Reviews

As a fan of time travel media, I say without reservation that this is the single best example in the 'genre'.

The film picks up a year after the end of the series. Kurisu and Mayuri are safe, and the Steins;Gate worldline has been reached. The Future Gadget Lab is inventing gadgets instead of time machines. The world is at peace, but Okabe is tormented by visions of the other worldlines, and he begins to slip away. At first, he only suffers headaches, but the visions get longer and more visceral, and he disappears entirely into another world line.

It is up to Makise to look for him, as she is the only one who remembers he is gone. The others have no idea. They are clueless. Daru is now the founder of the Future Gadget Lab. The world isn't radically different. Nothing falls apart. Makise gives lectures. Mayuri goes on Mayuri-ing. Daru hacks into CERN. Ruka practices swordmanship. A palpable sense of emptiness lingers over the lab, but that's it.

They still drink Dr. Pepper, though no one knows why. Okabe's influence is still there, but it is not attributed to him. As Bioshock Infinite posited, when the mind is confronted with a reality that its experiences can't support, it changes the nature of those experiences.

This is especially effective in this story, which is based around the concept of deja vu, which in Steins;Gate is a form of Reading Steiner. In the anime, Okabe was shocked to see that he was not the only one with memories of other worldlines. Ferris, Mayuri, Ruka, Daru, and Makise had these other worldlines imprinted on their minds, but they were regarded these memories as nonsense or dreams, just as we would. This is a lot like deja vu, and this film makes the connection even stronger. Deja vu is often foggy, like there's a fact floating out there in the abyss of your mind that you can't quite grasp, and in this film, the characters think of Okabe's existence in much the same fashion, like an ephemeral wisp that they've forgotten and can't quite remember.

Makise can remember better, but she has a hard time grasping his name, as though she is clutching at fog even as she is trying to return him to this worldline. She's the main character of this film, which just seems right. The last two episodes of the regular anime were about bringing her back, and the special was about bringing back the relationship between her and Okabe, so it makes sense for this film to be about her trying to preserve that relationship, to make sure it doesn't fade away. It's so natural, and it's a truly genius decision that helps this film stand out from the last two episodes and the special, that helps it stick in your memories.

She tries to go back in time and stop him from disappearing, but he doesn't want her to, not because he doesn't know what happen, but because he does know what'll happen. Her mind and soul will be torn apart as she desperately tries and fails to make things right. Her humanity will be all but gone, and she will be just a shell of a human being.

He knows this, as he has been through it himself, and he does not want to happen to her. In the middle of this film, he declares these thoughts in a speech to her, a speech that hits so hard, building off the conflict and dynamics that have been building from episode 1, pleading with her to not go back in time. Okabe delivers a lot of speeches at the end of the series and in the special about how hard it has been to time-leap over and over again. They all work, but this one is far above the rest, thanks to the writing, the context, and the amount of feelings and information communicated from Okabe to Makise. She didn't know what he was feeling before, but now she does, and it's torturous. She absorbs all of what he says because it's all completely true, and it's all so painful.

This film hinges on that relationship between Okabe and Makise in a way that no episode of the show, even episode 22, had, and it's wonderful. Their relationship is one of the most emotional, stimulating, and thoughtful in all of anime. I don't just care about these people. I'm enraptured by them, and the film deepens those emotions. It doesn't just capitalize on their relationship; it furthers it. The main conflict of the film is a conflict between them, which is fascinating and adds layering.

The love, care, empathy, and affection between these two people feels alive.

When the film ended, I was satisfied in a way I wasn't at any other point in the series. If the story of Okabe and Makise had ended after episode 24, or after the anime, or after the special, I would have felt content, but there would still be a piece of longing in my heart. There was no longing after finishing this film, except maybe the longing to watch it and the series again for the first time.

El Psy Kongroo.

A film that is more talked about than seen these days, Chinatown is nonetheless one of the most significant films ever made, and it sits at a unique precipice in cinematic culture. Starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and somewhat hilariously, John Huston, it is the story of a private investigator sent to snoop on a cheating husband only to later find that husband turned up dead, setting off a chain of events that leads to the top being blown off a major conspiracy that runs deep into the roots of early 20th century Los Angeles.   It's a shame that the only part of the film the average film-goer knows about is the most famous line, "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown." That's a wonderful line, but out of context, what does it mean? Nothing. You could guess or even infer, but unless you've seen the film, it might as well be sitting out on an island. Even you know the general plot of the film, as I did before watching it, you don't get the full impact of the line.

Film quotes stick in the meat of popular culture not just because they're fun to stay or because they role off the tongue, but because they're built up to beautifully and because they hit with a force that sums up the emotions of the moment. Quoting them only works if those present know the film itself. Imagine how absurd it would sound to say, "May the Force be with you," to someone who's never seen Star Wars. They would get the gist of what you're saying, but they wouldn't get the reference or the connotations.

The "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown" line works much the same way. There are situations when it would be appropriate to say this, but there's no point if no one in your party has seen Chinatown. For those who have, that line conjures up so much rage, frustration, despair, cynicism and tragedy. It carries a lot of weight.

Neo-noir films are rarely happy affairs (the word noir even means black in French), but this film goes the extra mile. Back in 1974, the neo-noir film was rare. Traditional noir films had not been popular for some several decades, and even those were limited were the Hays Code and the culture of the time. This was a new animal altogether, and so as the film gets darker and the situation more disturbing, you end up feeling as revolted as Jack by the end. When the last night falls and you see the lights of Chinatown for the first time, you feel like you've come the end of an exhilarating, hideous, psychotic day and want it all to be swept away.

A lot of influences went into this film. There were old school noir influences, of course, but there were also influences from the then-cutting edge crime films of the day, as well as the psychological thrillers that had started to proliferate in the late 60's and early 70's. There are also literary influences; I was surprised to learn this was not based off a novel. It is very much a novelist's film.

But the most startling influence is that of Westerns. This works in two ways. First, the film takes place close to the turn of the century, a time not too far away from the settings of Westerns. The dark, cynical Westerns this film is most like took place in the 1880's, in the twilight of the West, after the land had been tamed. Second, the noir film had- at least from an American perspective- grown out of the Western: many of the same ideas, concepts, and perspectives are present. The noir was 'replaced' by the second wave of Westerns that came up during the 50s and 60's: Sergio Leone and like. In the 70's, the Western was in a Golden Age. Heaven's Gate had not yet come out. The genre was booming. America still had use for it, particularly in an era when we as a people were feeling rather lost and alone. Chinatown is neo-noir springing up from the second wave of Westerns, just like that second wave sprang up from original noir flicks.

The characters and acting in this film are first class, and despite some strange choices here and there, the plot pulls you in deeper into its black heart. This is a mystery in the truest sense of the word. There are so many layers to pull back in the seedy L.A. streets, so many secrets to carve out. The titular Chinatown is used to great effect, first as an idea, then as a place. The characters, particularly Nicolson, are perfectly cast.

This is a film that puts its competition to shame. It digs its claws into you and doesn't take them out. It's a definite must-watch.

Breathless is right.

I was enthralled the whole time.

To understand this film, you have to understand its context. This is right up there with Citizen Kane and Star Wars as one of the most influential films ever made. It is the definite film of one of the definitive movements in cinema.

France is the birthplace of cinemas. Many of the artform's oldest customs and traditions were developed there, but after a couple decades, the center of innovation shifted over to America, to the Cecil B. DeMille's and the D.W. Griffith's. Cinema was transformed into a form of high art. It could be analyzed and scrutinized. It could change lives and influence people.

World War II changed this dynamic, as world-shattering events tend to do. Hollywood, of course, didn't disappear, but its Golden Age, which had already been in decline, disappeared completely. America had a crisis of identity in its film industry that didn't really resolve itself until the 60's and 70's. There were a lot of great films made in the 50's, but an overwhelming percentage of them came from out of the States. We had a few classics, a good deal of them either about Hollywood or by Alfred Hitchcock, but overall, the industry lacked both the glitz of the early days and the depth of recent times.

When you think about the era of nostalgia, you probably either think about today or the 80's, but the 50's were like that too. Many of the biggest films took place in the 20's. We were relatively relaxed as a country. We had won a war, and we were in an unprecedented era of economic prosperity. We could afford to look backwards. France, however, could not.

In case you slept through history in school, France was taken over by the Nazis in WWII, and it became one of the key theatres during the later part of the war. Hundreds of thousands of French died, and their country was in ruin. They had to rebuild their country. They could afford to be creative and innovative. In fact, they had to be.

From that environment came the New Wave, an exciting, breezy, flippant new attitude toward filmmaking. The camera could travel freely. Jump cuts were used to clip through a scene. The traditional structure vanished, replaced with rambling conversations that were the direct precursors to Woody Allen movies. Films got more atmospheric and at the same time more sensual. There was a sense of highbrow swagger to them. It was as though film before the New Wave was a housewife, and film after the New Wave was an alluring mistress from a foreign land with a mysterious ill-gotten fortune.

This style, of course, eventually made its way over to my country and became something else entirely, getting a lot darker in the process. But that's beside the point. Even if you're not a film historian, this is a breezy, energetic, clever, exceedingly entertaining flick. The acting is superb. The editing is sharp. The camera-work is exciting. The writing is thoroughly captivating. And yes, it is one of the Frenchiest films I have ever seen- a cultural icon, I could call it.

So if you need a burst of roguish, revolutionary excitement in your life, check out Breathless.

3.5 out of 5 This is the most Takahata-ish Takahata movie. It has all his major quirks: a bizarre sense of humor, traditional Japanese mythology, environmentalism, a focus on story over character, an inability to juggle a lot of characters at once, random but fun singing that strangely does not disrupt the tone of the film, and a Japanese paternal preachiness that his films barely manage to not collapse under.

