Legion (Review)

Film is a reliable place to look when seeking out our own weaknesses. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951, not 2008) assures us it’s our own trigger-happy nature that will do us in. WALL-E has the human race complacent and consuming, our globe rendered one giant dust bowl. Al Gore is practically banking on the ice caps melting.

Humankind loves to predict our own end. And, whether it's by nuclear annihilation, global climate change or good old-fashioned sinning, we love it the most when it's our own fault.

The Lovely Bones (Review)

The Lovely Bones is not a movie; at least not in the sense you and I think of one. It has no coherence, no idea of what it's doing, what its purpose is. It barely has a plot. I'm still not sure if it has any scenes, whatsoever.

What The Lovely Bones does offer, however, is a tangled marsh of unfocused emotion, unclear characters and uninspired dreamscapes, all of which sum up to make a moving picture, yes, but a movie? No.

Avatar (Review)

NOTE: Like most things I write, I'm not very happy with this; but, the ideas I'm presenting, I believe, have some substance to them. I'd love to go off specifically about each one, but, alas, there are not enough hours in the day. And, although I am basically reviewing the film, this piece is more of a string of thoughts about the film in which I'm not necessarily judging it per se. with that in mind, read on.

Watching James Cameron's Avatar, one starts to understand how its main character, Jake Sully, must feel when splitting himself in two. Just as Mr. Cameron has his protagonist jacking into a new world, a place he could never experience to the fullest without this link, he has audiences plugging into their own separate reality: a new type of cinematic experience.

A film made strictly as a catalyst for the 3D movement, Avatar was destined to be either the messiah of a new wave or the biggest Nelson-style “haha” to the technophiles of the film industry of all time. Now nearly a month after its release, Cameron's Avatar has grossed more than $1.3 billlion worldwide, making it the second highest grossing film of all time. Sorry Nelson.

Best of the Decade (Jake) (cont.) (Essay)

3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004): Contrary to what history books might tell you, some of the greatest films are also the most modest. Having only a brilliantly written screenplay by the highly celebrated Charlie Kaufman and the direction of Frenchman Michel Gondry to its name, Eternal Sunshine looked to change our minds about hurt feelings and serendipitous (or defeatist?) lovers and managed to become one of the best films of the decade. Its topsy-turvy, discombobulated approach made the film hard to follow through its first run; like one of those patterned images that relates a 3D object in time, if you tried too hard to see this film, you never could. The story of a man, Joel Barish, portrayed marvelously by the still untapped Jim Carrey, who decides to erase all of his memories of his ex-lover, Eternal Sunshine is a showcase of masterful editing, as the film weaves in and out of Joel's past, memories being unburied and erased with Joel fighting it all the while. Jon Brion's original score was sullen and deep, accenting the film's roller-coaster of emotions perfectly when garnished with tracks from The Polyphonic Spree. Eternal Sunshine was not an epic by all means, nor did it have epic success at the box office, but almost six years later it remains to be an unforgettable example of great film. Why this film was important: Unique in its style and approach, this film is one of the greatest portrayals of love and hurt exhibited in movie history.