Dawn of the Dead (1978)

"This was an important place in their lives."

Written and directed by George Romero. 1978.

In the DVD audio commentary featuring Romero, his ex-wife Christine Forrest, and make-up/stuntguy Tom Savini, Forrest spends a lot of time lamenting the fact that no studio's ever given George the money to make the kind of movie he really wants to make. It's a weird kind of apology for a great flick. That's the way it is with me, Romero shrugs. And that's why your movies are great, Savini adds. And, admittedly, going against the principle of Orson's No, a bigger budget didn't do much for the late-in-life sequel Land of the Dead except bring it closer in line with every other zombie movie released these past couple of years. We forget that the zombies in Dawn are all gray pancake and stiff walks. Squibs made with tin can lids and condoms. Boris the Dummy under the wheels of a garbage truck. Man. This movie's a romp.

Magnolia

"The book says, 'We might be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.'"

Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. 1999.

Magnolia gets heat for being long, but I don't think so. For me, it's more like spending three hours (or, if you go by the movie's timeline, one rainy day) in the company of interesting and sometimes horrible people (in other words: people). For your consideration: Anderson's adept handling of mise en scene, the camera's movement, the lighting, the editing -- all top notch. Also, the way the rain beads on Officer Jim's uniform. The sequence in Claudia's apartment -- when Jim responds to a "disturbance" -- remains one of the most endearing things I've seen on film.  As for those much-maligned frogs, well, there are foreshadowings throughout the movie, glimpses of signs bearing a tell-tale verse from Exodus (though they're hardly visible on the small screen), and the entire movie builds toward a revelation of this sort: that there is a power at work in the minutiae of life, that yes, strange things do happen all the time, but not without design. So why frogs? I don't know. And I'm not sure I'm meant to. I like that.

The Lower Depths (1936)

Written by Jean Renoir and Charles Spaak. Directed by Jean Renoir. 1936.

Is the love of the right woman enough to set a crooked man straight? Is forty rubles enough for two people starting over? I don't know, but Gabin believes yes and yes. And, as an old man says of a dying girl's picture of heaven, "If she believes it, it is true." This --the tenuous alliance between fear and hope, what some of us would call faith -- is the truth of Renoir's beautiful movie.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace

"I'd want to tell him that I cherished the time we spent together, and I never expected anything from him. Even if I only saw him for a few moments, it made me happy. And I'd want to tell him that I love him and that I'll always love him. And no matter what happens on this world, I know he tried his best to help us."

Written by Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner. Directed by Sidney J. Furie. 1987.

"The Dude of Steel," intones Lex Luthor's nephew, Lenny, in one of the movie's more pithy moments. "Boy, are you gonna get it." And get it the Dude of Steel does. This one ranks right up there among the worst films ever made. Golan-Globus got their mitts on the property from the Salkinds and milked it like the cash cow it was. After all, at this point in their movie-making careers, they were in financial trouble. Witness the sign on the Kent farm early in the film: "This property for lease or sale."  Or: the driving philosophy here can be summed up in one hilarious headline: "Superman Says 'Drop Dead' to Kid." Make "kid" "kids" and you've got yourself a tagline.

Speaking of headlines, remember that one in the original Superman: "Look, Ma! No wires!"? You can see a wire or harness in almost every special effects shot in this movie.

My favorite moment: when Clark Kent takes Lois Lane by the hand and walks off a roof. Lois, for whatever inexplicable reason, thinks Clark is committing suicide. "Clark!" she cries. "Things aren't that bad!" Well, for Christopher Reeve, who shared story credit on this one, I imagine they were.

CASINO

"A lot of holes in the desert, and a lot of problems are buried in those holes." 

Written by Nicholas Pileggi. Directed by Martin Scorsese. 1995.

The Marty who made Casino is, without a doubt, the same Marty who cast Larry David as a hard-talking Jew in Curb Your Enthusiasm. Casino is Scorsese at his most playful and reckless: lots of flashy lighting, jump cuts, lots of severe camera angles, and lots of old geezers plugging one another between hits on their oxygen tanks. James Woods as a pimp named Lester? Don Rickles as a no-nonsense pit boss with a shotgun? Marty's mother as an old wiseguy's mother, admonishing her son not to talk so dirty?

What's not to like.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

"I've been no place I wanna go back to, that's for damn sure."

Written by Frank Kowlaski, Sam Peckinpah, and Gordon T. Dawson. Directed by Sam Peckinpah. 1974.

Warren Oates is too cool to live, and -- unfortunately -- such is the end.

Forty Guns

"I need a strong man to carry out my orders."

Written and directed by Sam Fuller. 1957.

Barbara Stanwyck is as grand and big in this movie as the vast landscapes and valleys she inhabits. And so is the movie itself, one of Fuller's best. Fuller: a director whose voice never compromises and always understands, keenly, what an audience wants, what cinema demands.

My Best Fiend

"Every grey hair on my head, I call Kinski."

Written and directed by Werner Herzog. 1999.

I'm not sure which is better: Klaus Kinski's mad raving that he's Jesus or Werner Herzog's quiet intent toward deicide. "One day I seriously decided to firebomb him in his home," director Herzog tells the camera, the Peruvian jungle and the shoot of Aguirre, The Wrath of God his backdrop. "I was prevented from doing so only by the vigilance of his Alsacian shepherd." One only wishes there were footage of that.

Nosferatu, the Vampyre

"Death is not the worst. There are things more horrible than death."

Written and directed by Werner Herzog. 1979.

Herzog's interpretation of the original German film is eerie, atmospheric, and somehow apocalyptic -- as a good vampire narrative should be. Kinski's vampyre is forbidden to participate in his own apocalypse, here confined to a German village, a household. A woman's heart.

The Big Sleep

"You know what he'll do when he comes back? Beat my teeth out, then kick me in the stomach for mumbling."

Written by William Faulkner. From the novel by Raymond Chandler. Directed by Howard Hawks. 1946.

In praise of style above all else here, and there's nothing but praise for this: it's nifty the way Marlowe and Ohls light up in that hallway. Marlowe tosses his match to the floor. Behind him are a cigarette bin and a firehose. Almost as nifty as a tossed salute from a doorway to the tune of "And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine."