Capsule Review: Vertigo (1958)

A financial failure upon its release, Vertigo's reputation has slowly grown over the decades until it's now considered one of Hitchcock's very best - if not THE best. It's certainly one of his most psychologically fascinating, as a retired police officer suffering from acrophobia (Jimmy Stewart) is hired to follow the wife (played by Kim Novak) of a wealthy old friend, who the friend suspects has been possessed by the suicidal spirit of her ancestor. Of course there's Hitchcock's usual obsessions, but everyone is working at the top of their game here - from Saul Bass' incredible opening title sequence to Bernard Herrmann's unforgettable score. Much was made of the age different between Novak and Stewart in the film, but Stewart actually gives one of his best performances as a man tortured by memory and his own weakness.

Capsule Review: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Based on the life of British army officer T. E. Lawrence, David Lean's Lawrence Of Arabia might very well be the most epic of all Hollywood films. Running over three hours, and featuring numerous massive battle scenes, the film remains anchored by its startling lead performances, including an impossibly young Peter O'Toole in the lead, and Omar Sharif's first English language performance as Lawrence's loyal friend Prince Faisal. The film shot for well over a year, with desert scenes filmed in Jordan and Morocco, as well as Almería and Doñana in Spain, and never has the desert seemed both so dangerous and so inviting. To see Lawrence of Arabia on a big screen is to be enveloped by cinema, as it provides a full sensory experience in a way that few films have ever been able to replicate. Beautiful, and timeless, what the film lacks in historical reality it more than makes up for in spectacle.

Capsule Review: Double Indemnity (1944)

One of the earliest - and finest - film noirs, Billy Wilder's shadowy tale of murder and betrayal was co-written by Raymond Chandler, whose hard-boiled prose is evident in Fred MacMurray's narration. MacMurray - as the impossibly confident Walter Neff - is a revelation in the lead; a complete heel, but an attractive one, who somehow makes being an insurance salesman seem like the most glamorous (and sexy) occupation in the world. His life begins to collapse after he randomly meets Phyllis Dietrichson and - remarkably quickly - is convinced to plan the seemingly perfect murder of her husband. The excellent Edward G. Robinson plays Neff's friend and co-worker Barton Keyes, who starts to take apart the story piece by piece, until the only question becomes who will turn on who. Beautifully written, the film was a massive critical and commercial success upon release, and helped popularize the genre which would flourish over the following decade.

Capsule Review: All About Eve (1950)

All About Eve has such wonderful dialogue and performances that it's easy to forget just how bitter and cynical it is. A slick commentary on our culture's obsession with youth, particularly in the entertainment industry, it features a tour-de-force performance by Bette Davis as the aging actress Margo Channing. Davis is in full-on queen bitch mode, while somehow still remaining the heart and soul of the piece, spitting out the exquisitely crafted Joseph L. Mankiewicz dialogue with equal parts enthusiasm and vitriol. But it's not just David in fine form, as the supporting performances are universally excellent - with the ensemble receiving five acting Oscar nominations alone, and the production as a whole getting an (at the time) record 14 noms. The plot; about an obsessed young fan surreptitiously infiltrating - and  imitating - the life of a famous theatrical star, remains ferociously entertaining until the end. A true Hollywood triumph.

Capsule Review: Les Diaboliques (1955)

Like Psycho, a film that might possibly never have existed if it wasn't for Les diaboliques, time and imitation have dulled the edge of Henri-Georges Clouzot's masterpiece of suspense. However, even with an ending that most audiences will see coming at the half-way mark, the film has enough slow building suspense and fascinating psychology to thrill and entertain in equal measure. Wife and mistress working together to plan the perfect murder sounds like something out of Hitchcock's playbook, but the French surroundings and cast - who are pitch perfect - serve a much darker tale than Hitchcock would have attempted. The imagery is unforgettable, and the climactic sequence - with the ill Christina chasing her supposedly dead husband through the hallways of the boarding school - is still absolutely chilling. Re-made in English several times; most notably a poor big-budget Hollywood remake (known as Diabolique) starring Sharon Stone and Isabelle Adjani.

