Caliban-6 Reviews

M (1931)

60 years old, and still uber-suspenseful

[10/10 · 4 January 1999]

The opening scene of this movie is the first clue to its near perfection – A mother preparing dinner for her child, waiting anxiously for her to return from school. Her hope, and then distress as she hears people pass outside her door. While down in the streets of Berlin, her daughter is receiving a balloon from a strange man in a long black coat. We know what's going to happen, but it's still horrific to watch.

Fritz Lang, you cinematic god! A simple story of the underworld, the police, and a single man holding an entire city hostage, and done with such precision and pre-noir darkness that is oozes creepy suspense from beginning to end.

But this movie is not so simple as the police inspectors trying to catch a devious murderer – it's about the mob, employing its network of beggars and petty thieves also trying to bring the killer to their own brand of justice. Apparently, the police crackdown caused by the murders is bad for business – so the mob begins to track him down as well.

It's not only a great crime story, and perhaps the first physiological thriller (the murderer is schizophrenic) but there's comments to be made here about the nature of justice, and who should best dispense it.

In all, not only a trail-blazing classic, but THE trail-blazing classic.

Lone Star (1996)

Life ain't simple on the border

[10/10 · 29 October 1998]

This is a great film about the American Experience. It's a movie about generations, the gaps they must overcome, and the taks of leaving the shadows of famous (or notorious) parentage. All the characters, from Otis and his son and grandson, to Sheriff Dodds and his father, Sheriff Dodds, all of the main characters need come to importnat relalizations about their common past of the frontier of America.

There are no easy answers. But for this group of Texans, the first step to the future is the last line in the film: Forget the Alamo.

A classic, snubbed on all counts by the MPAA.