Chinatown (1974)

Halfway through Roman Polasnki’s perfect crime noir “Chinatown,” the femme fatale played by Faye Dunaway bumps a car horn with her head during a moment of distress. The noise startles her and seat mate PI Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson). It is the coldest punch of foreshadowing I’ve ever seen, and I only noticed it on what may have been my 15^th (?) viewing. The next viewing I noticed a new twist: Gittes’ love of horses. That’s the beauty of Polanski’s tale of 1930s Los Angeles and ex-cop Gittes, who spies on wondering spouses, and wears fine suits. Plot: The wife of LA’s water engineer hires Gittes to bust her cheating husband, except the woman isn’t the engineer’s wife, and when the man turns up dead, Gittes realizes he’s been played. Gittes takes action. Except the cruel joke of “Chinatown” is Gittes is a fool, so lost and clueless the deeper he sinks into ancient familial evil, by film’s end he is left in shock, helpless. Robert Towne gets the screenplay credit, but Polanski wrote the unnerving finale. Polanksi’s direction is as smooth as jazz, with perfect interior car shots. As the villain, John Huston plays a monster for the ages. A+

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)

Pissing at a massive plot hole in a “reboot” of the Grimm Brothers fairy tale that takes two kiddies who kill a witch inside a candy house, and ages them into black leather, machine-gun-toting adult brother and sister bounty hunters of Medieval Times is … well, futile. But in “Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters,” we are asked to swallow a cauldron of brain sludge reeking of inanity. Mainly: Is it likely two adult siblings  cannot recognize their hometown, and for the villagers not to recognize their own two legendary celebrity offspring named Hansel and Gretel now grownup as two celebrity witch-killing adults named Hansel and Gretel? Um, no. The actors seen unsure. Jeremy Renner (bored mode) and Gemma Arterton (just rollin’ with it) are the titular characters in what may have been at one point a sick LOL incest-heavy live-action “Road Runner” gore-fest spoof, but the studio blinked. At 1 hour 20 minutes, it shows near-fatal edit flaws and can’t dodge a scene where Hansel can’t dodge a boulder that bounces when he hits it. I have no clue what writer/director Tommy Wirkoloa (“Dead Snow”) is aiming for, but this is one sticky mess. C-