April 25th 2013. Pick Of The Day.

Jean-Pierre Melville's UN FLIC screens its last as Film Forum's featured rep screening of the week. This tres francais tale of Alain Delon's burnt-out detective hunting for the identity of the criminal mastermind behind a series of heists, who might just be nightclub owner and best friend Richard Crenna, was the last of the Frogteur genre master's brilliant career. Catherine Denevue drops in to utterly screw up the proceedings as the women the two men share. A compelling stalk through the underworld as only Melville could conduct, but alas it misses as my Pick again. It'll be back.

Clearview Chelsea Cinemas lightens things up considerably with a rare screening of Colin Higgin's 9 TO 5. The late 70's cash-in on Dolly Parton's smash hit song features the Southern Fried Sweetie as a fed up secretary who joins co-conspirators Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in a revenge plot against the conniving boss who's taken credit for all their ideas and hard work. Boy do they ever. Big box-office in the Women's Lib Me Decade, it remains, yes I'm saying this, an effective social farce that may not reach the heights of a Wilder or (gasp) a Lubitsch, but serves as a both time capsule of a bygone era and reminder that things ain't quit as equal as we'd like to pretend. I'm sorta sorry to pass this up tonight, but it's up against an even greater time capsule of a bygone period. Boy is it ever. Boy do I say that a bunch. Keep readin'.

MOMA's excellent retrospective dedicated to the immediate influence German expressionist cinema of the 20's had on the Hollywood studios in the 30's and beyond continues for one more week. The Weimar Touch today offers John Brahm's remake of Hitchcock's classic THE LODGER, a not great but very interesting retelling of the Mahstah's first trademark box office hit. With a cast like Merle Oberon, Laird Cregar and the consistently sanguine George Sanders a director could do very little wrong, and the results serve as testament to that fact. But let's not settle for the merely good today, not on a day that sees a screening of what a large majority of cinegeeks consider the best, most perfect and most influential studio film ever produced, maybe best film all-time.

It begins with a once obscure point on the map of Africa, and ends with new friends walking off into an unsure future of the free world. The 100 minutes that unfold between these bookends are absolute cinematic bliss. The film holds a particularly deserved spot in MOMA's retrospective; not only are its styistic strengths the result of Weimar film technique, the movie was crafted by hands that were employed in the German film industry of the 20's. Director Michael Curtiz, stars Peter Lorre and Conrad Veidt, character actors S. Z. Sakall and Ludwig Stossel, all worked in Weimar cinema during this incredibly influential period and some actually fled the Third Reich, mirroring the plight of the film's characters. I know I choose this flick fairly routinely, becuase it screens regularly in our fair metropolis and very few movies can beat it on any given day, but if a viewing through the context MOMA provides with this retrospective ain't enough to entice, then I offer this; we may not get too many more opportunities to view a pristine 35mm print of this masterpiece in the venue intended, and the reels in MOMA's private collection promise to be just that. Need I say play it again?

Michael Curtiz's CASABLANCA screens today at 4:30pm as part of MOMA's The Weimar Touch retrospective. God it never gets old watching the Nazis get their asses kicked. Go Bogie!

Follow me on Twitter @NitrateStock!

Like the page at Facebook.com/NitrateStock!

Check with the so-and-so's at Occupy Sandy to see if you can volunteer/donate to the hurrcane victims who still need your help.

Be safe and sound and make sure the next so-and-so is too, Stockers! Back with tomorrow's Pick tomorrow! C'mon YANKS!!! Yer killin' me!!!

-Joe Walsh