And so we begin…(after the flip, that is.)

*  “The Lady Vanishes“ turned out to be Alfred Hitchcock‘s penultimate English film before launching his Hollywood blockbuster career with “Rebecca.” Since it came out within a few years of the somewhat better known “The Man Who Knew Too Much” in 1934 and “The 39 Steps” the following year, this 1938 box office smash sometimes tends to get lost in the shuffle. That’s a crime because “The Lady Vanishes” is one of Hitch’s jolliest and most entertaining films, even if Hitch himself might have played it down because of all the justified attention the writing team of Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder received for their classic screenplay.

Like the master’s self-homaging “North by Northwest,” “The Lady Vanishes” is set largely aboard a train and features an in-the-dark protagonist suddenly embroiled in dangerous espionage shenanigans. The innocent who gets in over her head this time is a mostly charming but also somewhat entitled young lady of means (Margaret Lockwood) who has already had a run-in with a rude but chivalrous musicologist (Michael Redgrave). When she befriends a lovably hobbitish Englishwoman (Dame May Whitty) who disappears not only from the train but, apparently, from the memory of everyone she has encountered, something is very obviously up. Chills, suspense, comedy and romance definitely ensue, with an accent on comedy and romance.

Contemporary audiences might be a bit thrown off by the fact that the film opens as a light comedy with only the barest hint of a thriller element until a genuinely shocking murder about half an hour in. They might also be thrown by the use of very obvious miniatures for the establishing shots of a small Balkan village that open the film. Go with it — once the thriller elements kick in, it’s one tense little ride.

Also those miniatures, necessitated by a lowish budget — even Hitchcock, no stickler for realism, worried about them — are a fun reminder than this is a movie, not real life, and the lengthy intro is a pretty delightful comedy set-up which, among other treats, features one of the English screen’s most popular classic era comedy teams. Though they teamed up for the first time on “The Lady Vanishes,” actors Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne would come to be at least as tied to cricket-obsessed travelers Charters and Calidicott as John Cho and Kal Penn are seemingly forever wed to cannabis-loving journeyers Harold and Kumar.

Radford and Wayne would reprise their roles, sometimes under different character names and sometimes not, in a number of films. Their films ranged from a segment of the 1945 anthology horror classic “Dead of Night” to low budget vehicles like “Crooks Tour,” which is featured on this typically chock-full-of-greatness Criterion disc, a Blu-Ray update of a 2007 release. You can also see them in “Night Train to Munich”, a worthy World War II-era follow-up from writers Gilliat and Launder directed by Carol Reed (“The Third Man“) that is very nearly as much fun as “The Lady Vanishes.”

* While we’re on the topic of great thrillers set aboard trains, if you were one of the masses left perhaps a bit less than overwhelmed by 2009’s “The Taking of Pelham 123,” taking a look back at the nifty though special-feature free Blu-Ray edition of the crackling 1974 “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three“ may reveal something about the way violent action thrillers should actually be made, or at least the way I think they should be made.

Grumpy-not-yet-old-man Walter Matthau stars as a hang-dog head of the New York subway police who suddenly finds himself confronted by a group of murderous hijackers. Led by a wiley, utterly ruthless ex-mercenary played by the equally superb Robert Shaw (“Jaws“), the gang requests a cool million in return for the lives of a group of luckless passengers.

With a screenplay by one of the wittiest scenarists of his day, Peter Stone (“Charade,” “1776”), this adaptation of a novel by John Godey blends R-rated suspense with plenty of black comedy and satire. It’s main target is the brutality of contemporary urban life. “Screw the goddamn passengers! What the hell did they expect for their lousy 35 cents – to live forever?” asks the world’s most callous dispatcher who seems to be angling for a position in the hardline Giuliani administration two decades early. Few movies not made by Sidney Lumet or Spike Lee capture the contentious  humor of the people of New York with this much accuracy and aplomb.

The top-notch supporting cast includes Hector Elizondo, Woody Allen pal Tony Roberts at his absolute best as an ultra-blunt deputy mayor, and Jerry Stiller — best known today as both Ben and George Costanza’s dad — as a lackadasical deputy. “Reservoir Dogs” fans will take note of the color coded names of the hijackers, Ringo Lam’s 1987 Hong Kong crime flick, “City on Fire,” was not the only movie Quentin Tarantino was borrowing from.

