Fans of the late director Robert Altman should under no circumstances be unaware of this truly fine work of art by one of cinema’s greatest craftsmen. Jean Renoir’s “La Regle Du Jeu” (The Rules of the Game) got off on a bad start, originally opening to a non-receptive audience in 1939. The film’s negatives were also considerably damaged during the war, only to be completely restored in 1959.

This belated release during the French New Wave movement allowed different classes of society to succinctly admire a work that was created far ahead of its time.

With the foundation of an old 19th-century comedy of manners by Alfred de Musset, Renoir (son of the impressionist painter) chose to make a subtle yet contemptuous comment on the senseless conventions of pre-war French society in the face of grave crises.

Now cleaned up with a new digital restoration, we are first introduced to an exhausted Andre Jurieax (Roland Toutain), touted as the next Charles Lindberg, as he lands his bi-plane in heroic fashion after crossing the Atlantic solo. He is met by his friend Octave (Renoir in one of his more memorable cameo roles), French diplomats and a media frenzy, but not by his beloved Christine. She is also a close friend of Octave’s, and whom he says was the impetus behind the journey.

Not put out, the now-married Christine switches off the radio broadcast and continues to prepare for her group’s pleasure trip to their countryside estate La Coliniere. While Christine’s husband attends to his own outstanding relationships, Octave convinces them to invite Andre along with them to their estate. Hilarious allegory ensues as the group heads out on their hunting/adulterating excursions (largely referenced in Altman’s “Gosford Park”).

To the casual viewer, possibly expecting a quaint portrait of the 1930’s French lifestyle, the film is quite deceptive in that it does not beatify or denounce any of the characters outright — for instance painting their faces in hard shadows or filling their mouths with adversarial dialogue.

Instead, the filmmaker made the conscious decision to outwit the viewer, even incorporating many of his own personal attributes into the characters, especially Octave. The whimsy creatures of this theatrical anecdote are also in a perpetual state of uneasy happiness throughout the picture, creating the dark underbelly that no one on the stage at La Coliniere wants to admit exists.

“La Regle Du Jeu” was dedicated to the still-influential film critic Andre Bazin, rightly so as he encouraged the realization of many directors’ creative fruits, especially during the New Wave.

In many ways, this film was a culmination of those talents and can be timely for every generation due to its universal conclusions.

For one, almost no screen time is wasted here, with the constant rigmarole of the debutants and their hubbies acting out their confused understanding of love. Only during choice moments, like on the hunt when a terrorized rabbit meets his slow, agonizing end, does the audience have a chance to take a break from the sensation of their anti-reality game and reflect on its repercussions.

As one savior of a suicide attempter said in the film, being in such a situation is as if you are in a separate, detached world when looking at the real one from behind the lens of a camera. “It’s like the nature photographer, taking pictures of a tiger, but he doesn’t realize the tiger’s running right at him until it’s too late.” This sense of capturing an extraordinary aspect of human nature on film does not hinder, but rather it illuminates Eric Steel’s “The Bridge,” (2006).

Doing needed justice to the star-child of taboo subjects, Steel and his cameramen shot hundreds of hours of telephoto film aimed at San Francisco’s Golden Gate in an attempt to capture the numerous suicide attempts that occur there every year. Despite its purest majesty, the bridge is the single most popular destination for suicide attempts in the entire world, according to the film, with 26 successful attempts during Steel’s yearlong 2004 shoot.

Framing the film with the story of Gene, a man who died after jumping from the bridge in 2004, we hear the candid depositions of his friends and family. From these, it becomes clear that even the closest of friends to a mentally volatile person can be totally naïve to what that person is capable of doing. While these types of actions are extremely unpredictable, we generally avoid dwelling on the moroseness of the topic because it makes us feel uncomfortable or afraid that even bringing it up will provide that spark needed for someone to literally go over the edge.

The sister of one of the jumpers puts the attraction of the bridge into perspective, citing its accessibility, stunning beauty, and above all its false promise of fame and romanticism.

The ethical thorns fly in from all directions when one really takes into consideration what is going on here. Some may (and have) asked, how the filmmakers could just stand by and watch people die. Furthermore, by showing people in the act, copycat attempts could result. In an extra DVD featurette however, it is said the cameramen were always ready to make the call as soon as they saw someone jump. Though their goal may be eerily unsettling to many, shining light on the subject germinates discussion among the concerned.

In the tradition of rudimentary, non-condemning documentary filmmaking begun prior to the Depression-era, exploitation is not an impetus for Steel here, as he interviews the families, friends and survivors of those who attempted suicide on the bridge without the slightest sense of judgment. He presents them as they really are, and how people and families experience these tragedies every day.

The most striking moments in this daring, universally essential film are the long, telephoto sequences of people calmly strolling across the bridge until one of them quietly slips their legs over the railing, as if everything is normal. Then a passerby realizes what may be happening and decides to break the social convention of polite non-involvement we all live by, intervening to save the person from jumping into the depths.

