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)

1965: Per qualche dollaro in più (For a Few Dollars More)

Once you got over the concept of manliness that is promoted in the second installment of Leone's trilogy about the overly talkative bounty hunter and are ready to enjoy it for what it is (an exercise you're already familiar with, having seen the first one), you'll realize it's not very entertaining. (5.5)

1961: Judgment at Nuremberg

I am no expert on the Nuremberg trials, but it appears that the film gives as good a treatment of the moral and legal questions surrounding such a case, as well as the various shades of guilt between black and white, as you can expect from a fictional work of entertainment. As a work of entertainment, it succeeds, as it is well structured, populated by interesting characters played well, and, at three hours, not a minute too long. (7.5)

1966: La battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers)

Not only is it fully warranted that this film's look is renowned for its proximity to the documentary style, but the first half or so merely recounts a series of terrorist attacks, complete with dates given and a narrator leading us through the events. After Colonel Mathieu arrives to lead the counterinsurgency, things get a little more conventional. Crisp and elegant, it's a very good film to look at throughout. (7.5)

1921: The Kid

Crisp, funny, touching and featuring a great score (composed in 1971) as well as that certain something it's hard to put one's finger on, The Kid, about The Tramp's adventures with his cute adoptive son, may well be the quintessential Chaplin film. (8)

1970: Patton

Never having read anything about the film's content, but having seen versions of the film's poster multiple times, I naturally had assumed that this was some anti-patriotic war comedy, sort of like M*A*S*H, but apparently, a man looking somewhat silly saluting in front of a giant national flag does not signify parody or satire in the USA.

No comedy then; rather, this is a biopic about an actual US general during WWII, co-written and well-made except for the fact that most of the indoors scenes look like having been shot in the studio. On the plus side: In the original (undubbed and mainly English) version of the film, all of the dialogue in German is delivered by native speakers, which is fairly unusual. (6.5)

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: District 9

In retrospect, it seems like a stroke of genius: Do a film basically using the aesthetics of the Bourne pictures, but

• with aliens
• use a nerd-turned-hero, i.e., a character the kinds of people who like this kind of movie can identify with better than with a brawny hunk such as Bourne or a million other action heroes

Laugh all the way to the bank. (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)

2009: (500) Days of Summer

You know what? I totally understand what this guy is trying to say. But he's wrong. It's lovely, in an excrutiating way. (7.5)

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)

2006: Children of Men

In 2027, everyone in the world is infertile (everyone?) and Britain has closed its borders, trying to stem a tide of illegal immigrants who want to come despite England looking like a shithole - apparently the rest of the world is even worse off, the film's a bit vague on this. The screenwriters, keeping the basic dystopian setup, but substantially altering the plot of the novel the book is based on, remembered that in a screenplay the main characters need a task and came up with the lamest one in the book: the characters have to get from A to B, despite obstacles. It takes a lot of hard work to make that interesting, and this film doesn't deliver. Also, pretty much all of the film is shot in a grey-green-blue shade, which is a bit like someone shouting "DYSTOPIA!" in your face for two hours. On the plus side: Michael Caine sporting really long grey hair. (5.5)

As for dystopian Britain, didn't Mark E. Smith remark something to the effect that if you want to see humanity at its worst, you should go to central Manchester around closing time? Now, there's an idea for a film for you: Showdown at the taxi stand.

2010: Shutter Island

The first half or so of Scorsese's film about two agents investigating on a kind of Alcatraz for the criminally insane has an extremely well-crafted plot, but the ending is extremely poor - indeed, my enjoyment of the film was heightened because I discounted early hints about the ending thinking that they couldn't possibly go for something that lame. Also, Scorsese generally doesn't seem at the top of his game, the music's poor and the back projections' quality made me wonder whether they were intended as a deliberate hommage to Hitchcock. Having said all that, of course if Martin Scorsese directs a thriller based on a Dennis Lehane book it's going to be a good film. (7)

