The Dark Knight runs along literally like a series of disconnected cabaret acts, with what passes for narrative happening off-screen most of the time, and the ample screentime remaining filled up with chases and fights so haphazardly shot and cut you can't tell where anybody is or what's going on. —Michael Atkinson at Zero for Conduct

Which sounds like the movie I saw too. In fact—and consider this a sacrilege if you want—there's not a lot of difference between Dark Knight and Timur Bekmambetov's Wanted as violent genre excuses for cluttering up Chicago's downtown streets. Except Wanted gets better kinetic mileage out of its under-the-el-tracks setups ... and shooting along a seedier stretch of Lake Street helps too, since Christopher Nolan's blanded-out version of metropolis—Upper and Lower Wacker, Navy Pier, LaSalle Street, the riverfront curtain wall—is pretty much what you'd expect in a typical Gray Line tour. Just the usual showplace suspects, to keep the out-of-towners pacified ...

But if the Lake Street underbelly's now the semiofficial benchmark for seedy Chicago shooting, then arguably Walter Hill's Streets of Fire (1984) is still the reigning genre champ. Except he had to paint over the whole street to make it seem more "authentic," or at least like a rock 'n' roll stage set in some down-and-out gangbanger musical. Still, better Orwellian ersatz than Nolan upchucking his Frommer's guide. Or to steal a line from Tom Hanks in the immortal Joe Versus the Volcano: "It's fake—I like it!"

"I see what you mean," my partner for life said after sitting through a screening of Hellboy II: The Golden Army last weekend. She's a fan of Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, or at least had been until just then, for what usually passes as the maudit "poetry" of that weenie bit of business. Whereas I'd stubbornly insisted there was more complex emotionality in a single handprint on the aquarium glass in Hellboy number one than in all the wan aestheticizing of Pan. Ramp up the prefab sensitivity, rake in all the praise, even if the work's patently innocuous and/or inferior. "He really loves what he's doing, doesn't he?"

Like a cat with a fuzzy Nerf toy and just about the same attention span. Andrew Tracy's complained that del Toro's Hellboy II stagings are too ham-fisted, lumbering and abrupt where they ought to be ... well, I don't know what they ought to be, aside from not existing at all, since I can't imagine anyone bringing more keenly tuned awareness to the meticulous ins and outs of this fabricator's art, all the precision-crafted mini motifs that, as seems to me obvious from the get-go, most contemporary pulp directors couldn't begin to emulate, much less think of in the first place. Of course, Peter Jackson might, though with Jackson narrative's a necessary form of discipline: there has to be a through line to bring the proliferating effects together. But Del Toro'd rather wing it: this I like, and this, and this, like one of Brian De Palma's mad, free-associating frenzies (a la Raising Cain), only del Toro does it better, his this 'n' that balancing act more exactingly executed and felt. And there's no sitting back to admire the spectacle, since already he's pushing to the next effect, and the next one after that. (For intelligent critical back-and-forth addressing many of Tracy's points, see Jim Emerson's Scanners link here.)

So no, not "absolute" creativity, I can see where Tracy's coming from—but so the hell what? Since the affection's both palpable and generous: this guy's really into his epiphanies, like Bach turning technical somersaults in one of his elaborate keyboard inventions. Which of course is sacrilege to suggest, since by definition Bach's, uhh, "profound," whereas del Toro, per Tracy fiat, is just a commercial hack. Another prime example of genre conferring status, more or less automatically, determining where we do or don't get to stick the tendentious label aaarrrttt. Which is something Jeff Koons could tell you about too ... can't get those category boundaries muddled!

But where Tracy sees hackabout, I see, e.g., Minnelli and Miyazaki—in the elegantly confected beanstalk creature, delicate, graceful, and menacing at the same time. Or Brakhage, in the resurrected robot armies: all those compositional curlicues in elementary reds and blues. Or Joseph H. Lewis and the B studio auteurs of the 40s and 50s, termite energies burrowing into their finest—as in most demented—work. Which of course was and still remains resolutely commercial, ergo, in Tracy's cleansing, puritanical light, "corrupt," just another co-opting product of Hollywood Moloch, Inc.

Meanwhile our Hellboy delirium continues, its echt termite consciousness never backing off. Is it aaarrrttt or just another case of death by CGI technology? I sure can't tell you—except we're not getting this kind of work anywhere else. Michael Bay anyone?

Because of space limitations, our print edition can't accommodate as many Critic's Choice boxes for older films as it once did. So welcome to "What's Old," a new weekly post in which I'll try to showcase the week's best revival. This week it's the Buster Keaton comedy Our Hospitality (1923), which screens tonight as part of the Silent Film Society of Chicago's annual summer festival, with live organ accompaniment by Michael Jacklin.

