Summer of Film #14 of 100
Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins teaches an important lesson in screenwriting. You can rescue a so-so film with a spectacular climax.

For all practical purposes, this is the first Batman movie. It tells the classical superhero origin story in its own reimagined way. While this may not be the best Batman movie ever, this is by far the best Batman of all time. As a character, Batman as played by Christian Bale, is one of the most well developed and well acted superheroes. The problem with previous incarnations was that you did not know about (or care about) Bruce Wayne. For the first time, with Batman Begins, you actually do. More than you do about Batman. Read More »

Summer of Film #13 of 100
The only way I can talk about Love Liza is to talk about Philip Seymour Hoffman. In his films he seems to operate in one of two modes- there is the Hoffman (of say Owning Mahoney or Magnolia) that shrinks while on screen, that is so subtle, understated that you would not notice him if he wasn’t a character in the film. Then there is the larger than life Hoffman (of Punch-Drunk Love or Almost Famous that demands your attention every frame of every scene). This movie has him operating in the first of these two modes. The movie stars Hoffman as Wilson Joel failing to deal with the suicide of his wife. Read More »

Summer of Film #12 of 100
Before I get into anything else- what is the connection between ‘The Sopranos’ and 1995’s ‘Basketball Diaries’? Three actors from ‘The Sopranos’ are in this film- Lorraine Bracco (Dr. Melfi from ‘The Sopranos’), Michael Imperioli (Christopher Moltisanti on ‘The Sopranos’) and Vincent Pastore (Big Pussy on ‘The Sopranos’). Then I’m reading a bit more about these people and come to the realization that all three of them were in Scorsese’s ‘The Goodfellas’ as well! No explanations yet after a little time researching and googling.

Basketball Diaries is a story of a kid- Leonardo DiCaprio playing real-life writer Jim Carroll- who nearly loses everything he has when drugs threaten to take over his life. This has the potential to be a spectacular story- and it is, since it actually happened. The problem is in execution. The movie doesn’t take it’s subject matter seriously enough. It pulls its punches- keeping most of the violence, suffering and consequences off screen, to the effect that to a youngster the worst effect drugs would have on you was that you felt like you had a bad case of the ‘flu. And you couldn’t play basketball. Read More »

Summer of Film #11 of 100
Robert Altman (MASH, Gosfod Park) is the master of fly-on-the-wall cinema; the brilliant ability to make films about ensembles rather than follow individual characters. The opening scene of The Player has the camera drift on a movie studio lot for 8 minutes without a cut, catching glimpses of inside deals and snippets of only-in-hollywood conversations. This sets the stage for a film that draws us behind the closed doors of doublecrossing Hollywood players. Read More »

Summer of Film #10 of 100
Easy Rider is more about a generation, a time, a place. A lifestyle.

Easy Rider is a film that creates a mood and builds on it for its duration with the sole purpose of giving people everywhere an understanding of a lifestyle that existed for a few years and then vanished to only become part of the American mythology. This was the time when peace, love and music brought people to the town of Woodstock , when riots brokeout at the cinenmatheque in Paris and when a guy named Captain America (Peter Fonda) with his friend Billy (Dennis Hopper, also the director) rode across America’s south in search of a way out of the system. Read More »

Cameron Crowe does something for me; the combination of Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous and Say Anything- his brand of rock ballads about men who will always be boys- just thinking about them make me smile.

This year, now that Star Wars has passed, Elizabethtown sits at the top of the list of movies I’m looking forward to. If Cameron Crowe does anything for you as well, you may want to check this out (43Mb). It is a music video/trailer/feel-good piece for Elizabethtown and a must see.

Summer of Film #9 of 100
The advent of sex, lies and videotape in 1989 caused three things major events to occur:

1. It brought the attention of the world upon the great Steven Sorderbergh who not only lived up to his indy protégé status but soon surpassed it with his back-to-back Oscar favorites Erin Brokovich and the brilliant Traffic and his bringing together one of the great ensemble casts in modern motion picture history for Ocean’s Eleven.


2. It lended it’s title to countless unimaginative gossip rags, entertainment mags and scandalous newspaper stories. You could almost hear the editor say, a few minutes before going to press: ‘What are we going to call this article? If you can’t think of anything, I’m going with sex, lies and …’ you know what. And very rarely do those articles have anything to do with sex, lies and videotape; but who cares? It sells.


3. Finally, and probably most significantly, sex, lies and videotape brought on the independent film revolution that arguably hasn’t ended yet. And for that, if for nothing else, this movie is a classic. It made the ‘90s a great time to start my film life.

Having said all of that- the movie failed to impress. It is intriguing, challenging and has one of the most eerily endearing performances on film (James Spader) but for me, there was no connective tissue. Read More »

Summer of Film #8 of 100
There must have been a time when the Coen brothers’ films were described as noir, as dark comedies and people must have tried to come up with better and more accurate descriptions as every new movie threw their old adjectives out the window. Thankfully, we can now just call it a Coen brothers’ movie and hope you’ll understand what you are in for.

Of course, I’m assuming you’ve seen one before (one that was not Intolerable Cruelty, that is). If you haven’t, well you should- and Fargo or The Man Who Wasn’t There are good places to start. Blood Simple, however, is where the Coens got their start; and what a start it is. Read More »

Summer of Film #7 of 100
There is no way to speak of this film without dealing in superlatives- Howl’s Moving Castle, from Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke) is the most imaginative animated fantasy I have ever seen, the best animated film I have seen since Finding Nemo and probably the best film I have seen so far this year.

Most promos and reviews describe the plot as the story of a girl who is the victim of curse that turns her in to a an old lady, but this is not the plot. It is only the event that sets her out on a journey that is part Wizard of Oz, part Sound of Music and part.. well, part its own fantastic world where each seen is populated with fascinating characters and objects, each character has a range of strange quirks and each plot point has the potential to spawn days of idle childhood daydreams. This is the movie that will make a child of you if you are not one; and if you are, then this is the movie you will carry with you your entire life. You will grow up with dreams of the flying wizards, the fire demon and the magic portal door of the most magnificent house/castle ever put on film- i.e. Howl’s Moving Castle. And what a castle it is (Click on the thumbnail for a better view). This humongous, creaking, crawling contraption with gears, levers and pulleys out of every corner is the star of the film.

Summer of Film #6 of 100
Metropolis or Metoroporisu is a Japanese animated visual fantasy by Rintaro that shares imagery with the 1926 Fritz Lang classic silent by the same name. The story is set in a futuristic city where there is unrest between the robots and the humans. A Japanese private detective and his nephew come to the sprawling futuristic city of Metropolis to investigate a mad scientist accused, among other things, of human rights violations. What they discover is political machinations and intrigue between the many layers of the city; from the tall Ziggurat built in the city to the underground levels infested with defunct robots and thugs. The man behind the political unrest, Duke Red, has employed the scientist to build him a super-robot; a girl, Teema, to rule the Metropolis and replace his dead daughter. The movie’s strength lies in its visuals and in the inner struggle of Teema and the city in general about what it means to be human. The visuals are more intriguing than the plot- though I have to admit I saw an English-dubbed version and could have been the victim of the lost-in-translation syndrome.