You Kill Me (2007)

"My name is Frank, and I'm an alcoholic."

Frank (Sir Ben Kinglsey) is also a hitman for the Polish mafia in Buffalo in John Dahl's You Kill Me. Dahl - and a riveting performance by Kingsley - succeed in making an alcoholic murderer an endearing protagonist, so it's a good thing that the film doesn't rely on anything but the character of Frank Falenczyk.

Frank, who's been sent by "the family" to San Francisco to dry out, meets up with an AA sponsor (an understated Luke Wilson) and falls in love with a girl named Laurel (Tea Leoni). That's just the first act of the movie, and for me to describe in any detail the second half of the film would be to give away a few plot surprises, including whether or not Frank manages to stay sober - perhaps a bigger challenge than rival mobster O'Leary (Dennis Farina).

The script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely is one of the funnier ones from 2007 with enough laughs to keep the movie clipping along without getting bogged down in a punchline-a-thon. And a great deal of the laughs come from Kingsley's intense portrayal, wherein he never seems to break character. Although he doesn't look Polish and doesn't always sound Polish, Kingsley forces you to believe that he is Frank.

I called Luke Wilson "understated" because he seems at times to have phoned in his performance, alternating between genuine concern for Frank's sobriety and empty presence on the screen. Ditto for Tea Leoni, who is supposed to be playing a complex wounded bird but who never seems to get anything across with her role other than a body for Kingsley to face as he delivers his lines. Dennis Farina and Philip Baker Hall, as rival mob bosses in Buffalo, are interesting, but they're not given enough screentime and so function as buffers between scenes about Frank.

There are a lot of better movies than You Kill Me, but this is a smart comedy - short and sweet. I can't praise Kingsley enough for really immersing himself in the role, and I'm afraid I have little else to say about the film. So let's just say this - if Alcoholics Anonymous was this fun, we'd have more in recovery.

High School Musical (2006)

When director Kenny Ortega and crew decided to open High School Musical with a song entitled "Start of Something New," I don't think they knew how prophetic their words would be.

High School Musical is at the center of a Disney hypestorm the likes of which only Jack Sparrow has rivaled. And with the third installment in the widely popular series due out in October (and this being one of the films that I remember well enough to not have to re-view it before reviewing it), it seems an opportune moment to take a critical look at the Wildcat phenomenon. [For reasons of space, fluidity, and focus, I'll only examine the first film for now and take up the second one later. When I see the third film, Senior Year, I'll let you know what I think.]

I've argued that High School Musical (HSM for short) is basically a Disney-fied retread of Shakespeare's great tragedy Romeo and Juliet, so let me briefly explicate that one for anybody who hasn't heard my argument already. [The following is an excerpt from a critical writing of mine which examined the ways in which teen comedies modernize Shakespeare. The other two films under consideration, 10 Things I Hate About You and She's the Man, will probably be reviewed here later.]

Of the three, then, High School Musical is the most difficult to establish a line to Shakespeare. High School Musical is “loosely based on William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and featuring a high school jock and a science nerd as star-cross'd lovers” (from the Sunday Territorian's 2/18/07 article “Tweens love School”). Specifically, High School Musical turns the basketball (and its star player Troy) and scholastic decathlon (and its star, Gabriella) teams into Montagues and Capulets, “[t]wo households, both alike in dignity,” attempting to prevent the “star-crossed lovers” from joining in the winter musicale (from Romeo and Juliet, 1.1.1, 6). Unlike the other two films under consideration, High School Musical dramatically alters the ending of its source material, by replacing Shakespeare’s double-suicide ending with a peppy song-and-dance number, “We’re All in This Together” (HSM). Where Shakespeare cautions about the problems inherent in bad blood, High School Musical offers a view of all the positives to be gleaned from working together to accomplish one goal. That Disney’s High School Musical soft-soaps Shakespeare’s original ending is no surprise; after all, this same studio, as Tony Howard notes, commercialized “Hamlet into The Lion King and politically corrected The Tempest in Pocahontas” (Howard 318, from Howard's “Shakespeare’s cinematic offshoots,” published in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, with editor Russell Jackson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Longest paragraph on this blog? Probably. Most scholarly/erudite? Definitely. Most well thought-out? Certainly.

By way of further plot summary, hunky basketball star Troy (Zac Efron, for whom we have this movie to thank) and geeky but still attractive brain child Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens, a lass I have to commend for her scandal-rebound) meet by chance on Christmas vacation and sing a duet together. When it turns out that Gabriella and Troy go to the same high school, they decide to audition for the "winter musicale," Twinkle Towne. They land a callback - much to the chagrin of resident diva Sharpay (the laudable Ashley Tisdale) and her twin brother Ryan (Lucas Grabeel, who gets his chance to shine in the sequel). Singing, dancing, and - believe it or not - sabotage ensue as the school conspires to keep Troy and Gabriella from being together.

It's pretty much no secret that I'm a fan of this movie, but I didn't start this way. It took about three viewings before it grew on me. The first time I saw it, I watched it to find out what all the hubbub was about but gave up before the third song - a pity, since that's now one of my favorites - saying, "This is stupid. A bunch of kids running around singing. Lame, Disney, lame." The second time, I watched it with my grandmother as a sort of joke, mock singing a few of the songs afterwards.

Something happened in between the second and third viewing - perhaps the trip to Disney World, where I'm convinced there's something in the water - that the movie began to grow on me. It's infectiously fun, with catchy tunes and endearing characters. It's no secret why the under-20 crowd are getting hooked on HSM, but I think it's just as much fun for the over-20s as well. Heck, I'm over 20, and I still enjoy putting this movie in or catching it on cable. And I'd be lying if I said that these actors aren't any good in other roles (see Hairspray to watch Efron really blossom, or... well, that's about it for anyone else.)

The film hits a few sour notes which impede my viewing, but perhaps these are just my hang-ups. 1) I've studied this film in perhaps too much depth, so it's a challenge to enjoy it without overanalyzing it. 2) Efron doesn't do his own singing (Drew Seeley, a more trained vocalist, fills in), and it's a noticeable difference that I'm glad the sequel rectified. 3) The "villains" of the piece, the Evans twins, are in my mind more likeable than our protagonists. Their songs are catchier, their scenes are funnier, and for my money they're just prettier people. Shallow? Perhaps.

That being said, I don't want to be too positive at the risk of sounding like a starstruck tweeny-bopper. Oh, what the heck. The Mouse knows how to make a good movie. I credit the one-two punch of Jack Sparrow/Zac Efron (with a lot of Hannah Montana thrown in for good measure and great money) with saving Disney from a lackluster stock report, but there's something to be said for the good clean family fun that all three provide.

Before this review gets too much longer, I should point out that this is by no stretch of the imagination a perfect movie or even a great movie on the par of The Departed (also from 2006) or Casablanca. It is, however, a lot of fun and a great way to just let go for 90 minutes.

Just don't be surprised if you continue to "Bop to the Top" (by far the catchiest tune in the whole show) long after you've seen the movie.

Blood Simple. (1985)

If I may be fatuous for a moment, the Coen Brothers only make two kinds of movies: balls-out comedies with overtly verbose protagonists (think The Big Lebowski or O Brother, Where Art Thou?) and dark tragicomedies of an elaborate crime gone horribly wrong (Fargo is perhaps the seminal example, though we can't overlook their Oscar winner No Country for Old Men). [The Ladykillers tried to be both - and failed miserably.]

Blood Simple, the first Coen Bros. vehicle, is most certainly an example of the latter.

When Marty (Dan Hedaya, who never seems to stop brooding) discovers that his wife Abby (Coen staple and wife Frances McDormand) is cheating on him, he hires private detective (or, in the parlance of our times, brother shamus) Loren Visser (M. Emmet Walsh) to kill her and her lover Ray (the slightly unsettling John Getz). Visser opts for a double cross, stages the death of Abby and Ray, and attempts a real murder - of Marty. But, in true Coen fashion, the best laid plans of mice and men... well, you know the rest.

As the first Coen Brothers film (and pretty much the last one of theirs I hadn't seen), there's a lot in here that seems familiar to a loyal viewer - or precursors of things to come in their cinematic canon, if we're taking things chronologically. It has the tangled plot and mystery angle of The Big Lebowski, the violence and crime-gone-wrong of Fargo, and the scenery and moral ambiguity of No Country for Old Men.

