'The Gold Rush'

Nobody makes good movie posters anymore.

'The Bank Dick'

After 29 years, this is my first ever W.C. Fields film.

Always a punchline growing up, I couldn't really name you a Field movie and all I really refer to him is the bulbous red nose, the fat face and the "my lil' chickadee" line.

"The Bank Dick" is highly ridiculous. It runs through a variety of mishaps and happenstance opportunities for Fields' character where he falls backwards into liquor and money despite being a total waste of space.

Meanwhile, Joe from "The Three Stooges" serves as the mysterious bartender.

'The Passion of Joan of Arc'

A great film.

It's greatness can be kinda realized in the photo I've embedded here. This movie was released in the 1920s, not too long after D.W. Griffith and others were making silent films with one camera showing one landscape shot and everything happening within that one frame.

"The Passion ..." is a series of extreme close-ups: From Joan to her judge and jury. No make-up was applied. Thus, you get the dimples and wrinkles in faces. You see the stubble and slope of noses, cheeks, chins, eyes and jaw lines. You see the fat hanging down the priests' faces.

So close up, the contrast is so beautiful and it makes it feel like a film made 30 years later, not in 1928.

Also, the film has an interesting history. The original was destroyed in a fire. Carl Dreyer worked until his death to piece together a second version with outtakes and cut scenes.

Then, in 1981, a complete version was found inside a janitor's closet in an Oslo mental asylum. Needless to say, it was an odd twist to the film's legacy.

'The Phantom of the Opera'

Having never seen any adaptation either in film or on stage, I was intrigued to know that the phantom actually has a name.

Erik.

Erik the phantom.

Yes, Erik could've been the guy in the next cubicle or the friendly barista at your local coffee joint.

And he really wasn't a phantom, a term that suggests a ghostly presence. Instead, he just a due with a boner for a chick and he was willing to sacrifice the lives of others in order to get this chick a regular job.

Erik was certainly a sweet romantic. Nothing says love like murder and terroristic threats.

'Brutal Youth'

Elvis Costello has six albums on the 1,001 Records You Have To Listen To Before You Die. That's pretty good for just about anyone. Six albums considered some of the best records since pop music began.

Costello is the epitome of the pop-rock musician, who never truly had hooks. His songs were poppy and digestable. But he was hardly ever going to get radio airplay even though his songs were ideal for it. There are catchy songs (like Costello's) and then there are songs with hooks (like Kelly Clarkson).

The difference is that Costello gets six albums on the list of the albums you've got to listen to before you die. Clarkson just makes money singing about breaking up with her boyfriend.

'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves'

Have a kid and you'll run through the Disney anthology pretty quickly.

I honestly don't mind most of the Disney films. "Fox and the Hound" did not age well. However, "Peter Pan," "The Jungle Book" and "Robin Hood" are all fantastic films.

I don't dig "Snow White" very much. For one, it's incredibly violent. Killing Snow White and carving out her heart. It is crazy how it's an 88 minute movie and yet it takes about 60 of those minutes to set the film up (Snow White running away; finding the dwarves home; dwarves coming home; dwarves befriending Snow White). It just takes forever.

Reading about it more, it was pretty monumental in terms of filmmaking and animation. Maybe it sucks, but we'd have no "Spirited Away" or "Up" without it.

'Dracula'

I was taken aback at how bad Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves are at acting. And all the cornball shadow tricks and sticking Dracula's face in the moon and all that jazz.

All up until the point that a friend told me that Francis Ford Coppola did all the tricks on purpose to make it feel like an older film. Then I realized that had to be the reason why Ryder and Reeves were brought in. They had to find some of the worst actors in order to recreate the way people acted in 1935. There's no way anyone would admit this and there's no way this was mentioned to Ryder and Reeves because I'm sure both have too much pride to even imagine this scenario, but I believe it without a doubt in my mind.

Vampires are really popular and, really, have been for quite a long time. I can't imagine a time in the last 100 years or so when the vampire myth and legend haven't been commercially popular. "Twilight" is not so different from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," which was on the air for seven years.

What men don't get about why women love vampires is that it's all about love and romanticism. It dates back to a day and age of nobility and the same love/lost that Jane Austen has sold a billion copies of her books over the last 200 years. It's no different.

What appeals the most is the idea of immortality and, yet, how carnal (human) vampires actually are mixed with this idea of chivalry and class. It's everything that a woman wants. She wants to be swept off her feet, ravaged and then told the man will be with her forever. Why wouldn't women love a good vampire story?