A lot of the characteristics I mentioned are negative, I don't dislike this movie. If I were given the choice between it and a random Hollywood blockbuster, I would pick it every time, despite its many faults. But I'm disappointed. Most filmmakers tend to get better as they get older, or at least grow in interesting ways.  Takahata did neither. As he grew in years, he exchanged complexity and intelligence for clumsy simplicity, and though the stylism he was once famed for did not go away, it was not nearly enough to cover up his declining artistic craft. He became simply a shadow of his former self, and though he was a rich and powerful man responsible for some of his country's enduring masterpieces, you couldn't help but feel pity for someone who had fallen so far, particularly because every now and then, there were traces of his old genius that exposed themselves for just long enough to give you hope.

Yes, I'm saying he's basically the Japanese Francis Ford Coppola.

The best thing about this film is the aesthetic. Every Takahata film has a great aesthetic, but this film takes it to the next level. It's better-looking than most Miyazaki films, and it has a greater deal creative designs too. A lot of hard work was put into making this film look as good as possible, from beginning to end. I'm not so adverse to Takahata's storytelling as to say you should watch this film on mute, but if you are planning to watch a film on mute, this would not be an a poor choice.

I should probably explain the plot of the film: in the 60's, during widespread urban development, a group of raccoons fight to stop their home for being destroyed. Yes, it does not make its environmental message subtly. At least Nausicaa had a strawman. This film doesn't. In fact, on a whole, it is rather disconnected from reality.

But that's not my main problem with the film. To explain, let me talk about my favorite scene. It's a romance scene between the 'protagonist' raccoon (I put it in quotes because this film doesn't really have a protagonist), and his love. It's a stunning scene, it's legitimately interesting, and the dialogue is rather well-written. It's the kind of scene you want to last forever.

And then they go and terrorize some innocent workers. Yeah, just like that. While I don't think we're supposed to think of the raccoons as universally good, we're supposed to sympathize with them and think their tricks are funny. I don't. The way they're presented, I was cheering for the humans. But even if their tricks were funny, that kind of tonal inconsistency takes the viewer right out of the moment, and it litters this whole movie.

Combined with unnecessary bizarre happenings that were not needed and break the pace of the film, and you have a ness of a movie. Takahata being serious is good. Think Grave of the Fireflies, his only truly great movie. Takahata trying to be funny is Takahata wasting the viewer's time. There are even parts of the film that are legitimately funny, but because they weren't weaved in with any artistic prowess, the audience doesn't care.

It is not a coincidence that the last five minutes of the film, which are the darkest, are also the best. I was sent dreaming of a better film, one that capitalized on the potential of those last five minutes, and of the very beginning, and of the good character interactions and depictions of this interesting raccoon culture. But as it was, I'm stuck with that film. I'm all right with that. It's just that I hoped for better.

By: Joshua A. Fagan

Great art brings clarity. The art itself may be about deception or confusion or disillusion, but the artist finds clarity and purpose. This is why it is so important for art to take on 'sensitive' topics. As much as the moral guardians would like to imagine that the problems of the world would vanish into thin air if they were swept under the rug, this is not the case.

We are confronted with these topics, and we contemplate them and interact with them, whether directly, indirectly, or hypothetically, but our viewpoints are small and biased, naught but ethereal pockets floating in the air, cloudy with our perspectives and shrouded by our worst features, our doubts and prejudices and nagging thoughts that we know aren't true but tag around anyway.

Great art bypasses these pockets. It is not ethereal or intangible; it is substantial and corporal, like a tower or a bridge or a skyscraper. It takes the thoughts and feelings that are impossible for us to understand by ourselves and projects them into the realm of reality. Great art's light isn't always white, but it is always bright, blinding even, blinding enough to sweep away the darkness, which is not anger or sadness or any number of unpleasant emotions, but rather ignorance and dividedness, the corrupted cloud of not knowing.

Requiem for a Dream is a film that embodies this truth more than most any I have seen. It is a film that makes order out of chaos. It does not reduce chaos to order, mind you. It takes the chaos and lays it out in the light, revealing its true nature. The impulses and choices and situations shown in this film are some of the darkest there are, but the powerful direction of Aronofsky lays them out in full color, divorcing them from the perceptions we have in our heads, demystifying them while hitting us with them full force.

If you're a lover of music, or you've at least seen Amadeus, you'd know what a requiem is: a Mass for the dead. Requiem for a Dream, thus, is a Mass for the dreams of the characters, which die throughout the film. If you know the definition of the word requiem, the end result of this film isn't be that surprising. It's not trying to be surprising. It's not trying to pull one over on you, to hit you with a twist. This is not a Nolan or Scorsese film, a flight of demented fancy.

It is a march to death, to demise, to ruin.

Generally, in film, strings are only used for dramatic scenes. Think the use of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings in the climax of Platoon. In this film they play close to the beginning of the film, as two of our main characters move a TV over the opening credits. Throughout the film, variations of that same piece come up over and over again, as do many of the film's montages and cinematic tricks.

This is not a fragile film, one that sways back and forth through its runtime. It is sturdy. It stays put. It is unbreakable. It breaks you. Empire rated this the #1 most depressing film of all time, and I find it hard to disagree. It is common in depressing pieces of literature or cinema for the characters to discuss their dreams and ambitions. In most films, the artist lets you feel, at least for a second, that these dreams are possible. This film offers no such illusions. It brushes your wishes to the side and descends into deeper and darker territory, the cuts getting faster and faster until all sense of life and hope have been lost to the unrelenting march of despair.

Some films sweep you away. This film pounds at you until you are a gray puddle of goo. But then it ends, and after one last rendition of the title theme, you hear waves and seagulls. You are free to pick yourself up and put yourself back together. Resonance pounds through your bones. And around the time you put the last piece of yourself back, you realize you have experienced one of the greatest pieces of art of all time.

I've always wanted to see a dystopian film set on a train. Not only did I get one, it ended up being one of the most creative and thoughtful films of 2014.

Most dystopian films- whatever their type or quality- are set in open, vast areas. There is a lot of space for the characters to run around and interact with their environment. This film flips the switch. The characters still get to interact with their environment, but there is a sense of claustrophobia that hangs over every second of the film.

The physical distance covered by the characters in this film is large- and it feels even larger than it is thanks to the diversity present in the art direction, which every car looking and feeling fundamentally different than every other car, which by the way is also the reason why six small subworlds feel larger than one large, boring desert world, a truth game developers seem to have forgotten these days- but it is covered in cramped quarters. Any film in which the heroes' primary objective involves having to navigate through a structure owned by the villain is bound to be tense, but in those films, there is usually at least one big, wide area, like a dungeon or hangar. This film, by virtue of taking place on a train, has no such open area.

You'd think that such a film would feel linear and uninteresting even with the superior art direction. You'd be wrong. While the film does feel like a video game at times- particularly in one section where the heroes open a door and are suddenly faced with about fifty guards- it feels like a good, strong, interesting video game, the kind you never get tired of. While the character work is nothing exemplary, it is more than good enough for this kind of a film, and more than good enough to film feel alive, like it has a beating heart.

The difference between a trip and a journey is that a trip simply takes your body from one place to another, while a trip takes your mind and spirit too. To go back to the video game example, almost all early games- and a good amount of later games- leave you with a sense of emptiness as you explore. You're just going on a trip, not a journey. It does not feel like that at all in this film. The gravity of the situation is apparent on the characters' faces. Chris Evans, who plays Curtis, our lead, is not exactly Marlon Brando, but when a director can get a good performance out of him, it's a good performance because you can tell his entire life's history is informing on the actions he takes.

That's why he makes a good Captain America, and that's why he's good in this film. He has been stuck on this train since he was 17. He's thirty-four now. Snowpiercer is a film that takes place on a snowball Earth that happened 17 years ago. Curtis and some others managed to get out, but they were treated like scum. He has seen multiple revolutions rise and fall. The events of this film are the culmination of his struggle, and they feel like it. That's what makes dystopian works effective; it's not so much the dystopia itself, but rather how it affects the characters.

That brings me to the biggest triumph of this film: it is taps into everything that makes dystopian movies work while avoiding cliché and tedium around every corner. In an America that was drowning in Hunger Games ripoff, this South Korean-Czech production based off a French novel (yes, that's weird, and it shows) gave us exactly what we needed.

This is not to say the film is perfect though. There are a lot of things that don't make sense and twists that fall flat. Whenever it tries to be deep and existential, talking about fate and destiny, it comes off as confused, likely as much of anything because of the differences between Western and Eastern views of this topic.

I wish the character interactions were as detailed and interesting as the technical aspects of the flick. Aside for an astonishingly good revelation scene outside the engine room, these characters don't really pour themselves out to one another. The most emotionally invested I felt was during a (really impressive) battle scene at the end of the first act.

If you're a nitpicker, you might want to skip this one. But if you're someone like me, someone who appreciates film as a living, breathing art form, and prioritizes ideas and concepts and performances over little problems that don't affect the overall quality of the film, you'll enjoy this one for what it is. If nothing else, it's certainly a cure for formulaic dystopian flicks.

11 minutes. That's how long it is before a single line of dialogue is uttered in David Lynch's breakthrough masterpiece Eraserhead.

During the latter half of those 11 minutes, I thought this was going to be a silent film. Sure There Will Be Blood, which gained kudos for its lengthy silent opening sequence, didn't have a single line of dialogue for the first quarter-hour of the film, but you knew it couldn't last forever. In this film, in Lynch's arcane madhouse, it could have.

And in a real and significant way, it should have. It would have been more natural, more appropriate. Despite that, I'm not saying that this would have been a better film had their been no dialogue, though it still would have worked. The dialogue seems alien, like an intruder to the world Lynch has created, which in turn makes that world more eerie and disturbing. Humans are adaptive creatures. When we are presented with a bizarre dystopian wasteland for an hour and a half, we adapt to that bizarre dystopian wasteland. Lynch counters this with his dialogue. Its clumsy awkwardness acts as a counter-rhythm to his world, keeping the audience on their toes.

The acting this film is as out of place as the writing. It's not grave and serious but stilted and, well... bad. It reminds me more of a Shyamalan movie than a Fincher flick. The wooden spaceyness that pervades most bad acting is there in spades. But that's not a bad thing. It helps the film turn on a light in our heads, a dark light, a light that says something is seriously wrong. With normal bad acting, we are pulled out of the atmosphere. But Lynch, who unlike Shyamalan knows exactly what he's doing, has the film structured such so that this style of acting pulls the audience in further into the world he's creating.