Our Hospitality was Keaton's first genuine feature (The Three Ages, released earlier that year, was really just three shorts slapped together), and it climaxes in one of his most hair-raising stunts, a daring rescue at the edge of a waterfall. It was also Keaton's first exercise in Americana, which would flower in two of his greatest movies, The General (1927) and Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928).

The screening takes place tonight at 8 PM at the Portage Theater, 4050 N. Milwaukee; tickets are $12. Here's a nice little clip from the film, decked out with a tune by Daft Punk.

Last week's New Yorker carried an interesting personal essay by Charles Van Doren, the Columbia University instructor who became a star on the 1950s quiz show Twenty One and then an object of disgrace when the public learned that the show was fixed by the producers. Movie fans probably know that story from Robert Redford's Oscar-winning Quiz Show (1994), but Van Doren's essay also details his life after the scandal, including the genesis of the movie. Redford offered him $50,000, and then $100,000, to serve as a consultant, but Van Doren, acting on the advice of his attorney and the feelings of his family, turned the offer down. According to the piece, that didn't stop actor Ralph Fiennes (pictured) from driving up to Van Doren's house and sneakily asking for directions in order to get a look at him.

A footnote: Redford's movie was adapted from a superb book by Richard Goodwin called Remembering America: A Voice From the Sixties. A House subcommittee investigator on the quiz-show case, Goodwin later wrote eloquent speeches for presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Senator Robert Kennedy. (He's also the husband of presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.) Goodwin is a tremendously gifted writer, and Remembering America is an essential memoir of the 1960s. I can't recommend it more highly.

Fans of the Classic Film Series at LaSalle Bank (now Bank of America) in Irving Park may remember Scott Marks, who programmed the series from 1995 to 2000. Marks was part of the Chicago film scene for years: back in the 80s he managed the old Parkway revival house at Clark and Diversey, and in the 90s he taught history of film and animation at Columbia College. He was also a crazed memorabilia collector, an expert on the films of Martin Scorsese and Jerry Lewis, and an actual FOJ (Friend of Jerry).

In 2000 he skipped town to take a job programming the film offerings at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego. "The first week I was there, I stepped out for a smoke and was suddenly transfixed by the building across the way," Scott wrote me recently. "It was as familiar as my mother's laugh; I was in Xanadu! In 1940, Welles sent a second unit crew down and used it as a stand-in for San Simeon."

Unfortunately, Xanadu turned out to be a pretty good metaphor for Scott's gig at MoPA: he says the program was never able to build a strong audience and ended in 2005. "What do you do when your biggest enemy is the sun?" The museum was located in Balboa Park, which he describes as "one of the most beautiful places on earth."

Since then Scott has been busying himself with various film-related activities. He wrote movie reviews for the Gay & Lesbian Times and did on-air reviews for the local Fox affiliate; he taught film at University of California, San Diego and at San Diego State University; he programs a classic film series at San Diego's North Park Theatre; and his radio program Film Club of the Air can be heard on KPBS. But the big enchilada is his blog Emulsion Compulsion, which includes over 10,000 images from his gigantic memorabilia collection. Enter at your own risk; the next time you look at your watch, it'll be two hours later and you'll be late for something or other. This I know.

This weekend the Music Box opens the first Chicago engagement of Marina Zenovich's documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which looks at the notorious 1977 statutory rape case against the highly regarded film director. It's a fascinating movie in many ways, exploring the media's sick fascination with Polanski (whose parents died in the Holocaust and whose pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, was slaughtered by the Manson Family in August 1969) and reconstructing the judicial skullduggery that prompted Polanski to flee the U.S. in February 1978, never to return. But both times I watched the movie, I came away with the queasy sense that Zenovich was trying to excuse Polanski for his crime, playing up his tragic history and artistic achievements. It's OK to drug and sodomize a 13-year-old girl. the movie implies, when you can make a movie as good as Chinatown.

The case is way too complicated for me to synopsize here, so you should check out the movie yourself before taking my word. But you might also want to read the transcription of the victim's testimony at TheSmokingGun.com. When you see it from her perspective, the idea of Roman Polanski—who served only 42 days in protective custody, for psychiatric observation—as a martyr of the American justice system begins to break down.