That said, it's not a particularly great film. The direction is interesting but lacks the polish anad overall flair that the Coens are known for. The plot, though intricate, never fails to hook the viewer's attention, relying on frustratingly terse characters who always seem to do the wrong thing and never really earn the audience's sympathy. And the pacing of the film is brutally slow at times, with a great deal of the film elapsing in silence. What dialogue there is isn't terrifically memorable.

For the most part (setting aside Walsh's performance for now), the acting (which is limited to only four important players) is restrained to the point of dullness. Almost everyone wears a mask of general unease on his/her face, but nothing truly comes of the unease, and there's no progression beyond that to show off acting chops that I know McDormand, if no one else, possesses. The notable exception here is Walsh, whose portrayal of ethically sketchy Loren Visser can rightly be called the first "Coen Brothers character" to join the ranks of The Dude, Anton Chigurh (who I suppose is more Cormac McCarthy than Coen), and Marge Gunderson. Each time Walsh is on the screen, he's riveting, leaving the audience guessing how and why he's doing what he's doing - and what exactly is he doing, anyway?

The plot and dialogue are not supremely memorable. A few plot twists - and dead people that won't stay dead - are good for a few "What the--?!" moments, and the Coens keep the violence at an evenly blatant level, just enough to unsettle and startle but not enough to wholly disturb. And the film is missing trademark Coen dialogue; I find myself unable to recall any good lines from the film, save the dramatic "I don't know what you're talking about, Ray" and Walsh's eerie chuckle.

These are the same guys who wrote The Big Lebowski? There are a few moments where I believe it, but for the most part Blood Simple is no Citizen Kane. As debut films go, Blood Simple is better than a few I can think of (the exceedingly dull Garden State, anyone?), but the Coens have done a lot better. Thank goodness for that. As a quaint "Oh look where they started. My, how far they've come, eh?" experiment, Blood Simple isn't terrible. But as a film standing on its own two legs?

The best, as they say, was yet to come for the Coens.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Here's the difficult thing about reviewing a staple like Raiders of the Lost Ark: I've seen this film so many times that two very distinct things make reviewing it impossible. First, I've already made up in my mind that this is an excellent movie. But secondly and perhaps more importantly, the movie loses some of its magic because it feels as though it's going through the motions. Maybe that's a commendation on the caliber of the film, that I've forgotten very little over the years that I've loved the movie.

But "it's not the years, honey, it's the mileage."

After 27 years and three sequels, Raiders of the Lost Ark holds up reasonably well. Obligatory plot summary follows, for those who have no idea what an Indiana Jones is or why he's raiding some ark that's been lost. The product of the Spielberg-Lucas filmic powerhouse, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford, as if I needed to clarify that) is pitted against Nazis and French rival archaeologist Rene Belloq (delectfully wicked Paul Freeman) in the cross-continent race to find the Ark of the Covenant, an Old Testament artifact that channels the power of God.

Steven Spielberg often says he set out to "make a B-movie, but better," yet I'd argue that he's made a full-fledged A-List movie that's every bit as enjoyable as it was when it first debuted. Perhaps I shouldn't fault the film for cooperating with my photographic memory by being so gosh darned memorable. Perhaps I should rather be commending the convincing performances, the artful direction, the impeccable John Williams score, and the chill that runs down my spine when the Nazis open the Ark.

It says a great deal about the movie that a lot of its third sequel, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), takes cues from this one. Note the return of Karen Allen, whose performance as the spunky Marion Ravenwood was so unmatched in the other Jones films that Spielberg didn't even try to find a new girl for Indy in the fourth film. Also note the return of the Ark Theme in the fourth film's opener - as well as a split-second cameo by the Ark itself! Finally, take note of the similar ways in which the film's villains acquire the MacGuffin and have it lead to their quest's ultimate failure. Rip-off, derivative, homage, or tried-and-true formula?

This film and its threequel, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), both share the similar structure of Nazis seeking religious artifacts, and there's something grounded in fact about that combination that makes this film work better than its sequel-prequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The villians, though slightly exaggerated, are not cartoonish and serve as perfect foils to the straightlaced professor of archaeology.