Leave it to America, a place where it is never too late to unite for a good cause, to rally behind the rich and famous when dealing with such a vital issue as the self-destructive path we have so desperately clung to for nearly three centuries now. With his contemplative “The 11th Hour,” actor Leonardo DiCaprio has joined the likes of Al Gore and many others in fostering one such movement for this generation.

In the new movie, first-time filmmakers Nadia Conners and Leila Conners Peterson show their novice skills, following DiCaprio’s inspiration. Gathering dozens of nature videos and interviews of experts ranging from Stephen Hawking to Michael Gorbechev, they switch from talking head, to a shot of a volcano erupting, to another speaker, to yet another ocean wave splashing ashore. It becomes difficult to concentrate on only one subject at some points.

Another major player in the film is the constant musical score underlying literally every second of footage. At times eerie, and at others overly bombastic and monumental, the soundtrack reveals that the filmmakers were going straight for the viewers’ heart with their dire message.

Beginning with the current state of earth and the human race, dozens of recognized professors, anthropologists, entrepreneurs, architects, and others make their case for why a pivotal change in global thinking is necessary to sustain consumer’s comfortable ways of life.

Anybody who has taken a history class knows how the Industrial Revolution transformed everything about how things are done within a functioning society. In fact, we still go on with our daily lives not thinking twice about how this period switched our thinking from raising our own food and making our own tools to relying on a supposedly infinite supply of natural resources to be used for mass production in factories.

It is this way of thinking, Gorbechev and others said that got us into the current unstable period, and that the time is running out for us to quit denying the obvious impact our wasteful lifestyles have created. If we don’t act soon, we are the ones that are at the most risk. Being at the top of the food chain, we would be among the first species to go.

The final portion of the film refreshingly focuses less on preaching about where we humans have faulted in our rise to the throne, but more on the ways we can still save ourselves, our ways of life and the natural beauty that surrounds us.

Some possible solutions to moving towards creating a sustainable economic system that supports the recycling of materials instead of their endless waste would include giving corporations incentives to be less wasteful with their production, initializing polluter pay systems and building more environmentally friendly houses and offices. All of these suggestions have begun trial runs in certain countries, and all have had positive impacts.

Though formed as an elongated PSA-like plea for universal awareness, “The 11th Hour” will do moderately well at the box-office, making an initial impact far less than “An Inconvenient Truth” did. The reasons for this may include the fact that the American psyche is so wired that it can only pay true attention to a one-man-show type of production (i.e. Michael Moore), and it is not yet ready to accept the kaleidoscope of other brains in this world ready to make change a reality. Or it may just simply be that the subject of this film that is suited better for the small screen and has too broad a scope for people to focus on anything palpable or revolutionary.

The examination of Fritz Lang and his work can be traditionally presented as a collection of distraught human beings in extraordinary circumstances. In the operatic Metropolis (1927), the protagonist is coaxed into becoming a hero for the downtrodden peoples of an entire society that lay at the feet of his own dominative father. Lang’s M (1931), critically analyzes a world teeming with an epidemic identity crisis.

Even for someone accustomed to the shadowy sub-culture often present in Lang’s oeuvre, the appearance of reality in the opening minutes of the film is fatally deceptive. Children playing ball, mothers ever dedicated to their laundry duties, and a little girl bouncing her ball down the street. The entirety of seemingly innocent, everyday occurrences meet an unexpected turn for the utmost evil when the girl’s ball innocently bounces into a reward sign for the capture of an active child murderer. Then suddenly, an ominous whistling comes from behind the girl (and camera) and a dark shadow falls upon the poster. The girl is abducted by this mysterious man and later, as her mother is frantically looking for her, it is clear that she is dead and will never be heard from again.

The director’s talent in this instance and throughout the movie is to restrain form showing us the overtly violent aspects of the murderer’s nature, and he instead switches focus to the additionally horrific and ever-imitated response of the mother and the society. Both are utterly aghast at the possibility of a human being capable of something as horrible as this. As one of the women says, they are used to “crooks get [ting] sort of tender when they see little kids,” and generally adding that “everyone has a little bit of mother inside.”

The response of the society comes from an unexpected source: the criminal underworld. Similar to the Metropolis underworld, these small-time crooks strive for independence and a dignity in their work amidst the increased police presence due to the recent child murders.

Peter Lorre as the marked man Hans Beckman plays his role with spot-on representations of paranoia and the dangers of obsession. When the mass jury of criminals finally confronts Hans, he exposes their own hypocrisy saying, “are you…proud of breaking safes or cheating at cards?” If they would take the liberty to rid themselves of worthless obsessions and go get a real job, then all that would be left would be people like Hans who have no choice. “It’s impossible. I can’t escape, I have to obey it.”

This involuntary impulse to murder resembles in a way the impulse of the film’s auteur to be continually in a mode of creation, even when the Nazis were looming over his beloved homeland. After transferring from Berlin’s Nero-Film to Paris for a year, Lang settled in the U.S., where his career with MGM would continue until his later years.

