Mini-Review: At first glance The Apartment seems devoted to the old message "money doesnt buy happiness, love conquers all". At second glance, love conquers very little. Theres no sense that Baxter or Fran will ever be in love - Fran "never learns". Love for Wilder tends to be a sordid affair, the stuff of sweaty sex and deceit, and his cynicism shines through despite the brief optimism of the ending. Baxter seems unlikely to change either - when the game of cards ends the film is doomed to repeat itself.

Mini-Review: i started to watch this but then ran off screaming

Mini-Review: sails from event to event with a bland competence that reduces its subject's struggles to inevitable stepping stones down castro street towards martyrdom central. devotedly mainstream, it takes milk's anti-closet leanings to heart and squeezes every little nugget of subtext into the foreground, or in most cases dispenses of them entirely. aside from the hideously overwrought death scene it's not bad as such, just... safe.

Mini-Review: Civilisation's railroad is creeping up over the hills, and the Old West totters on the brink of extinction. Once Upon a Time... is the dream of one final, glorious swansong, where mythical anti-heroes fight it out across a sweeping backdrop, in a world where those who think with their heads are about to stop losing. Left alive is a lady of civilisation, basking in the benefits of progress, and a hero of the old school, purpose extinguished, about to fade into obscurity forever.

Mini-Review: And while Rafe is off fighting everything gets completely whack and next thing you know everybody is in the middle of an air raid we now know as "Pearl Harbor."