Shawshank+Makes+Me+Wanna+Go+To+Prison+and+Other+Stuff

__**THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION** as seen and interpreted through the happenings of Liam Walsh__ It all starts with Andy's conviction, exemplifying Shawshank's first blush, first kiss, first impression, first glance and starting anew at the beginning of the alphabet and subsequently drags on in a flowing, long-winded, spun out but beautiful example of cinematic storytelling. Personally, I thought the slow movement did us a world of good, giving the master of rolls time to appreciate the mezzanine floor before them. Its something I could just fix my eyes on again and again and never retire into the shade...though it did make two life sentences seem like a cakewalk with a few major scrapes but ultimately nothing to write home about. WHITE-HOT!

__**CASABLANCA MAKES ME WANNA FALL IN LOVE AND THWART NAZIS**__ While coming out of the spectrum, you don't need a classical education or moral tuition to appreciate that this love story is just cool. The dialogue and characters and soundtrack and even just the way the shadows play off the heroes and the heroines and the bad examples. It prompts a wholesome film noir guise with the expressionist swag and you can't help but collapse at the way Ingrid's eyes sparkle off her penetrating glance. Then there's Humphrey whose presence is religious in the most hardened sense of the word and Claude Rains who expounds those tarnished aspects of the police force to perfection. Now, the way they speak is at the same time unprecedented and as different as chalk from cheese 'cause THEY MAKE IT SAUCY! And if I hear "As Time Goes By" one more time, my heart is gonna split in two. So all in all...Casablanca is a pillar of the community.

I'm mesmerized by Elia Kazan's truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth approach he took to sum up the soul-stirring sink of corruption that is "On the Waterfront"...even if it were to only clear his name in the foregoing naming of names he gave during the anti-Communist investigations. Marlon Brando was a prize-fighting Casanova as always, Eva Marie Saint was simply beauty unadorned, and its a field day when two star-crossed lovers are being knocked up by those villains ugly as sin. I love when Brando insists on feeding Saint in the bar scene, which blindsided me in its intensity. But then there's Karl Malden's fiery sermons as Father Barry, the infamous backseat confrontation between blood brothers, Terry and Charley, and the poignant defiance of Johnny Friendly when Malloy bowls along off to work in his languishing, wasted, and crippling state. I WAS SWEPT OFF MY FEET!
 * __WELL COWABUNGA! ITS ON THE WATERFRONT__**

This thing is my favorite son...but I'm-a just a sucker for hippy-hippy hoorah romance fueled by infidelity, aimless graduates, seductive mothers, and Simon and Garfunkel so Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme that culturally insignificant phonies! "The Graduate's" got too many positive qualities. The soundtrack is so irresistible it burns, the cinematography is solid and in turn creates such a timeless element (those underwater shots in particular), Dustin Hoffman's portrayal as Ben Braddock is so rattling that I think its safe to call it "Awkward" at its best, and the overall mood set by the era and uncertainty of whats to come put me in a spell. Everything's symbolic of something and so far, this was the movie we all needed to see. The whole enchilada needed a taste of Mike Nichols' magnum opus.
 * __THE GRADUATE...NOW NEED I SAY MORE__**

__**THE MALTESE FALCON (off like a prom dress)**__ Well Humphrey's at it again and would you look at that! He's being a deplorable, infernal dude but hey, that's just your idiomatic private investigator. Secondly, he's got that noble, elfin soft-side if you didn't know because he'll make good and fulfill an obligation if it means justice will be served. So he's just chilling out with his profoundly retarded colleague, Archer, until he gets dragged through the mud into the raw deals and fishy transactions of three shady, double-tongued snobs and one sorry sight of a gunman who are all in on attaining an unparagoned, jewel-encrusted falcon. Now...this is a film-noir and I've got an inextinguishable sweet tooth for film-noirs so no matter the circumstances, I'm gonna say that "the Maltese" dazzles me like the Italian Stallion in the sense that it gives me some forty or fifty of the quirks I look for in movies. Enough said...

__**BANZAI!!! ITS CHINATOWN!!!**__ God Save The Queen because I physically want Chinatown and I'm talking the bonds of marriage, kids, and an all-inclusive villa on the Mayan Riviera. Now, I say this all in the name of Wonder on behalf of the rock solid, celestial and sanctified ensemble that composes Chinatown into a pitch-perfect movement of mystic intrigue and soul. First off, Roman Polanski is a veteran with a practiced hand and an air-drawn dagger despite the statutory rape and he's got Jack, Faye, and John to sustain him. Every angle, complexion, word, demeanor, and phase seemed to be religiously and gingerly etched into a subalpine prevalence making this a running mate for prominence in anyone's Top of the Pops. A truly remarkable piece of work...

__**DO THEE "DO THE RIGHT THING"**__ I'm at about 11 viewings of this movie now and I haven't tired of it yet. Could it be my unrelenting man crush on Spike Lee or Public Enemy? Maybe Rosie Perez's dance moves? Well I dunno...but its really got a hold on me and its probably due to the fact that I've been watching it regularly since I was 10-years old. There's the cinematography, which employs the use of steaming reds and oranges backed up by Dutch angles and other off-kilter points of view creating an entourage of a city under fire. Then the definitely true dialogue...and then the ending. You want the preeminent definition of "earth-shattering"...you watch that ending.