* We’re incredibly late for Valentine’s Day (and even later if you know when the Blu-Ray dropped) but, even among French films, there are few productions as purely romantic as 1934’s “L’Atalante.” The most famous of the two features included on Criterion’s “The Complete Jean Vigo,” it’s a moving, evocatively filmed, and extremely simple fable about a the highs and lows of love as experienced by the captain of a small canal barge (Jean Dasté) and his lovely bride (Dita Parlo). Delicate but also fierce in its gritty depiction of down-at-the-heels pre-World War II France, it also features a great comic performance by the legendary comic Michel Simon as a lovable old sea salt whose blood would probably test out at 40 proof.

Since writer-director Jean Vigo died at 29 the same year as his best known film was released, he has attained a sort of John Keats-like status among cinephiles enchanted by his romantic, melancholy surrealism. As sad as Vigo’s early passing remains, it at least means that it’s not hard to put the great cineaste’s complete works on a single disc and you can watch them all in a single long afternoon. These include the anarchy laden boarding school drama, “Zero de Conduit” (“Zero for Conduct”), and some frequently arresting experimental silent shorts.

* Is there a stranger, more interesting, confounding, and compelling 1990s movie than Todd Haynes’ seductive and mostly very entertaining 1998 ode to 1970s glam-rock, “Velvet Goldmine“? Somewhat hampered by the refusal of David Bowie to allow any of his songs to be used, Haynes nevertheless takes advantage of a treasure trove of iconic pop from such stalwarts as Lou Reed, Brian Eno, Roxy Music, and, of course, T-Rex, as well as such contemporary (14 years ago) bands as Pulp and Grant Lee Buffalo.

Although I once felt like a pretty lonely fan of this odd amalgam of rock and roll musical and off-kilter “Citizen Kane” rip-off by way of Phillip Dick and George Orwell, I’m glad to see the young folks have recognized it’s problematic brilliance. The new Blu-Ray, naturally looks superb, sounds amazing, and is a great vehicle for Haynes’ appropriately stylized vision. The commentary by Haynes and producer Christine Vachon is also a must for anyone who’s interested in the film and its many antecedents.

* It’s a thrill to finally see 1958’s “The Big Country“ in high definition 1080p on a big screen TV, but it would be even greater to see it in 35mm on an actual movie screen. Still, the home version ain’t bad for this big, big epic in which the characters themselves are obsessed with just how very, very large their little piece of the American West happens to be. Directed by William Wyler (“The Best Years of Our Lives,” “Roman Holiday“) and co-produced by liberal-minded star Gregory Peck, this very unusual epic western plays today as something of an enjoyably longwinded rebuttal to the those in public life for whom every problem may be solved by a war.

As with “The Lady Vanishes,” I could easily spend days writing about this film — and I’d link to a blog post about it on my old web site right now if I hadn’t been hacked — but all you need to know is that it’s much more than a message picture. There’s some really stirring action pieces, in particular an epic final three-way confrontation and a lengthy fight featuring Peck and his unbending romantic rival, played by Charlton Heston, who was cajoled by Wyler into taking a gig between playing Moses in “The Ten Commandments” and taking on the part of Judah Ben Hur in Wyler’s follow-up epic. It’s definitely one of my two or three favorite Heston performances.

“The Big Country” is also chock of sexy late-fifties romance, sexiness largely supplied by its two outstanding female leads, Carroll Baker (“Baby Doll”) and Jean Simmons (from “Guys & Dolls,” “Elmer Gantry” — not Kiss!). It’s a perfect movie for a long Sunday afternoon. I don’t like to say “they don’t make ’em like this anymore,” but I really do wish this kind of grand “something for everyone” mass entertainment still existed at the movies.

* There was a time when featuring a television star in a movie was pretty much considered the box office kiss of death. Since it starred two stars of a hugely successful TV series and did, in fact, bomb miserably, 1972’s “Hickey and Boggs“ might have been Exhibit A for that viewpoint. The real marketing problem, however, was that the stars were Bill Cosby and the late Robert Culp of “I Spy,” a lighthearted globetrotting buddy spy show that no one would have considered edgy or groundbreaking in any way if it weren’t for the fact that Cosby was the first African-American star of a U.S. TV show. The movie is anything but lighthearted.

