Featuring artists from Christo and Jeanne-Claude to Chuck Close, the film is a Valentine to contemporary art and the people who love it.

Somehow, even after yesterday's film noir binge, there's still room for more. This is one of my favorite places to be. A screen, an overpriced soda, miniature chocolate candies, and my mind runs away from me.

I love the reacting faces of the audience. Cradled in darkness, there's a suspension of self-consciousness. I know I make my strangest faces there.

Going with someone else is a shared experience, but alone brings its own thrill. It's rare to feel that anonymous and yet so far from lonely.

There's nobody you know sitting next to you, reminding you of your other life. Your whole existence for those two hours is right there in those lights flashing through the darkness.

--Caroline Hagood

Ever notice that Spike Lee and Yoda look exactly the same?

Just a thought...

See?!

Do the right thing, Yoda: paternity test.

-Mitchell Geller

In the first section that takes place during recruit training, R. Lee Ermey is brutally good as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, a man bursting with an arsenal of creatively hateful jokes. A former Marine Drill Instructor, Ermey was brought in to coach the actor they had originally chosen for the role. He was hired after yelling obscenities for fifteen minutes without flinching while being pelted with tennis balls. Now that shows real dedication to dehumanizing epithets.

--Caroline Hagood

When we talk about film we're using a specific vocabulary. Beyond talk of "martini shots" and "executive producers," "best boys" and "Mis-en-scène," some of the most important words we use are actually quite circular. How often do we find ourselves watching a movie, struck by the Hitchcockian aspects of the plot, or the Kubrickian formalism of a particular shot. To those with little or no knowledge of movies, these words would mean nothing. While one could define these terms with words, the OED has very little on AMC when it comes to truly getting the point across.

Hit the jump for more...

To explain the latest addition to this pantheon of nouveaux adjectifs cinématographique, Apatowian, to a layman, one might say that in order for something to be Apatowian it has to feature adults acting as children, with biting comedy that has a soft heart, featuring any number of a particular group of comedy actors.

While this aforementioned definition captures the essence of Apatow, it sounds stupid. It might interest some, but to sit this layman down and have them watch, for example, "Knocked Up," would work much better than trying to have an intelligent conversation about why a movie about a man who was too impatient to have safe sex and is (quite possibly) addicted to marijuana and is a man-child is funny.

One could expound on the Felliniesque nature of a film without ever seenig a Fellini film, but it wouldn't work.

In many cases to understand is to have experienced, and the case of film vocabulary is no different.

That picture above, by the way, pretty Kubrickian, no?

-Mitchell Geller

Gloria Wandrous

Holly Golightly

Finally, a Donnie Darko for tots!  Combine Donnie Darko’s apocalyptic bunny friend, preternatural phenomena and sharp commentary on contemporary society with a spoon full of sugar, and you get The Last Mimzy. The film is adapted from Lewis Padgett’s (husband and wife team C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner) acclaimed 1943 short story, “Mimsy Were the Borogoves.” 

Their title and pseudonym allude to Lewis Carroll (Charles Ludwidge Dodgson) and his “Jabberwocky” poem from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.  With a score from award-winning composer, Howard Shore, including a collaboration with Roger Waters ("Hello I Love You"), the movie is a trippy affair. Like the literary works that inspired it, The Last Mimzy gazes at the world through an unusual lens. 

--Caroline Hagood

The Telegraph obviously has never heard of Public Enemy, or they wouldn't be so influenced by hype:

. .

In a list of the top 100 movies of the "noughties" published on Friday, the UK's Telegraph newspaper totally jumped the gun. Despite being riddled with odd choices ("Star Trek" at #27 while "The Wrestler" is #92?! "Donnie Darko" being included on the list?! Two Michael Moore docs?), the film at position 100 is totally and completely off mark. Hit the jump to see the mysterious pick.

"Avatar."

Yeah. That "Avatar." James Cameron's $500 million, yet to be proven as anything 3D "revolution" is on the Telegraph's list. Yeah, I don't know why either. While many of us are understandably excited, we're holding in the praise until we've seen it. Here's what the good folk at the Telegraph have to say about the choice:

"On the basis of a sneak 15-minute show reel, it’s not premature to predict that this ground-breaking 3D sci-fi epic will change the way we look at movies."

It's surprising that the Telegraph is willing to throw out any credibility based on an extended trailer and a few year's worth of internet hype. Cameron is a talented man, but... really? I'm not sold yet. The movie looks silly. I'll be more than happy to eat my words once I've seen it, but there's almost no way it will live up to all this hype, which is a damn shame (but the dangers of hype is a discussion for another time).

Anyway, hit the link below for the rest of the ridiculous list.

via

-Mitchell Geller

The impossible happened. Patrick Süskind’s “unfilmable” novel, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, was adapted for the big screen (2006). This was no easy feat because scent, the book's theme, is difficult to portray cinematically.  