This just goes to show that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Most film critics, even good ones, are too set in their criteria. Anyone who has a checklist that says 'If a film does this, this, and this, it's good/bad', is missing out on entire worlds of possibilities. Film is not politics, people. Being extremely forward on one stance or another is not a good thing. There are many good options, many good styles of going about filmmaking, and a good critic learns to appreciate them all.

Art is the process of tapping into- and refining- the web of emotion that courses through the world. Any work that does that well is worthy of respect and admiration, no matter how it does so.

But I'm afraid this review has made Lynch and this film come off as infallibly perfect. They are not. Lynch is a fantastic director, but this is not his best work. That would be Mulholland Drive, which I have talked about in detail earlier. Recently, the BBC named it the best movie of the new millennium. While I wouldn't go that far, it's an incredible, sultry, dark, carnal, glorious flick that takes Lynch's insane mind and applies it to people and a story we can actually dig into.

This film is nowhere near that good. If I had to describe it in one word, it would be experimental. Lynch worked every dollar of the microbudget he was on. This isn't Lynch, distilled and refined. This is full-on, fierce, ambitious Lynch madness. Some things work, some things don't. I wish it added up to more, but what we got is wonderful. It feels like David Lynch's first feature film through and through, and that is not a bad thing.

It's the perfect movie for Halloween, midnights, or any other creepy time. Give it a watch.

They would never make this film in America.

I don't mean that it's too sexual or too violent for American filmmakers and filmgoers, though it would be unusual to see an American filmmaking, which fetishizes both topics, be so frank about them.

I mean that it's too real to be an American film.

I don't mean it's real like Boyhood. That's a different kind of real. American films are, by their nature, full of posture and preening. That's not inherently negative, but it prevents the kinds of conditions that created this film, a steady, unflinching, inward-pointed look at Rio's worst favela, Cidade de Deus, the City of God.

American films' desire to take themselves so seriously often gets in their own way. They are often boring and monotonous. This film, while showcasing some of the most serious and dark themes out there, is tremendously entertaining. It can be fun. It can be energetic. It can be delightful. It knows when to go dark and when to explode into color.

More than anything, it is captivating. Nothing is predictable, thanks in large part to the film's structure, which alongside Casino is proof that great films can be structured around narration. Actually, Casino is a great film to compare this to. Both films take place over relatively the same amount of time. Both films are about cesspools of corruption and violence, though one cesspool is obviously richer than the other. Both films feature a lot of cursing and explicit violence. Both films feature betrayal and paranoia. Both films feature astonishing grasp of cinematic wizardry. Both films end on relatively quiet final notes.

One's about rich Vegas mobsters, and the other's about poor Rio gangsters, but they have a lot in common, not that you would notice that while you're watching either film. They feel fundamentally different, not least because the Scorsese flick is intoxicatingly introverted and psychological, while this film is punishingly vast and open. It reminds me of Slumdog Millionaire in a way, though with all due respect to the incredibly talented Danny Boyle, this is the better film by far. More than that, though, it reminds me of a classic adventure movie mashed up with a 90's- early 00's action movie, like a perverse, distorted Lord of the Rings/ The Fast and the Furious crossover.

MM:FR contrasted its frenetic action and pace with a linear story. It's a grand antithesis that is a big reason why that film works so well. This film, with its propelling but non-frenetic action, is free to zip around the entire narrative space. Casino did not take advantage of the fact that its structure allowed it to double back and go on tangents. Scorsese, despite or perhaps because of his detailed background in film, stuck close to the playbook. I like to think of it as a limo driving crosscountry down the highway.

City of God, meanwhile, is more like a truck swiveling and swerving down back roads. The opening scene is not the only occasion where the filmmakers take liberties with the timeline of the film. In fact, these liberties form the majority of the first two acts. The film sets up the framework for this right after the first scene, where it essentially argues 'If you want to understand X, you have to understand Y, and if you want to understand Y, you have to understand Z, so we're starting at Z.' But it does not proceed from Z to Y to X. During the Z storyline, the narrator, our protagonist, Rocket, might point out that W is important and come back to it after the film finished storyline Z.

Conventionally speaking, this sounds like a recipe for disaster, but it turns out brilliant. The narrative structure is far better assembled and more interesting than almost any other film, proving that often, the unconventional way is the best way. The same can be said for the film's masterful editing and cinematography.

The early 2000's were a gold mine for visual craft, producing the most beautiful-looking movies of all time, including the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Amelie, which not coincidentally are the only two films I would say look better than City of God. But in a way, it's even more beautiful than those movies, which are often pretty in the same way a painting is pretty. This is pretty in a way that only a film can be, in a way that cannot be fully scene from just looking at screenshots.

This film has a wide variety of showstopper scenes, scenes where plot, character, and craft come together to create a spectacle the likes of which I have never seen before. The greatest of these comes at the end of the second act, at a crazy party that is extremely 70's, extremely Brazilian, and extremely entertaining. As a film critic, I knew something was going to go wrong, but I was shocked and awed by what happened. The visual craft during this sequence is haunting. Thanks to the strobe lights, it is like reality itself is blinking in and out of existence.

After that scene, the film's structure changes, and it settles into its final act. It stops jumping around so frequently. The color fades away, and it becomes an urban war film akin to The Hurt Locker and Mockingjay- Part 2. Bombs go off. Good intentions are squandered. Lives are lost by the bucketload.

There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

There is only darkness.

There is only war.

There is only the City of God.

Clarice Starling is the perfect name for the protagonist of this film. A starling is a bird, a little bird, that comes in flocks. A single starling by itself is weak, innocent, vulnerable. Clarisse is harder to define, but the long 's' sound makes it sound like a wind blowing through a peaceful field. When I hear the name Clarisse, I think of a rich teenage ingénue in a blue dress leaning dreamily on a white balcony.

No, Clarice Starling is not all those things, mostly because she is played by the gritty Jodie Foster, but that is the roll she is cast into at the beginning of the film. She manages to work her way out of her situation as the hunts the serial killer Buffalo Bill, but there is one man who can cast her back into it, one man who can turn her back into a ten-year-old girl and steal away all her personal secrets.

Ladies and gentleman, meet the man, the legend, Hannibal Lecter. Even you've never seen this or even heard of this movie, you've heard of Hannibal Lecter. When AFI released its list of the top 50 heroes and the top 50 villains in all of cinema, Hannibal Lecter was number 1 on the villain list. It's telling that Anthony Hopkins received an Oscar for playing this character despite getting limited screen time. Hannibal can strike fear into Clarisse Starling. He can certainly strike fear into you.

Humanity is afraid of smart people. Smart people can disrupt the current order of things, breezing by without breaking a sweat. Humanity is afraid of crazy people. Crazy people are unburdened by the moors of society, and have no problem breaking down boundaries. Humanity is afraid of stoic people. Stoic people can stand their ground even when the world around them turns to fire and blood, and so they can gain a leg up on their emotional brethren.

Hannibal Lecter is smart, crazy, and stoic. That is a dangerous combination. Smart people are normally not crazy, and even when they are, they usually make an emotional mistake. Crazy people are normally not stoic, and even when they are, they are not smart enough to pull off their schemes. Stoic people are normally not smart, and even when they are, they typically are not crazy enough to disrupt the entire order of things.

In many ways, he is the perfect villain. He even has the perfect villain name. Hannibal rhymes with cannibal, of course, but it is also the name of the famous leader of Carthage, who led elephants over the Alps in the Punic wars in an attempt to destroy the Roman Empire. Lecter, meanwhile, sounds conniving, due to both the combination of the 'l' and the 'k' sounds and its resemblance to the world lecher. It also sounds vaguely similar to the word 'specter', fitting considering his slippery, phantasmal nature. This film and the books that inspired it are great examples on how to create character names that vaguely allude to the character's personalities without being too obvious.

But Hannibal isn't really the villain, now is he? He's surely not the protagonist, but he's helping Clarice on her quest to catch the real villain of the film, Buffalo Bill, a character who is interesting in his own right, but is overshadowed by Lector and Starling. But in a way, his being in the 'hero's aide' role makes him a lot more unsettling. If he were just the villain, the film would still be great, but it wouldn't be as interesting or complex, and we would lose a lot of the Starling/Lecter interactions, which are the highlights of the film.

The ambiguous or outright villainous hero's aide has been done before, but usually the character in question isn't nearly as twisted or nearly as helpful. The character of Lector strikes a deep unease within the audience. His positioning within the story deepens this unease. It is not an unintended side effect that Lector's presence hangs over the story even when he is not directly in it.

As of date, this is the last film to ever win the Big Five Oscars- Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, and Screenplay. It was one of the first major films of the 90's, here to signal that the light and vapid 80's had come to an end. Foster and Hopkins both deliver A-class performances, and the writing weaves together with the direction to tell a perfect story. A frightening, towering, superbly entertaining spectacle, this one film you can't bear to miss.

It is rare that a film fills a hole I didn't know existed.

Brooklyn is a period romance about a woman, Ellis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), who immigrates from Ireland to the United States in the 1950's. It is also one of the best films of what turned out to be a fantastic year for cinema.

When I think of immigration from Ireland, I think of the 1840's and 1850's, during the Great Potato Famine, or else I think of the turn of the century, the high point for immigration of all sorts. But the eras that have been passed over by popular culture are not empty shells. They have stories to tell. This film is one of the very best of these stories.

Above all, it is a lovely film. It is not bold or brash or glitzy or any other quintessentially American attribute, but it is a quintessentially American film. I do not mean it is the sort of film that could only be made in America by Americans, but rather that it is the sort of the film that exemplifies what my country is, at its best, about: growth, opportunity, resilience, desire.