Cosby and Culp had become buddies in real life and both were men of some real artistic ambition. Clearly, Culp — a cartoonist in his youth — wanted to be a serious filmmaker and he went all-in on this very dark tale post-noir about two down on their luck Los Angeles PIs. Though beset with a somewhat shambling and overly complicated screenplay by a young Walter Hill, it was clear that Culp had a strong sense of style and an eye for striking and stylish visuals. This really good looking transfer on a on-demand DVD is the first time the film has been available for a decent home video viewing in some time. (A previous DVD is, by all accounts, horribly inferior so be sure you’re getting the new MGM edition.)

* It’s fortunate for everyone that, unlike Jean Vigo, the very skilled director Alan Rudolph has enjoyed a good long life and a lengthy career, because if his filmmaking had ended with 1976’s “Welcome to L.A.,“ I wonder if anyone would remember him. This is a tough film to sit through and not in a good way, despite the requisite first-rate cast.

Presented by Rudolph’s mentor, Robert Altman, clearly the idea is to present something of a West coast follow-up to Altman’s heartland masterpiece, “Nashville.” Set largely in the Los Angeles music business, the results are mostly kind of unwelcome, as are the musical stylings of singer-songwriter Richard Baskin whose work, along with stars Keith Carradine and Geraldine Chaplin, had also been featured in “Nashville.” Baskin’s songs, like the movie, are morose without being engaging in any particular way.

Also featuring a young Harvey Keitel, Sissy Spacek, and Sally Kellerman (the original Hotlips from Altman’s film version of  “M*A*S*H”), this is a movie that only a young man could have made. It sports the special bitterness of those who have recently figured that life is not always what your parents said it would be. On the plus side, Angelenos might get some fun out of spotting old L.A. locations now long gone or transformed. On the other hand, there’s more of that stuff in Altman’s great “The Long Goodbye” and,  yes, “Hickey and Boggs.” Watch those instead.

As a lifelong fan and a nearly lifelong tough critic of musicals, I love most of these films. However, this list is not so much a traditional “best of” and I’ve included one choice I definitely don’t like. (It won’t be hard to guess which.) These are musicals that I think contributed to the development of this polarizing and hard to pull off genre. They don’t hark back to times gone by or try to recapture a past glory that will never return, but actually take us into the future. That’s important now that musicals seem to have a future.

“Dancer in the Dark” (2000)

Earlier this year, the brilliant but often irritating Danish director Lars von Trier shocked hard-to-shock European festival audiences with graphic sexual violence in “Antichrist.” Back in 2000, all he needed to divide audiences was some really intense melodrama and an approach to making dark musicals partially borrowed from TV creator Dennis Potter (“Pennies from Heaven,” “The Singing Detective”).

Featuring a literally once-in-a-lifetime lead performance by singer-songwriter Björk as a young mother ready to sacrifice everything to save her son’s failing eyesight, “Dancer in the Dark” is maybe the most emotionally potent story of parental love I’ve ever seen. As a musical, it’s strange and arresting.

Like the Potter television shows and movies and “Chicago,” further down the list, the musical numbers take place in the mind of the lead character. In this case, however, it is particularly poignant as our heroine is a fan of musicals who, though she is gradually going blind, is attempting to appear in a community theater production of “The Sound of Music.” Below, she musically confesses her situation to a smitten Peter Stormare (yes, the guy from “Fargo”). Lumberjacks or not, “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” sure seems like a long time ago.

Moulin Rouge” (2001)
As the non-musical Pixar films became the dominant template for animation and the musical form lost its last apparent movie bastion, big studios began to experiment with musicals starring humans. Unfortunately for me, the first and still one of the most popular of this decade’s high profile film musicals was Baz Luhrmann’s beautifully shot, amazingly designed, dull-witted, and over-edited “Moulin Rouge.”

Yes, this musical fan is not a fan of the musical that’s been credited with resurrecting the genre. Why? A couple of sequences work, but on the whole I expect the funny parts of a movie to make me laugh and, even more important, I like to see the movies I’m seeing. As far as I can tell, Luhrmann simply doesn’t have the confidence in this film to allow us time to view the arresting images he’s worked so hard to craft, nor does he permit time to actually see the hard work his dancers and actors put in. Editor Jil Bilcock is expected to do all the performing instead.

As for what Luhrmann and his arrangers did with the various classic songs they threw into a musical Cuisinart, the less I say about it the better. At the risk of sounding like a fogey (or a member of an 18th century Austrian court), too many notes. Way, way, way, too many notes. See if you disagree.

“Hedwig and the Angry Inch” (2001)

John Cameron Mitchell pulled off a tremendous coup in adapting his stage hit, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” into a film that, though something of a cult success, is still vastly under-recognized. The live “Hedwig” was essentially a rock concert combined with a one-person show, so turning it into a relatively conventional dramatic movie meant adding a great deal of new material. Working on a very modest budget and studying his Fosse, he crafted a new kind of music film that blended wondrous David Bowie/T-Rex-style glam rock composed by Stephen Trask, outrageous comedy, and some fairly searing drama with imaginative performance sequences and elements of more traditional musical theater. That same year, Todd Haynes’ historical musical, “Velvet Goldmine,” explicitly tried the same thing on a much larger, vastly less humorous, scale with a fictionalized story of the glitter rock era. It’s actually a terrific movie in many respects, but it didn’t have the needed emotional resonance or connect with an audience in the same way as “Hedwig.”

Here, Hedwig, the lonely but unflaggingly flamboyant East German not-quite-transsexual victim of a badly botched sex change operation, experiences a wondrous musical rebirth just as the Berlin Wall falls. This, my friends, is one way to shoot a musical number on a budget. It starts a bit downbeat and slow, but it rewards a little patience.

“Chicago” (2002)

After “Moulin Rouge” became a surprise hit on DVD, it was decreed somewhere that most musicals should be over-edited ADHD extravaganzas. Largely because he had a brilliant adaptation by Bill Condon to work with, director Rob Marshall actually could have done a lot worse with “Chicago.” It’s a movie I like very much, even though it was so over-cut that I wondered if Marshall was trying to hide the fact that, as dancers go, Renee Zellweger and Richard Gere can’t really be expected to be Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. Since he shot his next film, the non-musical melodrama, “Memoirs of a Geisha,” in almost the same way, I’m still not sure.

Bob Fosse, easily one of my four or five favorite directors, basically invented the highly edited musical comedy sequence with his first film, 1969’s “Sweet Charity.” However, first and foremost a dancer and choreographer himself, he never lost site of the action even as he jazzed up the presentation in brilliant new ways. In adapting the choreography Fosse created in the seventies for the original stage show of “Chicago,” Marshall loses something. Even with a group of first rate dancers, including Catherine Zeta-Jones, he can’t hold a shot for more than a second. The miracle is the following signature sequence from the film still works, but I’m convinced it would be even better if only he’d laid off the cine-caffeine a little. (“Cell Block Tango” starts at 2:07.)

“Colma: The Musical” (2006)

Things were pretty slow in the way of half-way decent musicals during the middle of the decade. Christopher Columbus’s take on “Rent” was about as uninspired as you would expect and had me wondering why anyone liked the original show. The freakishly candy-colored direction of Joel Schumacher, which we all remember so well from his Batman movies, was combined with Andrew Lloyd Weber’s mock-classical dirges to make for a completely unwatchable “Phantom of the Opera” (I know this is true because I was completely unable to make myself watch more than a half hour of it.) Bill Condon’s attempt at duplicating Rob Marshall’s directing style on “Dreamgirls” was a lot better, but still just okay except for truly first-rate performances by Eddie Murphy and some great singing by Jennifer Hudson. I had an excuse to skip “High School Musical” because it was only a TV movie at the time.

And then, from a San Francisco suburb this lifelong Californian had never heard of, came one of those rare surprises that makes this whole cinephile/film critic thing worthwhile. A collaboration between first-time director Richard Wong and singer-songwriter-actor-screenwriter H.P. Mendoza, “Colma: The Musical” builds on the low-budget inventions of “Hedwig” by adopting the traditional singing-for-no-reason musical to the zero-budget aesthetic.

Brazenly getting around all the traditional problems with film musicals by taking a fresh, eye level approach to musical numbers and simply refusing to apologize for the fact that its characters have a weird habit of singing with an invisible power-pop band, “Colma” was also a musical version of maybe half the zero-budget indies ever filmed. A story of three eighteen year-old friends adjusting to adulthood and fraught relationships with lovers, family, and each other, it tends to drag a bit whenever the music stops. Fortunately, there’s lots of very smart pop music by Mendoza, whose style recalls They Might Be Giants and Amy Mann. After a good-but-not-great opening, the film explodes with a true single-take wonder: an eight minute, two-song “oner” that is eight of most fun minutes of any movie of the decade as far as I’m concerned.

Unfortunately, I can’t show you even part of that here, or any of Wong and Mendoza’s other fine music sequences. However, some unembeddable clips can be found on YouTube. You can also read what I wrote about “Colma: The Musical” a couple of years back here. But first, check out the trailer. It’s pretty cool.

“Once” (2007)

Of course, if you find making an old-school break-into-song musical a bit too much, you can always find a story about people who would actually perform music in real life and then simply not cut-away during the songs. You could call it the coward’s way out, but if it was good enough for Bob Fosse in “Cabaret,” it’s good enough for anyone else. And no film in recent years has used this approach more effectively than this gentle semi-romantic drama about a pair of street musicians, both with strong attachments to absent lovers, who meet and find happiness together — musically, that is. With a dash of “Brief Encounter” and little bit of “The Commitments,” “Once” cast quite a spell. Well, on me and a lot of people, but not everyone.

Still, even though the music by stars Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová is often haunting but not entirely my personal cup of ultra-laid-back modern folk, writer-director John Carney’s warmly matter of fact approach to the simple pleasure of musical perfomance made this cozy, joyful, and poignant little hang-out movie impossible to forget. Sorry, I couldn’t find any decent clips — or even a trailer I liked — online. Here, have a photo instead.

“Sweeney Todd” (2007)

The risky but logical choice of having Tim Burton, a past master of non-musical stylization, adapt Stephen Sondheim’s dark musical masterpiece, “Sweeney Todd,” paid off in into a movie musical that was both unprecedented and old-fashioned, blending classical horror techniques going back to the 1930s with a straightforward approach to the musical drama and an awful lot of blood for a musical. Though I had concerns about casting two actors not especially known for their musical theater abilities in the lead roles, Johnny Depp proved to be a strong enough singer and a great enough actor that it wasn’t a problem; Helena Bonham Carter, if no Angela Lansbury, held her own rather and the supporting cast was first-rate. As for Burton, for once his genius with the design elements of the film was matched with some geniuinely great material.

The best part was that Burton had no problem keeping things simple and letting the drama and suspense just play itself out, as in this brilliant duet of would-be murder between Depp and Alan Rickman (a better singer than you’d expect) as the vile Judge Turpin. Here, Sweeney learns that revenge may be a dish best served warm after all.

“Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” (2009)

Purists might scream, I suppose, that since it’s primarily been viewed on the Internet, this effort by Joss Whedon and various friends and family members doesn’t qualify as a movie. All I can say is that it has screened at the American Cinematheque and it’s never been on TV, and I say that makes it a movie, damnit. What, you interject, I already included this in my “TV in the 2000s” entry on Joss Whedon? To that, I can only say, “posh!” and “balderdash!” and “who cares what you think little accuracy person?” Just be grateful I couldn’t figure out how to shoehorn the musical “Buffy” episode in here, too — ’cause I was thinking about it!

Okay, before I get any more carried away over-channeling Joss Whedon’s sense of humor, I’ll tell you that the real reason I’m including this is because I really do believe that, as much as any film here, the combination of DIY financing and highly professional talent makes “Dr. Horrible” one intriguing pathway to the future of musicals and, because of how it was presented, the future of entertainment in general. Moreover, the Whedon clan understands an awful lot about entertainment and, without resorting to fancy tricks they sell a very silly musical tragicomedy about a lovesick aspiring supervillain (played by musical theater pro and comedy genius Neil Patrick Harris) and fill it with social satire, shticky jokes, and sadness. In others words, if you simply commit you can tell just about any story.

There’ll be a sequel to “Dr. Horrible,” but perhaps its example is just as important. The future of musicals is wide open and anyone can make one. Sure, not everyone can make a good one, but anyone can try and more people should. It’s a brand new day.