Some critics have pointed to the film's political undertones, even interpreting it as an allegory of the Third Reich. The producer, Bernd Eichinger, is no stranger to this subject, having gained international acclaim for The Downfall, a Hitler biopic. Apparently, Eichinger had been bugging Süskind to let him at Perfumesince its publication in 1985.  His perseverance paid off. 

The film does an impressive job with a difficult concept. Tom Tykwer (Run, Lola Run), no stranger to frenetic subject matter, had a tricky job with this tale of a homicidal perfume maker. The result is a charmingly bizarre hybrid that plays like the love child of Chocolat and Silence of the Lambs.

In this nightmarish fairytale, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) is born, despite his mother’s efforts to the contrary, in a filthy fish market.  The scene of his birth is perfectly executed and particularly striking; the pressure mounts as the baby’s heart struggles to pump amidst the many pounding elements of the market, climaxing in Grenouille's only real achievement— his own life.  

Years later, on a rare outing, he comes upon his first victim (Karoline Herfurth).  The camera masterfully highlights the pieces of her that obsess him; she is all bosom, shocking red hair, and plums. The search to preserve this experience through scent starts as a troubling fixation and leads to the composition of his master scent, the essences of 25 virgins, finishing with the lovely Laura (Rachel Hurd-Wood). 

Perfume is an ode to the nose; it opens with a dark shot of Grenouille’s face, with only his sniffer eerily lit. The film is slow in many places, but the result is a disturbing  examination of the horrors and pleasures of the senses. 

WTF!!! That's all I kept saying as I watched this movie.  This is not a horror or suspense film.  It's also not for the faint of heart.  For anyone expecting another Paranormal Activity, you are in for a rude awakening.  

The Fourth Kind is not scary.  Or terrifying.  It is deeply disturbing.

It is a unique set up.  The film is a reenactment of actual events, with the real audio and video clips woven in.  There are times when they are played side by side: real footage on one side, the film version on another.  It adds a different feel for the viewer, as if to drive home the point that what you are watching really happened.  Milla Jovovich plays Dr. Abbey Tyler, a psychologist who conducts a sleep study in Nome, Alaska, where they have been countless missing persons cases and reports of strange activity.  You also get to see the real Dr. Abbey.  And what a sight that is....

At the screening I went to yesterday, not everyone was convinced.  There were some who actually booed when the credits came up.  I think they were expecting your run of the mill scary movie.  All I know is that I left that theater extremely disturbed by what I had just seen.  This is not a film I will ever see again.  

Once is enough.

Is it really true?? Did all these events actually take place??? As the director says at the end of the film, that is for us to decide.

-Frances Illa

As I’m watching the pregame show for football on Fox, I am surprised to find out that the world premier of the new Avatar trailer will be shown before the game.  Now I’m excited by any Avatar news, so I was anxious to see what new footage would be shown.

I was not disappointed

OMG!!!!

We were given a deeper look at the story surrounding the action of the film.  The military is looking to gain access to a key source of a resource that’s worth tons of money.  Sully (played by Sam Worthington) is sent in to infiltrate the Na’via and gain their trust.  He soon realizes that he is on the wrong side and the battle begins.

If anyone knows how to tell a great story, it’s James Cameron.  If I wasn’t super psyched to see this before, I can’t wait for December.  The best part: my brother now wants to see Avatar. 

Watch below and feel the excitement!

Avatar - Theatrical Trailer | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

The portrait that he paints of the comedian is not, as he puts it, a “happy-go-lucky” one. He stresses that the jester’s role is one of hard work, copious preparation and the attitude of a disbeliever--a trust no one sensibility that keeps the mind sharp.

In his assessment of the methods behind his success, we start to recognize the degree of thought that goes into each gag; but his greatest gag is his transformation in the name of humor. The soft-spoken, brainy guy in the interview emerges onstage as the pimped-out, loud-mouthed purveyor of the “N” word.  Yet, when he describes the 5-blunt rotation of chilling with Snoop as a “ghetto track meet,” we see Williams the wordsmith again.

This guy is darn funny, and the intelligence that crouches behind his façade of inanity makes him darn funnier. His quips are built on a keen understanding of sociopolitical issues that is framed as an ignorance of them. Pimpadelic reveals Williams to be what all of the best comics are, an irreverent cultural commentator. 

The book tells the story of five sisters whose lives, and subsequent suicides, obsess a group of teenage boys who have appointed themselves custodians of their memory.  Like detectives, they piece together “the effluvia of so many young girls becoming women” through interviews and bits of evidence. Although they may not complete the Lisbon puzzle, their lifetime of obsessive dedication does result in quite the tale.