Nevertheless, it is far too complex and beautiful of a film to be adequately summed up by a few buzz words. The filmmaking craft is top-notch. There are shots in this film that are framed like paintings, such as the first shot of the film- Ellis' home and street- and the first shot of New York City, with the Empire State Building glimmering in the distance.

The character work is even better. I hate most movie romances because they feel contrived and tacked on. At no point do they feel necessary or important. This is a shame, because a great romance evokes passions, dreams, fears, and wishes that nothing else can. Great romance can be big and boisterous or soft and subtle, but it has to be intimate and potent, a secret shared between the two lovers. By those measures, this is one of the best romances in the history of art, and I do not say this likely.

There is a love triangle, but it is natural, gripping, and very non-petty. Ellis behaves in a reasonable way, her actions filled with her personality and her evolving mental state. A bad love triangle plays out like The Bachelor. A great love triangle plays out like a boat navigating two shores. Ellis is not just caught between two guys. She is caught between two different lives, two different ideals, two different dreams.

The best films all feel unique, like it could only be made at one place and one time but one team. While this film is in many ways a throwback to an earlier era, offering a feel, an environment, and a story that had been left behind by the passage of time, it is its own production. It shows the past as it could only be viewed from not just a present, but this present, by these people.

It is not obvious or obtuse, but gentle and subtle, a welcome change in the era of towering blockbusters meant to be seen exactly one time by tens of millions of people. Most films nowadays are like a roller-coaster- you get on, get twisted around for a while, get off, eat, and move on. This film feels like love, how appropriate, considering it is a romance. You're immediately drawn in. You want to know more, to dive deeper. Eventually, you fall in head first and are overjoyed about it. When it ends, you are crestfallen, but you know the memories you have formed will stay with you until eternity.

Saorise Ronan stands out among a collection of talented actors and actresses delivering some of the best performances of their lives. I want to see more of her. I want her to make more roles come alive. She has the right blend of fierce and sensitive. Though she (wrongfully) did not get an Oscar for her role, I have no doubt she will receive one in the future. I do, however, doubt that she will be as good as she is here. This role fits her perfectly.

As a film critic, I am often disappointed when writing my reviews. I want to share with you, my audience, the feeling a film gave me. But that is impossible. A film, despite only normally being between an hour and a half and three hours, is a combination of the work of hundreds or even thousands of people over often years. The best a critic can do is try to capture the essence of that feeling, but even that is hard to do. Art is about emotions, and while emotions can be explained, they cannot be translated. I could talk to you about what happiness feels like, but I can't make you feel happy by doing that.

How does every Ghibli movie end up surprising me? Other than Tales from Earthsea- an aberration and a movie no one could like- I have not watched a Ghibli movie I haven't liked. Sure, I was lukewarm on My Neighbors the Yamadas, and I thought The Secret World of Arietty was underwhelming, but Ghibli has never disappointed me. I go into every Ghibli movie- except Tales, which I correctly heard was terrible- expecting it to be great. Why is it, then, that every Ghibli movie blows away my expectations. I expected The Wind Rises and When Marnie Was There to be great. They turned out to be some of my favorite films of all time.

I expected this film to be a lighthearted and entertaining but shallow romp through a somewhat imaginative fantasy world. After all, it was only 75 minutes long, the shortest theatrical Ghibli movie ever made. I expected to give this film a solid 3.5 or 4. What I got instead was a rollicking, interesting, astounding adventure.

It's not just the quality of the films that impresses me. Most films are variations on the same formula. They feel like molds. Except for Tales, no Ghibli movie felt like that. Even if they're just simple here's journeys, like this film, they have a heart and an identity. They offer a unique experience that sticks with you.

This is not by favorite Studio Ghibli movie, but it is the best of the five films the studio made between Spirited away and From Up On Poppy Hill. It is the only one of the five- except maybe Ponyo- that understands why Ghibli films are so great. It is driven by emotion and character. It is fantastical and absurd, but it makes perfect sense. It feels just right. The characters do not get exactly what they want, but they are transformed for the better.

I would not have guessed this movie was only 75 minutes long. Those early Disney movies were short too, but they felt short. They did not make you feel like you were getting shorted, but they did not feel like grand adventures, if only because over half of their runtime was dedicated to animals doing animal things and enjoyable but pointless song numbers.

This film feels like an adventure despite its length. That's the power of animation. It does not feel like a particularly grand adventure, but it does not need to. Kiki's Delivery Service doesn't feel like a grand adventure. My Neighbor Totoro doesn't feel like a grand adventure. They don't need to. They rely on atmosphere and character. They make you feel free. They make you feel like a child again, but not in an oversensory, immature way. Instead, they bring you back to a time when the world was fresh, and you could spend crisp mornings and long evenings in its embrace, back when adulthood was just a wisp in the darkness. There is a right way and a wrong way to pull off nostalgia. Ninety percent of American films do it very, very wrong. Ghibli films do it right, and so they stick with you.

The animation quality blows me away. In many ways, it is a prettier film than Spirited Away. The central tower and the labyrinth surrounding it are beautiful. I might use them as my desktop background. The idea that the Kingdom of Cats, where most of the film takes place, doesn't have a day and night cycle and the only place where 'true' sky can be seen is a warp between it and the real world, is mighty clever, and it is only one of many brilliant concepts the makers of the film came up with. The first fantasy sequence in the film, where cats walk through the night on their hind legs in a procession, is one of my favorite sequences in a Ghibli film. The pacing is perfect, of course, but so is the lighting, which is eerie but also welcoming.

They work the feline theme to its limit. It's not overbearing, though, and it pulls the audience into the world, which is fairly complex for such a short movie. The layout of the kingdom is wonderful, and I love the long establishing shot of the cattails glowing in the sunlight. There are transformations in this film, just like in Howl's Moving Castle. I think that film does it better, but this film gets a lot of little details right, particularly height.

The plot threads are wrapped up a bit too hastily, but it does not feel like it, as they were on the side all along, and the main narrative remained the center of attention. The music is beautiful and helps enhance the European, almost Parisian feel the film is going for. While the characters are not as interesting as the characters in the best Ghibli movies, but they are interesting enough, and they never stall the movie.

Haru is a likable and relatable heroine, and she marks the transition toward high-school-aged protagonists that would continue for the rest of the studio's existence and culminate in When Marnie Was There. While she is not as interesting as the protagonists in that movie, she is earnest and thoughtful but flawed. She is a lot less complex of a protagonist than I thought by looking at the promotional material, and while her story wraps up a little too neatly for my liking, she deserves her spot in the crowded stable of Ghibli female leads.

Ghibli characters go on not only physical journeys, but emotional journeys as well. They witness miraculous sights, likely fly through the air, and come out as new people with new experiences that they will hold onto forever. The magic of Ghibli- and this film in particular- is the ability to transfer those sensations to the audience. That is their greatest gift.

Scorsese's still got it.

This is not his best film, though it did get him a Best Picture win and that Best Director nod he had been chasing for some three decades. It's not as good or Raging Bull or Taxi Driver or Goodfellas, but it is still an all-time classic.

The all-star cast is a treat to watch. When DiCaprio (who also starred in Blood Diamond, an excellent film I have already reviewed, this year), Damon, Nicholson, Baldwin, Martin Sheen, and Mark Wahlberg (who is at his best here) are in the same film, sparks are going to fly. They do not necessarily make the film, and I wouldn't single out any single performance as Oscar-worthy, everyone is at the top of their game.

What I give this film credit for is embracing its aesthetic. A Boston crime film should feel fundamentally different from a Las Vegas or New York-based crime film. It revels in its Bostonness without rubbing it in the audience's faces. I give credit to Scorsese for continuing to redefine himself. He has made two of the greatest gangster films of all time in Goodfellas and Casino. If he wanted, he could have made this film like that. No one would have complained. Yet he chose to make a fundamentally different film in terms of structure, tone, and plot. It feels as much a film of the aughts as those other two flicks feel like films of the 90's. It is our first great post-Sopranos crime film.

The premise is equal parts simple and genius. There are two main characters. The first is Leo DiCaprio's Billy Costigan, Jr., who grew up in a life of crime and is thus selected to be an undercover agent for the Massachusetts State Police in the affairs of crime boss Francis Costello (Nicholson). Costello, however, has planted a mole in the police in the form of Colin Sullivan (Damon), whom he has groomed for well over a decade.

It is not long before Costello trusts Costigan and the police trusts Sullivan. The two of them are not suspected when each side discovers there is a mole in their ranks. The two men come to recognize each other as moles, and they hunt each other down.

What I love about this film is how it straddles that line between simplicity and complexity. It's simple enough to explain the plot, but there are interesting and fundamental complexities in how it unfolds. This is true of most of Scorsese's films and is a key reason why they are almost always box office successes, but I believe this to be the best example of this, particularly in the relationship between our two main leads. They aren't friends, but there is an interesting respect between them.

There is a lot more gray area and moral overlap that one would expect given the premise. The characters do not stay within the roles they are expected to play, which I really like. It's hard to make the characters in a more premise-fueled film like this three-dimensional, but Scorsese finds a way.

I like the last hour of this film significantly more than the first. The first hour lingers a bit too longer on establishing the premise and characters, and it cuts between Sullivan and Costello too quickly. This film won the Best Oscar for editing, and while I won't say that it's undeserving of that honor- it is a Scorsese film, after all- it doesn't become a really well-edited film until the second half.

The last twenty minutes of this film are fantastic. They strike the perfect chord between orchestrated and spontaneous. At times, it feels almost anarchic, but after the credits roll, it is apparent that everything made perfect sense. It feels like a roller-coaster, except that instead of coming to a stop after throwing the audience for a loop, it takes them for another ride, and another ride after that. The Return of the King was chastised for its 'fake-out endings'. This film takes the idea of the fake-out ending and turns it to its advantage. Each of the endings hit so hard, and piling them on top of each other gives the feeling of a boulder rolling faster and faster downhill until it is going so fast that not even an adventurous archeology professor can outrun it.

Leave it to Scorsese, the greatest maker of crime films, to redefine the genre once again. This film is not without faults. It feels muddled at times. I wouldn't call it the best film of 2006. But it is a titanic, ambitious, revolutionary accomplishment that has not aged one day.

