Them

An efficient French (but set in Romania) home-invasion thriller, along the lines of the far superior "High Tension." It's short and focused like "Vacancy," which I like. But there's nothing that stands out about the production. In fact, the Just Bourne Critic slept through the whole thing.

Au Hasard Balthazar

A classic tale of a girl (who looks like a young Jessica Alba) and her donkey. Both are tormented by a young French Liev Schreiber/Jason Bateman, and others. The deeper religious meaning was probably lost on me. Unless the meaning was life means suffering, in which case I got it.

Othello

Orson Welles stars as the eponymous Moor in this on-the-cheap B&W production. Not Welles's finest hour (and a half). There might be some good ideas here, but the poor quality of the film stock and audio get in the way of appreciating it as much as we should be able to. Also, the actor who plays Iago doesn't seem charismatic enough to fool Othello and the war backdrop to the entire story should be better and more prominently portrayed. And for whatever reason, I think the play works best when both Iago and Emilia are hot, but here they're not, they're so not.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Stupid as hell. Unbelievably stupid as hell. Spielberg, who recently impressed with his great "War of the Worlds" and classic "Munich," takes three giant leaps backwards as a filmmaker, scraping from the bottom of the barrel of reject ideas from his '50s nostalgia crap phase and trying to pass off cheap stereotypes and prairie dogs as comic relief. And the next person who casts Shia LaBeouf in a big-budget blockbuster gets 5... no, 10 demerits.

The Third Man

A classic British noir that takes place in Vienna around World War II, with its American, British, French, and Russian zones, and Germans all about. Graham Greene wrote it. Greene wrote great books, until he introduced a Catholic character, then he wrote terrible books. But "The Third Man" has no Catholics in it, so the script is decent. And Orson Welles is a supporting actor, so bonus. He asks the tough questions, like when he's on top of the ferris wheel and talking about his victims: "Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?" Great stuff.

The Hidden Fortress

An Akira Kurosawa-Toshiro Mifune collaboration samurai-era tale that inspired "Star Wars." I've seen it before, I'll probably see it again. It's muy bien.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Two great comic actors -- Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer -- in a film that thinks it's really subverting action films like "Lethal Weapon" and "48 Hours" and "Beverly Hills Cop," but in fact isn't that subversive and sticks to the script it tries to deviate from. Also features the curiously overrated Michelle Monaghan. The movie, though, has some good lines and is enjoyable enough.

La Piscine

Rich French people laze about a swimming pool. A guy who looks like Chief Justice John Roberts shows up at the country villa of his friend, who looks like Rob Lowe. Roberts has his daughter with him (who is "of age," as they say), and Lowe has his girlfriend with him. The characters toy with each other in a "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" kind of way, and there are myriad uncomfortable silences of nothing but the four characters eyeing each other. Not my cup of tea -- no wait, that's English -- It's not my haute cuisine.

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

Better than II and III. It's a little weird the queen falls for Anakin when he's a young boy. A tad R. Kelly-ish. Jar Jar's a disaster. Interesting to note that Keira Knightley's in it as Sabe, who I think is Natalie Portman's character's body double. That's all I've got to say.

Frenzy

This '70s Hitchcock thriller about the necktie murderer is in color, but other than that, it's standard fare. Not his best.

Alice

Hit paydirt with KDRT. (Worth a shot.) This Czech interpretation of "Alice in Wonderland" uses stop motion animation, so it's like a longer, darker "California Raisins" sketch, with some surreal elements as well. To paraphrase Kanye West, I just spent an hour and a half on this, just to say, "You ain't up on this."

Hamlet

A great example of Shakespeare on film, comparable in my eyes only to the performance of "Romeo and Juliet" in "Shakespeare in Love," the play within the play. Although, Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet doesn't give proper emphasis to my favorite line, when you says to Ophelia, "It would cost you a groaning to take off mine edge."

The Return

A Russian film about a 12-years-absent dad who returns to spend time with his two sons. The dad is not a good dad, and the sons don't like him. They go on a fishing trip. At the end of the film, they "return" as well. Cut and dry; that is it. But it's well done, so it's worth watching. I'm not sure, though, if a repeat viewing would illumine what was in the box.

