2010: The Social Network

The Film Everybody's Talking about, a courtroom drama of sorts, is an all-around good, funny and well-photographed dramedy, though it's a little too textbook to excite me. (7)

2006: Un printemps à Paris

A gangster film with the standard ingredients heist, hustlers, homicide. Plus a sick "love story", just because we're French. Not a bad screenplay, and a master would have made this a really good movie, but Jacques Bral isn't one of them, so instead you get what feels like a made-for-TV movie. (6)

2008: Flammen & Citronen (Flame and Citron: The Nazi Assassins)

The film about resistance fighters in Nazi occupied Denmark is generally good, but little not-so-good elements here and there make it merely o.k. (6)

1960: Inherit the Wind

It is hard to stay neutral when telling the story of an actual historical case in which a science teacher in the USA's bible belt was sued for teaching evolution, and this film clearly, and perhaps a bit to forcefully, makes clear that it's not on the side of the religious zealots. Otherwise, this is a well-structured and all-around professionally done piece of political entertainment. (6.5)

1959: Charlotte et Véronique, ou Tous les garçons s'appellent Patrick (All the Boys Are Called Patrick)

Godard shot this short a in the year before he did À bout de souffle, but, working from a script by Eric Rohmer, he naturally couldn't produce anything resembling a masterpiece. The story features a couple of female flatmates who go out one day to be chatted up seperately by the same guy, tell about it each other in the evenings, and guess what happens at the end. Exactly the same story, with genders reversed, was made into the excrutiating rap song "Die da" by Die Fantastischen Vier about forty years later, the lyrics having the decisive advantage that it's unclear until the end that the two friends are talking about the same person. Well. (5)

2010: Sex and the City 2

I understand every bit of criticism in Roger Ebert's one-star review, but I can't say I hated the film. Yes, we made fun of it and it's certainly no Some Like It Hot, but at times I laughed with the movie and, never having seen an episode of Sex and the City, found it an interesting sociocultural experience overall. (unrated)

2008: Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Woody Allen takes his usual spiel to Spain with this relationship comedy in which two American girls - one with a taste for the solid life, the other looking for passion, etc. - fall for a mediterranean Romeo with a violent ex wife. While the latter two roles are well filled by Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz respectively, Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson do less than stellar jobs in the first two thirds of the title roles. (Barcelona, as far as I can tell, looks fine.) Tight screenplay, good ending, 7 points.

1968: The Odd Couple

It's photographed a bit blandly, but apart from that there's absolutely nothing wrong with this always entertaining and occasionally funny Lemmon-Matthau vehicle. Extra super: the Pigeon sisters. (7)

This is another of the films I saw recently that are based on plays; they hardly ever do that anymore, do they? Instead, every other American film nowadays appears to be based on a comic. All in all, I think I prefer the former.

2009: Star Treck

Though somewhat unengaging in terms of plot (guess what, they have a planet to save), the film about Kirk, Spock et al. coming of age offers enough little injokes and eye candy to be nonboring. (6)

2009: Up (in 2-D)

The Pixar movie, about an old man who wants to fulfill his lifelong dream of going to South America by flying there using his house (with lots of helium balloons attached) only to find there's still a boy scout on the porch after he's left the ground, is visually attractive and generally done with the level of professionalism that one expects from Pixar, but suffers a bit from a slump in the middle. Better than Happy Feet or The Incredibles, but not as good as Madagascar or Ratatouille. (6.5)

1972: Deliverance

When four friends go on a rafting trip, senseless violence finally strikes after a somewhat tedious 25 minutes or so, and after that things get ugly. Not badly executed overall, but I don't really need a film to tell me that civilization is only skin deep and you're never really save; after all, I do pick up a paper from time to time. (6)

1961: Une femme est une femme (A Woman Is a Woman)

If A bout de souffle was Godard's take on American gangster films, maybe Une femme est une femme may be seen as his version of lighthearted musicals in the style of An American in Paris. Loosely plotted, it deals with a woman who knows she wants a child but not from which of two men (who, naturally, are good friends - remember, this is a French film). Though it's clearly too much in love with its own quirkiness, it's a good movie overall because it's visually attractive (Early 1960s Paris! Technicolor! Competent individuals in charge!) and because some of its quirkiness is rather lovely - two of the comic scenes, combined running time about four seconds, are almost unforgettably super. (7)

1978: The Deer Hunter

This is probably the best-known film I was going to see but hadn't yet, but even so I learned I knew very little about it: Though I was aware that the film started in the soldiers-to-be "real" lives in the US (which is a nice touch) I was surprised to learn it takes almost an hour before we get to Vietnam (which is too long, given that the "American opening" isn't all that interesting). This is the best section of the film, featuring a really gripping Russian roulette scene, but then, after another forty minutes it's back to the USA and then back to Vietnam and back to the US again.

During this whole in-out, accompanied by the kind of sensitive problem music Liberace might have come up with, we learn that the Robert de Niro character was really into shooting deer before he went to Vietnam but when he comes back, he refrains from doing so. This is meant to convey either that he has learned violence is no fun or that the Vietcong have antlers; I'm not sure which.

In the end they all sing "God Bless America". Amen to that: Let's hope that in the future America gives its Oscars to better films. (5.5)

1950: All about Eve

As soon as a theatre star (Bette Davis) and her best friend (Celeste Holm) take a seemingly fawning fan (Anne Baxter) under their wing, the scheming and bitching and general meanness - what psychologists call relational aggression - begins in true female fashion. Indeed I was surprised that the screenplay had been written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz - after all, men would never say such nasty things about women - until I found out it was based on a short story by one Mary Orr.

It's a bit like a war movie, really: Quite entertaining as long as you don't have to be part of it. (7)

2004: Sideways (Best of the Noughties Lists and Suggestions #9)

The film about two middle-aged buddies who go on a trip to the Santa Barbara wine country before one of them gets married only to predictably become involved with two local ladies is well written, well photographed, well acted and succeeds all around in what it's trying to do: to provide an entertaining, easily digested film for people with brains, the kind of moviegoers who fancy neither the usual blockbusters aimed at their children nor the Masterpieces of Finnish Existentialism currently playing at the local arthouse. (7.5)

1984: This Is Spinal Tap

I found the fake documentary about a British hard rock band on tour in the USA not nearly as funny as I expected due to its fame, in part, I guess, because I am not a fan of the school of humour that makes fun of people's stupidity. Even more surprising: Everybody knows about the amps that go to eleven, but in the movie it's but a sidenote. Very decent diversion (6.5).

2007: 4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days)

Otilia (major screen presence Anamaria Marinca) helps her friend Găbiţa get an abortion - which in communist Romania is illegal. Yes, it's the feelgood film of the noughties, and you can trust writer-director Christian Mungiu to milk the setup for all its dramatic potential. Truly gripping, although I think that a Metacritic score of 97 may be taking things a bit far. (8)

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)