361
Clerks (1994)
Director: Kevin Smith
The no-budget, über-indie convenience-store comedy that struck gold and made Smith the man he is today - the heartfelt if profane chronicler of America's slacker belt. Read Review ›
|
|
359
The Lady Eve (1941)
Director: Preston Sturges
The irrepressible Sturges takes another bow in the 500, with this familiar mix of rich characters and madcap plotting, as spurned con-woman Barbara Stanwyck disguises herself as an English lady to romantically torment dotty professor Henry Fonda. Read Review ›
|
|
 |
360
The Return (2003)
Director: Andrei Zvyagintsev
Family drama in the Russian wilds as an estranged father returns to his two teenage sons: this simple premise emerges as a stunning, near-mythic tale of emergent manhood in the hands of a director fast becoming Russia's premier filmmaker. Read Review ›
|
|
358
Russian Ark (2002)
Director: Aleksandr Sokurov
The film that famously involves one single shot, floating through the halls of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg during 19th century Russia. It's a virtuoso piece of directing, but can't quite escape the nagging sensation of stunt over content. Read Review ›
|
|
|
357
The Long Goodbye (1973)
Director: Robert Altman
Robert Altman's languid, freeform version of Raymond Chandler's last great novel relocates the 1953 story to 1973, critiquing the out-of-time values of Elliott Gould's Philip Marlowe - a slobby, unshaven, chain-smoking all-time loser introduced in a brilliant sequence which has him try to pass off inferior pet food on his supercilious cat. John Williams' superb score plays endless variations on a title tune and many sequences are astonishing: a violent gangster making a point by smashing a Coke bottle in his mistress' face ("That's someone I love; you I don't even like") and an invigoratingly cynical punchline ("... and I lost my cat") that turns Marlowe into a sort of winner, after all. Altman puts vital action into the corners of the frame, almost unnoticed, and highlights tiny moments of weirdness in a sun-struck tapestry of Los Angeles sleaze. Arnold Schwarzenegger, no less, has an unbilled cameo as a minor thug. Read Review ›
|
