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President Richard M. Nixon and the Watergate scandal that lead to Nixon's resignation are fifty years behind us. 

Yet their echoes and rhymes bounce around American political hallways to this day.

Robert Altman's deep cut 1984 movie imagines a disgraced, resigned Nixon getting drunk in his study, half-recording, half-ranting a memoir/apology of his tortured life into a microphone to an unseen Cuban assistant named "Roberto".

All the while a gun sits on Nixon's desk.

Nixon is played by Philip Baker Hall (who many of us know better from his work with Paul Thomas Anderson and on TV) with a theatrical ferocity.

The "bigness" of the performance is…

THAT WAS A LOT: Ryan Coogler's SINNERS (wri & dir by Ryan Coogler, w/ Michael B. Jordan, Warner Brothers, 137mns, USA)

Ryan Coogler's SINNERS is a movie made by someone ready to shoot their shot.

Not that FRUITVALE STATION, CREED, or BLACK PANTHER 1 & 2 weren't movies made by a moviemaker giving it their all but SINNERS is made by a moviemaker who has the power to make exactly the movie they want to make. And makes it. 

It works. Bottom line. And it's audacious. Which is always inspiring in this age of a lot of major studio productions that are underwhelming.

It also feels like a mess. And it may…

It is sometimes (wrongly) accepted wisdom that Kurosawa's true auteur career didn't begin until DRUNKEN ANGEL, his 1948 movie which he himself said was the first one in which he had total control. Before that, it is true that Kurosawa had to answer to war time censors and studio heads. Many describe this as an apprenticeship period where Kurosawa bided his time and sharpened his craft. 

And while DRUNKEN ANGEL certainly is his strongest movie up to that time, there are several movies Kurosawa made between 1943-1948 that feel every fiber a Kurosawa movie. If there's interference or tampering, it's hard to see it now eighty years later. 

THE MEN WHO TREAD ON THE TIGER'S TALE feels like a brilliant rough draft for …

Ingmar Bergman's PERSONA, Robert Altman's 3 WOMEN, and David Lynch's MULHOLLAND DRIVE may be three of the best examples of the "female driven psychological character study" sub-genre.

Bergman's PERSONA feels like it strongly influenced the other two. And Lynch's MULHOLLAND DRIVE feels indebted to the two that came before.

Altman, the 70's inconoclast director of NASHVILLE, THE LONG GOODBYE, MCCABE & MRS. MILLER, who would later have a 90's resurgence with THE PLAYER, SHORT CUTS, etc, tried his hand at this type of movie before.

His 1972 IMAGES (a movie this writer quite likes for all its self-seriousness) is a kind of REPULSION by way of PERSONA and doesn't fully land despite consistent flashes of cleverness throughout.

3 WOMEN doesn't fully land either. . .until it does. It's one of those movies where …

f American moviemaker Michael Ritchie was responsible for no more than the scene in 1976's THE BAD NEWS BEARS where a little league team discovers their grumpy coach played by Walter Matthau near passed out drunk on a pitcher's mound and wonder if there's going to be practice, Ritchie's place in movie history would be firm.

But Ritchie actually had a career as unpredictable as many of the misfits he made the center of his movies. Known for THE CANDIDATE, DOWNHILL RACER, BAD NEWS BEARS, FLETCH, among others, Ritchie also directed his share of movies that didn't work or are lost to the sands of time.

But there is something like a "Ritchie touch" …

Francesco Rosi insists on facts and unvarnished reporting. Whatever his politics might be, his north star are FACTS. And this makes his movies demanding.

Actor Rod Steiger is as brilliant and electric as Brando and Hackman. Steiger is one of the greats.

To have Francesco Rosi make a movie with Steiger is almost too exciting to meet expectations.

The movie they made together, HANDS OVER THE CITY, about political corruption and deal making in post war Naples, Italy surpasses expectations.

Shot with impeccable craft by Italian master cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo (8 1/2, SALVATORE GIULIANO), HANDS OVER THE CITY is all the adjectives you want:

Gritty, journalistic, wry, ironic, brutal, understated, shocking, gripping.

Steiger plays…

It's strange when a movie feels both consummate and tossed off. Such are the eccentricities of talent and craft. 

BLACK BAG, written by David Koepp, is WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOLF by way of TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY with a dash of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot to season the salad.

A good light meal-totally passable, even enjoyable- to be served with chilled wine with friends at a dinner. Much like the one that kicks off this movie. 

BLACK BAG follows …

A dynamite movie, even if the ending falters into a kind of conventionality the rest of the film miraculously avoids, ONE EYED JACKS is great for what it IS and an all-time movie "what if" for what it could have been.

For you see, dear readers, ONE EYED JACKS, a western about sensitive outlaw Rio (Brando) joining up with a bank robbery gang so he can get revenge on Sheriff Dad Longworth (Malden), the man who double crossed him five years ago, was originally supposed to be directed by Stanley Kubrick.

So let's start with …

Every April since 2010, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) — the beloved cable channel and cultural institution that broadcasts classic films around the clock — has hosted a remarkable festival in the heart of Hollywood. While Los Angeles is never short on revival screenings, the TCM Classic Film Festival offers cinephiles something rare: the chance to experience classic films the way they were meant to be seen — on the big screen, in historic theaters, surrounded by fellow lovers of cinema. And if that’s not enough, many screenings feature special guests, from legendary filmmakers, stars, historians, and preservationists to TCM’s own knowledgeable and charismatic hosts.

Like many film buffs, I grew up …

A beautiful movie about the lives of three Indian women-Prabha, Anu, and Parvathy-who work at a hospital clinic in Mumbai, ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT is a quietly daring movie about female independence and agency in a culture straddling ancient traditions and rapid modernity.

Written and directed by an Indian woman and winner of last year's Cannes Grand Prix award, ALL THAT WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT is that rare recent film that …

Pablo Berger's feature animated ROBOT DREAMS goes from simple to complex to unsettling to accepting. Like the stages of grief. It's a fascinating movie that doesn't fully come together and yet. . .it conveys that feeling of finding appreciation for a past relationship that you accept can never be again.

The story follows a lonely single Dog in an alternate reality 1980's New York who purchases a Robot as a companion. The two become fast friends only to have …

European limited TV series have yielded some of the greatest cinematic works of all time. And while American TV in the age of cable and streaming has produced its fair share of THE WIRES, BREAKING BADS, TRUE DETECTIVE SEASON 1's, TWIN PEAKS THE RETURN, and so on, it really is a stunner how much critically important cinematic work has come out of European TV.

Ingmar Bergman's SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE and FANNY & ALEXANDER, Kryztof Kieslowski's THE DECALOGUE, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, Lars Von Trier's THE KINGDOMS I, II, & III, Mike Leigh's NUTS IN MAY among many other TV movies in the 1970's, are just the tip of the iceberg of incredible work.

And so it is with Italian master moviemaker Francesco Rosi's CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI…