Combat!: Escape to Nowhere (1962) (TV)

Lt. Hanley is made prisoner of the Germans and is put in charge of an officer who reveals to him that he is defecting. They face numerous dangers as they try to leave occupied France.

After only three episodes, I think I can surmise the eminently surrealistic universe engendered by this show. It's a real treat and I am sticking to it. (But on the other hand running out of things to say about it, perhaps.)

Combat!: Lost Sheep, Lost Shepherd (1962) (TV)

After the landing in Normandy, a battalion is stranded behind enemy lines, and, when an ally tank manned by a disturbed soldier approaches them, they take a ride on it to the next village, which seems to be unpopulated except for a priest and some children.

Well, it seems I am hooked to this series. It is exceedingly entertaining and well made.

Funny Games U.S. (2007)

Two young men invade a lake house and hold its owners - a couple and their small son - hostage, for no apparent reason other than the pleasure of torturing them.

A cinematic heir, in plotline, to The Desperate Hours, and Les inconnus dans la maison, and, in style, to A Clockwork Orange. Self-referential, 4th-wall breaking asides are inserted, which are apparently accounted for by a desire to imbue the film with a degree of reflexivity. The effectivity of such devices is questionable: the history of films which end up inducing the very same violence they purport to criticize is long - let's not remember them here - the reasons for that fact being intimately linked to the ontological status of the displayed image. Even the attempts at thwarting catharsis have no less unpredictable consequences. André Bazin's critical work, I am told, dealt first with some of these matters, although, in connection with theatre, it has been debated at least as far back as Aristotle. Judged merely as a conventionally fashioned horror drama - which, despite its metafictional presumptions, it is - its derivativeness stands out like a sore thumb; still, among the films I have seen by this director (Caché; Code unconnu) - and not counting the one based on another person's literary work, the relatively superior La pianiste - this is the least infuriating one. The film possesses a certain tragicomical consistence of tone which lends it a considerable degree of watchability; as for the plot's coherence, it could have done a lot worse, never mind the self-mockery displayed regarding this particular aspect of it. An intriguing interpretation of it as a political allegory has been proposed on the Internet Movie Database Discussion Forum, for which you should click here.

Rating: 48

The Bank Job (2008)

In England, a car shop owner who is also a part-time two-bit thief is proposed a bank job by a woman of his acquaintance; the job consists in raiding the vault where the safety deposit boxes are; unbeknownst to him and his accomplices, she is being forced to do the job by a government person, who is interested in some compromising photographs of a member of the royal family which are in the possession of a drug-dealer and pimp posing as a black power activist.

Entertaining piece of speculative fiction cum thriller.

Rating: 65

The Syrian Bride (2004)

A druze woman living in the Golan Heights is marrying a guy in Syria; all the family attends her wedding, some of whom come from other countries; the border crossing is problematic.

This has no interest; it is boring and amorphous and at times just does not make sense (e.g. she allegedly will "never see her family again").

Rating: 21

Combat!: Forgotten Front (1962) (TV)

This is about World War II. Some guys are trying to locate a cannon, and have to enter a vacant house, and are blown to pieces; then a second group comes after them and find a German deserter hiding in it.

Good TV.

Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her (2000)

Several female characters very tenuously connected, their common problem being loneliness: an abortionist, a palm reader, her terminally ill lover, a police detective, her blind sister, a divorced mother who takes an interest in her dwarf neighbor, a bank manager who gets pregnant of her married lover, her homeless acquaintance, and the corpse of a probable suicide.

Engaging drama with excellent performances, and a tendency toward romanticism (in its contemporary popular sense).

Rating: 63

Iron Man (2008)

Based on the comic book characters created by writer-editor Stan Lee, scripter Larry Lieber, and artists Jack Kirby and Don Heck; Iron Man first appeared in issue #39 of Tales of Suspense magazine (March 1963).

This is about a guy who develops a superpowerful metal suit.

Not really interesting, but if one manages to get into this warped universe, one may perhaps appreciate their efforts to produce a technological odyssey about the weapons market and how only an inside man may turn the tables, so to speak.

Rating: 35