The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet, 2003) D-

This movie is so awful, so painful, so poorly executed that it's almost indescribable. I sat there for 80 minutes just waiting for something interesting to happen or for a plot point to be explained and carried out and couldn't believe it when absolutely none of that happened. The film gets points for trying something different- almost no dialogue is spoken during the course of the movie- but there needed to be songs or title cards or something that shaped the plot and spelled out what was happening. The Triplets of Belleville is about a bicyclist who is kidnapped and his grandmother who, with the help of a group of elderly musical sisters, track him down and rescue him, but we are never told why the bicyclist is kidnapped or how the grandmother knows who the kidnapper is when she sees him in the nightclub. And that preposterous car chase at the end made me want to stab toothpicks in my eyes and lick a frogsicle; I understand it's a cartoon but those cars flipped over way too easily and the escape was nearly anti-climactic. After witnessing this horrific mess of a film, I can't believe this was so widely acclaimed back in 2003- more proof that sometimes movie critics are pretentious jerk-offs.

Caesar and Cleopatra (Gabriel Pascal, 1946) B-

Forget the MGM-lite spectacle and Pascal's tedious and uncinematic direction: the real reason to see Caesar and Cleopatra is for Claude Rains' and Vivien Leigh's dynamic performances. Just when you think you've seen it all from these two, they surprise you yet again with the depth of their skills. Rains makes his Caesar instantly likeable and charms us into understanding why Cleopatra falls under his spell. He acts as a sort of Henry Higgins, transforming the demure and innocent Cleopatra into the glamorous, authoritative Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. The beginning of Leigh's performance is a little strange. Seeing her as a naive waif after Scarlett O'Hara was a bit of a shock. It isn't until Caesar takes her under his wing, when she starts combining the naivity with the hardness of the older woman, that it becomes a full fledged performance. The way she combines these polar opposites and switches them on and off at the drop of a hat is astounding.

A Hole in the Head (Frank Capra, 1959) D

I'm not going to lie- I'm a huge fan of Frank Capra. For some reason, his cheesy, unashamedly uplifting "Capracorn" styles work on this little ole cynic. This, combined with the fact that this film boasts a magnificent cast including Frank Sinatra, Edward G. Robinson, Thelma Ritter, Eleanor Parker and Carolyn Jones, should have assured A Hole in the Head greatness. Imagine my surprise when it didn't. A Hole in the Head tells the story of a widowed owner of a sleazy hotel (Frank Sinatra) with a son who he loves more than anything. He's behind on his mortgage payments and about to get thrown out so he tries to get money from his rich brother (Edward G. Robinson) and his wife (Thelma Ritter). They tell him that they'll give him the money if he'll settle down and marry a woman they set him up with (Eleanor Parker). A Hole in the Head is supposed to play like a comedy- the problem is that none of the jokes are even funny (I take that back, one is: Thelma Ritter's line reading at the end "I don't understand...they're so poor and so happy!"). The repeated gag of Robinson falling back on the low chair wasn't funny the first time, so why would I need to see it repeated five or six times? Frank Sinatra was never the greatest actor (even in his most acclaimed performances in From Here to Eternity and The Man With the Golden Arm something was missing), but A Hole in the Head reveals his limitations. He is the last actor I would have picked to play the father; his tough, man's man persona doesn't fit well into the role (I would have rather seen someone like Rock Hudson in the role). A Hole in the Head, in the end, completely wastes the aforementioned dream cast. The actressexual in me loves Ritter, Parker and Jones the most here, but they really aren't given much to do; it's Sinatra and that annoying kid's show unfortunately. Random rant: that "High Hopes" sequence was one of the most awkwardly handled musical scenes I've ever seen. I can suspend disbelief if the entire film is a musical, but it makes absolutely no sense when you have one musical number in a two hour movie.

Desire Under the Elms (Delbert Mann, 1958) C-

I'm not familiar with the original play by Eugene O'Neill that Desire Under the Elms is based on, but I believe that it deserves a far better treatment than what Mann delivers here. The story- a young man lusting after his aged father's hot new wife and their ensuing battle over the land they live on- should have interested me more, but writer Irwin Shaw and director Delbert Mann completely butcher the power of it by not bothering to adapt the play cinematically. The film looks as if it was shot from the audience point of view with absolutely no imagination: you can obviously tell how the different scenes are set up in the stage production. The scenery looks so shoddy and cheap that it could have been knocked over with a breath of air. Burl Ives basically does his whole Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Big Daddy schtick that comes across as hammy beyond belief this time. Sophia Loren is good, but not quite at her Two Women peak. Anthony Perkins, however, proves here that he was a good actor before Psycho and that it wasn't just a fluke. It's no Norman Bates but it's quite a fine performance.

