I didn't initially like the concept of the doves, but the two of them trying to have a conversation while they constantly swooped past their heads wore me down.

Well, I didn't assume it. I observed it, by watching the movie.

Young relative to Melamed. Though Melamed turns out to be younger than I thought (57).

Well, I didn't think I Give It a Year was an odious piece of shit (though it started out looking like one—I did hate the first 10-15 minutes). So yes. Among other things, it actually sticks to its central idea, as opposed to mostly ignoring it.

Humor is so subjective. There's a version of this scene I would have found funny, but as it actually plays out it seemed painfully forced. Would it be such a massive faux pas to simply say "Oh, whoops, you know what, there are some photos here that aren't really family-room material"? And the way the parents stare at…

It's actually in the trailer. Except it's not at all funny divorced from context (so there's no point in my repeating it here.) Just like "this is one nutty hospital" is only hilarious if you've watched at least the previous 10 minutes or so of Tootsie.

That brief scene is seven minutes long.

That whole system gets a bit goofy on the negative end. My own grades are very much a Bell curve—I rarely give A's, but I also rarely give F's, or even D's. (As an example, my own grade for Alex Cross was a D+. That was one of my bottom five films last year, which for most people would be at least a D if not a D- or…

Not all repetition is the same. Julia Loktev's Day Night Day Night features a stunning scene in which the would-be terrorist recites the details of her fake ID over and over for her handler; it's the same questions and answers repeated for several straight minutes. That is obviously not the same thing as a movie…

I haven't seen Fanny and Alexander in like 20 years; it's coming up for a revisit in the near future. I think I liked it okay, but in general I'm not a big Bergman fan. (Exceptions: Persona, Sawdust and Tinsel, Smiles of a Summer Night.)

I was in fact assigned the film, though I was happy to revisit it as I hadn't seen it since its original theatrical release. Was really hoping I'd find more to admire than I did at the time, but alas, no.

Right? Hadn't really expected this level of wounded anger. Babette's Feast is a non-entity in the cinephile circles I travel in, not so much disliked as just barely remembered or acknowledged.

Replying to washington WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE FUCKING KILL DISQUS WITH FIRE: It's that the film doesn't bother. Tykwer is a formalist; Axel decidedly is not, at least on the basis of this one. (I find it significant that none of his others seems to have ever left Denmark.)

I didn't mean that quite so literally. It's not that of the available choices, voters picked the wrong one. Their general taste strongly influences what gets offered to them in the first place, as each country tries to guess what will appeal.

The story in the Criterion booklet begins on page 20 and ends on page 60. And they're not exactly huge pages. But that's of less interest to me than the essential literary-ness of Dinesen's work and the film's utter inability to find a visual correlative. Look at the sentences I quote and tell me where and how the…

I understood the movie fine, fellas. (It's not exactly rocket science.) I just didn't much like it. Try to cope.

I'd absolutely say it about Cinema Paradiso and (ye gods) Belle Epoque. Belle Epoque is the freakin' poster child for the kind of film I'm talking about.

Definitely not me badmouthing Wes Anderson. I'm a big fan.

The idea was that you'd need a confederate for the surprise element if you're acting as host. Otherwise you're gonna be pretty conspicuous.

There is virtually no chess in the movie. I'm not knowledgeable enough to know whether experts will be able to spot interesting details by examining the boards.