College. It feels a bit more generic than other Keaton features, perhaps because we associate Lloyd with college comedy. But it’s really very good all the way through; and the twist of Keaton’s love for the Girl causing his athletic skills to kick in at the end is compelling as well as funny. The love story isn’t quite absurd: the girl is clearly in love with Keaton, must reject him after his nasty anti-athletics speech, but is shown to be…
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One Week 1920
One Week. One good physical gag after another, held together nicely by the very natural working partnership of the young couple. (Sybil Seely is great, and the reflexive gag of the camera operator using his hand to conceal her nudity as she retrieves a bar of soap from her bath is a little provocative.) The crazy house keeps providing surprises for Keaton to turn to his advantage: his run through the covered porches as the house rotates is amazing.
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Safe 1995
Safe. Really remarkable, with a big middle ground between the real and the symbolic, so that the disease that overtakes the heroine, and that is still worsening at film's end, seems as much a metaphor for the precarity of all life as it does a sign of environmental crisis. The distinctive, Kubrick-like detachment of the long-shot-based mise-en-scène is emotionally expressive here in a way that's outside of Kubrick's wheelhouse, and is allied with the performances, especially Moore's, which push us…
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My Darling Clementine 1946
My Darling Clementine. The film impressed me so much, at almost every moment: that quiet soundtrack that one often hears in postwar films made itself felt in the film; also hints of expressionism held in check by the omnipresence of space in natural locations. Earp is a fairly complex creation: in love with Clementine and also quite struck by Holliday; not always predictable in when he will back down or confront; never controlled by passions, even when engaged in revenge.…