and accordingly tanked at the box office. Though nicely noir in aesthetic terms, the movie suffers a bit from the story's predictability. (7.5)

1962: La jetée (The Pier)

Is this even a film? Well, it's a 27-minute sequence of nonmoving b/w pictures with an omniscient narrator's voiceover and a little classical music, dealing with a man that, after the nuclear war is over, is a prisoner in a POW camp and is sent back and forth in time by the Germans, who finally managed to win a world war.

Does it work? I'll quote someone else: "This is experimentalism how it should be done, not as a chore for the viewer but as something that the viewer can enjoy at least as much as its creator. So the visual style is challenging? Put some interesting plot in it. The plot is strange, mundane or cryptic? Do it in a visually interesting way."

Though a critic's favourite, today La jetée is probably best known as the film that inspired 12 Monkeys. Both films are about equally good (8) and would make a nice double feature.

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties - #10: State Property

This gangsta epic managed a metascore of 9.

"A Roc-a-Fella Films production, this picture features company CEO Damon Dash and Rock-a-Fella artists Sigel, Memphis Bleek and Jay-Z; director Abdul Malik Abbott is best known for directing Jay-Z videos. The steady stream of characters dressed in Roca-Wear sometimes gives the impression that you're watching a feature-length commercial." - Maitland McDonagh, TV Guide

"Abbott's apparent nod to 'Scarface' goes beyond the inevitable token coin-flip homage in that, throughout the pic, he clearly means to create an ironic distance from the severely limited consciousness of his hero. But since Sigel's acting range is even more limited than his character's consciousness, it's difficult to gauge where the irony begins or ends around, say, his fervent espousal of family values: 'When I'm behind the trigger and ready to rock someone, I always think: Damn I got a family.'" - Ronnie Scheib, Variety

"'State Property' is rated R. It has violence, nudity, obscenity and not much else." - A.O. Scott, The New York Times

1950: D.O.A.

A man finds out he's been poisoned and only has a few days left to live and spends them on finding his killers - now isn't that a cool idea for a crime film? Though somewhat hard to follow at times, the movie, shot in stark, grainy black & white and set to a soundtrack the expressiveness of which borders on the camp, moves at a speed befitting its subject matters and doesn't waste any time on cinematic subtleties. Wham, Bam, Bam! (7.5)

(The film is in the public domain. Free & legal download or streaming video at Internet Archives.)

1996: Hard Eight (a.k.a. Sydney)

Something is missing in this deliberately slow-paced gangsters and lowlives flick which keeps me from endorsing it wholeheartedly. But never mind, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson went on to great things. (6.5)

1976: The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

John Casavetes' film about a night club owner with a gambling problem whom a bunch of gangster pressure into - SPOILER ALERT! - killing a Chinese bookie to settle his debt has "independent film" written all over it. The construction of the script is nothing like what they teach you in the screenwriting textbook and the mise en scène uses unconventional frames, handheld camera and nonstandard lighting, making much use of the fact that there are often spotlights around where the scene is set. Indeed the film is visually excellent and a very valid counterargument against the view that if your film is noir you should shoot it in black and white. On the downside, the script is not only unconventional but also not very good, sort of petering out after about three fifths. If you like it sloganesque: Very well directed, somewhat poorly written. (7)

Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties

Enough of Best of the Decade lists! Metacritic, the site that aggregates movie reviews and calculates an overall "metascore" (out of a hundred) gives us a list of The Worst Movies of the Decade - the ones that the critics really hated (pointer: TSPDT). Starting on Tuesday, I'll give a rundown of the bottom ten (none of which I've seen), each time collecting a number of choice quotes from the portion of the reviews that's still online. Follow with the Honouring the Worst Movies of the Noughties tag.

1927: The General

It's an audacious idea to create a feature-length film consisting of two train chases with just a little plot padding and this focus on action can easily go wrong (cf. Kill Bill, Vol. 1). But Keaton and collaborators made it awe-inspiring and, at times, funny. Together with Sherlock jr. (the only other of his pictures I've seen), The General suggests that the famous comedian ought to be regarded as one of the great action movie directors. (8)

1955: Les Diaboliques (Diabolique)

At the end of the film, a card urges the audience not to spoil the fun for their others by telling them the story, so I'll only say that it starts out with a schoolteacher and her colleague/friend deciding to do something about her bullying husband. It is no surprise that this film seems somewhat Hichcockesque as the authors who provided the novel this was based on also wrote the book that was made into Vertigo. Featuring unexpected plot turns and nice little touches, the movie keeps a delicate balance between full-blown thriller mode and a more light-hearted approach. (7.5)

1930: L'age d'Or

The follow-up to Chien Andalou is four times as long, has some sound (apparently added in postproduction) and doesn't seem quite as fresh as its predecessor to me. Also, you can't shock anyone nowadays with allusions to masturbation and fellatio. Fun fact (if it is a fact): "The film cost a million francs to produce and was financed by the nobleman Vicomte Charles de Noailles, who beginning in 1928 commissioned a film every year for the birthday of his wife Marie-Laure de Noailles." (6)

1931: Frankenstein

Badly acted, poorly edited and generally over the top, the original Frankenstein movie exhibits all the weaknesses you should expect from a 1930s horror picture and is a lot of fun. (unrated)

