Waitress (Adrienne Shelley, 2007) C

Waitress isn't nearly as bad as its detractors claim, but it's also not the comedic masterpieces that its champions hail it as. The film is warm and funny at certain points and Keri Russell's performance is genuinely affecting. One of my main problems with Waitress is the fact that the screenplay can't decide if it wants to be a drama or a comedy or a quirky character study or what not. There's is such an uneven combination of the three genres that none of it really gels together. In the beginning, the Jeremy Sisto character doesn't seem that bad, just tiresome and annoying, but then he makes a complete 180 into abusive, wife-beating husband that we're shocked that Russell's friends let her go home to him every night. I could have used a little less "quirk" (especially from the Ogie character) but it was still an enjoyable time.

Day for Night (François Truffaut, 1973) A (x2)

Truffaut's Day for Night is, quite simply, one of the most fascinating films about the movies that I've ever encountered. Second viewings usually make or break a film for me, but I actually thought it was much stronger than I remembered. Unlike Sunset Boulevard or Singin' in the Rain, Day for Night is a love-letter to the movies and what they mean to Truffaut. Sure, they're messy and shit happens that completely fuck them up, but he wouldn't have it any other way. I also thought the performances were surprisingly strong considering they're hardly Truffaut's main concern here. Valentina Cortese's character arc isn't especially strong, but she's humorous and affecting in her few scenes and quite the diva. Jean-Pierre Leaud understands the immature young man bit quite well by now and delivers nicely. I also noticed in the scene where Leaud asks Truffaut to be his best man how similar they act and look. It was almost a Persona moment it was so eerie. Jacqueline Bisset, as the American actress who's just recovered from a nervous breakdown, was also much better than I remembered. She seemed so lost (in a good way) throughout the whole movie, and I finally understood why she cheats on her husband and sleeps with Leaud's character.

I know this was a little scattered and thread-bare, but I'm positive I'm going to write something more in depth sometime in the future. This movie is much too fascinating to be summarized in a paragraph or two.

Amadeus (Milos Forman, 1984) B

One of the few major Oscar winners I've somehow avoided in my 6 or so years of movie watching and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. Amadeus tells the story of Antonio Salieri, court composer to the Emperor of Austria, and his relationship to musical prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Salieri recognizes that he is second-rate compared to Mozart's genius and, driven by jealously, plots his downfall. The opening 10 minutes were absolutely brilliant- an exhilarating rush of dreamy editing, glorious Mozart music and F. Murray Abraham's soothing voice. Forman's opening sucked me in, and even if the rest couldn't quite live up to that beginning, it was still an interesting film. The juxtaposition between the mediocre, but immensely successful, Salieri and the genius, but unappreciated, Mozart was fascinating and an interesting commentary on today's music business. Overall, the film probably could have been tightened up and shortened in the middle, but Amadeus was still a good time. F. Murray Abraham gave an excellent performance and earned a well-deserved Oscar. Tom Hulce as Mozart, on the other hand, was nothing more than that annoying giggle. Many 80's actors probably could have given the same performance without much effort.

The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke, 1934) B+ (x2)

While watching The Thin Man again the other night, I had forgotten just how odd of an hybrid this film really is. It's not often you see screwball comedy mixed with a Dashiell Hamett murder mystery- and it's even rarer that you find the two working so well together. William Powell and Myrna Loy, as the witty, urbane and ever so slightly intoxicated Nick and Nora Charles, have perfect chemistry together and are so perfect in their roles that you forget that they hardly appear for the first half hour (almost becoming supporting players in their own story). In lesser hands, I feel the comedy probably would have fallen flat and made this another run-of-the-mill detective story. The Thin Man isn't perfect- there are too many characters to keep track of and most of the performances aside from Powell and Loy are yawn-worthy- but it's still one hell of an enjoyable time.

Charlie Wilson's War (Mike Nichols, 2007) C+ (x2)

The first time I saw Charlie Wilson's War, I loved the irony of the whole situation- helping the Afghanis defeat the Soviets to end the Cold War but, in the end, turning them into enemies- and the sort-of "unholy alliance" that develops between Congressman Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks), right-wing Texas socialite Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts) and CIA agent Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman). This time around, I saw through all of that and what is left is a flimsy film at best. My main problem is the miscasting of Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts in their roles. To play someone who does a lot of boozing, hard drugs and partying, the last actor I would think of is Tom Hanks; he's way too babyfaced and all-American to be thought of as someone who would do that. It would be like seeing James Stewart snorting cocaine off a hooker; the pictures don't add up. And the Julia Roberts miscast is even more miserable since she doesn't even give a halfway decent performance. She's so concerned with that Texas accent that she forgets to give an emotion or feeling to the words she's saying (and the accent isn't even that good). My other problem is that the film is way too talky. There's too much verbal explanation and no visual storytelling. Mike Nichols' direction lacks any imagination whatsoever and you can't tell me that the words are so strong they didn't need much camera interpretation; just look at Nichols' own Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as proof that directing screenplays with a lot of talking don't need to be boring visually. A lot of people hated on Philip Seymour Hoffman's Oscar nomination and while I think he was the weakest of the nominees, he's still the only person in Charlie Wilson's War who completely fits his character. Sure, he's pretty much coasting through this, but I love a good scene stealer (I'm a diva, it's in my nature) and Hoffman can steal a scene with the best of them.