If I had to describe this movie in one word, that word would be 'striking'.

The world is crazy, and for the time being, it's only going to get crazier. When it gets to be too much, I sit in my bed, turn off all external stimuli, and remind myself that I have somehow, some way gotten to live at a place and time where I can watch movies like Raging Bull.

I kick myself for not having seen this sooner. It can be argued that Scorsese has made more great films than any other filmmaker, but this is his greatest. It is one of the greatest films I have ever seen. De Niro delivers his best-ever acting job, and the other actors play their parts, but this is Scorsese's vision through and through.

It is based off the story of Jake LaMotta, a former middleweight champion boxer famous for his toughness and turbulent life outside the ring, but it does not fall victim to any of the typical fallings of 'true story' movies. There is no crass sentimentalism or pseudo-wisdom. It is filthy, violent, experimental, and operatic.

Many of Scorsese's movies are based off real events or people, but none feel as original and dynamic as this film. Had I never heard of LaMotta, I'd be likely to say he was a fictional character made up by Scorsese. Without changing anything about the man's life, Scorsese has made it his own.

If a pirate kidnapped you, stuck you on a deserted island that somehow had electricity and a DVD player, and held out every Scorsese movie ever made, asking you to pick one... choose Raging Bull. This is prime Scorsese. No one else would even think of attempting a film like that. Scorsese mends the very boundaries of art to his will.

Who other than Scorsese would stop the film midway through to speed ahead five years not by a means of a simple time skip but an elaborate montage contrasting highly stylized boxing action with lighthearted shots of the LaMotta family that are the only colored parts of this film.

Yes, the film is in black and white, and it is better for it. Intense films are better in black and white than in color. While I don't agree with those who say film as a whole is better in black and white, the modern black and white films I have see have looked better than almost any color films. The sorts of directors who would consider making a black and white film long after the medium went out of style know when it's appropriate and when it enhances the experience. For reference, see Schindler's List and Memento By the way, I would have loved to see a black and white MM:FR. It would probably be one of my five favorite films of all time.

As for this film, it is firmly in my top 50. Maybe it'll even make it into my top 30. It's one of the greatest films of the decade. Note the contrast between the ring scenes and the outside-the-ring scenes. The ring scenes are stylized and electric. They pull out all the tricks in Scorsese's toolbox, and if there's one thing Scorsese is best at, it's drawing from everything done throughout the history of cinema while adding his own tricks, so that toolbox is mighty full. The boxing scenes in Rocky are fun, but they are child's play compared to this. The fights are atemporal. Time slows down and speeds up with the flow of the fight. It's much more like what is happening inside the fighter's mind than what is physically going on in the ring. Also present are the bright flashes of old-fashioned cameras, which Scorsese would once more rely on in The Aviator. Again, LaMotta's mental state during these fights make the bulbs stick out more than they otherwise should have.

The outside-the-ring scenes, however, utilize long takes. If it weren't so gritty and profanity-laced, I might be fooled for a couple minutes into thinking I'm watching a Woody Allen movie. When the film snaps back to the ring scenes, it's both startling and exhilarating.

As a piece of filmmaking, Raging Bull is unparalled. It's a marvel to watch. This is a film I'd love even if I had to listen to it in an unknown language. It also avoids Scorsese's 'weakness', if you can call it that, which is overemphasizing technical and stylistic marvel over genuine emotion. Here, technical side of the film, as well as the film's lofty, epic ambitions, flow perfectly into its emotional core.

This film left me stunned and astonished. Perhaps the word masterpiece is used too often these days. I'm indifferent on the issue. But even if it is, this is one of the films truly worth of that lofty title. In many ways, it is the pinnacle of American filmmaking.

In all respects that matter, this film hasn't aged a day.

Sure, the story is hamfisted, but so what? It's basically a propaganda movie. I'm not watching it for depth of character. That's not the reason it has endured. Sure, it's almost dreadfully short, but so what? Films can show a lot in 69 minutes if they don't dawdle, and this film doesn't even think about dawdling.

Through and through, it feels like a 20's movie, but it feels like how you want 20's movies to feel, how 20's movies have been portrayed as feeling by our nostalgia for that time as well as the Hollywood Machine itself. Most twenties movies, while charming, lack cinematic sophistication. The actors can be funny or poignant, but the effects are lacking and the camera work looks like it was done by someone who had never been to film school. Many end up feeling like half-finished films. It's hard to embrace films from that era, even films that I want to like and are interesting, such as Nosferatu or the original King Kong, because of this. I can appreciate them, but appreciation does not translate perfectly into affection.

This film is different. I wouldn't go so far as to call it the best film I've ever seen, as some film critics have, but it is definitely a awe-inspiring accomplishment. It's not only astonishingly good, it's astonishingly good in a dynamic, electrifying way. The title cards don't just exist to provide information- they punctuate the story beats. Each scene flows into the next. Each part flows into the next. There are montages and elaborate wide shots and quick, clever cuts. It's better on a technical scale than most films released today.

Nothing is done without a purpose though. Every shot and trick furthers some thought or feeling. It's both lean and remarkably ambitious. It does not run for three hours, but it tries and mostly succeeds to capture the emotions of the audience. Eisenstein knew what he was doing; he had to. Many of the creative technical work was his invention. When Hollywood filmmakers saw this film, they were shocked. They had never seen anything like it before.

This deserves a place among the films that changed absolutely everything. Just like there is a pre-Citizen Kane era and a post-Citizen Kane era, there is a pre-Potemkin era and a post-Potemkin era. Every film buff has their favorite Potemkin shot. Mine is the long shot on the steps where the woman holding her injured son is shot by the Cossacks.

Back in the day, even people who didn't know exactly what made this movie special couldn't stop thinking about it. Fundamentally, it is different from every film that was made beforehand. Even now, I can hardly think of a film that's made me care so much about a scenario I would have otherwise cared so little about.

I've repeatedly said that even as an outsider from the 21st century, it's possible to tell an innovator from a copier. Even if you didn't know anything about Star Wars, it's easy to differentiate it from the works that copied off it. The original carries itself with a poise, an energy that the copiers just don't have. It's in the 'blood' of the film, if you will. This film has that. I can see myself rewatching it over and over again. It's one of the most gripping motion pictures of the 20th century.

4 out of 5 Stars Contrary to popular opinion, there were a lot of good eighties films. This is one of the best. DePalma's three-hour-long epic about a Cuban outlaw who comes to the United States and becomes a fearsome drug kingpin is one of the most stark, haunting, and rich cinematic experiences of the decade. While not without flaws, it is a towering cinematic achievement, filled with vivid imagery, spectacular acting, and a raw intensity that was extremely rare then and was extremely rare now.

The eighties are my least favorite decade in modern history, and a lot of its films reflect its worst qualities. They are trite, overblown, and senseless. They prefer artifice over truth, and often attempt to sell artifice as truth. If I didn't know better, I'd say they were made by robots that are trying to understand human emotions. Rampant commercialism and an inability to connect with their audience- or people in general- ruin many of these films. A lot of eighties films are lack a metallic plant: "Oh, you liked this organic, lush sprout? Here, let us make one for you but take out all the lushness and organicness you liked about it. There. Aren't you happy?" What the great eighties movies, whether they be dramatic or comedic, have in common is that they deal with the grandiosity of the decade. Back to the Future and Ferris Bueller's Day Off both ride that grandiosity for all it's worth. You feel like you're getting away with something when you watch them. It's fantastic. On the other hand, a film like Heathers goes right at the excess and insanity, providing something of an antidote to it. Then there is the third option: rip that grandiosity off the tracks and show its horrendous underbelly. That is what this film does.

This a film that could only have been made in the eighties. Nowadays, filmmakers take a different approach to portraying the excess of the eighties- see The Wolf of Wall Street. But in this film, the tragedy of 80's excess is shown in that same level of 80's excess. While this could have played to the film's detriment, it ends up creating a deeper and more believable world. It plays better now than it does back then. The opulence Tony- our protagonist- surrounds himself in during the third act of the tale is more surreal and arcane than it was back then. A modern filmmaker can attempt to replicate the insanity, but it would be a conscious decision and thus would not flow as well into the fabric of the film.

It helps that this film was made by two of the most fundamentally 80's filmmakers in existence: I already mentioned DePalma, but this film was written by Oliver Stone. Both men have of course made films outside the 80's, but they were at their best in the 80's, are distinctly remembered for the films they created in the eighties, and represented many of the highs and lows of the eighties.

The action is strong, particularly in the famous final scene, and the acting is good, though not great. There are a few pacing problems, though I appreciate the film's scale. The character work is shoddy, but the narrative is well written. The cinematography, music, and style of the film are exemplary. The combination of shadows and long shots with bursts of violence evoked the image of a predator stalking their terrain.

While not the greatest work in its genre, Scarface not only remains a tremendously influential film, but an intense, unsettling, thoroughly entertaining film. I duly recommend it.

In a fair world, this wouldn't have had to be an indie movie. When I think about indie movies that got popular, I think about films like Juno, quirky and unusual films that came out at just the right time to strike a deep, fundamental chord with a mainstream audience. This film is not like that. It's a simple, straightforward story of two girls who love to play soccer.

Then again, it is fortunate that this is an indie movie. Mainstream execs would have ruined this film. They are good at one thing: selling films to as big an audience as possible. That is not a crime, and saying it is their job, I have a hard time condemning them for doing it. But mainstream appeal comes at a cost: the soul of the film. Now I'm not saying big blockbusters cannot have a soul, but trying to convert a smaller film into a big blockbuster can drain it of what made it special in the first place.

This film certainly is special. It's not spectacular- this is no MMFR or Godfather or Princess Mononoke- but it lifts itself above and beyond its genre contemporaries. The craft is excellent, from the cinematography to the use of music, and the writing is surprisingly spot-on.