Capsule Review: Magnolia (1999)

While Paul Thomas Anderson's debt to Robert Altman - who he later worked with extensively before his death - had been on display in Hard Eight and (particularly) Boogie Nights, it was 1999's Magnolia where Altman's influence really came to the forefront. Telling a sprawling tale of the interweaving connections between a dozen or so characters over a 24 hour period, the film explores themes of chance, fate, love, death, and forgiveness among people of wildly disparate backgrounds. Featuring one of the most impressive ensemble casts in recent memory - including Jason Robards in his emotional final performance - the film occasionally threatens to collapse under its emotional weight ( particularly during two memorably surreal sequences) but Anderson deftly keeps the ship upright over the lengthy three hour running time. It's uneven, and occasionally frustrating, but it's a massive accomplishment, and one with near limitless pleasures to unlock.

Capsule Review: The African Queen (1951)

Humphrey Bogart won his only Oscar for this rousing adventure film based on the 1935 novel by C.S. Forester, but his performance is just one of the elements that make the film so unforgettable. Katharine Hepburn's co-lead performance is equally good, and the pair share a rare chemistry that carries almost the entire running time. Bogart's gin-soaked riverboat captain finds himself clashing with Hepburn's buttoned-down missionary as the two float dangerously towards a German gunboat during the beginning of World War I. The photography (by the legendary Jack Cardiff) of the African surroundings is lush and beautiful, while John Huston dominates the landscape - and stages a number of dangerous scenes - with his usual unhinged aplomb. It's frightfully entertaining, even if the rear-projection and model work can be a little rough around the edges. Endlessly entertaining, and thankfully available in a beautiful 2009 restored version.

Capsule Review: The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

While Roger Corman's cycle of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations are rightfully lauded, it was the final two films - Masque of the Red Death and The Tomb of Ligeia - where Corman was finally able to match his ambitions with appropriately lush and impressive production values. Filming in England, Corman used sets left over from Becket and surrounded himself with top British talent - including young Cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, whose grasp of visuals match perfectly with the colorful, sometimes surreal production design. Vincent Price gives one of his best (and most restrained) performances as the brutal, Satanic Prince Prospero, who throws a massive party for local nobility at his castle while the countryside is ravaged by a plague. The portrayal of Satanism is rather shockingly nuanced, and there are wonderful supporting performances from Patrick Magee as the twisted Alfredo and Horror Hospital's Skip Martin as the diminutive Hop-Frog (a piece adapted from a different Poe short story). It's wonderfully entertaining, with a satisfying climax that appears to have been influenced by The Seventh Seal.

Capsule Review: A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

Charles Crichton, an Ealing veteran who helmed The Lavender Hill Mob back in 1951, was nearing 80 when he directed A Fish Called Wanda, but his mastery of tone and pacing is a big part of what makes the film - from a script by star John Cleese - work so beautifully. The international cast includes Cleese as a married, upper-class lawyer who gets increasingly involved with Jamie Lee Curtis' Wanda, after she's part of a diamond heist. The robbery was masterminded by Georges (Tom Georgeson) who only trusts the stuttering, animal loving Ken (Michael Palin), while Wanda and her lover (posing as her brother) Otto (Kevin Kline) continually try to find ways to get the loot for themselves. Perhaps surprisingly, the humor strays far away from the often surreal humour of Python, preferring instead to put the quirky cast in a variety of compromising, farcical situations. It's often hilarious, and played perfectly by the able cast - particularly Kline, who does some of his best work. Much of the cast reunited for 1997's Fierce Creatures, but faltered without Crichton steering the ship.

Capsule Review: Within Our Gates (1920)

The oldest surviving film by an African-American director, Within Our Gates paints a devastating picture of race relations in the United States just a few short years after D.W. Griffth's incendiary The Birth of a Nation. The plot is rather disjointed - perhaps the result of the original inter-titles being lost - but involves a young African-American woman's attempts to raise money for a poor southern school by traveling north. The show-stopper occurs in the film's final twenty minutes, where the woman's past - which involved the lynching of her family after her father is falsely accused of murder - is finally revealed. It's a necessarily angry film, but one that recognizes the capacity for change. Some late melodrama dulls its edge, but director Oscar Micheaux proves himself a capable director in only his second film, and shows Griffith didn't have a patent on making passionate and political films.

