Mini-Review: Some people think this a mess, but I think that its eccentric performances, complex Milius script and continual (yet controlled) tonal shifts--from realism to folk tale to surrealism to farce and then back to realism again--make this a uniquely enjoyable epic Western. More than any other film outside the Peckinpah oeuvre, it effectively chronicles and mourns the disappearance of the Old West. Newman is good, and Stacey Keach is a standout in an hilarious cameo as "Original Bad Bob the Albino."

Mini-Review: A masterpiece of Chabrol's later period, this study of a passionate and honest young woman making her way through a minefield of puritanism, perversion and the merciless imperatives of class is restrained and compelling. As is customary with Chabrol, all this leads to violence, but the violence is a natural extension of character and circumstances, never an excuse for melodrama. Sagnier's performance is subtle and haunting, and Berleand strikes the right note as the aging novelist.

Mini-Review: Don't let the title (and the name "Joan Crawford" above the title) fool you into thinking this a bittersweet tale of a May-December marriage. No, this is Robert Aldrich doing to the woman's picture what he already did to the private-eye noir in the insane "Kiss Me Deadly." This film is crazy, paranoid, intense. The shadows are dark, Cliff Robertson is dangerously bonkers and Joan carries self-sacrifice to the point of symbolic crucifixion.

Mini-Review: This Indie "B" made by blacklisters has a few cool Bunuel touches (hairy spider being stepped on, raccoon devouring chickens, numerous close-ups of feet), and the ending is surprisingly tolerant and European: a story that features statutory rape and false racist accusations ends with a hint of hope instead of the murder/suicide combo that a similar "A" Hollywood studio product would require. Scott is fine here too in this his last major role, but still the whole thing never quite jells.

Mini-Review: Once you accept the idea of blue-eyed Lancaster and Peters as two Apaches on the run, you may find much to admire in this Aldrich film. The action scenes are good, Massai's trip through St. Louis is unique and vivid. and, although the Native Americans speak in the laconic style of old Westerns, dry humor, fierce honor and a reverence for nature reveal themselves beneath the stoicism. Besides, no Native American couple in love had ever been treated so tenderly--or so mercifully--in a Western.