It is also impressively earnest. Many films of this genre have that studio sheen and professional smugness to them, as if they know they are exploiting their viewers for profit's sake. The quality of the films suffers for it. Typically, the people who write and direct these films are a generation or two older than their characters. If they care enough to put some effort into the film, this is either undetectable or inoffensive, but if they do not, things can get ugly real fast.

This would have posed even more of a problem in this film's case. One of its two main characters is Indian. Studio execs have enough trouble handling foreign cultures in dramatic contexts. In comedic contexts, they are completely lost. This, along with racism and slavish devotion to traditional ideas of money-making, is one of three ways why they stay away from these sorts of movies entirely, and while that is heartbreaking and I'd love to see it change, I can't say it's comforting to see a big studio movie bumbling its way through a culture it does not understand. The end product is usually either bland and boring or, worse, stupid and insensitive.

Thankfully, studio execs were not involved, and the filmmakers, who understand exactly what they're doing, handle their topics deftly and smoothly. This is not an esoteric film. You don't need a deep understanding of India, Britain, or Sikhism to like or understand this movie. But the filmmakers' knowledge informs on it heavily. They don't have to reach or shoot blindly into the dark. They know their playbook, they know what they're dealing with.

This film is their baby. They put an unusual amount of effort into it. While not every sequence works, there is an air of grandeur and passion to the all thing. This is not to be confused with an air of pretension: this very much is a romantic comedy through and through. The filmmakers simply care about fleshing out their story and characters, making the experience interesting and thoughtful instead of half-baked and slapped together.

The relationship between the two girls is stellar. Friendships are not often done well in films, but the playful, affirming chemistry between them is just great. While it does fall into clichés and contrivances, including a limp love triangle, its energy and fluidity and strength more than makes up for that. The way most hacks write friendships, it's a wonder they had friends at all- maybe they didn't. This film gets its two main characters and the relationships between them.

If there is a villain in this film, it is binding, restrictive beliefs. The cultures these beliefs erupt from are not bad, but the beliefs themselves are, particularly when they stand in the way of dreams and hopes. More than soccer, this is a film about culture and how it defines groups of people. Jess' sister wants to have a nice Indian wedding and start a family, and that's fine. Jess wants to go to America and play soccer, and that's also fine. In an era in which so many are scared of losing their culture, this film shows that cultures are at their strongest when they interact with other cultures, swapping ideas and thoughts, helping everyone get the lives they want and strive for.

The future: it is vital to the spirit of mankind. We live for the future. Without it, we can't hope or dream or believe. Without it, our lives are bleak and meaningless. Children of Men takes place in a world with no future. Women have become infertile. Not a single child has been born for eighteen years. It is the darkest kind of dystopia. Most dystopias are caused by war or famine or disease or an oppressive regime. All of those things are loud and tangible. This is different. It's slow, gradual, and complete. Once the current generation dies out, human life on earth is finished. Time is eating the human race alive.

There is only one thing more depressing than living in a world that has ended, and that is living in a world that is ending and knowing there is nothing you can do. That is the situation everyone has to live with in Children of Men, and it has caused the world to erupt into chaos. All the major world powers have collapsed into anarchy. Only Britain is left, and it has become a totalitarian police state determined to keep out foreigners at all costs.

No one in this world looks happy. They want to get as much power for themselves as possible, of course, but they know it doesn't really matter, not in the end. They are all going to die, and no one is going to replace them.

There is but one light, one ray of hope: a pregnant woman- a living miracle- has been discovered. The majority of the film is our main protagonist, Theo, trying to escort this woman through the dystopia to safety. He was only caught up with her because of his wife, who is the leader of a revolutionary wing trying to get immigrants the rights they deserve. The pregnant woman was in the revolutionary camp, but after the camp is taken over by radicals who want to kill Theo and use the baby for their own purposes, the two of them leave, meeting many interesting figures on their difficult path way to freedom.

This is arguably one of the greatest pieces of postapocalyptic fiction ever created. The storyline is good, the writing is great, and the characters have a sense of desperate humanity to them that's missing from too many postapocalyptic tales. But it is Cuaron's talent as a director that makes this film extraordinary. This is one of the best directed films I have ever seen. While much credit should go to the cinematography, which is astounding, Cuaron seamlessly weaves these excellent pieces into an evocative tale that is equal parts elegant, gritty, and haunting. No other filmmaker can match his love of- or talent with- moving camera shots. The full scope of the dystopia is on full display. He indulges in the entire world, not just the main character, making everything feel darker yet more alive and certainly more focused on the emotions this film is generously putting on display.

A glorious, grim spectacle, this is a triumph of modern filmmaking from one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Every second, every shot, every sequence breathes with energy, with power, with unequaled decisiveness, showing perfectly a story of desperation and despair, of misery and desire, of oppression and resilience, of hope lost and hope found.

I've finally found it... a Studio Ghibli movie I did not like. Let's talk about it.

Studio Ghibli had a lean few years following their greatest commercial success, Spirited Away. That film made the equivalent of $300 million and finally broke the studio through to Western mainstream audiences. It is the reason many Ghibli classics finally got released in the West. But the five films they released after that were decent at best. The nadir of this slump was this flick.

Up On Poppy Hill- the film that ended the streak of below-standard Ghibli movies- was a period romance. In this film, the company dips its toes into another genre- the big-budget, soulless fantasy Lord of the Rings rip-off genre. Yay! Among the films in this most detestable of genres, this is far from the worst. It looks and sounds gorgeous, and there are some good ideas thrown in here and there. The last five minutes are borderline phenomenal. But as a whole, the film embodies many of the worse elements of the genre: boring storytelling, stale characters, needless babble, overindulgence, and a distinct lack of focus, all of which combine to make a film that is impossible to care about.

This is really a shame, as this movie could have been really good. The source material, while not extraordinary, is creative and clever. The world of Earthsea is certainly not as boring as this film made it out to be. Go read the books and see for yourself. And even if the source material were bad, Ghibli and fantasy seem like a can't miss combination. Nausicaa is a great example of Ghibli's love of fantasy. In that film, they set precedents. In this film, they follow precedents. Nearly everything in this film is ripped off from something better- another hallmark of this horrid genre. In the end, it plays like a second-rate Nausicaa ripoff, a second-rate Legend of Zelda ripoff, and a third-rate Lord of the Rings ripoff.

It is also far too long. Normally, I wouldn't complain about a long Studio Ghibli movie. If there were a four-hour director's cut of Mononoke or Spirited Away, I would be ecstatic. But there is a reason animated movies are usually shorter than the average blockbuster outside of the fact that they take forever to make as is- the nature of animation makes a 90-minute animated movie feel full and luscious, while a typical 90 minute drama feels claustrophobic and barren. A 120-miunte Ghibli movie like Spirited Away or Mononoke feels like a 3-hour-long live action movie.

But length is something you have to earn. A 90 minute movie with characters you hate is annoying, but a three-hour movie with characters you hate in inexcusable. This film is 120 minutes long, and for the reasons I stated earlier, it feels like it's three hours long. I normally hate people who fall asleep in movies, but for this flick, I would encourage it.

The characters are painfully cliché. There's the young hero, the evil sorcerer, the hero's mentor, and so on. It feels like these characters were lifted straight from a set of archetypes. The only character who's somewhat interesting is the hero's love interest. While not a great character, she has all the film's interesting scenes, and is easily a standout in this paper-thin cast.

I absolutely despise our main protagonist. His struggle does not become apparent until halfway through the film, and it feels like it came out of nowhere, and it doesn't particularly feel like a struggle. This would be acceptable if he were interesting in any way, but he's not. To say he has no character would be kind. I would much rather have Link from Legend of Zelda, a character who literally never speaks, be the main lead here. The guy we got is so angsty and depressing and bland. The movie desperately needs us to care about him, but we don't, not in the slightest. He is honestly one of the worst leads I've ever seen. Nothing about him makes any sort of sense, and everything about him is so clumsily handled, and even if that weren't the case, he's still absolutely awful.

If over half this film were cut, nothing would change plotwise. This film has no right to be 120 minutes. It has no right to be 90 minutes for that matter. It should be 70, 80 minutes at most. And if I had to choose which parts to cut out, I'd cut out the parts where the characters talk. The dialogue is horrible. I would honestly enjoy this film better if I watched it in Japanese with no subs. I would rather this film be a travel documentary about this world. The landscape shots are the best things about the flick.

To be fair, if I have to spend two hours of my life watching a bad fantasy movie, I'd choose this over pretty much anything else. But I'd rather spend two hours watching a great fantasy movie, which is what this would have been. Goro Miyazaki, the director, would improve, but here, he squanders a potentially enjoyable film into the worst slog in Ghibli history. I weep for what could have been.

It is beyond cliché at this point to say this film is the 'All the President's Men' of this generation, but that is because the comparison is so readily apparent. If you're learned in any way about cinema, it's the first thing that pops into your head. I noticed in five minutes into the film, and I was continually reminded of that throughout its 130 minute runtime.

While they're not so similar as to make Spotlight a ripoff, I could see these films being part of the same series. Wouldn't that be a strange series- a set of similar films of excellence in investigative journalism. I'd be all for that, but in the current Hollywood climate, the possibility of that happening hovers around zero.

No matter what you think about this film's relationship to ATPM, it is certainly not a ripoff in terms of quality. It won Best Picture at the Oscars, and while I would not call it the best film of 2015 under any circumstances, it is a stellar piece of old-school filmmaking.

I find it quite humorous that both what this film is about- high-quality print journalism - and what it is- a mid-budget grounded drama driven by its story and cast instead of special effects- are in the same boat; they are gradually fading away but are capable of producing great work.

However, that same sense of obsolescence is why this film is not getting a perfect score from me. All the President's Men seemed titanic. It starred two of the biggest names in the world and was cutting-edge for its time. This film, with minor alterations, could pass for a film from 1975. It doesn't want to accept full-on modern filmmaking, which would be all right if everything from then hadn't shrank since then, thus making this film seem less important than it otherwise would be. Journalism and these types of movies are two things that don't matter as much as they once did, and this film acting otherwise without providing any additions to the formula stops it from being truly great. It is drawing from a well that isn't as deep as it once was.