Eyes Wide Shut

I'm reminded of an adage used in Bret Easton Ellis's "Glamorama": The better you look, the more you see. In the unrated version of "Eyes Wide Shut" (which is available in the US now), you do see more. I can't say the unedited footage makes the film move any faster, or makes the almost Pynchonesque conspiratorial denouement (which seems like half the movie) any more revelatory. But you do see more.

Rosario Tijeras

I don't see too many Colombian films. So upon starting this one, I wondered, will films from this country reflect that the country is torn apart by the drug war, rebel groups, terrorism, assassinations, paramilitaries, and rampant kidnapping? Will Colombian films reflect that the country's biggest exports are cocaine, heroin, flowers, coffee, and Shakira? If this movie is any indication, yes. It's a saucy, violent, striking thriller about an assassin loved by many men; it's like a Colombian "Shiri," but not nearly as good. Unfortunately, the movie seems like a meta-experiment in imparting to the viewer the experience of the actors' cocaine use -- for however amped up and frenetic the first half is, the second half is that much slowed down and like a comedown, and it's a letdown.

If I allot myself two hours to watch this film again, I will watch the first half and then watch the first half again.

Aguirre, The Wrath of God

I've finally seen it: a Werner Herzog film worth a repeat viewing. Spanish explorers (who speak in German -- I wonder if they're trying to speak German with a Spanish accent?) look for the City of Gold, El Dorado, Peru, in 1560. The adventure shows Catholic priests were complicit in the slave-driving of native Incans. Most interesting is a scene where the priest gives a bible to the "savage," telling him it contains the word of God; the savage holds it up to his ear and shakes it and says it does not speak; the priest then stabs him with a sword, killing him for blasphemy. Yes, the converting went well.

The extended sequence of the Spaniards traveling up the river recalls traits of "The New World": a realistic portrayal of survival in a foreign country, but played allegorically, like Herzog (and Terrence Malick in "The New World") had "Heart of Darkness" in mind. There are some great lines as well. As the Spaniards pass by a village, the Incans shout, "Meat is floating by." Later, Aguierre says, "That man is a head taller than me. That may change." It does change.

Macbeth

The only Roman Polanski film I allow myself to watch isn't as great as I remember. I don't like Shakespearean monologues that are portrayed as merely someone's thoughts, the character walking around with a voiceover no one else can hear. They're meant to be spoken out loud. But the production does have its finer moments, such as when Lady Macbeth says, "We fail," and not "We fail?" Polanski also, to his credit, makes Ross a more interesting character than I would have thought, eerily portrays the coming of Birnam Wood to Dunsinane, and adds an element to the end, of the brother of the new king going to see the weird sisters. Perhaps Ross will befriend him as he did Macbeth.

Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones

Still sucks. Hayden's worse in this one than he is the third, and Jar Jar's as stupid here as he was in the first. How does something this bad happen, and how does it still make so much money? Some scenes are so bad, they make you say, "Jesus Christ," and not in a good way.

My Left Foot

Daniel Day-Lewis thought he was bad off, now he's even more so. Not only is he a poor Irishman, but he also has CP and can only control his left foot. A happy film? No. A good film? Sure, whateva.

Bulworth

Bulworth was an ideas man, and every viewing of this movie makes me upset we don't have any politicians who speak like he does. I'm not saying we need someone to suggest a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. But it'd be nice.

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

The first part of the greatest (only?) two-part trilogy in film history comes to a close. Casting Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker, aka Darth Vader, may be the third classic blunder (along with getting involved in a land war in Asia and going up against a Sicilian when death is on the line). The whole point of the first trilogy is the turning of Anakin to the dark side, so for the audience to be into it, the movie requires an actor with enough talent to convey being conflicted, torn between staying true to the Force and the desire to save Padme's life. But, alas, Hayden tries to scowl his way through the phoned-in performance, and it drags down an otherwise . . . well, the rest of the movie could have used a lot less CGI and better dialogue, but it's better than the previous two.

