It was great until she woke up.

Some of Ophuls' most flamboyant camera work, but partly at the expense of story, as in the grossly flashy climax shot of "The Model." Ophuls has been praised for supposedly transcending Maupassant's cynicism, but what some interpret as cynicism is really a refusal of sentiment in place of astringent irony. Ophuls' adaptation sometimes hides in its technique and soft-pedals Maupassant's irony by sentimentalizing the characters.

Air Doll's cute/salacious premise is belied by its slugged tone--even the normal characters are apathetic to the point of abnormality. Reading the film for ideas is the wrong way to go when the film's real lift is in the cold luminosity of its images, which culminate in the tragic detachment of its ending.

I second the addition of AN AMERICAN ROMANCE, which might have been Vidor's masterpiece if MGM hadn't lopped off half an hour without his consent. The movie by the way is now available on DVD from the Warners Archive.

Vidor's adaptation suffers from a script that was rewritten during shooting, bad casting (Henry Fonda as Pierre?!), chaotic working conditions in Italy, and a final cut that was not Vidor's. Yet the film remains an impressive condensation of Tolstoy, filmed with a clarity and grace missing from the often bombastic and vulgar Russian mega-production. I wish Vidor had Bondarchuk's budget and running time.

I can't agree with some of the previous reviews--this is not a rom com. This is a brutally astringent look at the awful, constricting force of cultural traditions and taboos, and throws no sops to the audience. More happily, iIt also boasts one of the most casually sexy bedroom scenes in Israeli cinema.

Not completely insane, as its reputation suggests, but still one of the biggest oddballs produced by a studio during the early 30s, a prime period for "crazy fool" comedy.

One of Kitano's most melancholy films--filled with quiet despair.

This is the best Arthurian film: Bresson fully captures the crepuscular feel of the later parts of the Lancelot-Grail Vulgate.

This seems to be the one time that pornography and art fully touched bases. I don't think it's ever happened again.

One of Kitano's more divisive films: slow and almost narcotized. But I think it's one of his best. The puppetry is almost something of add-on to what at bottom are stories of deadening heartbreak. If the film is formal, it's because dealing directly with the emotions involved would be too raw an experience.

This is sometimes attacked as being sentimental but I found it less maudlin than some of Kitano's gangster films. Kikujiro captures both the enchantment and pain of childhood.

Ichi is the Japanese equivalent of The Revenger's tragedy--it's so giddily perverse that it's hard to be outraged by the content. It's also a knowing send-up of the macho Yakuza mentality. By the way, the original manga is even more fucked up...

More than any other 007 feature, this set the template for the majority of Bond films that followed. Yet it doesn't seem formulaic--this is the smoothest of the Bonds.

Mordant, melancholy and very funny--this has a sort of grace Bergman's more ostensibly spiritual films have never achieved.

Bunuel's episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

This might still be the most innovative meta-cinematic movie ever made.

Best editing I've ever seen in a film.

Why do Americans prefer the Holy Grail over this one? Anyway, Brian not only satirizes religious impulses and group thinking, but also attacks Hollywood Biblical films and 70s era revolutionary politics. The troupe's most meaningful film, though not their best (that would be the scabrous Meaning of Life).

Whatever it is, it's against it. The most joyous expression of nihilism ever perpetrated.

If only college was really that good...

Perhaps Stewart's finest Western--along with The Searchers, this is a deconstruction of Western masculinity, with Stewart's neuroses winding ever tighter until he hits a searing climax.

Much better than the thick, crass American version of course. The acting is crisp and deadpan; Asquith's direction is theatrical but not stagey.

Along with Bresson's Lancelot of the Lake, this is the best Arthurian film. It's a pitch-perfect close adaptation of Chretien''s "Perceval," the work that introduced the Holy Grail into the written realm of myth. Rohmer's stylized film is also a true work of the middle ages--as close as film will ever get to approaching that bygone spirit.

One of Ichikawa's most sardonic films, told with an immaculate poker-face, at least until the unsatisfying ending, when Ichikawa washes his hands of the material.

This film shouldn't work--Ross's glossy big budget approach goes against Potter's homemade musical intent, and Potter's script is just a digest of his great miniseries--yet it somehow holds together.

It's a dumb cartoon that's also Brosnan's best entry in the series. He gives his best, most relaxed performance, and unlike the other pictures in the series, which strained to make Bond relevant or speciously give him emotional moments, DAD is content with what it is.

A nearly indescribable whirligig of a picture. Gloriously batty in a genre all its own.

One of Barrymore's finest performances, in perhaps his least characteristic role, and proof how subtle he could be, belying his reputation for supposed hamminess.