Beat the Devil has no pretense at being anything. It’s consciously frivolous. The best way to inadequately described it, then, is as a rogue movie.

Training Day missed the chance at being a masterpiece. A more spirited director would have nailed it by focusing on the moral drama behind the plot instead of losing time with action sequences which last too long. It’s Denzel’s formidable performance, in the end, which steals the show. Visceral, violent and crude: most of all, unredeemable. Very few performances in the history of cinema carry such intensity, such totality. Without Denzel this film would be impossible.

A man escapes death in Bresson’s film. And we don’t care.

Kiss Me Deadly is about the sublime un-presence of power and authority in the nuclear age: it’s ridiculous to think of a democracy when a few man control a gadget capable of ending the world with a bang.

Angel Face, played diabolically by Jean Simmons, is impossible to resist: the first time Mitchum sees her he hypnotically walks towards her as she’s plays an eerie tune on the piano alone at night. Trouble never seemed more evident nor more sublime. “Walk away!”, we think; but we don’t want him to. 

Moral and political pessimism in Chinatown (1974).

In Limelight (1952) Charlie Chaplin interprets a somewhat exaggerated version of himself: comedy and vaudeville legend Calvero, who’s prime has passed and now, an old poor drunk – but wise… – is forced to the streets again, striving for a penny.

In Gun Crazy (1950) death, love and madness go in high gear, and it's hard to keep track midst all the shooting. At a traveling show the boy meets his soul mate, a gun-carrying, wild-blooded and death-foolish blonde. It’s love at first shooting.

Crossfire (1947) begins with a brutal murder. We only see the shadows of one man beating another to death in a hotel room. In due course we discover that a fascist has killed a Jewish man. Nothing new under the sun? Perhaps, but there’s a problem: we're in Washington D.C. two years after the military defeat of fascism. And that's the catch: military defeat of fascism does not mean its demise.

Leos Carax’s Mauvais Sang (1986) is not conventional cinema. It is enigmatic, dazzling, and disturbingly lyrical. And yet successful.

A time for idiots.

Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) play, as reporters, the good-cop-bad-cop routine. Hoffman steals the show with an anxious, restless performance. A normal person wouldn’t allow him to enter the house, but would unleash the dogs.

Silence is structurally loose, and too long. Scorsese has taken a liking for three-hour films, but, with some rare exceptions (say, David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia), longer films do not make for better ones (Spike Lee’s Malcolm X…). This is a work of courage, though, and it risks everything on a few scenes.