1953: Ugetsu monogatari

Mizoguchi's film about two men who go out into the world to try their luck does have its moments of (typically Japanese) beauty, but overall it's hard for me to see what all the fuzz is about. (6)

1958: Les amants

A woman is torn between her rich but boring husband and her fiery Latin lover. The film moves along decently until, while lying in the bathtub, she decides to solve this conflict by falling in love with a completely uncharismatic student. As he doesn't mind either, we get treated to a scene in which the lovers walk through nature accompanied by the sound of a string quartet, which possibly marks the low point of the use of classical music in the history of movies. At some point, the film ends. (4.5)

1954: Ordet

Much like Vreden's dag, another sparse Dreyer film set in the Danish countryside. Generally a nice unspectacular offering, but the young man who thinks he's Jesus's appearances border on the unintentionally comic (at least in the dubbed-into-German version I saw) and the ending is, um, unconventional. (6.5)

1951: Ace in the Hole

The story of a reporter putting a man's life in danger in order to have a better story and hence enhance his carreer is sort of pointless: You learn he's an egocentric arsehole in the first five minutes, and then the film spells it out. Still, the script is tightly written in an old Hollywood kind of way, so it's a decent 100 minutes. (6)

1959: Plan 9 from Outer Space

Yes, this film features some terrible acting and a number of technical blunders that may, indeed, make the movie a valuable teaching example for film school, but on a more general level it is no more trashy than the widely-acclaimed 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still, and certainly more entertaining.

1954: Thursday's Children

Not only is Lindsay Anderson's documentary about a school for deaf children boring, it also has voice-over narration that alternates between the usual third-person view and taking the (inauthentic) voice of the children ("We are deaf."). Bonus: Contains the remarkable assertion that if you don't have words, you cannot think. (4)

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)

1954: Viaggio in Italia

Strange: Throughout the film I kept thinking that the mediterranean light had been captured better in the films of Antonioni's ennui trilogy. Apart from that, competent film about a couple bitching at each other during a trip to Italy. Has Ingrid Bergman in it. (6.5)

1957: Kumonosu-jô (Throne of Blood)

Kurosawa's idea behind his version of Macbeth, the overriding aesthetic principle of which is scarceness, seems to be to make Ozu look like Busby Berkeley. (7) Just the right thing to watch after Sex and the City 2, and I've also got four Rosselinis lined up.

1956: Bob le flambeur (Fever Heat)

Although lengthy at times, Melville's first crime movie - about an ex-gangster who becomes an ex-ex-gangster after having gambled away his money and plans on robbing the Deauville casino - is recommended overall, not least because of Isabelle Corey, playing the cheekiest Lolita in movie history. Cool shots of 1950s Pigalle, too. (7)

1958: Dracula (a.k.a. Horror of Dracula)

The first film to star Christopher Lee as the Count is too trashy to be reasonably good and not trashy enough to be so bad it's good, but still a decent bit of afternoon entertainment. (6)

1959: Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus) (Restored 107 min.s Version)

Though I realize it is set during Carnival, I still have a feeling that Rio in the late 1950s may not have been the magical place where everyone is always happy (except when throwing a mighty funk on jealousy grounds) and the samba is always playing (except when the bossa is playing). But who cares, it's not a documentary. As for the plot, Orfeu is set to marry Mina - but then Bambi-eyed Eurydice arrives from the countryside. O&E are soon getting it on, but Eurydice is being followed by someone who is either a bloke dressed up as death or Dr. D himself. Never mind the plot, though; the main actor here is the magical Rio described above, filmed in glorious Eastmancolor. (8)

1957: Les Espions

The director of a small psychiatric clinic in rural France accepts lots of money from someone claiming to represent the US secret service, and the next day lots of strangers have moved in, taking over the clinic uttering more or less vague threats about what will happen if he resists. It's a cool premise for a movie, but the lack of clarity about who is on whose side tends to create confusion rather than suspense or surprise. (6)

1957: Le notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria)

Fellini's (seminal?) take on the hooker with a heart topos, firmly in the neorealist tradition, is not a bad film at all, but somehow its famous magic managed to elude me. (6)

1950: In a Lonely Place

The main character is called Dixon Steele, but we never see him perform. He is, in fact, a screenwriter, and has a woman falling in love with him who thinks he's wrongly accused of killing a girl. The ending totally doesn't work, but the film makes up for it with generic 1950s b/w US film charm. (7)

1950: I Confess

Visually more refined than most of Hitchcock's earlier work I've seen, this movie - another take on the innocent-man-under-suspicion theme - suffers from a complete lack of suspense or surprises. (5.5)

1956: The Searchers

Two men go to search for a woman abducted by Indians, shooting quite a few of them, as well as a few Nonindians, in the process. I'm not someone who thinks all people must share his taste, but even leaving aside all moral issues (discussed by Roger Ebert with a lot of sympathy for Ford, Wayne and the film), it is still a bit of a mystery why this movie should be considered one of the very great works of cinema. Ebert mentions some shots he finds beautiful, making the film sound like an American Lawrence of Arabia, but I don't see it. The Searchers is unusually good in no department and generally seems to be aimed not so much at children, but at simpletons. (That's 5 points on purely aesthetic grounds.)

1953: Stage Fright

This Alfred Hitchcock film, featuring his usual tropes, benefits from a tightly-written script and uses Marlene Dietrich to full effect, but indeed suffers from the famous construction error later acknowledged by Hitchcock. (6.5)

1959: Anatomy of a Murder

A nice enough courtroom drama - a bit like magazines, this is a format I'm generally fond of, but there are hardly any outstanding specimen - but isn't there supposed to be some twist at the end? Well, maybe this wasn't the case in 1959. (7)

1957: Sweet Smell of Success

How's that for a setup: One man - a press agent - is constantly being humiliated and commanded around by a second man - an influential, and hence powerful, columnist - but you can't really feel for the first man because he is just as big a slimebag as the other one. Between the two of them, they try to break up the relationship between the columnist's sister and a jazz guitarrist, a client of the agent in this excellently constructed and fast-moving drama, which is notable for its razor-sharp dialogue. (7.5)