What's more, Raiders is funny. Of course the standout scene here is the one in which Indy meets an expert swordsman... and irritatedly shoots him dead. The humor would later be amped up in Last Crusade, but it's a marvelous tension-breaker here when the action scenes get too intense - which, believe me, they do. Though on this, what must be the 50th viewing of the film, I didn't gasp in horror during the epic car chase sequence as I surely did the first time, I still Oohed and Aahed at all the right places. I even laughed at punchlines I remembered when I decided I wanted to watch this one again.

It's not the years, it's the mileage. My only complaint about this film is that it's so memorable that it holds few surprises for multiple viewings. Other than that, it's a perfect thrill ride from start to finish. And of course any movie that ends with an homage to Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) can't be all bad.

The Descent (2005)

I'll say this for British horror film The Descent - it works. Director Neil Marshall's second film preys on claustrophobia (fear of tight spaces), nyctophobia (fear of the dark), and scopophilia (a form of voyeuristic pleasure).

Unfortunately, that's about it.

If I had to sum up The Descent in five easy words, it'd go something like this: mutant cavedwellers attack sexy spelunkers. More specifically, the film follows six thrill-seeking women who decide to explore an undiscovered cave a year after one of them, Sarah, loses her husband and daughter in a horrific car crash (the first great jump moment of the movie). After they realize the cave is more difficult to navigate than they anticipated, the women also realize that they are not alone...

If this sounds like the plot of every horror movie ever, it's because The Descent unfortunately suffers from being overly formulaic. In classic form, the first act of the film introduces the characters to us, yet the real action doesn't start until they enter the cave. A few combat scenes and deaths later, the film closes with the "one last scare" that Wes Craven's Scream so strikingly highlighted - and parodied.

The performances all fall into the same tropes that horror films encourage - the blonde protagonist, her spunky best friend, the older sister protecting her rebellious younger sister, &c. And the monsters are mind-numbingly mindless, not even that terrifying to behold.

Why, then, does the film work?

A lot of it has to do with Marshall's deft direction and perverse mastery of basic human fears. Perhaps the tropes of moviedom help Marshall here; we can just feel when a jump moment is coming, yet the anticipation almost makes the event worse. Take for example the scene where sisters Sam and Rebecca are fleeing the creatures and come to an abrupt turn in the caverns - the direction is such that we can only see one of the two corridors at a time. The camera rounds the corner, swings back, back again, back again, so that by the time a creature lunges at the sisters, it's been built up in our heads so much that the jump is amplified tenfold.

Something must be said, too, for the film's setting - a dark and unfamiliar underground network of caves. The characters are out of their element, as are the viewers. Marshall successfully instills a claustrophobia with his visuals that most directors can only dream of. And of course the shaky camerawork during fights with the creatures take the style of Greengrass's Bourne trilogy to a bloody new high.

Would I have liked the film if I hadn't watched it at midnight, with all the lights off (even the streetlights)? Probably not. But if you're looking to have the bejeepers scared out of you, I can't think of a better flick than The Descent.

Spider-Man (2002)

A great many people will credit Bryan Singer's 2000 film X-Men with saving the superhero genre from the ignominy of Schumacher. To be certain, the X-Men franchise proved that comic book movies could be taken seriously. Yet I was always slightly more partial to Sam Raimi's Spider-Man. Maybe that's unfair, because I own both movies and rewatch them every so often.

Perhaps what makes Spider-Man the stronger of the two is its direct handling of "the origin story." Raimi walks us through the ins and outs of Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire, who seems like he was birthed by Stan Lee's original comic book), so that by the time he's bitten by the radioactive spider we feel intimately acquainted with the human side of the character.

And while Ian McKellan is a brilliant Magneto, nothing beats the almost inhuman split personality that Willem Dafoe delivers as Norman Osborne, alias The Green Goblin. Alternating between a desperate businessman and a maniacal fiend, Dafoe is at his peak here. His ability to deliver on multiple emotions in the same scene - as in the mirror scene here - should come as no surprise; Dafoe played Detective Kimball in the 2000 cult classic American Psycho, where he acted his part in three different ways (1 - positive of a character's guilt, 2 - positive of his innocence, and 3 - uncertain either way), edited together to allow the viewer not to get a grasp on his character.

