And so begins December's viewing; I've already seen more films this year than I did last.

Night Moves
Arthur Penn 1975 US 1st time; DVD
A private eye - a former professional footballer in a struggling marriage - gets wrapped up in a missing girl case.
What is it about 1970s character studies that makes such enthralling viewing? They certainly don’t make them like they used to, and this whizzes past in 99 minutes: Hackman's performance is full of recurring, credible mannerisms, and the script seems to be driven by ambiguity - dialogue points to nothing, and the relationship between the protagonist and his multiple problems make for interesting viewing which would these days sit uneasily in the same film. It tackles difficult subject matter, a notch below Chinatown, and offers no resolution. Fantastic.

Miami Vice
Michael Mann 2006 US 2nd time; big screen
Two drugs squad cops infiltrate a drugs ring.
Mann's least impressive film, for which he has adopted a point-and-shoot method. If filming on DV has freed him up economically, it's also made him a lousy visualist. His work is becoming increasingly prone to caricature: the baddies all have baldy heads and Swastika tattoos, and there's almost a knowing, satirical nod near the end when the camera zooms in on a thug's greasy forehead, and a red spot in particular. The script is intolerable - the characters would do much better if they didn't speak at all. Ludicrous, ineffective bullshit.

Basically, I waited long enough to see Night Moves that it couldn't have been anything less than brilliant in order to be satisfactory. Miami Vice was the same situation I had with revisiting Munich: I got more out of it, but what was bad first time round was accentuated even more a second time round.

"Ships move, that's why they call them ships." - Jamie Foxx's best line of the film.