Overall the feel is like that of Ocean's Eleven; everyone seems to be having a great time making an enjoyable film without too many pretensions. We all know that it's ridiculous, but it's a heck of a lot of fun nevertheless.

It's worth noting too that this film's primary question is not "are replicants people too?", but rather "how and why do people refuse to recognize them as such"? That Roy and his companions are human should be beyond debate. Why then does society refuse to accept this? Beware! Follow those answers too assiduously and you my find they have uncomfortable implications. As a result, however, even should technological progress make the setting seem quaint someday, I think Blade Runner will always feel relevant because its themes are so...human.

What seems simple on the surface turns out to be less so, since as soon as Marlowe starts digging into the tale of blackmail people start turning up dead in his path and the mystery deepens and broadens to encompass a lot more than just a few gambling debts.

The plot of the film is simple and mundane; just as in many actual documentaries the drama and interest (and here, humor) comes from the characters and their quirks, foibles, and interactions. Five dogs and their owners and handlers travel to Philadelphia to compete in the Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show.

Based on a novel by Lew Wallace (sometime Civil War general, governor of the New Mexico territory and envoy to the Ottoman empire) the movie is about a wealthy Jew in Palestine seeking revenge for a severe injustice.

The Bad Sleep Well is a Kurosawa that doesn't feel like a typical Kurosawa movie. Known mostly here for samurai films set in or near the sengoku jidai period of Japanese history, Kurosawa has crafted a contemporary crime thriller about corruption in government and business and one man's quixotic quest for revenge and justice.

There's murder, mystery, love, and betrayal; all filtered through the setting of a California high school shortly after the turn of the century.

Another film about which I've written before. This is a film from the Japanese master director Yasujiro Ozu. This is one of several films he made that considers the transitional period in life where the child-parent relationship shifts as the child comes of age to marry and move out.

Here Huston crafts a fine noir-adjacent film out of a large cast without the characters becoming confused and keeps a heist simple and cracking along so that you're riding the edge of your seat waiting to see what comes next and brings the whole thing in under two hours. Modern directors would be well-served to take notes.

While the plot really isn't that important (the Marx Bros. are about the jokes, not the story), but the basic idea is that the four brothers all end up at a large weekend house party thrown by one of the ultra-rich. Hijinks ensue.