Capsule Review: The Terminator (1984)

It's hard to explain just how massive Terminator 2: Judgment Day was when it was released back in 1991. I was 10 years old at the time, and despite being significantly too young to view it - and never having seen the original - seeing it seemed like the most important thing in the world. It was many years later until I finally saw The Terminator, and I could be forgiven for being shocked at just how brutal it was. Compared to the huge action set pieces and "a boy and his cyborg" humor of the sequel, the original film is played dead seriously. In fact, while containing plenty of futuristic action and special effects; at heart it's a high-octane slasher film, even down to the first-person perspective from the unstoppable antagonist. It launched Arnold Schwarzenegger's improbable career, and turned James Cameron into an immediate A-list director; and has fueled multiple sequels, a television series, comics and plenty of assorted merchandise. That this all came from what is ostensibly a low-budget horror film - though one that is incredibly slick and well-made - is something I've always found to be endearing.

Capsule Review: The Fly (1986)

The director of Shivers and Rabid might be the last person you would expect to direct a big-budget special-effects filled science fiction remake of 1958's The Fly, but following his success with the Stephen King adaptation The Dead Zone, David Cronenberg was put in the unlikely driver's seat of a blockbuster. Not only did he deliver a genuinely chilling piece of science fiction/horror, he did it while maintaining - and evolving - his usual themes of melded flesh and body horror. Perhaps his most brilliant move was casting the otherworldly Jeff Goldblum in the lead, who gives an Oscar caliber performance as scientist Seth Brundle. He finds himself rapidly morphing into a half-man/half-fly after the creature gets mixed up into his teleportation experiments. Chris Walas' make-up effects are incredible, while Howard Shore provides one of his most effective scores. A huge critical and financial success, it was followed by the embarrassing The Fly II, starring Eric Stoltz.

Capsule Review: Aliens (1986)

Despite his reputation for being difficult, James Cameron is a man who has spent nearly his entire career bucking the odds. Following up the massive international success of The Terminator with a sequel to Ridley Scott's beloved science-fiction/horror film was a huge gamble, but somehow Cameron created a film that massively upped the ante; introducing heavy weaponry, a much wider scope and dozens of the titular xenomorphs into a story which brings back Sigourney Weaver as Ripley - woken up after 57 years in stasis. While focusing much more heavily on action, the director manages to create a story that sensibly evolves from the first movie, while introducing plenty of new memorable characters - Michael Biehn as Hicks, Lance Henriksen as the android Bishop, Bill Paxton as the whiny Hudson and - memorably - Paul Reiser as the impossibly scummy Carter Burke. It hasn't all aged well, but the spot-on pacing and high octane action puts the sequels that followed to shame, and the amazing climactic scene is one for the ages. A near-perfect piece of sci-fi action.

Capsule Review: Alien (1979)

It really shouldn't have worked. A big budget riff on 50s monster-movie science fiction, featuring state-of-the-art special effects and production design by H.R. Giger, Alien works because it plays the material entirely straight, with its rare early moments of levity eventually giving way to a completely nightmarish final quarter. While influenced by rubber monster fare like It! The Terror from Beyond Space, director Ridley Scott ramps up the claustrophobia and dread of the deep space setting (where "no one can hear you scream"), while delivering a top-notch ensemble cast whose easy chemistry makes their eventual fates all the more horrific.  The astounding production design is a treat for the eyes, while Sigourney Weaver became an instant star for her tough, independent portrayal of (Warrant Officer) Ripley. Of course there are also moments of surprising violence, and the alien itself - with its retracting "tongue" and acidic blood - makes for an unforgettable foe. Followed by the James Cameron helmed Aliens, as well as a series of sequels with diminishing returns, eventually crossing over with the Predator franchise. In 2012, Ridley Scott returned to the setting of the film with Prometheus.

Capsule Review: Way Down East (1920)

Way Down East ends with Anna, our consistently abused main character played by the luminous Lillian Gish, floating helplessly on a chunk of ice while heading towards a roaring waterfall and her almost certain doom. The sequence ranks among the best D.W. Griffith ever filmed, with the cross-cutting between Anna's chilly fate and the gallant David (played by Broken Blossoms' Richard Barthelmess) desperately searching for her making for an exciting, unforgettable climax. The rest of the film is fairly standard, though well-executed, melodrama featuring Gish's Anna being tricked into a fake marriage by the dastardly Lennox Sanderson (a slimy Lowell Sherman) and being ostracized and shamed for bearing a fatherless child. It's presented as a condemnation of unfaithful men as well as a tribute to the patience of women, and was based on a popular turn of the century play by William A. Brady. The silent film was later re-made in 1935, featuring Henry Fonda as David and Rochelle Hudson in the Anna role.

Capsule Review: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

As extensively analyzed and beloved as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is, it's easy to forget just how overwhelming the jagged, expressionistic visual  must have been to the audiences of the early 1920s. Fueled by two great performances - Conrad Veidt as the somnambulist Cesare and Werner Krauss as Dr. Caligari - the film's erratic pace can sometimes make for a frustrating viewing experience, but the twist ending - a controversial decision at the time - still holds some surprises for those used to more tame silent fare. Friedrich Fehér's acting is wildly over the top, but perhaps the gesticulating might have been necessary to be noticed when next to a towering, ghostly sleepwalker or the bug-eyed, troll-like doctor. Notable for introducing flashbacks within flashbacks into the language of cinema, and creating a tale that was endlessly imitated by the monster movies of the  following 30 years. It's also been remade several times, including as recently as 1995 (with Doug Jones as Cesare), but none can equal the impact of the German original.

Capsule Review: The Public Enemy (1931)

The ambitions of the character of Tom Powers in The Public Enemy are not so far off from that of any determined young man, he just happens to have the viciousness (and occasional rage) to pull it all off. His rise through the crime world happens naturally, though starts with a (literal) bang with the murder of a police officer. James Cagney imbues the role with a wiry, searing energy that so dwarfs his co-stars - Edward Woods in particular - that he nearly overwhelms the picture. You can't take your eyes off of him. He's the whole show here, though the pre-code material still feels quite risque if you're only used to the more sedate crime pictures of the 40s. The plot holds few surprises, particularly if you've seen the thematically similar Little Caesar from the same year, but created a frame which almost all future films featuring a character rising through the criminal underworld would follow. Some amazingly memorable moments - Cagney pushing a grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face, Cagney walking towards his possible doom in the pouring rain - are muted by the general predictability. Still, it remains supremely entertaining.

Capsule Review: The Pianist (2002)

Władysław Szpilman was a Jewish-Polish Pianist who, despite all odds, managed to survive the horrific German occupation of Warsaw, Poland. Perhaps no other director was better prepared to tell his story than Roman Polanski, who escaped from the Krakow Ghetto as a child after the death of his mother. Despite devastatingly emotional material, Polanski doesn't wallow in the sadness, instead embracing moments of quiet beauty amongst one of the greatest tragedies in modern history. He rests the entire film on the pitch perfect performance of Adrien Brody, who goes from naive professional to harrowed, impossibly traumatized survivor in a world so unrecognizable, that it seems nearly post-apocalyptic. When you witness the barbaric behavior of the Nazis in the film, it might be easy to believe the end of the world wasn't far behind. The 2002 winner of the Palme D'or at Cannes, and a truly powerful film.

Capsule Review: A Very Long Engagement (2004)

After Jean-Pierre Jeunet's disastrous Hollywood experience which resulted in Alien Resurrection, he returned to France and made the timeless, internationally beloved Amélie. His followup appeared at first to be a rather dramatic change of pace - a romantic drama focusing on a woman's desperate attempt to discover the fate of her fiancee, who was sent to his death during WW1 due to self-mutilation. However, Jeunet's visual gymnastics and unique storytelling devices are in full force, as the film darts around timeliness, making use of frequent cutaways, and employs a huge number of quirky, fascinating characters. But this is much more than simply Amélie goes to war - despite Audrey Tautou once again being radiant in the lead role. For one, the material is much bleaker, with scenes of intense violence and brutality that might make more sensitive viewers wince. The scope is also much wider, and feels much more grounded in reality despite Jeunet's otherworldly tendencies. Features Jodie Foster in a small role, showing off her impressive french skills.

Capsule Review: Gangs of New York (2002)

One of Martin Scorsese's dream projects, in development for over 30 years, Gangs of New York ended up a glorious mess, stuck somewhere between historical epic and action film. At over two and a half hours, it still feels like a compromised experience, perhaps exemplified by its casting. While Daniel Day Lewis as Bill "the Butcher" Cutting electrifies every moment he's on screen (and ably carries the film's dead spots), both Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz are horribly miscast, and even the incredible production design and supporting performances can't hide the weaknesses of those two stars. Thankfully, the supporting performers are universally excellent, and the settings makes for a fresh environment that is beautiful to look at - it's hard to believe that the sets were constructed in Rome, Italy. It's still massively entertaining, but feels unfortunately compromised. One can't help but wonder what a lean, hungry Scorsese might have made of this material in the 1970s.