I'm reading the Costello book as well, and I agree, and since I like that kind of digressive narrative I'm enjoying it, especially since, as you say, his voice comes through so clearly and it's so well-written.

Rancho Notorious is the best female-driven Western (besides McCabe, of course), and Fritz Lang Westerns are kind of underrated. Plus, Marlene Dietrich.

Have you seen Rendition? It's not a good movie, but he's pretty sympathetic in that one (IMHO, he also gives the only really good performance in it).

I still prefer the version of this Toussaint did with Chet Atkins on the Rhythm, Country & Blues album, but I like this as well.

I'm just hoping it won't be Jasmine (or the MCU equivalent).

I was just about to post that. It's the first thing I ever saw him in, and he was great in that ("Traffic was brutal").

Glad to see I'm not the only one who likes that movie. Don't forget it also has Lou Reed as Bob Dylan, Allen Garfield basically playing Bill Graham (the movie being based on Arkush's time working at the Filmore) and Malcolm McDowell as Mick Jagger (or an equivalent) talking to his penis!

Olivia de Havilland did a good twin/evil twin movie that's pretty good, called The Dark Mirror.

I would say this sequence serves a couple of functions:

Other films in competition that year (aside from The Soft Skin, which I've never seen, and Woman in the Dunes, which I think is brilliant, and would have been my choice that year):

That episode where O'Hare plays a schizophrenic who turns into a killer when he goes off his meds, and Dowd plays his sister, has some of the best acting both of them have ever done. She's also good in the ep where she plays a woman who kidnaps a baby that she was promised she could adopt. Both of them have the gift…

Still doing my off/on project of reading books I inherited from my father that I haven't read yet. Recently read Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, which I might have liked more if I was more familiar with the Gothic fiction she was parodying, but still worth reading. I'm about a third of the way through Thomas Hardy's Te…

It's an "official" bootleg, so it may not count here, but I really like Pete Townshend's first two Scoop albums, with some early versions of Who songs on them. The third one isn't as strong, but it does have some good songs on it, and the liner notes on all three are interesting; I didn't know, for example, "Athena" -…

"I'm not the first guy who fell in love with a woman that he met at a restaurant who turned out to be the daughter of a kidnapped scientist, only to lose her to her childhood lover who she last saw on a deserted island, who then turned out fifteen years later to be the leader of the French underground."
"I know. It all…

This is a bit older, but; I've watched the original Miracle on 34th Street and the Humphrey Bogart version of The Maltese Falcon too many times to count, yet it wasn't until I was in my 30's that I realized the guy who played the prosecutor in the former was the same guy who played Bogart's partner (who gets killed…

I like the movie despite its flaws (the makeover) and the schematic nature of it, but there had been decent teen movies before then. Over the Edge and Fast Times at Ridgemont High were both excellent dealing with "parents just don't understand!" (the former) and cliques in school (the latter). And yes, the original Car…

At a number of parties my father threw, he would cue up the scene from this movie where Ron Howard and Cindy Williams are dancing at the hop to "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" to show people.

And Lucas actually played the younger Paul Newman in Empire Falls.

Whatever you want to say about Anniversary Party and Dancer in the Dark - and I don't like either of them - at least you could tell there was some thought behind how they were shot, and an attempt to use digital other than for its cost and novelty value. That partially mitigates for me how awkward digital looked back…

He also did a good noir film, Somewhere in the Night, and I liked his version of Julius Caesar as well. Oh, and his western, There Was a Crooked Man… is really good too.
I'm with you on Sleuth, though for a different reason; I didn't mind the twist so much as I thought the dialogue was too self-conscious, affecting a…