Even the subject matter reflects its lack of grandiosity compared to its spiritual predecessor. While I ardently refuse to take anything away from this very important story that affected many lives, it is no Watergate. There is only one Watergate. ATPM was lightning in a bottle in that regard. How we get our information has also changed over the last four decades. While everyone knew about Watergate, they didn't know the nitty-gritty, the details of the story. Now, with the internet, any random Joe could find out everything he needs to know about the Catholic Church abuse scandal in minutes.

But that's enough points against this film. It really is one of the most insightful, hardhitting, entertaining films of the last six years. I would put it up with and maybe even above Michael Mann's The Insider, another film that is often compared with ATPM. A killer cast, led by Michael Keaton (leading his second Best Picture-winning film in two years), Edward Norton (putting in the best work of his career), and Rachel McAdams (same deal), engage you in this narrative, and the Academy Award-winning screenplay chipped in a great assist. The few modern touches of the film do help it out, making it feel old-fashioned in a good way instead of old-fashioned in a bad way. Though not unprecedented, this film is sharp and unflinching, a true instant classic.

By: Joshua Fagan

This is, by default, the worst Studio Ghibli movie I have ever seen. I doubt it will stay that way, given that I'm finally digging through the entire Ghibli canon. I've heard bad things about Tales from Earthsea, though I will reserve final judgement for after I've seen it. But yes, this is the first Ghibli movie I've seen that I'm not giving a completely positive review to.

What it's about? A Japanese family and their wacky but mundane adventures. That's it. There's a stressed-out father, a quiet yet nagging mother, an overworked, nervous teenage boy, a cute little girl, and a wise yet snarky grandmother. Given this is Ghibli, you might expect these characters to be more than their stereotypes. But they're not, not really. Miyazaki is a wizard with characters. Takahata? Not so much. Even the one unquestionably great movie he made, Grave of the Fireflies, is not great because of its characters.

While it's fun hanging out with these characters, you never believe that they have anything truly interesting to say. They're the equivalent of the friends you invite to a party but would never think of coming to when you need emotional support. In real life, these people are fine. But they do not make for compelling film-viewing. Great characters make you feel like you know them in a deep and profound way. I could watch the characters in this film for the rest of my life and never feel that way toward them. And that is a big fault considering what kind of film this is.

There is not even a plot. The film is just a series of thinly connected vignettes. While this fits the film's comic-strip-inspired art style, it is a lot like that art style in that it is an interesting choice and one that I respect, but it is not necessarily a good choice. Takahata's intention was to give us an inside into the family life of these characters, but as these characters are not interesting, it does not really work. The entire film feels like a collection of filler that was taken out of a better, more interesting movie.

Some of the vignettes would be fairly funny on their own right as short films, but tons of them connected into a full-length movie makes it feel jumbled and boring. There are some threads that were clearly intended to be developed, but never paid off. There some characters that were explored too little, some characters that were explored too much, and some characters that were explored in the wrong ways. The whole film is disjointed. I don't hate it, and there is a lot of good stuff in it, but it's too bland and flaccid for me to like.

My biggest complaint is how it never builds to anything resembling a complex. Even in a slice-of-life movie like this, there should be some kind of build-up, some indication that the film is going somewhere, even if it's not somewhere traditionally interesting. Boyhood was especially good in this regard. This film just goes along on its merry way, then just wraps up. We talk about films having good pacing or bad pacing, but this film doesn't have pacing. This isn't horrible, but it robs the story of what emotional heft it would have had.

Formatted differently and under different hands, this film could have been great. Instead, it's stuck at 'merely good'.

Do you remember Saturday morning cartoons? If above a certain age, you do. They were fun, poppy, and enjoyable, although as we got older, we came to realize that they weren't very good.

This is like a Saturday morning cartoon, except it's good.

Aired on Netflix and made by basically the entire Korra team minus Bryke, this is based off the classic 80's show Voltron. That show was all right. This show is great. It's not Avatar-great or Korra-great, but it's great. The animation is top-notch, the writing is solid, the characters are interesting, the pacing is excellent and it's an all-around blast to watch.

This a series that is made for binge-watching. The episodes flow into each other so well that it's like a mix between a TV series and a movie. It's almost a new medium, or at least a new format. This is a very interesting development. It'll be interesting to see where it goes, both in this series and in television in general.

Thankfully, this is a series you will want to binge-watch. It starts you off in that direction by combining the first three episodes into one epic hour-long season premier, but it is the quality and addictiveness of the show that carry you the rest of the way. Honestly, I'd be surprised if anyone didn't binge-watch this. It's not like some of the great adult-skewing TV dramas like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones, or even shows like Avatar and Korra, which can tire you out and force you to take a break. These episodes leave you with enough energy that you want to springboard into the next one.

This choice extends to the series as a whole. Without giving too much away, the entire season ends abruptly, leaving us on a cliffhanger. Now, if they were focused on one season at a time, this would not be a good choice for the ending. It's unsatisfying. But when the entire series is completed, it's a brilliant idea. People would finish season 1 and jump immediately into season 2. Despite what you may have heard, it's very possible for later seasons to retroactively improve earlier seasons. This takes that to a whole new level.

None of these characters were particularly interesting in the old 80's show, but under the deft hand of Team Korra, they all have specific and well-defined hopes and fears and desires.

In a lot of shows where a team of heroes must save the day, one member of the team (or that member and his rival) get all the spotlight, while the other heroes are swept to the background. Sure, they may get episodes in the sun, but even then, it's obvious and contrived that they were just trying to get those characters more screen time. Often, those characters don't even have any bearing on the finally. But here, it's different. The team really feels like a team: all five members matter. There is a leader, but he doesn't overshadow the rest of the team, and it feels like he's the leader not because some marketing department declared him to be so, but because he's the most mature and knowledgeable out of all the characters, and would naturally be the leader.

I also love this series' ability to take typical TV-episode plots and make them emotionally and thematically resonant. In the third-to-last episode, the characters' ship gets corrupted. It's funny, yes, but by the end of the episode, an important sacrifice has to be made, and you'll be crying your eyes out. It takes a deft grip on storytelling to be able to pull something like this off.

Now I'm not saying the show's perfect. It can occasionally get bogged down in things we don't care about, and while a significant amount of suspension-of-disbelief is needed for a show like this, it sometimes pushes you too far and feels too contrived. But the weakest part of the show is its villains, none of which are all that interesting. When the villains are on screen, I kind of bide my time and wait for them to switch back to the heroes. But when they do switch back to the heroes, my eyes lock on to the screen. I was not expecting to become so invested in the characters and environment and plot, but Team Korra got me. Great show, guys. I will be waiting for season 2.

(P.S. I love the chemistry between the characters. It's funny and heartfelt. They really do make a good team.) By: Joshua A. Fagan http://jfmillenniumreviews.blogspot.com

Here we are, folks: the first full-length movie Hayao Miyazaki ever made.

Back then, he was a youngish animator who had paid his dues and made quite a name for himself in the anime industry, but he had not yet begun his ascent into a global icon. He was a name in anime, but he was far from the name to know in anime.

This movie... did not much change that. While it was warmly received by fans of the television series, which Miyazaki also had a hand in, the series did not have particularly high ratings or many fans at the time, and the money failed to make a major splash in the Japanese box office. It did, on the other hand, make a major impact on one young Californian working at Disney. His name? John Lasseter.

Even nowadays, not enough people know about this movie. Most that have are either fans of the Lupin III animes- the franchise is going stronger than ever today- or fans of Hayao Miyazaki that are interested in his entire oeuvre of work. I am firmly in the latter category.

It's a shame that this film isn't more popular, as it's absolutely fantastic. While it's not my favorite Miyazaki movie, it's a fun, epic, adrenaline-filled adventure with classic characters, great music, stunning animation, and some of the best fight scenes that had been animated up to this point.

If I had to describe this film, I'd say it's like a PG-13 heist film mixed with a grand, romantic, save-the-princess story, taking the best elements from both genres. It's just a blast. You care about these characters and the situations they're in. It never gets cheesy, both because it fully believes in itself and because there's always some action to balance things out. And it never gets cold or meatheady, both because the action is always personal and fluid and because there are always some mice character moments to balance things out.

There is not another Miyazaki movie like this. I could spend the rest of this review listing things that are in this movie but not in any other Miyazaki movies, or I could spend the rest of this review listing things that are in other Miyazaki movies but not in this one. But instead, I'll say that in a lot of ways, this does feel like a Miyazaki movie, through and through. Miyazaki has a very specific way of making films, right down from the character interactions to the pacing. That core style is in full display. If you showed me this movie, didn't tell me who it was by, and then told me it was a Miyazaki film after I was done watching it, I'd say, "Yeah. That's about right." The relationship between Lupin and Lady Clarisse is as wonderful as it is pure. It really makes this movie work. When she's taken away, you really feel her pain, and his pain too. I'd even go so far as to say they have one of the best relationships in any Miyazaki movie. While I can understand why Miyazaki moved away from this type of storytelling and these types of characters and relationships, he is very good at constructing them.

Our villain is also very good. It is actually quite difficult to create good 'pure villains', characters that make you go, "I want the hero to take this guy down." instead of "Ugh. Can this guy just jump off a cliff already. He's annoying me.", but this film manages to do it. He is relentless and slimy, and his famous battle with Lupin on the hands of the massive clock tower is a truly great scene.

This is not one of those Miyazaki movies that make you feel like you've been transported to a different, better dimension, but it is an utterly fantastic genre flick that will enchant and delight anyone who watches it.

This isn't the worst movie I've seen. But it exemplifies everything that's wrong with 80's movies.

The plot concerns two awkward teenage boys who somehow manage to create a beautiful woman, who, like some sort of uber-hot fairy godmother, helps them come out of their shell and become confident members of society- terrible, terrible 80's society.

My biggest problem with the film plotwise is that there's no evidence that they're actually better people. If anything, they're more annoying than they were at the start of the film. And all throughout, they are just horrible and horribly unlikable people. If this were my film, they would be the antagonists instead of the protagonists. If nothing else, there should have been some time for the characters to reflect and think on what they've done. But why have reflection and intelligence when you can have low-grade humor and pathetic wish fulfillment disguised as empowerment for the last sorts of people on earth who actually need empowerment? I really hate the 80's. I am so glad I didn't have to live through them.

It gets to the point that the purposely, hideously one-dimensional evil big brother character is the most sympathetic one in the film. 80's films love wish fulfillment, and this isn't inherently a bad thing. Ferris Bueller's Day Off is pure wish fulfillment, and it's also one of the best movies of the decade. The main difference is that Ferris is cool and smart and free while the main characters here are pathetic, smarmy, and squirmy. I'd go anywhere with Ferris. I'd do anything to avoid going with these people. Ferris earned his crazy getaways. These people stumble around. They're more like Camerons, except Cameron is genuinely likable- a normal guy- whereas these people are unrelatable freaks.

But of course this movie doesn't need to be as good as Ferris to be watchable, just like not every fantasy film needs to be The Lord of the Rings. This film isn't bad because not even a homeless man would take it as a replacement for one of the great 80's teen comedies. This film is bad because it's an insensitive, brainless, unfunny, dull, absurd piece of cinematic garbage that is inferior to every other movie that has endured from its time and genre.

The effects are bad, even for a cheap 80's movie, and the characters are boringly one-dimensional. I'm for more angry at the latter flaw, particularly considering this is a Hughes film. Sure, Hughes helped enforce those stereotypes, but he usually built beyond them and did something with them. That's what makes the Breakfast Club so great. But the characters here are so by-the-numbers, it's laughable.

My theory is this: Hughes used up all his wit and creativity on TBC and Sixteen Candles and had none left for this film. I'm backed up by the fact that he made all three of those movies one after another over the span of 19 months. Maybe he just didn't have anything left in him. Maybe he had to go back and recharge before getting back to it.

There are few positives to this movie, but these are they: Kelly Lebrock does a great job as the created woman. She's not a great actress, but no one in this movie acts well, so her lack of ability doesn't stand out. What does stand out is her charisma and poise. She's the only redeemable part of the movie.

And then they're the fact the film often veers into so bad it's good territory. When the film's being absurd instead of absurdly boring, it's actually quite funny. It's not intentional humor, but it's something.

The film isn't as sexist as one would think. It's bad in that regard, yes, but it's so bad and ridiculous that you're only going to be offended if you're looking to be offended.

Eighties movies are like the first act of 90's movies, where it looks like the main characters have gotten away with committed morally questionable needs, but their actions soon catch up to them. In 80's movies, there's no karma. But in the case of films like this, I desperately wish there were.

Our main hero is Quasimodo, a supposedly hideous man who has been locked up in the castle by Frollo, whom we'll get to later. One of my problems with this movie is that Quasi is not nearly as hideous as he is portrayed. He's more of an ugly-cute. He's not attractive, especially compared to his costars, but 'the most hideous man in all of France' he is not.

But my main problem is that this film professes a moral that it doesn't matter what you look like, yet what's Quasi's reward for being the hero. You and I both know that if he'd been more handsome, he would have gotten the girl (honestly a sexist concept in of itself, but that's for another day), the beautiful Esmeralda. But he doesn't. He merely gets to be accepted by the public and treated like a normal human being. What kind of a reward is that? Esmeralda ends up with the traditional blond, handsome prince, Phoebus, who is so forgettable I had to look up his name before I wrote this review. That's garbage. For all his hardships, Quasi basically gets the 'reward' of being the third wheel.

The one bright spot among our cast of heroes is Esmeralda. Besides having a gorgeous name, she's entertaining, energetic, flirty, and cunning. I'm not really sure if she's that different from the other Disney Princesses (yes, I know she's not actually a princess, but Disney plays it fast and loose with the branding; if this movie had been more successful, you bet she would have been there), but she definitely feels different. She feels more experienced, more mature.

Honestly, I wouldn't have minded if they took out the Hunchback and her prince and instead made it about her and Frollo, It really wouldn't have been an adaptation of the Hunchback of Notre Dame anymore, but it would have been a more interesting, better-told story than the one we ended up getting.

Frollo himself is far and away the highlight of the movie. He's the kind of Disney villain that's scary when you're a kid and downright disturbing when you're an adult. Before I rewatched this one, I thought Scar was far and away the best Disney villain ever. Now I'm not so sure. If you asked me right now, I'd give the edge to Frollo. He may not have killed Mufasa, but he is wondrously, gloriously, terrifyingly insane.

In fact, at the moment of writing, I'd even go so far as to call him arguably the best straight-up villain in film. That voice, that outfit, that authoritative, slimy charisma; it's impossible to look away when he's on screen. He steals every scene. He, plus the many, many wonderful shots in the film (including one in which the pattern on the main stained glass window of the Notre Dame is projected onto the ground on which Esmeralda is standing) are what elevate this film above its contemporaries and make it a truly great film and underrated in the massive Disney animated canon. I hope there comes a day when this film is fully able to come out from the shadow of The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast and really, truly stand on its own.

For the first act or so, Frollo is just a captivating, impressive villain. Then comes Hellfire. Other than being the best song in the film and one of the best songs in the entire Disney renaissance, other than being partnered with a beautiful visual sequence that, like real destructive fire, is as painful as it is unignorable, it completely reveals Frollo's state of mind. This is his one moment of weakness, and it disgusts him. And what does a man like Frollo do when confronted with his weakness? He wants to destroy it and bring back the stony façade he regularly projects, for that is all a withered, black soul like himself has left.

What is his weakness? He wants Esmeralda. And I don't mean he wants her to lock up in his castle or tie up on the train tracks. He wants her in a lustful, sexual, carnal sense. Of course, the film doesn't use those words, but it's as clear as the water on a bright sunny day. To see emotions like this expressed with the lush Disney bigness is as surreal as it is terrifying. Yet there's a certain current of reality to all this that immerses you in his crazy, twisted world.

He refuses to accept this thoughts, and thus they go more twisted and perverted. He seeks to snuff them out and so wants to kill her or burn the city down trying. And that's exactly what he does. He burns half of Paris to the ground. We see him torch an individual home with his own hands. He tries to chop off Phoebus' head. And it's fairly clear that if he got Esmeralda alone to do whatever he wanted with her, he'd kill her, but not before raping her first.

Yes, this is a G-rated kid's movie.

And because of the nature of animation and Disney animation in particular to shape the environments around the emotions of the characters, you feel every bit of what I just described. It's well-done, evocative, and kind of unbelievable.

While a mess of a film in some parts, the parts that are good are so good they more than make up for it. This is one of the great Disney Renaissance movies, and I hope Disney gets around to the live-action adaptation. It's truly unique.

I may like this movie more than I should, as right after I finished watching it, I received my very first partial request from an agent. Even now, as I'm writing this, I'm ecstatic. But even putting all that aside, this is still a fantastic movie.

This is the first good Holocaust movie I've seen that both 1) isn't so depressing I feel drained for the rest of the day and 2) is still reverent and respectful and dramatic. It is hard to make a character-driven Holocaust movie, mostly because the enormity of the event takes away from the characters. Spielberg was able to do it with Schindler's List. Benigni does it in a totally different way with Life is Beautiful.

The main plot of the movie is centered around a funny Italian Jew waiter who was put into a concentration camp with his son during World War II. His son is only four or five, so he makes up stories about how they are playing a game and how when they get to 1000 points, they'll get a tank. It's cute, it's funny, it's depressing, and it just works. If they had played it hollowly or cynically, it wouldn't have been successful. But they didn't. Benigni- who picks up a well-deserved Oscar for his role, becoming the only person to ever win Best Actor at the Oscars for a performance given in a foreign language- tells his son these things as if they were the absolute and total truth, giving himself to them, wanting to believe them himself. It's a sight to behold.

Naturally, there were critics who attacked this movie for not being another grim, miserable, slog of a Holocaust movie. They just have in their minds that movies are supposed to be one way, and if they're not that way, they must be bad. I hate these kind of people. They don't have a right to live, let alone be critics. Honestly, I think it's a bit pompous for an American critic (who is part of a country that was an ocean away from the Holocaust) or even a British critic (who is part of a country that managed to avoid having their citizens butchered in it, though they lost many people in the war effort) to attack the portrayal of the Holocaust from a country whose Jews experienced in quite personally.

Either way, it's a completely shallow thought. This movie gets how horrible the Holocaust was. In fact, it gets it a lot more than many other movies set here do. It gets it in a personal, somber, humanistic desperate sense, a sense in which you have to do whatever it takes to stay alive and not wait to die and get your spirit pounded out of you. I can understand why Americans and Brits might not get it, though that's no excuse for the amount of ignorance in the reviews, but it makes perfect sense.

The first act of the film- which takes place before the Holocaust- is actually the best in the film. I could watch that and nothing else and be satisfied. Part of me wishes that been stretched out to two hours and made the entire movie. It would have been the funniest, most heartfelt romcom of the 90's. The relationship between our main leads (Guido and Dora) is phenomenal... which is of course why Dora is shrugged off to the side when the Holocaust portion starts in favor of Guido and their son, Joshua. Yes, I know it makes sense from a logistical standpoint, and it's a great story on its own right, but it is jarring.

While I love this movie, it does have some pacing problems. The first act seems disconnected from the rest. The transition isn't completely out of the left field, as plot points from the first act are developed in the second and third, but it seems almost like an entirely different team made the first act, or like this is the result of two scripts being mashed together. It's not terrible, but it is sort of distracting. I think a rewrite or two could have been a boon.

Anyway, this is still one of the best movies of the nineties, and it broke down a lot of barriers for foreign films. It certainly helped that this is prime Oscar bait (WWII, sacrifice, mildly happy ending, love and loss), but it never once felt like Oscar bait to me. Benigni made this movie solely because it's the movie he wanted to make, and I'm glad it was such a runaway success. It's a brilliant film, and one people will watch over and over again long after dredge like The Pianist has been forgotten.