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. —L.P. Hartley

I wanted to tell the story of the last romantic couple. —Jean-Luc Godard

Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress (now at Landmark's Century Centre) wants to tell the story of the last romantic couple too. Or is it the first romantic couple? Since in terms of literal historical period we're obviously nearer the beginning than the end—the age of capital R "Romanticism" and everything that implies, about prevailing cultural attitudes and standards of human behavior in the post-Napoleonic brave new world of 1830s France. But then why do these dandified lovers, impeccably decked out a la July Monarchy—in plush, exotic fabrics, colorful toques and mantillas, with oriental hookahs on the plein-air carpets, etc—seem so anachronistically like ourselves? Since however meticulous the period reconstructions—gilded rooms, railings and balustrades, statuary—the behavioral signals seem almost intimately familiar: could be us up there, since that's how we'd be responding right now. Which makes you wonder how foreign this country of the past can be ...

Same period,* different film. Jacques Rivette's The Duchess of Langeais, which played in town a couple weeks back, seems as chilly and distant in its neoclassical reserve—Ingres contra Delacroix, the polarities of the era—as Mistress is romantically hung out. As in his earlier Joan the Maid (1993), where late medievals discuss theological dogmas like transubstantiation as if their lives depended on it (which in fact they did), Rivette's characters in Duchess seem driven by assumptions about life, behavior, ideology, etc, that we're not in a position to share. These people aren't us—if you want to "relate," be prepared to fight your way into the mind-set.

So what's to choose between them? Obviously a matter of inclination and taste, since both deliver their own brand of delectables. Whatever her merits as historian, Breillat's micromanaged attraction to the vagaries of human passion invites a complicity that Rivette, more austere and abstract, isn't inclined to give. On the other hand, Duchess fascinates out of sheer obliquity, its terse, alienating distance—everything less predictable since less familiar, a matter of epistemological cunning rather than identification strategies unleashed. Yet despite its raw immediacy, it's the Breillat that arguably wears you down and out. Too much us, not enough them. Where's negative capability when you really need it?

(*Actually it isn't, though every review I've read apparently thinks that Duchess is set in restoration France, in the early 1820s or thereabouts. But as the film's introductory title makes clear—not to mention Balzac's own source novel—the relevant "restoration" is of the Spanish king, Ferdinand VII, not France's Louis XVIII. So Napoleon's empire would still be alive and kicking, if only for a short while more. No wonder everything's so neoclassical—it's exactly as it should be!)

You can have your WALL-E, as calculated and corporate a product as the object of its own anemic eco-satire (which pulls so many punches that even Bush and Cheney could probably support the message: yo, we're for less garbage and that kinda shit ... and let's get rid of those fat people too—yeee-haw!). Me, I'm more into Doug Sweetland's Presto, the five-minute Pixar short that comes on before the sentimental google-eyed robot gets down to its sanitized, softball business. Not that Presto doesn't have problems of its own, mainly in character animation that almost seems xeroxed from Ratatouille, which already looked so airbrushed and cuddly that even babies couldn't feel remotely threatened by it. (So whatever happened to all those jagged cartoon edges of the 40s? Best keep the Termite Terrace people away from pointed metal objects ... ) But the pace is dizzying, sometimes even disorienting, both physically and mentally, a perpetual-motion circus—up-down, in-out, all from a handful of obsessional riffs and themes—that puts you in mind of Road Runner and Coyote and at least a half a dozen anvils. A lot of imaginative stretching from all parties involved, extending well beyond the professional "tastefulness" that predictably turns WALL-E into such a dispassionate, stifling bore.

But don't take my word for it—you can watch the whole thing online here.

Facet Film School's new six-week session of evening classes begins tonight with "The 'Religious' Films of Luis Bunuel," taught by Zoran Samardzija of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Scheduled for screening and discussion on Monday nights through August 25 are Susana (1951), Nazarin (1959), Viridiana (1961), Simon of the Desert (1965), The Milky Way (1969), and Tristana (1970).

Beginning Tuesday, novelist Aimee Laberge will lecture on the regional cinema of Quebec, screening Claude Jutra's Mon Oncle Antoine (1971), Michel Brault's Les Ordres (1974), Ted Kotcheff's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974), Denys Arcand's The Decline of the American Empire (1986), Jean-Claude Lauzon's Leolo (1992), and Phillippe Falardeau's Congorama (2006).

Charles Burnett and Haile Gerima are the focus of Brandon Linden's Wednesday-night course, "The LA Rebellion," which will include Killer of Sheep (1977), Bush Mama (1972), Ashes and Embers (1982), My Brother's Wedding (1983), To Sleep With Anger (1990), and Sankofa (1993).

Adam Jones of DePaul University will teach a David Mamet survey on Thursdays, screening House of Games (1987), Things Change (1988), Homicide (1991), Oleanna (1994), The Spanish Prisoner (1997), The Winslow Boy (1999), and Catastrophe (2000), Mamet's little-seen short adapted from the Samuel Beckett play.

Classes are $125, $80 for Facets members. To enroll call 773-281-9075 or click here.