Sex and the Circe

The Lady from Shanghai

Crit (1947)

Golly! I had no idea there were any noirs this good left that I hadn't already seen. A convoluted plot that keeps us guessing whether it's a double-, triple, or quadruple-cross, razor-sharp dialogue (and if Welles takes most of it for himself, that's not such a bad thing, and if his brogue is never altogether convincing, well, that's not a hanging offense either), some good scenery chewing by the Welles regular Everett Sloane and the utterly obscure Glenn Anders, and as fatale a femme as you could ever ask for in the second-most-beautiful Hollywood actress ever to marry royalty. And then there's that climactic funhouse-mirrors sequence. Classic; why has it been hiding from me all these years?

Sex and the City

Crit

I always thought that one of the best decisions in the planning stages of the series was half-hour, not hour, and indeed, for about a half-hour, I was having fun (estroporn wedding-dress montage notwithstanding), but the sprinter was never meant to run a marathon, and the next half-hour, and the next half-hour, and the next half-hour, and the next almost-half-hour showed all the signs of severe oxygen deficit (though I'll grant that Jennifer Hudson brings some fresh air to the second half). Men fail two of the women for no other reason than that the plot demands it (well, unless "that's what men do" counts as a reason)--we've got to get the quartet to Mexico, after all--and then the last loose end is tied up by a deus-ex-utero device. Maybe if you wait for the DVD and watch it over five sittings . . .