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The Mystery Man (1935)
Stark Drama! A Shadow Creeping Through the Night!
Filmmaker(s): Ray McCarey

Hard-boiled newspaper reporter Larry Doyle (Robert Armstrong) goes a bit too far in celebrating a work bonus and wakes up on a train bound for St. Louis with only a buck on his person. To remedy the problem, Doyle pawns the revolver he's carrying. When the gun is subsequently used in a murder, Doyle's problems only multiply. In the meantime, he's also fallen in love with a comely stranger (Maxine Doyle) he convinced to impersonate his wife.

Prehistoric Fishing Cinematic archeology is what this is all about. The film has lost all its appeal as the hooks have gone out of style. But we can see major chunks that have evolved to what we have now. The basic setup is the fold of a...


Published February 9, 2024
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Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World (2011)
Filmmaker(s): Robert Rodriguez

Eight years after the third film, the OSS has become the world's top spy agency, while the Spy Kids department has since become defunct. A retired spy Marissa is thrown back into the action along with her stepchildren when a maniacal Timekeeper attempts to take over the world. In order to save the world, Rebecca and Cecil must team up with their hated stepmother. Carmen and Juni have since also grown up and will provide gadgets to them.

Multiple Copies I‘m aware that many people like to encounter films as a small, unchallenging adventure. That isn’t possible with me, but I have something similar: sometimes a simple film is a relaxed encounter with the filmmaker, a sort of illustrated visit in his home. I like...


Published February 9, 2024
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The President’s Analyst (1967)
Only two people on earth want Sidney Schaefer alive. Sidney Schaefer. And the President of the United States.
Filmmaker(s): Theodore J. Flicker

At first, Dr. Sidney Schaefer feels honored and thrilled to be offered the job of the President's Analyst. But then the stress of the job and the paranoid spies that come with a sensitive government position get to him, and he runs away. Now spies from all over the world are after him, either to get him for their own side or to kill him and prevent someone else from getting him.

Surrogates The gas has cooled on this balloon, and the (political) Earth shifted underneath. But that makes it a bit more enjoyable if you come to this for the structure. The story device is simple: cold war spy versus spy, only to learn that the (then monopoly)...


Published February 9, 2024
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Hanna (2011)
Adapt or die.
Filmmaker(s): Joe Wright

Raised by her father, an ex-CIA agent, in the wilds of Finland, Hanna's upbringing has been geared to making her the perfect assassin. Sent into the world by her father on a mission, Hanna journeys across Europe, eluding agents dispatched after her by a ruthless intelligence operative. As she nears her ultimate target, Hanna faces startling revelations about her existence.

Young Angelina Some films spring from the human soul; others are mechanised. A problem is that the commercial process that brings films to us is itself a machine, so we are faced from time to time with the clumsy act of that machine valiantly trying to give...


Published February 9, 2024
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Rubber (2010)
Are you TIRED of the expected?
Filmmaker(s): Quentin Dupieux

A group of people gather in the California desert to watch a "film" set in the late 1990s featuring a sentient, homicidal car tire named Robert. The assembled crowd of onlookers watch as Robert becomes obsessed with a beautiful and mysterious woman and goes on a rampage through a desert town.

Erasure I have a hard time with films like this. On the one hand, it explicitly deals with concepts that attract me. It is very clever and well enough put together. But there is balance between art meant to affect you and essays about the process....


Published February 9, 2024
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L’iceberg (2005)

Fiona is the manager of a fast-food restaurant. She lives comfortably with her family in the suburbs. In other words, Fiona is happy... until one day she accidentally gets locked into a walk-in fridge. She escapes the next morning, half frozen and barely alive, only to realize that her husband and two children didn't even notice she was missing. But when Fiona develops an obsession for everything cold and icy: snow, polar bears, fridges, icebergs--she drops everything, climbs into a frozen goods delivery truck and leaves home. For a real iceberg.

Purity I’ve seen one other project from this couple, ‘Rumba.‘ I liked it, but this one seems so much better, less cute and choreographed. All storytelling is about abstraction. Sometimes that can be done in ways that by agreement, we see as invisible. We think of the...


Published February 9, 2024
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Phantoms (1998)
For centuries they told us the terror would come from above. We've been looking the wrong way.
Filmmaker(s): Joe Chappelle

In the peaceful town of Snowfield, Colorado something evil has wiped out the community. And now, its up to a group of people to stop it, or at least get out of Snowfield alive.

Primeval Roles Whatever confluence of forces that were at work, when I saw ‘Lawrence of Arabia‘ I was dumbstruck. The sweep of the desert and its lonely complexities mapped thoroughly with the internal landscape this man revealed. Lonely, sexually obsessed but incompetent, determined to press through...


Published February 9, 2024
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Colombiana (2011)
Revenge is beautiful.
Filmmaker(s): Olivier Megaton

After witnessing her parents’ murder as a child in Bogota, Cataleya Restrepo grows up to be a stone-cold assassin. She works for her uncle as a hitman by day, but her personal time is spent engaging in vigilante murders that she hopes will lead her to her ultimate target: the mobster responsible for her parents' death.

Episodes of Death Long form is so hard that most films will do anything to get out of it. A standard escape is to have three acts that the viewer will accept as belonging together. Each of these can then be a small story by itself. And...


Published February 9, 2024
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Drive (2011)
There are no clean getaways.
Filmmaker(s): Nicolas Winding Refn

Driver is a skilled Hollywood stuntman who moonlights as a getaway driver for criminals. Though he projects an icy exterior, lately he's been warming up to a pretty neighbor named Irene and her young son, Benicio. When Irene's husband gets out of jail, he enlists Driver's help in a million-dollar heist. The job goes horribly wrong, and Driver must risk his life to protect Irene and Benicio from the vengeful masterminds behind the robbery.

Neutral I don’t know how many more of these kinds of movies I have room for. And how much tolerance I have for expert craft taking me to the edge of insight and stopping. The focus of this film is an aspergers-like solitary young fellow who,...


Published February 9, 2024
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The Last Mistress (2007)
Filmmaker(s): Catherine Breillat

Secrets, rumors and betrayals surround the upcoming marriage between a young dissolute man and virtuous woman of the French aristocracy.

Gaddafi's Italian What you open to can be bigger and more fulfilling if you are careful to make those things few. Some films you can let permeate your soul, and others you must keep at a distance. Part of the experience of film, unavoidably, is how...


Published February 9, 2024
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