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Before Sunset (2004)
Sublimity on film
Perhaps a true testament to the power of this seemingly simple film can be deduced from the number of people who have written reviews about it here on IMDb.com. Here are the numbers: 18,430 votes and 346 user comments. That comes to 1.9 comments for every 100 votes. Although 1.9% may not seem all that high, I couldn't find another movie that had a vote-to-comment ratio as high as 1.5%. And as can be seen, the substance of the comments about "Before Sunset" are further testimony to the impact it has had on those who have viewed it.
The movie plays by its own rules and may not be for everybody, but for those that it is, it touches them very deeply. And oh what an endingas one reviewer so aptly put it, the ending is "perfect" . . . Julie Delpy impersonating Nina Simone is as good as it gets.
City for Conquest (1940)
Before Kazan was a big-time director, he played a terrific small-time thug.
I saw this movie a long time ago (about 1968) and was quite impressed by the story, acting, and filming. Cagney plays a typical role for him--the decent little guy who's out to do big things but gets beaten down by the bad guys. As in "Angels with Dirty Faces" and "Torrid Zone," he teams up well with Ann Sheridan. Ann worked often and well with the movie tough guys of the late 30's and early 40's (e.g. John Garfield, George Raft, et al) but seems to have become rather forgotten over the years. All I remember of the Arthur Kennedy role is him sitting at a piano in a New York apartment composing a symphony, which he ultimately succeeds in doing due to the sacrifices of his on-screen brother played by Cagney. As I recall, the symphony is titled "City for Conquest."
The ending of the film is exceptionally moving. But for me the best and most memorable sequences were those few brief scenes involving Elia Kazan as Googi Zucco. With his cocky bearing and slick black hair, Kazan plays as good a mob-like thug as anyone I've ever seen.