What Lumet has done so well here, and the thing that most films of this nature fail to accomplish or even attempt, is to emphasize the lows of a tense situation in order to amplify the high notes when they arrive. He does well to spend good portions of stock on the true statis of the situation, allowing moments of compassion and tedium to saturate a story that, in another’s hands, may have felt more akin to an explosive heist romp. Instead, Lumet and his ensemble deliver a delightfully paced thriller that is generous enough to let true characterization and story drive what could have been a genre piece into something much more interesting.

As a medium, film is full of rarely utilized potential. In this instance, I am talking about the possibility of cinema to overcome mere narration and wisp dreamily into the realm of meditation. Although it has been done, successfully, several times, there is a surprising dearth of these films being produced. Whether this results from a fear of underemphasis in terms of narration – the desire to tell a story being innate to humans – or a lack of imagination, I am not the one to say. Thankfully, Denis’ Beau Travail is a film that aims squarely for the right portion of your brain. Its success, however, is debatable.

By taking the central premise of Billy Budd and transliterating to the French Legion in Africa, Denis takes the shell of a story and, well, not much else. Her concern is a more rhythmic one. The camera follows impeccably fit men doing a host of undeniably masculine training exercises. It lingers for as long as it wants, solemnly suggesting but not proclaiming anything as a result of its inquiries. It quietly, for example, shows us the group of men performing a strange ritual of forced embrace; over and over again. Far from being soporific, Denis’ camera work is often refulgent and hypnotic.

Where Beau Travail doesn’t suffer from, say, hebetude, it does ask a bit too much from the viewer. The relationship between Galoup and Sentain becomes something of an over-simplification; Galoup is out to get Sentain, under unstable pretexts, and Sentain is more or less innocence personified. This does dull the edge of the films appeal a bit, although it was clear from the start that this wasn’t Denis’ primary concern. The homoerotic overtones add little, although perhaps hint at Galoup’s motive.

From the opening credits as gears churn amidst hazed out clips of bombings to one of the more joyous finales I can recount, Daisies prances about in a free from manner directly in tune with demeanor of the two young girls it so generously depicts. In much the same way that the two Maries consistently act immature in mature settings, Chytilová joyously frolics between different color schematics and mosaic editing with relentless energy, capturing a twisted and mildly psychedelic version of a teen girl’s fantasy sleepover; one in which everything is ever so slightly naughty.

Featuring two girls who have consciously decided to be “bad” in a “bad world,” Daisies moves with a kinetic ferocity one would not expect from a film that is essentially without a narrative. Sure, there are the lecherous old men the girls have their way with, an attempted suicide followed minutes later by giggling, and a feast that can only be described as smile inductive, but these are mere snapshots of a gloriously free attitude that permeates every frame and every cut of Chytilová truly ingenious romp.

There is one point during Daisies in which Marie I and Marie II both become irked with the fact that “nobody is noticing (them)!” This is almost immediately followed by a “We  exist!” march that almost, in a way, encapsulates the entirety of this truly exhilarating piece of the Czech New Wave.  The two Maries are keen on overindulgence and nowhere is this more blatantly realized than the conclusion where they stumble upon a banquet to be. At first they play it cautious, trying not to upset the table too much. By the end they have eaten – and drank “oh Johnnie!” – nearly everything on the table. Not content with this, they proceed to have an enormous food fight. Needing further diversion, they tear off the curtains and put on a fashion show. When all is said and done, they vow – over and over again – to work hard and be clean. This, apparently, is the key to happiness, although it is clearly being made a mockery of.

Errol Morris has a fairly unique ability to elicit defensively candid interviews from oft maligned subjects. He did so in The Fog of War and here, again, he has successfully drawn deceptively forward responses from unlikely candidates. While the story – and more importantly the images – of Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison have become mental calling cards of our nations collective conscious in regards to the Iraq war, Morris proofs his material, making it seem as important and fresh as the days in which the horrific images first leaked.

There is more at stake here than simply getting the story straight as Morris, who has proven so adept at doing in the past, blurs lines and obliterates comfortable objectivity. With bias firmly in his back pocket, the filmmaker questions the nature of images themselves and in doing so asks obvious questions about the importance we place upon them and our willingness to forget about atrocities that exist in a realms outside of our minds; atrocities that have not been documented. As far as those that have faced the lens, he allows those on camera to speak for themselves.

With hardly a prod – Errol speaks up maybe three times throughout the entire documentary – the perpetrators of the well known war crimes give their own account of what went down. In eerie fashion, none of them seem all too distraught about what happened. Rather than guiding you to pass judgment on the interviewees, their fairly opaque answers point to a darker reality, one in which all are culpable and nearly all are able to point fingers. Where the final finger points is never dictated, giving Standard Operating Procedure the lingering quality that most great documentaries possess.

