Say it Loud: I'm Black and Proud

Film: Within Our Gates
Format: Internet video on laptop.


The List exists for a number of reasons. It’s a celebration of films that are truly great for one reason or another. Some are simply great films; others are important because of the innovation they brought to the language of cinema. Others, like Within Our Gates are important for historical and cultural reasons. This film is the earliest film produced and directed by an African American.

Like a number of films on this list, I was prepared to gut this one out. I made the commitment at the start of the month to attempt to locate and watch the earliest remaining film on the list every week, and it turns out that this week, it was Within Our Gates’s turn. A no-budget film with amateur actors, and silent doesn’t sound like my idea of a good time. But, as I said, The List exists for a reason, and committing to watching the entire list means sitting down with every movie and giving it its just due. I braced myself for a rough ride.

The rough ride never showed up. Okay, there were certainly some bumps, and it was far from butter smooth, but all in all, I dreaded this film far more than its reality warranted. This isn’t to say that Within Our Gates doesn’t have problems. It suffers from a number of issues, not the least of which is that it tries to do far too much with its short running time. There are three distinct stories here—the plight of a school, the path of a criminal, and the back story of one of the main characters.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here, as usual. This is the tale of Sylvia Landry (Evelyn Preer), who is engaged to Conrad Drebert (James D. Ruffin). Unfortunately for Sylvia, her cousin Alma (Flo Clements) is also in love with Conrad, and arranges for him to spot Sylvia in a compromising position with another man, causing him to call off the engagement.

Sylvia responds to this by returning to the South and a black-only school whose director is too kind-hearted to turn away any child, even those too poor to pay the meager amount needed for education. His tenderheartedness causes the school to approach bankruptcy, so Sylvia heads north to raise the $5,000 needed to keep the school open.

It is here that we encounter the first real racism in the film. In the north, Sylvia encounters three people. First is Dr. Vivian (Charles D. Lucas), who catches a thief who has stolen Sylvia’s purse. He is quickly taken with Sylvia. Also encountered is Elena Warwick (Mrs. Evelyn), a wealthy philanthropist who nearly runs Sylvia down with her car, and then discovers Sylvia’s quest to save the school. Third is Geraldine Stratton (Bernice Ladd), a woman so dead set against non-whites that she opposes women’s suffrage lest the black woman be given the right to vote.

With money in hand, Sylvia returns to the south, while Dr. Vivian finds out about her past. She was raised by a poor but honest black family who were lynched for a crime they didn’t commit. Sylvia manages to escape, but is nearly raped by a man who turns out to be her biological father. Pretty creepy if you ask me.

What’s interesting here is that while many of the racial problems here are unquestionably the fault of the white people, many are equally the fault of the downtrodden African Americans themselves. Larry (Jack Chenault), the criminal who is also the step-brother of Alma preys on those he can find by swindling them at every opportunity. More insidious is the preacher Ned who realizes he is “selling [his] birthright for a ‘mess o’ pottage’” by telling his congregation that they should remain ignorant and thus get to Heaven while the rich white folk will be condemned to hell.

Just as damaging to the situation of Sylvia and the other honest and hardworking black folk is Efram (E.G. Tatum), who accuses Sylvia’s adopted father, raises the townsfolk against him, and ends up lynched himself, paying for his terrible misdeeds in the most awful way possible.

Certainly there are real problems with this film. It is often amateurish, and while there are a few scenes of action and excitement, a great deal of the film is nothing more than people sitting in rooms miming conversation with each other, massive numbers of intertitles (that are probably the best part of the film), and people sitting behind desks.

Micheaux did the best he could with what he had to work with. That his efforts aren’t the professional work of other directors of the time is no shame. In many ways, Micheaux is the first independent filmmaker. Within Our Gates is worth watching not simply because it is the earliest cinematic document of a black filmmaker. It should be watched on its own merits, melodramatic and overwrought though they are. It’s too much for what it is, and could easily lose 20 minutes of its already short running time, but as a piece of history, it’s something worthy of note.

Why to watch Within Our Gates: A rescued historical document of great importance.
Why not to watch: Frequently amateurish.

The (Concrete) Lion Sleeps Tonight

Film: The Asphalt Jungle
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on middlin’-sized living room television.

