Physical humor and tomfoolery abound in this romp through the first week of married bliss and pitfalls, but there’s also something really sweet about the love between Keaton and his new bride here (they share a kiss every two minutes, or at least it feels that frequent). The stunts are pretty awesome, especially an opening act involving the straddling of two cars, and watching Keaton attempt to *put together* his home—way to go, Uncle Mike: now that’s a generous wedding gift!—is a hoot, especially as a rejected beau mischievously switches labels, causing the house to look like a reflection in a carnival mirror once it’s assembled. There’s also some fun experimenting with cinema as a medium—a hand blocks the camera as the naked wife emerges from the bathtub; a panicked Keaton spirals through the spinning house during a storm in a long tracking shot. And the final scene, which finds the lovebirds in search of a new home but just as smitten with one another, is terrific. Add on the obligatory Keaton dramatic scene moment, and you have my current favorite of his films (though I owe The General a revisit), a fine combination of humor and heart.

73/100

Early short that showcases Chaplin on a power trip as a tramp-turned-cop who takes down the slums’ (Easy Street) biggest bully (a beast of a man who’s impervious to batons and boasts devil-like eyebrows). The slapstick is plentiful, similar to 1921′s The Kid—though it’s nowhere near as funny as that one—and of course, there’s the obligatory damsel in distress. It’s really about image, and how a strong one, even if obtained by luck, can breed self-confidence and, subsequently, social clout. There’s also some religious allegory at work: Easy Street opens in a church, where Chaplin humorously plays with a baby but, more seriously, finds his way after leaving and noticing a “help wanted” sign on the local police station’s door. Though Easy Street is more charming than laugh-out-loud funny, seeing policeman Chaplin doff his cap to the twice-vanquished bully on a cleaned-up Easy Street at the end is worth the price of admission, and it’s a great warm-up act for his truly great work of the next two decades, particularly The Circus (1928) and City Lights (1931), but also The Gold Rush (1925) and Modern Times (1936), as well as the aforementioned & underrated The Kid.

63/100

Though thoroughly average as a movie, Emmanuel Laurent’s Two in the Wave is absolutely must-see cinema for film buffs and cultural historians. A workmanlike-yet-somewhat-fawning documentary about the careers of New Wave pioneers Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, Two in the Wave is chock-full of interesting tidbits about their careers, ranging from their writing for Cahiers du Cinema, to their infighting over the precocious Jean-Pierre Leaud (the star of Truffaut’s masterpiece The 400 Blows), to their eventual deep falling out over political differences (Godard found Truffaut’s aversion to using the power of cinema to express disgust with the right wing to be reprehensible; Truffaut, meanwhile, considered Godard’s leftist politics over-the-top, and felt more comfortable using the camera as an escape from reality anyway). The entire documentary is a serious jolt of nostalgia and wistfulness—how can any cinephile watch Two in the Wave and not wish to be smoking cigarettes and drinking red wine at a café in Paris, having just seen the sexy Breathless or the tantalizing Jules and Jim, chatting with a beautiful young girl who may or may not bear an eerie resemblance to Anna Karina? That’s what I left the film yearning for, anyway! It’s also cool seeing Godard speak to Fritz Lang around the time of Contempt: for such a self-confident director who frequently bordered on complete arrogance and obnoxiousness, Godard clearly idolized Lang (for good reason, of course). All that keeps Two in the Wave from being great is that it has little dramatic flair of its own, despite the easy pickings the topic matter should provide. A random woman who periodically pops up turning pages seems to be meant to represent the present, looking back at the past with the same lust that we do, but she just seems superfluous and pointless. It’s easy to think that any director could take the stories of Godard, Truffaut, and the French New Wave and churn out an enjoyable finished product, so it’s tough to give Laurent much credit for his lackluster contributions, but the strength of subject ultimately won’t be defeated here: Godard, Truffaut, Leaud, and 60′s Paris supply enough pizazz to beat back the flaws and make Two in the Wave well worth seeing.

65/100