2005: Batman Begins

Does what it says on the label - childhood and death of parents, education, development of gadgets, etc. - in a thoroughly professional/predictable way. Too long, although not by as much as The Dark Knight, the visual acumen of which it lacks. I haven't used my stopwatch, but got the impression this might well win a competition for similarity of scenes' length in blockbuster movies. (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)

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)

2006: Little Miss Sunshine

Steve Sailer is probably right that the movie about a family who go on a road trip so that the daughter Olivia can compete in the Little Miss Sunshine contest was such a surprise success because it showed people, and maybe mums in particular, that other families are just as crazy as yours, or maybe more so. It's quick-moving, easy to watch and amusing, too, although for my taste it was a little too mainstream, especially the ending. (6) From a social science standpoint, I wonder why not more movies like this one get released - after all, they're cheap to make! According to Wikipedia, Sunshine cost 8 million (presumably not including marketing and related costs) and earned 100 million (presumably before profits from DVD and TV rights). Even if your average film in this vein is a third that successful, that's still a handsome return.

2009: Avatar (in 3-D)

The main thing most people are going to watch this for is the new 3-D technology and this works really well. I didn't find it as impressive as I thought I would (presumably because I've seen a lot of 3-D in the real world), but it looks realistic and is quite a bit of fun to behold.

Apart from that it is really not a good movie. Early on, we learn that the humans/Americans (often the same thing in this kind of movies) are on that planet because there's a precious resource to harvest (some stone). If in the process of getting it you have to kill some of the natives, so be it. But throwing bombs on their heads is maybe not the most clever way of making the natives voluntarily letting us harvest their planet, someone opines. Hmm, is it just me or is the screenwriter trying to make a comment on recent US foreign policy? (In general, the dialogues all sound like they were written by a fourteen-year-old boy, which may or may not be a deliberate choice by Cameron.)

The natives, however, aren't all that much like Afghans. Burqas? No, sir! Just think of the first five clichés that come to mind when I say "noble savage" and you know everything about them. They are so in touch with nature that while an animal the throat of which they've just slashed is bleeding to death, they inform it that its life-energy will be preserved. They keep a straight face, too. And their trees? They're not just trees; under the surface, all of their roots are interconnected and the memories of dead natives are stored there. (Regrettably, this is not referred to as the greenternet.) Cameron has really taken this whole Gaia idea in. And he lets it out!

But at least he has taken something in from the nonscreen world. A rare case. Almost all of the scenes seem second-hand. She at first wants to kill him and is furious when she is ordered to spend time with him. Hmmm, wonder whether they'll end up together? Like that. All of the time.

The screenplay also has structural problems, or, to put it differently, it doesn't have a single twist in it - you can predict the way the story will go after about ten minutes. Come to think of it, I thought that there would be a twist (concerning one specific character) that did not happen. On the other hand, between the two of us Heidi and I exactly predicted what would happen to the Sigourney Weaver character.

But let's not be picky about such things: Where the movie's really got to shine is the visuals. Well, I already mentioned the 3-D and the film's got some really nice shots of valleys, etc. But: The natives (and hence the avatars, which or who are designed to resemble them) look crap. So do the sort-of-horses. So do the sort-of-dinosaurs. In fact, every nonhuman animal in this film looks shite. (The plants look o.k.) What's worse: The film is basically set in two places; the military base and the forests. The military base is shot is shot in grey and blue. The forest is shot in green and blue. After half an hour I found myself longing for red, yellow and brown. And it's a long film.

I'm giving the movie 5/10 because the 3-D thing, as I may have mentioned, works really well. I strongly advise you, however, to see it in 2-D, irrespective of the size of the screen.

1931: City Lights

Despite an overreliance on "mix-up" jokes (bars of soap instead of pieces of cheese ending up on sandwitches - that kind of thing), Chaplin's last properly silent film, the one with the flower girl and the boxing ballet, manages to entertain throughout - though it is by no means laugh-out-loud funny. Clearly better than Goldrush. (7)