About halfway through Metropolitan, I wasn’t feeling too good about things. The mockery was blatant, jokes only half-inspired and performances completely overblown. Dialog replete with empty intellectualizing about class status in America (stultified of course) can only take a picture so far. Around the 45 minute mark, however, I started to realize that there was kind of a lot going on here.

For one thing, you have a comedy that is completely content with a languorous pace and an acknowledged hackneyed love story. Its jokes don’t so much pop as they dissipate into a stagnant backdrop. If this sounds unappealing, I have to admit, it largely is. The remarkable thing is that, as things unraveled in this repetitive manner, I became more and more enamored with Metropolitan’s stubbornness. I, for example, only found Rick Von Sloneker to be a hilarious name for a villain after it had already been uttered about thirty times.

Couple that with a few truly funny one liners and a daring take on a John Hughes film in which rich Manhattanites supplant everyday teenagers and you have yourself a film that’s perhaps more interesting than the sum of its parts.

Audrey Rouget: What Jane Austen novels have you read?
Tom Townsend: None. I don’t read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists’ ideas as well as the critics’ thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it really happened, that it’s all just made up by the author.

A truly bizarre film on many accounts. Antediluvian xenophobia mixed with just a dash of self-national mockery, Lifeboat rows along in both confusing and intriguing manners. Why is no one on this boat, aside from the German, capable of helming it? On the opposite side of the coin why, at times, does it feel like Hitchcock has made a propaganda film? Couple that with some out of date racial stereotypes, fine acting, and a cinematic experiment akin to Rope and you find yourself with a highly watchable although truly beguiling muddling of skills from the considerable talents of Alfred Hitchcock and John Steinbeck.

I have been meaning to get around to I Vitelloni since high school and, today, I finally did. The film is quite the quintessential “buddy” film, although it is a far cry from the drunken farce comedies we have come to expect from the genre today. This is not about a group of male friends going to Vegas, drinking a lot and coming to trite revelations in the epilogue. Fellini’s vision is an honest look at the mires of masculinity, malaise of stagnant living and realities of shirking responsibility.

Vitelloni follows men who are afraid to get jobs, borrow money to place bets and mark transitions in life by changes in their friends’ facial hair. The film deftly covers the blur that a life devoid of, well, reality can become. These are men more concerned with their stomach when their friends’ sister goes missing with her newborn child. Riccardo, Alberto and company find time to mock road workers as they amble through life wishing they were somewhere else and making no effort to bring that idea to fruition. When Moraldo, who acts as something of the moral compass for his compadres, finally leaves at the end of the film it leaves, for me at least, the question of whether he is actually progressing or simply attempting to dodge reality once again.

This late era Murnau film does not suffer greatly because of the studio constraints Murnau was under. Sure, the story has a lot less dramatic umbrage than Murnau’s previous efforts, but any fan of the big F.W. will find tons to love here. This Sunrise-lite effort is another beacon in the German directors astonishing métier. The fact that Murnau was on something of a leash here almost makes you appreciate the man that much more. His talent with images, pace and mood is so prodigious that one is likely to forget that they are watching a rather mundane Hollywood love story and bask in the images of one of the greatest directors who ever lived.

Judging the level of veracity in a film is a hard thing to accomplish, especially when the subject matter takes the form of human drama and relationships. Either you can identify personally with a character (or even mood), or you must draw upon, how should I put this, your awareness of others. A Nos Amours fits into the latter category for me. I have personally known girls who are, like Suzanne, entirely adrift in a sea of relationships. Their ship goes this way or that, to one person or another, although it never drops anchor or finds port for more than a short amount of time.

Pialat deftly captures the life of such a woman, offers, although does not insist, upon possible causes, and in doing so does a good deal of justice to the nature of Suzanne and other women who find themselves lost and in need of the validation of others. Pialat himself turns in the best performance of the film as Suzanne’s father; a performance which culminates in a spectacular dinner scene near the end of the film. The film ends on an appropriately ambiguous note. Despite all that Suzanne has gone through, we wonder if her innate constitution has changed. Likely, it has not. She merely moved from a boat to a plane – literally and figuratively.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is certainly something to behold. Beguiling, replete with cinematic gambol and hardly concerned with explaining itself, the film frolics amidst the macabre and dreamy with unrelenting ease. Symbols cascade from the screen as bees, flowers and just about everything else you can think of becomes a stand in for the sexual concerns of Jires’ vision. Fear of senescence, incest and virginity are all fair game here and, if the grass is green, play ball, right? Jires does so with brio. There is something appealing and, indeed, intoxicating about this kind of film, although I have to admit that it is a bit harnessed by a lack of cohesion. The fluidity of the confusion is both Valerie’s strength and weakness. We are forced to watch from a great distance.