The dialogue here is a little hammy, but one has to remember that it's based on a Stan Lee comic book. As Lee's famous creation The Thing might say, 'nuff said. What the dialogue does exceptionally well, though, is capture the first-person narration that comic books provide more readily than movies. Maguire's narration isn't awkward (as Kevin Costner's is in Dances with Wolves) or stilted (Sin City, though narrated poetically, left something to be desired with the inflection of its narrators).

And as a piece of art, the movie just looks good. The red and blue costume of our Friendly Neighborhood Web-Slinger stands out in stark contrast to the Green Goblin's... well, green suit. Sunlight on New York never looked so beautiful. And Kirsten Dunst, who's otherwise dull, glows in this movie. Maybe it's the red hair.

One can't critically review Spider-Man without at least touching on J.K. Simmons's spot-on performance as grizzly newspaperman J. Jonah Jameson. If Maguire was born of the pages of Marvel Comics, Simmons was the inspiration, because he couldn't be more flawless. Scene-stealing has never seen the likes of a performance like this and indeed probably never will. (Though I should give "props" to Cillian Murphy's scintillating turn as Dr. Crane / The Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan's 2005 Batman Begins, which may be the best comic book movie ever... until its sequel dethrones it)

Speaking of great comic book movies, Spider-Man 2 is generally considered to be among the best, if not THE best. Then came Spider-Man 3, the universally deplored threequel that gave us the travesty that is a disco-dancing Emo Parker. Try to forget that. The first film was a powerhouse. But "With great power comes great responsibility."

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

I'm still not quite sure what to make of Ang Lee's critically lauded Brokeback Mountain. At the insistence of a few friends and the confidence in Heath Ledger's acting ability that I acquired like a booster shot thanks to the trailers for The Dark Knight (in which Ledger plays the best damn Joker, period), I finally gave the movie a try.

And the jury's still out on the movie for me.

In his essay "In Critical Condition," David Bordwell draws a distinction between "an excellent film" and a film that is "to your liking." (I direct you to the entire article, a fascinating look at how movies are reviewed and analyzed: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=2315. Thanks, Karl.) This is the distinction I've been trying to sort out with this, the story of a complex love that begins between two sheepherders (Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, as Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist) in the 60s. Most everyone in the critical circle saw it as an excellent film, yet I'm not sure if I can dislike an excellent film. I'm not even sure if I dislike Brokeback Mountain.

Let me air my laundry about this one and hope that I'll come to some conclusion about the movie by the end. First the good news. The movie is consistently paced, lending a pastoral fairytale atmosphere to the whole work. If this was Lee's goal, he succeeded; if not, then the film dodges "boring" by a few feet. Acting in here is for the most part sterling (see the bad news for the notable exception), with a powerhouse performance by Heath Ledger that made me want to melt in my seat. Why he didn't win the Oscar I'm not quite sure - Hoffman's Capote was so-so but falls flat when compared with Toby Jones's a year later in Infamous. The two wives, Anne Hathaway and Michelle Williams, are suitably layered, but it's Ledger's performance that you'll take away for a while.

I've commended Lee for his ability to keep the flow of the film moving while maintaining a slow and deliberate pace. Yet I have to mention one scene in particular as a stand-out visual, the one I'll probably keep with me for a while. Ennis takes his wife (Williams) and daughters to a picnic/firework show, only to be met by foul-mouthed truckers who won't keep their language at a family-friendly level. When Ennis attacks the truckers, fireworks go off behind him while the camera rests at a Citizen Kane-like ground-up angle. The result is stunning.

Now the bad news. The crux of the film is obviously the relationship between Ennis and Jack. So it hurts the movie greatly that Jake Gyllenhaal is not a terrific actor and seems out of place against the vastly more genuine Ledger. Gyllenhaal seems like a child playacting in his father's cowboy uniform, and it seems that his only character development comes by growing a porn star mustache. Although I have to give him some applause for the "I wish I knew how to quit you" scene, Gyllenhaal is overall disappointing in here. (Randy Quaid, too, is lackluster, but his part is so small that he's barely noticeable.)

The other key flaw in the film is that it asks the viewer to be accepting of a relationship that betrays two marriages. I'm sorry, but I draw the line there. Had Ennis and Jack divorced their wives to be together (or at least not married until false pretense), I would have been more positive about their relationship. But the heartwrenching performance by Michelle Williams, especially when she realizes that her husband is in love with another man, makes it difficult for me to enjoy the film when I know that this relationship is making people so unhappy. Call me old-fashioned, but I disapprove of marital dishonesty and find it hurts my enjoyment of a work.

In the end, I think I have to concede that the film wasn't quite to my liking, mostly because of the flaws that - in my analysis - prevent Brokeback Mountain from being an excellent film. That said, I didn't want to stop watching at any point once I realized that the slow pace seemed intentional. I suppose I'd have to recommend it, if for nothing else than to see what all the hoopla is about.

Just don't expect an excellent film. Be content with a "pretty good, but could have been great" movie that will stick with you for a long time.

You'll wish you knew how to quit it.

Death at a Funeral (2007)

He's more than just the voice and wizard behind Yoda. Frank Oz is also a director, and after seeing Death at a Funeral, I'm going to have to look at more of his canon beyond Muppet-like projects of his.

Death at a Funeral is a testament to Murphy's Law in 35 mm. Anything that can go wrong does - in typically British fashion. I'll say this for British comedy: they're willing to push the envelope much farther than Americans. Though Americans are well-renowned for their crudeness in comedy, there's something classically British in the approach to poking fun at homosexuality, mescaline overdoses, and the bowel practices of Uncle Alfie. Heck, the funniest line of the film takes a jab at the very delicate subject of dwarfism: when told that no one will notice that Peter, a dwarf who has a nasty secret about dear departed Dad, isn't at the funeral any more, one funeralgoer exclaims angrily, "Didn't notice him? He's four f--king feet tall!"

Yes, that's Matthew Macfadyen, Mr. Darcy himself, as Daniel, the bereaved son who's balancing the loss of his father with a supremely dysfunctional family. Eat your heart out, Bluths. His brother is a famous writer, his mother is determined to be miserable, his cousin Martha has brought her accidentally-drugged fiance Simon, and Justin thinks he still has a shot with Martha. And that's all in the first ten minutes. From the moment Daniel opens the coffin and realizes the funeral home has given him the wrong body to the closing of the film, I laughed until I cried.

A lot is to be said for the directing and editing of the comedy, but the acting is what holds it together. Maybe it's just something about British accents that make even the dumbest jokes funnier. (Monty Python, anyone?) The fact is, each of these figures are delightfully over the top but remain believable within the realm of the movie. Who's to say whether Simon's drug-induced antics are scientifically plausible? The characters in the film all buy it; so do we.

Clocking in at 90 minutes, I have to say this is the funniest film I've seen in 2008 thus far. Sorry, Dan in Real Life, but the punchlines in Death at a Funeral killed. (ba-dum-chh)

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

If Spike Lee's 2006 Inside Man is the perfect bank robbery, then Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon has to be the worst. Al Pacino (as Sonny) and John Cazale (as Sal) lead the cast and the heist, which goes askew in almost every way possible.

For starters, Sonny doesn't disable the security cameras for about two minutes in the robbery. Furthermore, the intended third robber runs away from the bank, too nervous to point a gun at the security guard. A burning bank register alerts the insurance salesman across the street, and within minutes the place is surrounded by cops.

And it's downhill from there for poor Sonny and Sal.

Fans of The Godfather will love seeing Michael and Fredo Corleone reunite here a year after The Godfather, Part II was released. In many respects, Dog Day Afternoon allows both actors to play polar opposites of the roles that made them famous. Sonny, who bumbles his way through the robbery so that he can buy his lover a---er, I won't spoil the surprise. And Sal couldn't be farther removed from Fredo; where Fredo was the bumbler, Sal is cold and prepared to throw bodies at the police, while taking the time to worry about a smoker's immortal soul.

Lumet's direction, with which I've been peripherally familiar through his work in Network and Murder on the Orient Express, does a great job of injecting humor into the almost pitiful display the botched robbery elicits, also successfully capturing the scope of the media circus that revolves around Sonny - a true master of the media without even knowing it. My only complaint with Lumet is that the film drags a bit in two scenes that should have been more powerful - one where Sonny talks with his lover on the phone and the other where Sonny, fearing he will not live through the night, draws up his last will and testament. Though Pacino's acting is stellar in both scenes, some long takes and grinding-to-a-halt of the plot hurt the film.