Listen, Darling (Edwin L. Marin, 1938) B-

Listen, Darling has the beginnings of an interesting drama about womanhood in the 1930's, but it's ultimately a perfectly respectable family comedy that only aims to please. Mary Astor plays Dottie, a widow with two kids who, due to a lack of money, is considering marrying the town banker so she can provide a future for her children. Her oldest child, Pinkie (Judy Garland) sees her sadness and comes up with a plan with her best friend Buzz (Freddie Bartholomew) to take Dottie out of the city for awhile in their trailer so she can forget about the banker guy. Out in the middle of the woods, Dottie meets a single Walter Pidgeon and they try to find out if a relationship is possible between the two. What I loved most about Listen, Darling was this one scene in particular in which Astor's Dottie describes what it's like to be a single woman in the 1930's with kids to raise. In this scene, she tells Garland's Pinkie to get voice lessons so she'll have something to fall back on in case something happens to her husband- which is exactly is what Dottie believes she should have done so she wasn't in the situation she is in now. This little exchange is brilliant because it's so subtle and not delivered with some sledgehammer speech that it's even more effective. There's not much room in Listen, Darling for a lot of deep acting, but the cast does generally well with what they are giving. It's especially nice to see Walter Pidgeon in something where he's not riding the coattails of the fabulous Greer Garson. Mary Astor, who I've realized within the past month that I love A LOT, is pretty great here, though not especially Oscar-worthy or anything. Judy Garland is given a nice juvenile role, and you can see some of her Dorothy from next year's The Wizard of Oz peeking through, but the real highlight here is her flawless rendition of "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart."

Off topic, but during a scene between Pidgeon and Bartholomew, he asks if Pidgeon's a "woman-hater" because he's an older eligible bachelor; is this 1930's slang for homosexual?

The L-Shaped Room (Bryan Forbes, 1963) A-

I'm usually not a huge fan of 60's British cinema, which usually looks so dated now that it's almost unbearable to sit through, but The L-Shaped Room works exceptionally well because, stylistically, it's straight out of 1940's Hollywood. Leslie Caron plays a young French woman who gets knocked up and decides to keep the child (much to the chagrin of everyone around her) without the help of the baby's father. She moves into a boarding house and becomes friends with her neighbors, including eccentric musician Johnny (Brock Peters), lovable former actress Mavis (Cicely Courtneidge) and a nice young writer Toby (Tom Bell). The first 30 minutes or so are solid, if nothing groundbreaking, but you quickly realize that it's just setting the groundwork for a fantastic final 90 minutes. The material is pure melodrama, but director Bryan Forbes doesn't go for trashy, instead steering The L-Shaped Room towards an effective Sirkian drama. I also loved the impressive deep focus photography that really heightened the emotion, especially the scene on the stairwell between Caron and Bell during an enormous fight. It takes a while to warm up to Caron, but once you do, she'll sucker punch you with how good she is. Caron is definitely a limited actress, but Forbes and The L-Shaped Room play to her strenghts (most importantly, her de Havilland-like quiet strength) and she gives an immaculate performance. I also loved Cicely Courtneidge as the former actress who lives downstairs. She's quirky, dramatic and a lesbian in the 60's- why the hell wasn't she nominated for an Oscar as well?

The Goddess (Yonggang Wu, 1934) B+

The Goddess is a well-controlled silent melodrama starring the Chinese Garbo, Ruan Ling-yu. The film could have easily been something as trashy as something like The Sin of Madelon Claudet, but the sentimentality is downplayed to perfection. The acting is some of the finest I've ever seen in a silent film from Ling-yu's heartbreaking mother, driven to selling her body to support her young son to Zhang Zhizhi, whom I wanted to punch in the face everytime he came on screen (which proves he was doing his job well).

Cloverfield (Matt Reeves, 2008) B

Parts of Cloverfield were some of the scariest shit I have ever seen put on film. Seriously. That scene in the tunnel where the baby monsters start attacking the main characters nearly had me curled up in the fetal position. And the part where they are walking between the destructed buildings, 50 stories above the ground, had my stomach doing somersaults. Literally, at one point my dad asked me if I needed a Zanax I was so freaked out. On the other hand, other parts of Cloverfield fall so flat that it nearly destroys Reeves' impressive work. What bugged me most of all was the cameraman Hud (played by T.J. Miller) whose constant wisecracks and "comic relief" were completely unnecessary. Every thing that came out of his mouth was delivered like a joke and really broke up the tension. The beginning also bothered me because it didn't try hard enough for me to care about the characters. They just seemed super whiny and super boring. They weren't as bad as, say, the characters on The Hills (whom I would root for to be killed), but they weren't exactly fascinating either.

Too Bad She's Bad (Alessandro Blasetti, 1954) B+

A hilarious Italian screwball comedy starring Sophia Loren as the Hawksian motormouth, Marcello Mastroianni as the befuddled Cary Grant-type and Vittorio De Sica as the Charles Coburn screwy father. Too Bad She's Bad is the type of the film don't make anymore and even then it was rare to find a decent one. Judging by the other works I've seen of the main actors (Loren and De Sica with Two Women and Mastroianni as a muse of Fellini), it was strange to find them excelling so well at the break-neck pace of this film. Loren could match Kate Hepburn at her Bringing Up Baby peak and Mastroianni has the ability to still look masculine even while being walked all over by Loren. The chemistry between the two is undeniable and no doubt further cemented their fame together and separately.