Love Affair (Leo McCarey, 1939) B (x2)

Leo McCarey's Love Affair has the makings of one of the Great American Romances, but ultimately ends up just short of its lofty intentions. The main culprit here is the general uneveness of the screenplay and McCarey's direction. The film starts off fantastically with a charming introduction between Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne that's every bit as witty as anything in McCarey's earlier The Awful Truth. It completely sucked me in and left me wondering if I had underrated this film the last time I saw it. Then the film lost me when Boyer takes Dunne to meet his grand-mere Janou (Maria Ouspenskaya). The whole sequence doesn't really fit in with anything and those final lines between the two women which go something like "I can't walk very far. I have to stop at the edge of my sanctuary." "Well, thanks for letting me trespass into your little world." was super cringe-worthy. Just when I was ready to write the film off completely, Boyer and Dunne suck me back in with their chemistry back on the boat. It's a glorious couple of minutes, but then they are forced to split up again and McCarey can't seem to maintain the same momentum when they are apart. The next 20 minutes were decent, if not exactly noteworthy, which lead to a fantastic finale. The dialogue is a little over-written, but Boyer and Dunne are careful not to overdo anything. They keep the emotions grounded in reality, making their reunion all the more affecting.

Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck, 2007) B (x2)

Revisiting Ben Affleck directorial debut Gone Baby Gone was a bit of an interesting experience for me. This time around, the first half seemed a little sloppy; the editing was a bit off, the Casey Affleck voiceovers were a complete cop-out and totally unnecessary, the script rushed into doing too many things at one time. The only thing that really stood out in the beginning was Amy Ryan's performance. If I ever doubted the power of your work here Amy, I'm sorry because when I saw you again I quickly remembered how much I loved you. She's loud, abrasive, in your face and having the time of her life with that accent (I still can't get over her line reading of "Faaack Bea" at the end of the film- instantly iconic). If the first half was rough, the second half was golden. Cinematically it was much more proficient, thematically it was richer with the right vs. wrong motif coming into play and acting-wise everyone stepped it up a notch. Ed Harris is truly a joy to watch, especially during that scene in the hospital parking lot. And the ending, in which Casey Affleck contemplates if he did the right thing, is truly magical.

As a side note, if you watch this on DVD, make sure you check out the alternate opening in the extras. It's so good and so much more to the film (in such a short amount of time) that I really wish Affleck would have kept it in.

Jesse James (Henry King, 1939) C/The Return of Frank James (Fritz Lang, 1940) C+

In a million years I never thought I would be interested in the life and crimes of notorious outlaw Jesse James, but after The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford I'm now somewhat fascinated by his legend and murder. Unfortunately, since both Jesse James and The Return of Frank James are, to varying degrees, completely fictitious. Henry King's Jesse James is a solid, if not particularly interesting, crowd pleaser that gets muddled from the get go. The film can't decide if it wants to portray James as a dashing romantic lead, a Robin Hood-esque good guy or a raving lunatic. Jesse James tries each of these to varying degrees of success but in the end we are no closer to understanding the "real" Jesse James. Tyrone Power, proving here he was only a prettyface, definitely doesn't add anything dramatically to the film. He says his lines and hits the marks, but he doesn't evoke the feelings that Brad Pitt did so well in TAoJJbtCRF. The saddest thing about Jesse James however is the fact that the writers so blatantly changed James' life story to fit the story they wanted to tell. Zee never left Jesse after the birth of their first son; it only happened in Jesse James to heighten the drama and make that reunion scene so bittersweet. If Jesse James is a fudged biopic, then The Return of Frank James is a complete work of fiction because nothing that happens in the film actually happened in real life. I wouldn't have minded if the story was an original story, but it tries to pass itself off as history and that's just wrong. Let it be shouted from the rooftops: Frank James never chased the Ford Brothers after Bob shot Jesse and he did NOT kill Bob Ford, no matter what this film tries to tell you. With that little rant aside, let me just say that, cinematically, The Return of Frank James is a much better film thanks to legendary director Fritz Lang. Where King composed every shot of Jesse James like a pretty 2-D postcard, Lang adds depth, shadows and contrast to make every scene fluid and cinematic. It's not groundbreaking stuff (especially when compared with his Metropolis, M or Fury) but it's passable and a much better film than it would have been without it.

I Know Who Killed Me (Chris Sivertson, 2007) F

Was I Know Who Killed Me really the worst film of 2007? I'm going to be bold and say that it wasn't. It's without a doubt an awful mess: horrible acting, overdone cinematography, an immature script and aimless direction that tries way too hard. But I'd rather see a shitty film fly off the rails trying than watch shit like The Bucket List or Wild Hogs not even bother to do anything different. I Know Who Killed Me is actually so bad that it somehow becomes interesting, in the same way that people enjoy watching The Moment of Truth; theoretically, it's awful, but you can't help but stay involved. Lindsay Lohan plays Aubrey Fleming, an intelligent high school student who happens to be a talented writer. A crazy serial killer who tortures his victims is on the loose and one night he kidnaps Aubrey. Somehow, she is found nearly dead in a ditch and is brought back to perfect health- sans her right arm and hand. Everything seems fine until she doesn't recognize anyone around her and takes on the personality of a classless stripper Dakota Moss. The rest of the movie revolves around Aubrey/Dakota trying to figure out what happened. Most of I Know Who Killed Me was so ludicrous that I was either laughing (that scene where Dakota takes Aubrey's boyfriend upstairs to obviously have sex with him- right in front of the mother!) or completely confused (the last 10 minutes made absolutely no sense). When I read online a few hours later what it all meant, what the writer was trying to do was actually somewhat interesting. It's just a shame that everything (including his writing style) got in the way. You need more than just an interesting concept and the 90 minutes of crap that lead up to it is not worth it.

Murder! (Alfred Hitchcock, 1930) B

Leave it to the great Alfred Hitchcock to make a sleek and adult talking picture in Great Britain when in America we were still trying to figure out how to make talking pictures work. Murder! is no classic, but it proved that talking pictures could be more than just people standing around talking and that Hitchcock was going to have a long and successful career. The story is pretty simple: a young actress is convicted of murder, but another actor on the jury (Herbert Marshall) has an attack of conscious and decides to help find the real murderer. It's obvious that Murder! was based on a stage play from the way the scenes are staged, but Hitchcock, as he usually does, tells the story more visually than most talkies of the period. The scene where the jurors are deliberating is pretty fascinating because a normal director would have filmed it mostly in a long shot with a couple of cut-ins. Hitchcock, however, has the camera flowing around the room, bouncing from juror to juror and hardly repeating the same shot more than once. My only major problem with Murder! is the fact that the sound balance hasn't quite been worked out. Whenever there was background music, it was usually so loud that it covered up the dialogue (which was already hard to understand because of the thick dialects). But I can't complain too much; American pictures of the same time could barely compete in terms of quality with this picture.

All or Nothing (Mike Leigh, 2002) C+

Mike Leigh has a great eye (and ear) for the gritty and non-glamorous life of the working class, as he demonstrated so ably in both Secrets and Lies and Vera Drake. In All or Nothing, Leigh's eyes and ears are still in tune, but nothing else about the script or film really work. The main storyline involves taxi-driver Phil (Timothy Spall) and his wife Penny (Lesley Manville) and their marriage that has turned sour. When a medical emergency threatens one of their children, everything between the two comes to a head in a heated fight. This situation would be fine and dandy if we gave a rat's ass about either of the characters involved. Spall's Phil is an inane, blithering loser who couldn't form a complete sentence or look someone in the eye if his life depended on it. I don't know if I have something against Timothy Spall, but everytime I look at him I get annoyed. I thought Manville gives a good performance, but ultimately her character is just another shrewish wife that we've seen a hundred times before. There are a couple of other subplots going on in All or Nothing, including a potentially interesting one concerning a mother (Ruth Sheen) and her knocked up daughter (Helen Coker), but they are both dropped in the final half hour rather abruptly with no hints of a conclusion at all. A lot of people have attacked for All or Nothing for being "depressing," but I can deal with that (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, possibly the biggest downer of a film I've ever seen is also one of my favorites). What I can't deal with is a sloppy, aimless script that has the potential to be good.