We already told you to go see Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight in this week’s issue, but in case you didn’t catch it: Go see Chimes at Midnight. (It plays tomorrow night at Doc Films at 7 and 9:30pm.) Unless you have a multi-region player—or can procure a copy of the crappy VHS edition printed in the late ’80s—a rare screening is the only way to see this Orson Welles masterpiece, which many Welles scholars consider the equal of Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil. The film reworks Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays—among others—from Falstaff’s perspective, and one surprise is that the film is much less showy in terms of camera style and sound than, say, Welles’s Othello (which is also superb, if you’ve never seen it). As Falstaff, Welles gives one of his greatest performances; it’s a larger-than-life role that in many ways seems perfectly suited to his own gargantuan persona.

And after you’re done with Chimes at Midnight, go see Kathryn Bigelow’s new film, The Hurt Locker. As fascinated as we are by the critical split over Public Enemies, there are times when consensus is a good thing. If its current 93 rating on Metacritic is an accurate indication, The Hurt Locker is the most acclaimed film of the year so far. This look at the behavior of American bomb-defusion experts an Iraq (an underreported aspect of the war, Bigelow notes in an interview with us) not only situates us on the ground more vividly than any American feature film has dared to do, but also provides a startling sense of the psychology of its characters. Don’t pretend you’ve seen too many philosophical action films lately. Apart from Inglourious Basterds—to which, incidentally, Quentin Tarantino has officially added one minute, after much speculation about post-Cannes cuts (hat tip: Anne Thompson)—The Hurt Locker is the film of the summer.