With any genre of film, there are half a dozen or so that get mentioned in the first breath. When it comes to film noir, The Asphalt Jungle is one of those films. It is close to a perfect film, one that hits every note correctly both for film in general and for film noir in particular. Yes, I’m gushing, and I’m revealing at the start how I feel about this film. I don’t really care.

Since this is a film noir, it’s going to deal almost exclusively with criminal behavior, and to perpetrate this behavior, we have a huge collection of bad, bad people. We could start anywhere, but we may as well start at the man who seems to be the amoral center—Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden). Dix is a thug, a man whose job in any caper is to shoot at whatever someone points him at. He has a soft spot for Doll Conovan (Jean Hagen), who has an equal soft spot for the big lug.

Dix gets brought in on a big job knocking over a jeweler by crime mastermind Doc Erwin Riedenschneider (hereafter referred to as “Doc,” and played by Sam Jaffe). Doc’s proposed job will cost about $50,000 for Dix, the driver, and the safe cracker, but will net a cool half million in purloined gems. Fronting the operation is shady lawyer Alonzo “Lon” Emmerich (Louis Calhern), a man who lives bigger than his wallet, in part because of his penchant for spending time with Angela Phinlay (a very young Marilyn Monroe).

Emmerich’s problem is that he’s busted. Spending money on Angela hasn’t helped this, but he holds his entire lifestyle to blame—he’s just too free with the money. This is something he shares in common with Dix, who tends to play the ponies and play them poorly. Regardless, Emmerich’s plan is to fence the gems from the heist himself, and then use the money to skip to Europe, leaving Doc, Dix, and the others holding the proverbial bag.

This is all part and parcel of film noir, of course, which trades both on the idea of the anti-hero as well as the almost certainty of a double-cross somewhere in the mix. The heist runs into problems and guns blaze. People get shot. Emmerich attempts his double-cross. Guns blaze and people get shot.

I like film noir a lot. The more noir I see, the more it becomes one of my favorite genres of film. Part of this is that the plots tend to be intricate enough to warrant watching. Oh, I know going in that people are going to pursue their vices and die for their sins. That’s part and parcel of the genre. I know there’s going to be furtive meetings in shadows, plans formed and sent reeling due to bad luck or greed. I know it’s not going to have a happy ending. But what I also know going in is that the dialogue is going to be interesting and worth listening to. I know that the characters are going to be more than just the sum of their collective sins.

On all of these scores, The Asphalt Jungle is a classic. The dialogue is noteworthy mainly because it isn’t very noteworthy. There aren’t many tremendous lines or quotes to walk away with, but the dialogue here is very real, and spoken always in earnest. The characters, for all of their faults, are believable and I want to pay attention to them.

I tend to get sucked into films with this basic plot over and over again. I can predict the bad ending even as I hope for something good to happen to the poor mugs with the bad luck to be written into a noir.

Eh, I’m rambling. Film noir is an important genre of film and The Asphalt Jungle is one of the purest and best examples of the genre. There’s no real other reason to watch this film. It’s enough that it’s simply great.

Why to watch The Asphalt Jungle: Noir doesn’t get better than this one.
Why not to watch: Nothing good happens to anyone.

Nucking Futs

Films: Shock Corridor, The Snake Pit
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player (Shock); streaming video from NetFlix on laptop (Snake).

When it comes to filming the dirtier side of life, sex is what the people want to see. There are undoubtedly more films that showcase sex—not even getting into the pornographic side of the world—than anything else. Tune into Cinemax some night after about 10:30 and see how many bad cop movies/slasher movies/etc. take place in strip clubs, for instance. Of almost as much interest to the average person is insanity, and plenty of films explore this as well. Many of these are pretty bad, just like most sex films are pretty bad. But some of them are also pretty good, even beyond the shock appeal and the thrill of watching something that feels like should be going on behind closed doors.

Shock Corridor is such a film. Looking to expose a killer in the local mental institution, ace reporter Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) undergoes a year of training to pose as a mental patient. He has his girlfriend, singer and stripper Cathy (Constance Towers), claim that Johnny is her brother, and that he’s attempted to force an incestuous relationship with her. The doctors at the hospital agree to put him under observation, and get Johnny declared legally insane, committing him to the ward.

As Johnny undergoes treatment, he locates the three men who were the witness to the crime committed as well as other inmates like Pagliacci (Larry Tucker), a grossly overweight man who believes himself an opera singer. The first witness Johnny speaks to is Stuart (James Best). Stuart was captured by the communists in Korea and brainwashed, and now believes himself to be General J.E.B. Stuart, and replays Confederate battles in his head. In a moment of lucidity (something that happens with each witness), Stuart reveals that the killer wore white pants, and is thus either an attendant or a doctor.

Witness number two is Trent (Hari Rhodes), an African-American who was the only non-white at a prominent university. Eventually, the constant abuse broke him down, and he spends his days split between his old personality and one in which he is a racist and a founder of the KKK. From Trent, Johnny learns that the killer was not a doctor, but an attendant.

Third on the list is Dr. Boden (Gene Evans), a man who worked on the Manhattan Project, and has regressed to a childlike state, a regression that he admits to having done willingly during his moment of lucidity. He reveals the name of the real killer to Johnny, closing the case.

The problem is, and this is the reason to watch the film, of course, is that his time spent in the institution is starting to have a real effect on poor Johnny’s mind. Initially, he has terrible dreams about what might happen to the attractive Cathy while he is in stir. After all, he thinks, Cathy is attractive and talented, and works in a strip show—there’s no telling what one of the customers might get up to. Eventually, though, he starts to believe in the story he invented to get thrown into the ward in the first place.

There are plenty of lurid moments. At one point, while trying to get on Stuart’s good side, for instance, Johnny is trapped in the nymphomaniac ward, and nearly torn to shreds by women desperate for any man. While this might sound like the sort of scene Russ Meyer might film, it’s actually pretty terrifying. There’s nothing sexy about this scene, and quite a bit that is horrible, and Johnny comes out of the ordeal bandaged.

In his attempt to win over Trent, Johnny helps Trent go on a race-fueled explosion, which earns Johnny a trip to electroshock therapy—again lurid and again frightening and terrible. This episode creates a further indication of Johnny’s deteriorating mental state: frequently his ability to speak gives out and he’s unable to communicate.

There’s no doubt that Shock Corridor was made with the lurid in mind, and it seeks to shock the viewer at every turn. One of the most effective moments of this comes with a full-blown hallucination on the part of Johnny, featuring rain in the middle of the ward and some sudden color photography. Once this happens, it’s evident that like the other patients, Johnny is having moments of insanity and lucidity. The question is which will come out on top.

Despite the lurid nature of the topic and the story, this is a great film. It’s not an easy watch, but it’s a worthy one, and this is a film I will definitely revisit once I’ve completed the entire list.

An earlier film about the insane asylum is The Snake Pit. This is a far less lurid tale, perhaps because of its age, and perhaps because it attempts to paint a realistic picture of schizophrenia instead of the amped-up version presented in Shock Corridor. Certainly there are a number of Hollywood touches to this film, but this is a harrowing account of the illness of Virginia Cunningham (Olivia de Havilland) and the attempts to get to the root of her particular mental state.

We start in the hospital, called Juniper Hill (and if you’ve ever read Stephen King’s It, now you know where he got the name of his mental institution from), and Virginia’s awakening. She has no idea where she is or how she got there. We learn briefly in a flashback from her husband Robert (Mark Stevens) that the two of them met in Chicago, and that she ran out quickly one night when they had plans. He eventually found her again after he had moved to New York, and while she seemed both desperate and unable to believe that he truly loved her, they were married. Shortly thereafter, she broke with reality completely, and was institutionalized.

We learn what has happened to Virginia as her doctor, Mark Kik (short for Chrzanowski, and played by Leo Genn) learns of her troubled past. Virginia is convinced that it is impossible for a man to love her, or so we think at first. What we come to understand is not that she finds herself unlovable, but that she seems to be plagued with a curse—men who care about her don’t fare too well when Virginia isn’t happy with them or wants a break from them. A few terrible coincidences lead to schizophrenia, and to shock treatments and hydrotherapy.

What’s interesting here is that this film caused a huge reaction in the country at large—mental institutions were revamped because of this film. This is despite the fact that this film is in no way an expose of institutions. If anything, the wrath of the reformers must have centered on such places because of the character of Miss Davis (Helen Craig), who appears to be a sort of template for Nurse Ratched, although with far less malice and power.

While The Snake Pit succumbs to the Hollywood ending, this in no way diminishes its power, or the incredible force of de Havilland’s portrayal. She gives here one of the great acting performances ever recorded, and I’ll say it here—the woman was robbed at the Oscars.

The Snake Pit is too clinical at times, and fast forwards past many aspects of treatment. However, few things resonate so completely as Virginia’s first moments in what she calls the snake pit—it’s a moment of despair and realization brilliantly filmed, and one that still resonates as powerfully now as 60 years ago.

Why to watch Shock Corridor: It doesn’t spare the lurid details.
Why not to watch: It’s hard on the psyche.

Why to watch The Snake Pit: One of the greatest acting jobs ever committed to film.
Why not to watch: Olivia de Havilland far less glamorous than you’re used to.

All Roads Lead to...

Film: Roma Citta Aperta (Open City, Rome Open City)
Format: DVDs from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

No event in human history has spawned more films than World War II. War films during and immediately after the war tended to be more patriotic affairs, often riddled with evidence of nationalism and jingoism. This was important for the morale of the soldiers as well as the people back home. Often the European take on the war is less sappy and maudlin and more realistic. Such is the case with Roma Citta Aperta (Rome Open City, often shortened merely to Open City). The action takes place amidst the destruction and carnage of the war, although the war itself doesn’t really intrude much on the film.

Rome has been occupied by Germany, and the German Army is preparing for the assault on the Italian capital by the Allies. Naturally, there are a number of Italian citizens who would like to see an end to the war. Most of the Italian citizens we spend time with are actively working for the resistance movement, and most of them are actively pursued by the Nazis.

At the center of this is Don Pietro Pellegrini (Aldo Fabrizi), a priest who sometimes acts as a courier for the resistance. His role as a priest makes him valuable, because he is less suspicious than others and has tacit approval to be out and about past the curfew. He runs messages and money for Francesco (Francesco Grandjacquet), who is engaged to Pina (Anna Magnani), a pregnant widow. Also in the mix is Giorgio Manfredi (Marcello Pagliero) and his ex-girlfriend, Marina (Maria Michi).

The local Gestapo would like nothing more than to capture these men, particularly Giorgio, and will stop at nothing to find him and then torture out all of the information they want from him. It’s the finding him that they’re having problems with. To locate him, they use a series of informants and spies, none of whom is as useful as Marina, who can be bought with drugs and creature comforts like fur coats.

Since the Nazis have a spy placed so close to Giorgio, it’s only a matter of time until they catch him, and the conspirators hatch several plots to get him and Francesco away from the Germans and to somewhere they can continue working for Italian freedom.

There are several surprising moments in this film. Most shocking is the arrest of Francesco and the fate of Pina as she chases after the truck taking away her fiancé on the day before their proposed wedding. Equally shocking is the rescue attempt. The most brutal and shocking part of the film comes, appropriately enough, at the end. I’d rather not spoil this. I’ll merely state that it is one of the most brutal and effective scenes of its type ever filmed, mostly because Rossellini is smart enough to show us mere glimpses of what is happening without really showing us what he could. Our imagination works overtime thinking of what might be going on, and when we see the end results, they are every bit as bad as we thought they would be.

Like many a film, Roma Citta Aperta trades on its characters far more than it does on the story. The story is fine, if a bit simple. It’s the characters who really sell it, though. Fabrizi’s portrayal of the priest is dead on. This is a man who will sacrifice anything for his ideals, a truth he proves by the end of the film. His portrayal here is moving because it is also completely human and real. Similarly, Magnani’s Pina is vibrant and interesting, beautiful in spite of herself, and always interesting to watch.

The same can’t be said of everyone. Rossellini used a lot of amateur actors, and this shows in a number of scenes. The wooden quality of these deliveries do little to detract from this film.

Why to watch Roma Citta Aperta: War from a different point of view.
Why not to watch: As cheerful as a heart attack.

Lamb Chops

Film: Killer of Sheep
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I’ve been asked several times why I am pursuing a goal such as completing this entire list of movies. It’s a fair question, and it’s one I ask myself when I force myself to struggle through 150 minutes of silent melodrama. There are a number of reasons to struggle on, though. One of them is films like Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep. There is no way I’d have picked this off a library shelf if it wasn’t on a list, but it’s films like this that make the list worthwhile.

Briefly, this is the story of Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders), a man who works in a slaughterhouse. He helps herd the sheep into the line, hangs them up, kills them, and skins them. We see a bit of this throughout the film. He is attempting to make a life for his family and for himself, and he is constantly knocked back and knocked down by the everyday struggle of existence.

Stan and his family are poor, a reality he tries to avoid admitting to himself by saying that he gives things away to the Salvation Army, and poor people can’t afford to do that. Nevertheless, he is always short of money and always trying to think of a way to come up with more. What he’d really like is a different job, one that wasn’t such a boring and painful daily slog through skinned sheep. He and his wife (Kaycee Moore) barely get by, and every step forward is joined by an equivalent step backward.

For many people, this is reality. For Stan, though, there feels like there should be more. Stan has a poetic soul. He finds what enjoyment he can in his time outside of work—his kids, the feel of a china cup against his skin. But he has no time for himself really, or for relaxation. The house needs constant repairs, and when he is not at work, he is fixing something, trying to keep ahead of the entropy that he sees both in his house and in the surrounding neighborhood.

Like many films of this sort, there isn’t a tremendous amount of plot to deal with. Stan goes to work, comes home, deals with a setback, and moves on. Instead, this is a character study of the man himself. Stan is smart enough to see that there should be more to his life, and poor enough to realize that there probably never will be. Even trying to relax ends up with the minor tragedy of a flat tire, the realization that he hasn’t been able to afford a spare, and the limp back home, his day off wasted with something he didn’t want to have to deal with.

What we discover is that Stan has no control over his own destiny. He is instead boxed into the life he lives, much like the sheep he kills. No matter how he tries to escape—finding a new job, fixing the roof of the house—nothing he does to gain control lasts, or even moves him a step forward. His life, such as it is, is his life and always will be.

While certainly relevant for the Black experience in 1977, Killer of Sheep resonates even more fully today, in a world in which the economy doesn’t seem to ever get any better and everyone seems to be doing everything he or she can to merely tread water and stay in place. Stan’s plight is the plight of most of us, locked into places we’d like to escape from, knowing that the value of our own lives and souls is more than we are being paid for them.

Many of the performances in this film are amateurish, which comes from the fact that Burnett was forced by his minimal budget to use amateur actors. This can be easily overlooked based on the strength of other performances. Sanders is especially strong. He is expressive, pained, and easy to identify with, and is surprisingly nuanced throughout. While many of the peripheral and tertiary characters are wooden and say lines like they are reading them, for the most part it isn’t too noticeable.

All of this leads me to the title of this film. On the surface, it’s simply a statement of what Stan does for a living. He works in a slaughterhouse and he kills sheep. It’s not a difficult stretch, though, to equate Stan to those very sheep that he slaughters. He’s less the killer and more the victim, lining up in the pen and awaiting his turn to be trussed and hung from a hook while the cruel world skins him and takes from him everything he has to offer, using up everything but the bleat. Stan is emotionally and physically crushed before our eyes, and has as much hope of getting away as the sheep do. Life, or society, or his existence, is the killer of sheep, and Stan’s fate is that of all of us.

Ponder that for 10 minutes and then go enjoy your day.

Why to watch Killer of Sheep: A portrait of real life and real struggle.
Why not to watch: Skinned sheep heads.

Way, Way, Way Down

Film: Way Down East
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.


I took a gander at another film by D.W. Griffith, and his fourth in the first eight films on The List. The film in question is Way Down East, a domestic drama that I think is fairly safe from ever being remade based on the characters and the situation. It’s not one that works well in today’s world. We start with young Anna (Lillian Gish), a poor country girl sent to the city to visit her wealthier relations.

It is here that Anna meets Lennox Sanderson (Lowell Sherman). Sanderson is a rake, and a user of women. Interested only in his own pleasure, Sanderson woos the young woman, perhaps not really knowing that she’s merely a poor relative and not someone who comes from money herself. Regardless, Sanderson convinces Anna to marry him in secret, allowing him to continue using women as he wishes, but also giving him the pleasure and company of Anna’s bed. Naturally, Anna gets pregnant, which is the cue for Sanderson to admit the marriage was a sham and abandon her and her infant, Trust. When Trust dies (and yes, you should read that as “trust” dying as well), the now abandoned and alone Anna is forced to fend for herself. She does so by making her way to the Bartlett estate and begging for a job.

Here she meets David Bartlett (Richard Barthelmess), the son of the squire (Burr McIntosh). David quickly becomes enamored of the pretty Anna, but she keeps her distance thanks to her unusual past. Things come to a head when Lennox shows up in the area sniffing around the squire’s niece Kate and discovers his abandoned “wife” in the area.

And it’s here that I will confer with fellow 1001 blogger Squish Lessard. In his review of this film, he decries the melodrama, which is ample. I’m not personally adverse to melodrama when it works (Night of the Hunter), but when it doesn’t work, it really doesn’t work. Way Down East suffers from many of the same problems that comedies have had since comedies began. If someone—anyone—would just say something, all of the problems get resolved instantly. A movie that trades on the idea that everyone has to act like a complete idiot is a movie that has failed in the plot department. One person making a single comment cuts this plot off at the knees and cuts the last act completely.

See, our poor little Anna is branded as a harlot and a loose woman because she’s a) unmarried and b) has had a child. Except that she got married, and sex and having kids are a part of being married. She’s married, f’cryin’ out loud! The fact that she isn’t really married is because Lennox is a bastard, not because she’s wanton—he lied to her. All she has to do is tell someone and produce the damned certificate of marriage, or find a witness, and her good name is restored and Lennox Sanderson is viewed for the abandoning woman-user that he is. But no, it’s all to the plot that Anna must remain silently suffering this agony and these terrible accusations about her person and character. If she had a single ounce of backbone, our movie ends at the ninety minute-or-so mark. But instead of suing the bastard for breach of contract and a host of other legal niceties, she instead runs out on an ice floe in an effort to destroy herself (and it’s worth noting that Lillian Gish suffered for the rest of her life from complications involving the ice floe garbage).

No movie should depend on the plot device of everyone involved being a damned idiot, but that’s what we get from Griffith here. People are either mean-stupid or noble-stupid. Enjoying this movie means enjoying the company of really stupid people. More than that, they are a people with a very strange morality. It’s such a complete throwback to dark, dark days when the woman who is lied to and abused is held responsible. Essentially, Anna is a pariah not because she had a child out of marriage, but because she allowed herself to be lied to, and when she finally does reveal the complete truth behind her terrible secret, it's too little, too late. Moreover, the moral stance of the bulk of the cast is coming from a collection of people who would like to see David and Kate get married…and they’re cousins.

Compounding on this particular frustration is Griffith’s penchant for playing morality boss in a good number of his title cards. While I’m certain his intent was to be moral, the reality is that he comes off as pedantic.

The real shame here, though, is that Way Down East has all of the makings of a great screwball comedy. Instead, Griffith goes for doom, gloom, and message, message, message. Film was still in its infancy in 1920, and Griffith shows it here because he delivers the message of the film with his usual subtlety—that of a cricket bat applied to the temple. I felt beaten down by this film rather than what I assume was the intended uplift of the ending.

The other problem with making this into a comedy is that Griffith really isn’t funny. He has several comic relief characters here, and none of them are the least bit comic, or offer any relief. Furthermore, a great deal of the trouble in this film is caused by town busybody Martha (an uncredited Vivia Ogden), who ends up married to the man who has pursued her for a couple decades. Why the hell would anyone want such a nasty, evil-faced, self-important bint to get anything like a happy ending? Only in Griffith-land.

One more Griffith film to go. Thank God.

Why to watch Way Down East: Classic silent drama and the lovely Lillian Gish.
Why not to watch: The plot could be solved half way through with a single sentence.

Month 14 Status Report

Well, not too much in the way of musicals in February (I did one, I think), but I certainly made a dent in the silent films. I've decided that for as long as I can, I'm going to attempt a silent film every week from this point forward until I get through them all. When possible, I'll watch the earliest remaining film on the list, and will sometimes do more than one. I have a sudden urge to complete them all and leave them behind. I don't know if that's because I'm becoming attuned to them or because I'm becoming tired of them.

February was a good month in other ways, too. I got through the second-longest film still remaining (Satantango), which feels like a real accomplishment.

Look for a tapering off of posts for the next three weeks, followed by a massive surge of activity at the end of March.

Oh, and for the record, I'm officially 30% done with the entire list.