Attention, America! The Best Film Of The Year Is Headed Your Way...

Let go of the mouse. Put down the phone. Close the tab where your email is blinkering away, trying to get your attention. Concentrate all your attentions on these words.

BOOK YOUR TICKETS FOR BUG. NOW.

If you've already done so, then give yourselves a pat on the back. Good work, champs. If you haven't... well, finish reading this page (you might, god forbid, need some convincing!), and then head straight for your local theatre's webpage, or pick up that phone again and dial their number. According to boxofficemojo, it's being released in over 1,500 theatres, and while I'm not too sure on the math, that should leave you no excuse. I don't care if it's 100 miles away, you're driving. You do not want to miss this experience.

Because, yes friends, Bug is that good. It's so good it will take something amazingly supreme to dethrone it as the year's best movie. It's so bloody fantastic it even beats The Lynchian wonders of INLAND EMPIRE. If it'd been released last year as intially intended then my Gold Stars would have a distinctly different flavour to them.

Bug, in case you're very silly and don't already know, stars Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon (she of the trashy thrillers and he of the original stageplay- oh, their careers couldn't be more different, but both are absolutely, scarily superb). Judd is the lonely, divorced Agnes who, having been terrorized by the return of her ex (Harry Connick Jr, also excellent), holes up in her dirty motel room with an unhinged war veteran (Shannon) introduced to her by her friend (Lynn Collins), who convinces her that there are bugs. In their bed. Under the lampshade. On the phone. Under their skin. Everywhere.

Bug isn't your conventional horror film. Oh, the film goes to very dark and eventually very violent places, but this is no crappy slasher flick. Like the bugs themselves, Bug wheedles under your skin, it's unique tone and style chilling your entire body. It's absolutely frickin' terrifying, but also, somehow, manages to mix in some morbid humour, subtle layers, and some prementioned performances that'll knock you for six.

William Friedkin hasn't really been heard from much since his early 70s period of celebration (winning an Oscar for The French Connection and creating seminal horror The Exorcist), but he's back, people- this is a superbly attuned director, with a superb sense of the stagey set he's got, a needle prodding his actors to unexpected places, and an unforgiving laugh at his audience.

Bug is the best movie that you WILL see. Go. Now. Book your tickets. Take the day off work. Cancel all appointments. This is one movie that you need to see.

Oh, and if you don't happen to live in America: I sympathize. I cannot wait to see this movie again, for as much as it scared the living crap out of me, I think it's like a drug. I must see it again. But, naturally, there isn't even a release date for it here in Britain. But, be patient. Bug will come. It will find its rightful place beneath your skin.

The Jazz Singer and The French Connection

[The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927): Okay. Let's get one thing straight. I realize that this is, in the history of cinema, a very important film. People call it "the first sound film", or something along those lines, and, as a marker for the advent of the use of ears in the cinema, I suppose it has some lasting value. But... I'm sorry. It's just not good. At all. History has been extraordinarily kind to The Jazz Singer, and in more ways the one. The first thing you'll notice when you finally take it upon yourself to watch this 'landmark' is that, well, they barely talk at all. In fact, apart from one brief scene between Jack Robin (Al Jolson) and his mother (Eugenie Besserer), the only sound of display here is the scenes were Jolson (excruciatingly) sings. The rest of the movie relies of the silent cinema tradition of intertitles telling us shorthand what's being said. Is this really the first talkie if they barely talk? I'm not really qualified to make that judgment. However, I would say I'm qualified to say that, as a film, straight-up, The Jazz Singer is rather bad. Apart from the fact that Jolson- a very popular star in his day- is one of the most annoying people I've ever had to watch, The Jazz Singer repeatedly strikes some dull and often offensive notes. Yes, there's blackface going on here, for no apparent reason, as well as a horrific line in "He sounds like Jakie, but he looks like his shadow!"- which made my fellow classmates gasp. The maudlin story is very threadbare and uninvolving- an interior battle between career and faith- and ends very predictably and melodramatically. I suppose I have to give The Jazz Singer a reasonable grade just for what it signifies in the course of film history- but if I were you, I'd let it be. Grade: C]

[The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971): Before seeing William Friedkin's superb Bug (currently pending release in 2007) I'd never actually seen anything by the Oscar-winning director, not even his infamous The Exorcist, so I jumped at the chance to watch 1971's 'Best Picture' The French Connection, though, to be frank, I wasn't expecting much from it. On it's limited plot, though, The French Connection manages to hang a lot of stuff: the grittiness here was, perhaps, a first for a mainstream action film, as was the anti-hero in Gene Hackman's volatile 'Popeye' Doyle. Much of the central section of the film consists of Hackman and his fellow police officers tracking various suspects around New York- this is done silently, stealthily and with skill, making a potentially deadening sequence quietly thrilling. Perhaps the film goes a bit off-track with it's poorly orchestrated shootout sequence, as well as a confusing final shot (in both senses of the word), but The French Connection makes a strong case for the awards it recieved and holds up surprisingly well. Oh, and there's that car chase too, of course, which immediatly makes the case for the Best Scene Ever. But you know all about that. Grade: B+]