1952: Limelight

Here's one for the gender studies people: Chaplin plays a formerly famous comedian who happens to save a young and beautiful ballerina when she tries to kill herself. After he's taken her in, she naturally develops an interest in the old man, at one point kneeling down in front of him to get his shoes off in a manner that suggests routine. When she lands a top job, he suffers silently; when she thinks she can't perform on an important occasion - dance, I mean - he smacks her one and everything goes well. Seriously, what is one to make of this? (unrated)

1934: L'Atalante

A couple of newlyweds spend their honeymoon on a canal barge, but it is not obvious that for her he is the one and only. - The film, widely praised as one of the best ever, employs that old French favourite, the loosely structured screenplay, which has the usual downside of the movie falling into the nongripping category. On the upside, two really nice poetic ideas and lots of the hard-to-pin-down charm that old films often emanate. (6)

1955: Killer's Kiss

Given that he withdrew his 1953 feature film debut Fear and Desire, this is the first Kubrick movie that can be watched using standard channels and the last one that was missing from my list. The film about a boxer, a dancer and a criminal, small in terms of budget, scope and length, has two foots firmly planted in the noir tradition, achieves a generally rough feel mainly through the extensive use of handheld camera and has some brilliant shots of Manhattan's back alleys. Enjoyed it more than the generally similar but more acclaimed 1956 The Killing. (7) By the way, I recently read somewhere that it was one of Martin Scorcese's great achievements in directing Raging Bull that he filmed the boxing scenes from inside the ring. Whoever thought that was some great innovation apparently hasn't seen Killer's Kiss.

1958: Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (Elevator to the Gallows or Lift to the Scaffold)

Now, that's how to open a film: A close-up of a good-looking woman breathing "Je t'aime. Je t'aime" into a receiver. The French, eh?

Louis Malle's first film, set during a weekend in a late-50s Paris that the director deliberately made look modern is a crime gone wrong story. There's Julien Tavernier, the employee of a arms manufacturer who kills his boss, who is also his lover's husband; the lover, Florence Cavala, who is looking for Tavernier after he got stuck in an elevator on his way from the crime scene; and a young couple who steal his car and get into trouble of their own. As was remarked in the Washington Post (according to my DVD cover), the film's most important character may be Paris at night, the stylish photography accompanied by Miles Davies' trumpet. Despite minor weaknesses, this is a very good film (8).

Even better than the film: The trailer.

1919: The Professor

This seven-minute fragment features Charlie Chaplin as the director of a flea circus attempting to keep his underlings in check, an idea which was re-used in Limelight. Although it was a bit awkward to watch a film (albeit short) entirely without sound, I found it cute enough (6.5).

1960: Peeping Tom

This minor classic about a pervert with a film camera, which invites the stereotypical moviegoer-as-voyeur remarks, impresses with the cinematography's beautiful brilliant colours, but the in-your-face psychological explanations, ridiculously expressive score and poor acting make the film a camp experience more than anything else. (unrated)

1935: A Night at the Opera

The Marx Brothers' best-known film is quite funny, but, like most comedies, has little else to offer - with the notable exception of Harpo's work in the ropes towards the end. I could do without the musical interludes. (7.5)

2006: Lucky Number Slevin

It's one of those that some call "mindfuck movies" - films that make you aware that you don't know what's going on - and even beginning to summarize the plot would mean to spoil. Let's just say it's a comedy about killing people with lots of twists in the general Tarantino/Ritchie mode. The otherwise very enjoable screenplay suffers from wannabe cool (fax Tarantino?) dialogues and though there is nothing wrong with the direction I kept wondering what someone like Welles or Lynch would have done with the same material. Even so, a fun film for boys. (7)

As a sidenote, in purely business terms it seems like a particularly daft idea to call your film Lucky Number Slevin. A nontrivial portion of potential customers will type "Seven" instead of "Slevin" when looking for your product in databases. And some are going to write "No." or "#". Not good.

1930: Zero de Conduite (Zero for Conduct)

Boarding school pupils prank about and so does filmmaker Jean Vigo, who didn't bother to come up with a conventional plot for this 44-minute silent film. The "snowstorm" scene is famous for a reason. (6.5)

1957: Designing Woman

A sports journalist (Gregory Peck) with a liberal attitude towards honesty and a fashion designer (Lauren Bacall) get married to find out they come from different cultures. - This technicolor screwball affair delivers the number of laughs to be reasonably expected in the proper screwbally manner. And did Gregory Peck ever look better? (7)

1928: Un Chien Andalou

Seventeen minutes of well-photographed nonsense from Bunuel and Dali. Why not? (7) (Everybody always talks about the eye-slicing scene, but I like the doorbell much better.)

1955: The Night of the Hunter

Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) marries his former cellmate Ben's widow to get to Ben's ill-gotten gains. - It is widely regarded as a major classic, but despite some beautiful photography, I wonder why. Mitchum demonstrates he is not an actor, the screenplay, in which characters routinely talk to themselves to let us know what they think, is implausible and not particularly good at creating suspension and the visual make-believe is poor even by 1955 standards. Into the fat "overrated" folder. (6)