I had forgotten all the hullabaloo when this came out about how it was supposed to be an allegory for the Bush administration. Proponents of this theory pointed out that Chancellor Palpatine was trying to seize more executive power by leading a fraudulent war, and Anakin tells Obi-Wan towards the end that he's either with him or his enemy. Oddly, this same hue and cry hasn't emerged about "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian." Hear me out. The first movie was completely terrible; utterly worthless, devoid of any redeemable features whatsoever. And yet, someone decided we needed a second, and someone else supported that decision because someone else watched the stupid thing. And so here it is. And it will probably do well at the box office, so we can expect, I don't know, five more of these. I'm not sure whether that ties in to politics, but I do know this: don't watch it.

The Great Dictator

Charlie Chaplin plays both an Adolph Hitler-esque dictator and a Jewish barber who looks like the Adolph Hitler-esque dictator. Unless I've got my history wrong, I think this was progressive by 1940's Hollywood standards, especially in its condemnation of anti-Semitism and its ceaseless mocking of the German language. It has its moments, but I think I may be more of a Buster Keaton man.

Fists in the Pocket

A '60s Italian film about a dysfunctional family and a son who decides to do something about it, i.e., kill off his family. The weird clan might be seen as an early version of the psychopathic Firefly family in Rob Zombie's "The Devil's Rejects," but that'd be stretching this film's relevance further than it should go. I've seen better.

The Kite Runner

Like "Atonement," "The Kite Runner" centers around a child who does unforgiveable things. And like "Atonement," the movie's dull. But unlike "Atonement," this movie at least makes sense. There's not something terribly wrong with the movie. It's just boring. It's too bad that Hollywood finally made a movie starring exclusively people from the Middle East and wasn't about them being terrorists, and the movie wasn't good. We can hope that doesn't stop them from trying.

Swimming Pool

Generally regarded as a thriller with a twist ending, this film neither thrills nor surprises in the end. Which isn't to say it's not an okay movie. (It does have Ludivine Sagnier in one of her finer roles, and an English-speaking one at that. She brings her unique, French pronunciation to lines like, "He's the king of orgies, didn't you know?") It's just, let's be honest about what we're watching.

Reincarnation

Here are some helpful tips for any woman starring in a Japanese horror film:
If the camera zooms in on your face, there's a ghost behind you.
If your face is in the frame, but the camera is focusing on something over your shoulder, there's a ghost behind you.
If there's a little kid running around who you see but nobody else does, odds are it's a ghost.
If the kid says things like, "We'll stay together forever," definitely a ghost.
That girl who tells you she thinks she was killed in a past life? Good chance she's going to be killed in this one as well, and soon.
If you want the movie to work, you -- the star -- have to carry the whole thing because the people they get to play Ghost 1 and Ghost 12 and so on in a low-budget movie are probably going to be terrible actors. At best, they may have taken one improv class at the local community center, and they'll come across like the dancing landlord in "The Big Lebowski."
If you want the movie to make sense, too bad -- it's Japanese.

The Orphanage

An atmospheric, Peter Pan-ic Spanish ghost story about a haunted orphanage. Not great, but I'm sure the English-language remake will be worse.

A League of Thier Own

A lesson in little-known American history, and a Fergalicious performance by Tom Hanks as a drunk, over-the-hill manager who signs autographs like, "Avoid the clap. Jimmy Dugan."

Starting Out in the Evening

An aging writer trying to finish his last book; a fawning, young English grad student. Sounds like a recipe for something. Like "Venus," this is another in the genre of old-guy-and-young-girl-have-quasi-romantic-relationship movies. The actors (Frank Langella and Lauren Ambrose) get their characters right on: the writer is scholarly played, and the grad student has the perfect mix of snobbery, obsequiousness, and flirtation. The ending too is nice. If you don't want a hint, stop reading. But a lesser movie would have the writer embrace life in new ways, forsake writing and live his life to the fullest; here, he stays true to his profession and literally starts out in the evening, and it's refreshing.