The aptly named Friendless sells his grocery store in Indiana for $1.60 (and has to spend the money to buy supplies in the same store!) and hops a train to New York City where he gets lost in the shuffle. Inspired by the title call of Horace Greeley, he finds a miniature hand gun in a lost purse and heads to New Mexico where he tries his hand at ranching and falls in love with the big brown eyed cow! "Go West" is one of the most touching films Buster Keaton made and still contains all the wonderful physical gags that make his films so memorable. There are many funny scenes involving Buster's attempts to acclimate to cowboy life and his friendship with the cow is actually quite affecting (I adored the scene where Buster uses the cow's milk for shaving cream, and shaves the brand into his hide so can forgo the branding process). The ending is classic as well as the herd of cattle parade through downtown L.A. and Buster comes up with the ideal costume to lead them to their destination. "Go West" along with the rest of the Keaton's films, are the kinds of art that you embrace and whose spirit you wish could be replicated in today's movies.

Jimmie is having trouble telling his sweetheart that he loves her and the brokerage firm he works at is in dire straits. Then one day an attorney informs him that he has inherited seven million dollars on the condition that he marries before 7pm on the day of his 27th birthday which happens to be today. Now Jimmie is in a race with time to marry his girl or any other suitable woman so he can collect his inheritance. "Seven Chances" is one of Buster Keaton's finest works, starting as an amusing comedy of misunderstanding and culminating in one of the finest chase scenes committed to film. After Keaton gets denied by his girlfriend and is unable to secure a bride, his business partner places an ad in the evening paper telling the whole town the stakes. Now, as Keaton gets word that his girl will marry him, he must make his way back to her as he dodges trains, cranes, rivers, cars, boulders, bees, and hundreds of would be brides. It is truly a remarkable and innovative sequence and serves to confirm his status not only as a great physical comedian but also as one of the movie's foremost comics.

In 1905 the crew members of the Russian battleship Potemkin were fed up with their maggot ridden meat rations and decided it was time to rise up against the officers of the ship. After overtaking their boat and pulling into Odessa, word of their rebellion spread and ignited the revolutionary spirit. Soon the Czar sent his troops to quell the uprising and many protesters and innocents alike were slaughtered. The revolution continued leading up to the Bolshevik uprising of 1917. Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin has often been referred to as the greatest film ever made, and it is certainly one of the most electrically charged. From its kinetically edited scenes, which seem impossible to have been made for its time (I mean how many cameras did he have at his disposal in 1926 Russia?), we can see the seeds for the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Quentin Tarantino, and others. Filmed in beautiful black and white, its scenes of uprising are rousing and incredible. The Odessa staircase scene, where the baby carriage with baby in tow glides slowly down the stairs, is one of the most famous film sequences and rightly so. Battleship Potemkin is a superior film and during its editing process, Sergei Eisenstein must have surely invented some new techniques that would inspire generations of filmmakers to come.