But these are small details, and the viewer won't come away remembering those two scenes as the most memorable scenes. No, the moment where Sonny chants "Attica!" in response to police brutality has become the stuff of film legend; the interplay between despair and friendship between the hostages and robbers also set the film apart from similar heist movies.

By the film's end, Sonny and Sal aren't villains. They're anti-heroes at best, people driven to desperate measures by similarly desperate times. They're human, flawlessly characterized and impeccably sympathetic. Without ruining the movie, I will only say that I come away from it - as I imagine most viewers will - with the nagging query of, "What would I do?"

Isn't that the mark of a good film? Shouldn't it leave you wondering, empathizing, and recalling? Dog Day Afternoon certainly does.

And did I mention it's a true story?

North by Northwest (1959)

I've always said that my favorite film from Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchcock was his voyeurism drama Rear Window (1954). Then I graduated to loving Shadow of a Doubt (1943), doubtless because I was a budding Joseph Cotten fan at the time. This spring I had the opportunity to re-view Hitch's 1960 masterpiece Psycho and declared it my favorite.

Now that I've had the pleasure of finally seeing the master chase film North by Northwest, I'm reconsidering my list. I'm contemplating throwing it out altogether due to the sheer impossibility of choosing a favorite from among these. And I haven't seen enough Hitch, I know, to fairly assess the entire canon. More gems, I'm sure, await me.

As Madison Avenue exec Roger Thornhill, Cary Grant finds himself enmeshed in a world of espionage, all thanks to a case of mistaken identity. Superspy Vandamm (James Mason, whose voice I now realize Eddie Izzard has perfected in his imitative routines) confuses Thornhill for CIA operative George Kaplan, and the chase is on: Thornhill is off to find the real Kaplan with the help of femme fatale Eve Kendall (the radiant Eva Marie Saint), while Vandamm wants to stop Thornhill/Kaplan from thwarting the dastardly smuggling of secrets.

In some ways, this is, as screenwriter Ernest Lehman remarked, "the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures." It's a sweeping epic across America, unlike anything Hitch had done before. The suspense is non pareil, the score by Bernard Herrmann thoroughly rousing, and the direction extraordinarily gifted. This was Cary Grant's last film with Hitchcock, and the two - as if knowing this was their final collaboration - have thrown everything into the movie.

The brilliance of the film lies in the film's ability to thrust us directly into Thornhill's shoes. Like the hapless ad exec, we have no idea who George Kaplan is, and we have even less idea what he has to do with the whole story. As Thornhill pieces together the stray tidbits of information he gets, so do we. However, very early on, we learn something that Thornhill doesn't: George Kaplan isn't real. This is the ultimate MacGuffin, Hitchcock's favorite film device - the plot element that drives the story and characters forward but is ultimately inconsequential (think the $40,000 in Psycho or the eponymous Maltese Falcon from 1941). The characters are ultimately chasing a ghost, yet it's not the ghost that holds the weight of the story. It's how firmly characters believe in the ghost that truly matters.

I tend to be a more passive filmgoer than most; that is to say, it's very seldom that a movie gets me physically riled up. Of course, emotions run high when I'm watching a movie, and I'm not embarassed to say that film has made me cry as many times as it's made me laugh. Yet by the end of North by Northwest and its (in)famous grapple atop Mount Rushmore, my heart was racing. Take that, Jack Bauer - this is the ultimate spy story.

So much literature has been exhausted in lauding Hitchcock for his masterful direction, yet I must beg permission for a few more words of praise. The direction here is perfect, never allowing the viewer to forget important plot elements such as the pistol loaded with blanks. And of course, for sheer potent sexual suggestion, nothing beats the film's closing shot of a train driving into a tunnel. It says a lot that no one's beaten this imagery, the strongest in subtle erotic imagery since the dual cigarettes in 1942's Now, Voyager.

If it's a no-holds-barred thrill ride you're after, I can't think of a better one than North by Northwest. Coming before James Bond, Jason Bourne, and all those other similarly-initialed superspies, I can't help but feel that this was a pioneer film from which a lot of espionage dramas have taken their cues. You'll be surprised at how familiar the film seems, yet you'll be dazzled by how immersive the experience is.

Just keep an eye on the MacGuffin.