A Most Wanted Man is wonderful, but incredibly bleak.

For a total change of pace, I plan on seeing The November Man and that new Liam Neeson movie, just to watch hot older men beat the shit out of stuff.

A Walk Among the Tombstones? That's not out yet, right? I have mixed feelings about Neesons as Matt Scudder -- I love those books!

So this is pretty beautiful.

Parody YouTube channel inspires tighter logic in 'Captain America'

“Flattered and amused. What’s so funny is that I’m an avid honest trailer watcher. I love it, it cracks me up… We used to sit in the room and go, 'This is not going to end up in an honest trailer. This logic isn’t sound enough yet.' We literally tried to Honest Trailer proof the movie. Because what Honest Trailers really is… is 'How sound is the logic in your film? How ridiculous are the buys that you’re asking the audience to make?' So we would just comb through the script over and over again and go, 'How do we shore up this logic?' So it was a very helpful exercise for us.”

Because what Honest Trailers really is… is 'How sound is the logic in your film? How ridiculous are the buys that you’re asking the audience to make?' So we would just comb through the script over and over again and go, 'How do we shore up this logic?'

This is awesome!

I've had many a silly movie redeem itself purely because it made the effort to lay the groundwork for the things that happened later.

I used the Third Man as my workout movie. It holds up very well. I really believed the relationships. Did not strike a lot of false notes. Of course having Graham Greene write the script does not hurt. But it also struck me again how much better old movies integrate music into the script. It is not that music,as music, can't be matched by scores today. But way every note enhances the story, that really was done better. For example, why does nobody use the trick today of having each note in a scene coincide with a footstep so that every step is also a musical note conveying the emotional mood of the scene. Also it is just something to see that they used goddamn zither for a suspense film. Yes you can use a score dominated by major chords without discord notes to convey suspense. It is like our whole musical vocabulary for suspense films has narrowed.

I too have been counting Y chromosomes in classic film; in my case it was Twelve Angry Men. Enjoyed it a great deal, there's great character work (though the ending felt just a little too neat, and I felt that juror #8 - the original dissenter - was less well drawn than the others.) Interesting watching it with Biyi too. She watched it on her own, and didn't twig at all to the meaning behind the bigoted juror's rants. (It never being explicitly stated that the defendant was black, and this not being one of the fault-lines in Chinese society.)

The Third Man is a fun film, I do agree it holds up.

If I could do a top 10 (and it's just not possible) Third Man would be on the list.