Inception, 2010. Directed and written by Christopher Nolan. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Pete Postlethwaite, Michael Caine, Lukas Haas, and armies of gun toting men.

The Builder, 2010. Directed by R. Alverson. Written by Alverson and Colm O’Leary. Starring O’Leary.

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of…
–Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5, 169-170

Does Christopher Nolan dream? One must assume that the Brit sleeps, and when he does his waking life warps and darkens as it does for the rest of us. But maybe I’m being presumptuous–maybe he cannot sleep, maybe he cannot dream. Maybe Mr. Nolan has to read about dreams, and maybe he thinks that movies are dreams. There has to be something to explain the utter lack of imagination on display in his lauded Inception. For Inception is a film about dreaming… that hasn’t a single dreamlike frame in its 148 minutes.

Continue reading →

Toy Story 3, 2010. Directed by Lee Unkrich, written by Michael Arndt. With the vocal talents of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty, Don Rickles, Michael Keaton, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Estelle Harris, Teddy Newton, Bud Luckey (incredible), Javier Fernandez Pena, and Timothy Dalton and Kristen Schall, both utterly wasted in miniscule roles.

Is it fair to criticize a very good movie because it fails to live up to nearly impossible standards? Case in point: Toy Story 3. Look at Pixar’s last six years. The Incredibles. Cars. Ratatouille. Wall*E. Up. Excepting Cars, you’ve got four of the best movies a studio has put out probably since Paramount hit the jackpot with Robert Evans in the mid 70s. I would argue it exceeds anything Disney has ever done in a six year stretch of time, and would go so far as to say that those four are better than any four of Walt’s films ever. So with this in mind, I ask again: is it fair to say that Toy Story 3, unquestionably the finest film this summer, and exciting and at times touching movie, pales in comparison? That I expect more from Pixar? Or is this critic spoiled?

Continue reading →

Bad Company, 1972. Directed by Robert Benton, written by Benton and David Newman. Starring Barry Brown, Jeff Bridges, John Savage, Jerry Houser, Damon Cofer, Joshua Hill, and the great character actors David Huddleston, Jim Davis, Ed Lauter, John Quade, Raymond Guth, and Charles Tyner.

Last summer, when The Hurt Locker was garnering all sorts of praise and little box office, some film critic, whose name I don’t recall, noted that the current slate of war films was unique in history. This fellow noted that until this war, films critical of war, or deathly realistic, simply didn’t come out while the war was still being fought. The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, and their ilk were all released after the Vietnam War, and of course there were few, if any, movies critical of World War II or Korea. Perhaps this is attributable to the fact that we were, as a nation, very much in support of WWII and Korea, and at the start of Vietnam, while the “police action” raged and had moderate support, crap like John Wayne’s The Green Berets did stellar box office. This war’s films, however, have yet to find an audience. Why, I wonder? Could it be… because we don’t have a draft? Consider the past… and Robert Benton’s Bad Company.

Continue reading →

Mid-August Lunch (Pranzo di Ferragosto), 2010. Directed by Gianni Di Gregorio, written by di Gregorio and Simone Riccardini. Starring a melancholy di Gregorio, Valeria De Franciscis, Marina Cacciotti, Maria Calì, Grazia Cesarini Sforza, Alfonso Santagata, Marcello Ottolenghi, and Petre Rosu with his wild, wild hair.

I once heard a critic say that the outrageous spectacle of Avatar is what movies are all about. Well, I have to say I think that’s a load, and not just because I think Avatar is a load, and definitely not because I think outrageous spectacle is a load. Inglorious Basterds, Flash Gordon, and the forthcoming The Good, the Bad, and the Weird are all ridiculous spectacle, and I love them for it.

See, the movies are about everything. Like like poetry, like literature, like music, you can get any and every human emotion from the art. Poetry is the clash of swords and the breaking of skulls in The Iliad, just as it’s Mary Oliver channeling her grief over the death of her partner in “When I am Among the Trees”. One stirs your imagination and makes you grit your teeth and grimace (happily) at the violence, while the other suggests you sit quietly in the dark and offer a prayer of genuine thanks to the silver maple twisting sideways in your front yard. There’s room for both.

In cinema, with the summer movies coming crashing down upon us, there’s room for Iron Man 2, for Braveheart 2: Robin Hood, and there’s room–plenty of room–for the small gift that is Mid August Lunch. Continue reading →