The Entertainer (1960)
Another early-Sixties British study in dour, working-class realism. Tony Richardson directed the film, in which Laurence Olivier recreated his famed stage role as third-rate vaudevillian Archie Rice. Not surprisingly, his performance is impeccable, and Joan Plowright is almost as good as Archie's long-suffering daughter (Olivier and Plowright married a year after shooting the film). But the talky script and unrelenting gloominess starts to suffocate the proceedings. It doesn't take long to realize Archie is an unrepentant screw-up and will continue to screw-up until the final credits roll.
***

The General (1927)
Certainly the most revered of Buster Keaton 's works, this classic — equal parts adventure, romance and comedy — is based on an actual train hijacking during the Civil War. Beautifully shot, surprisingly lyrical in parts and boasting some terrific stunts, The General is still a film easier to admire than appreciate.
***

The Incredibles (2004)
A nearly perfect Pixar product that comes courtesy writer-director Brad Bird, whose The Iron Giant in 1999 hinted at his sizable talent. The Incredibles reaches the Spielberg standard of excellence when it comes to straightforward, crowd-pleasing storytelling — but that doesn't mean it skimps on sophistication or subtlety. In its tale of a family of superheroes struggling to be average, Bird parodies family dynamics, a litigious society, the complexities of hero worship, male midlife crisis and the narcisstic certainty of just knowing we could touch the stratosphere if our peers weren't weighing us down. There are some interesting insights to be found amid the jaw-dropping computer animation.
****

The King of Comedy (1983)
A blistering satire from Martin Scorsese still has every bit as much bite as it did when it opened (to criminally lukewarm box office) 22 years ago. Robert DeNiro stars as pathological fame-seeker Rupert Pupkin, whose idolatry of a late-night TV talk-show host (Jerry Lewis in a superb performance) leads to kidnapping. The film is one of Scorsese's best, and underrated, works. Not only does it skewer America's zeal for achieving celebrity without really doing anything to deserve it — a jab more relevant in today's Reality-TV era than it was back in the '80s — but it is also an exceedingly well-told story, expertly paced and peppered with the director's visual flair.
****

Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999)
Fred Leuchter was a death geek, a self-styled expert on the implements of capital punishment. Documentary maker Errol Morris chronicles how the Massachusetts native became involved (perhaps unwittingly) with a group of Holocaust revisionists who hired Leuchter to go traipsing through the ruins of Auschwitz in hopes of confirming their insistence that there were no Nazi gas chambers. Morris paints Leuchter as a naive dupe; regardless, the man is too pompous and pathetic to elicit much sympathy. Subsequently, Morris' film is well made, but ultimately empty. You're not exactly sure what Morris found so compelling about this jackass of a subject.
***