Scarce are films which posses the veracity to come clean about man’s diabolical nature. However unavoidable, it is far easier for studios to make people feel good about themselves and safe within their surrounding ethos. This is a restraint Lang seemed to warily steer around upon his American debut. An avid explorer of human behavior via film, even when critical and industrial opinions of him were increasingly malignant, Fritz Lang contributed to the world of cinema an extraordinary pallet of daring complexity and expression for future filmmakers.

In Jeffrey Blitz’s exceptionally quirky debut narrative feature “Rocket Science,” (2007) many themes arise in similarity to the director’s earlier documentary effort “Spellbound” (2002). The films can be seen as companion pieces in different strains, the later focusing on the pressures of a contest, the former on the pressures of life itself.

The challenges that come afoot during one’s secondary schooling are legion, and the many filmmakers who mirror their own experiences onto their characters (John Hughes kick-started this tradition with “Sixteen Candles”) are never without hard-to-watch storylines. Blitz continues this tradition with concise direction of talented actors.

The protagonist is Hal Hefner, played by the television-based actor Reece Thompson (“The 4400,” “Smallville,” and many others), and one day on the bus he is preyed upon by the school’s top debater Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick).

Before we continue, one must be aware that Hefner is a seemingly incurable stutterer, but is equipped with what he deems to be a wry sense of humor. This makes for some of the most discomforting dialogue sequences in recent teen flick memory.
After a humiliating defeat at the previous year’s state championship, where her whiz partner, the slick-tongued Ben Wekselbaum (Nicholas D’Agosto), came to the realization as he was closing in on the title, that the whole thing was a pointless charade. Suddenly stopping mid-sentence, he effectively gave the trophy to the opposing school. Ginny becomes desperate to reclaim her superiority, and back on the bus convinces Hal of his potential when she says “deformed people” are always the best. “It must be their deep source of anger.”

Completely infatuated, Hal falls for Ginny and her rifling speech patterns. He looks up to her as nature’s perfect creation, and decides to make a move, but Ginny is seemingly not prepared to get so close, and in response leaves the team for a rival school.
On top of this, Hal’s home life is shit. Lacking the support of a father (or mother) figure and being forced to fend for himself, he manages to survive on his own.

Not willing to give in so easily, he goes in search of the legend. Wekselbaum, now living alone, is found working happily at a cleaners in the slums of Trenton, N.J., and it is here that Hal plans to stage a comeback to prove his worth—but to whom?

At first, it is easy to think Blitz is simply jumping on the awkward bandwagon, joining the likes of “Napoleon Dynamite,” “Rushmore” and others in order to get a ticket to Hollywood — and he may very well be. A closer look at Hefner, however, may reveal an impetus somewhat less shallow.

Blitz is trying to tell us something momentous here about the importance of humanity’s capability for speech in that it doesn’t matter how many 15-letter words we can blurt out in perfect sibilance in front of large crowds, but rather what you do with the knowledge you gain and the words you do—eventually—speak.

For the director of “Mean Streets,” “Goodfellas,” and “Gangs of New York,” organized crime is as American as apple pie. What separates his previous entries in the crime film log with his latest, “The Departed,” is that his entire script was reworked from a 2002 film out of Hong Kong, titled “Infernal Affairs.”

With an ensemble cast of Goliath proportions, the new film is a welcome workout for some of Hollywood’s finest, including Matt Damon (Syriana), Leonardo DiCaprio (The Aviator) and, uh … oh yeah, the inimitable Jack Nicholson (Anger Management).

The audience is plunged right into the young adulthoods of the two main characters: Billy Costigan (DiCaprio) and Colin Sullivan (Damon) with quickly-coming and quickly-going scene fragments.

This sudden release of background information is prefaced by the coolly dominant voice of Nicholson, who plays Boston’s Irish mafia boss Frank Costello.

“I don’t want to be a product of my environment,” he proclaims. “I want my environment to be a product of me.”

Conversely, we see the development of Costigan into an undercover cop whose dedication is waning fast in light of his much-extended stay as one of Costello’s trusted go-to men. Sullivan is then promoted to detective for the Massachussets State Police so that he can presumably hunt down the man who runs Boston’s streets, but Scorcese lets us in on a little secret: he is actually a mole working for Costello himself in order to find the rat he senses among his own.

Paying close attention to Costigan and Sullivan, they are both clearly uncomfortable with their situations and the direction their lives are headed. In a scene with Billy’s psychiatrist Madolyn (Vera Farmiga), he voraciously insults her career as she refuses to prescribe him meds to cure his anxiety attacks. Minutes after he leaves, she brings him his prescription, and then of course, they hook up for a date.

Change is the hardest task for these two protagonists, constantly conflicted between doing bad things and acting out their truly good nature. For the avid filmgoer, it may add to one’s experience to view this dilemma as it is accentuated further in the morally centered Chinese original.

While both films accentuate the vastly different studio systems in China and the United States, they are at the same time sharing the same human themes of conflict between moral and personal obligations.

Like the transference of Kurosawa’s samurai classics into Leone’s spaghetti westerns, Scorcese has Americanized an emerging thread in Eastern cinema, that of the law enforcement’s inability to effectively combat organized crime.