The conservative community is appalled when the youngest Lisbon girl, Cecilia, is found floating in the family bathtub after her first suicide attempt. The tragedy isolates the sisters, turning them into the intriguing outcasts of their conformist community.  As a result of Coppola’s respect for Eugenides’ creation, the plot and structure of the movie are almost identical to that of the book. Early on, the voice-over  (Giovanni Ribisi’s spot-on man-boy rumble) tells us that “Cecilia was the first to go,” as we are confronted with the image of a young girl’s body floating in a tub of bloody water. 

From costume and décor, to gossipy dialogue, Coppola deftly depicts both the small-town feel of the 1970s community and the Lisbon girls' personal world; but it is with the more personal aspects that she excels.  With its whimsical explosion of girlish possessions, the set of the Lisbon home is packed with symbols of the girls’ budding womanhood and imminent deaths.  Cinematographer Edward Lachman’s shot of the house in all the different phases of light between day and night captures perfectly the inert sadness of the creatures within.

Most importantly, Coppola's treatment of the suicides is tasteful rather than exploitive. When the boys get inside the mythic house, a hanging saddle oxford is all that we are shown of the suicides. Just as the inaccessibility of the sisters makes them more desirable, withholding visual access creates a morbid curiosity in us. The image is more powerful because we are forced to imagine the upper hanging parts of a dead girl we cannot see.

Although there are some serious issues that the movie doesn’t broach--with all its focus on downy limbs and sublimated desire, it can gloss over the book’s commentary on race and class, for example—in many ways, it picks up where the words leave off. Its use of voice-over capitalizes on the evocative qualities of the text by coupling them with the aural and visual power of film. Coppola's intuitive grasp of the material draws the audience into the tragic and dreamy world of the film so effectively that, regardless of sexual preference, you'll find yourself obsessed with the Lisbon girls, their world, and why they left it.

While I was there, I caught the film committee’s presentation of Donald Boggs’ striking documentary, “A Ripple of Hope.” The film traces the tense moments before and after Robert F. Kennedy’s speech announcing the death of Martin Luther King Jr.  The showing was followed by lively conversation led by the committee’s effervescent chairwoman, Sharyn Grossman.

Boggs’ expert interweaving of the importance of King and Kennedy culminates in a shot of the Landmark for Peace Memorial that shows the two dead idols reaching out to each other from their metal confines. At the film's end, the audience was filled with the faces of people who had just relived a powerful slice of history. 

--Caroline Hagood

I wanted to love this movie.  It had such great characters and an entertaining story.  But something was missing.  There were times when the story got disjointed and seemed to veer off course.  And the ending?  Extremely disappointing.  

Yet, I find myself trying to focus on the positive.  Why?  I really liked the characters.  Chris Massoglia was great as Dan, the 16 year old who gets caught up in the world of freaks.  And it's great to see John C. Riley as a vampire.  He really is a jack-of-all trades.  There were funny points, especially when Willem Dafoe was on screen.  It was an entertaining ride and I felt the story was building up to something great.  It just fell short.  

I know this was based on a series of books, so I can't judge it from that perspective.  But I do feel the way it was advertised was misleading.  Each promo bills it as something different: a teenager is bored with his life and seeks adventure or said teenager is destined to stop a war between vampires.  That's not the movie that I saw.  I wish it was.  

-Frances Illa

It does seem like we're being overrun by the living dead.  Bloodsuckers, brain eaters, and all things hairy are all the rage in Hollywood.   We've seen the release of Zombieland (which I loved), Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant opens Friday (I'm seeing a screening tonight. My review will be up Friday) and the highly anticipated (especially by me) Twilight Saga: New Moon is just four weeks away.  

So what is up with all the monster love??  

Werewolves are a classic creature in cinema.  An American Werewolf in London is one of my favorite examples.  There is something about transforming into a fierce creature that resonates with audiences. A part of us wishes we could tap into that kind of power.  With the release of New Moon, werewolves will become an important part of the vampire-centric series.  In February, we get an updated take on The Wolfman, starring Benecio del Torro.  Even the hairy creatures want the spotlight!

Monsters of all shapes and sizes will continue to excite and horrify us for many years to come.  Because who can resist a good scare every once and awhile?  (or a sexy vampire???)

-Frances Illa

There is no director like him.  He has this unbelievable talent and a seemingly endless imagination.  What he puts on screen is nothing short of art at it’s finest.  And it just so happens to bring out my inner child. 

My favorite Miyazaki films after the jump

Sprited Away - This is animation at it's highest level.  Masterful storytelling accompanied by beautiful images (the walk through the flower garden in the beginning is breathtaking).  As I am a HUGE fan of Alice in Wonderland, I loved Miyazaki's retelling, with Chihiro as the heroine who must overcome a witch and the spirit world in order to save her parents.  There is a reason this won the Oscar for Best Animated Film.  

Howl's Moving Castle - A young woman is cursed by an vengeful witch and is turned into an old woman.  In order to free herself, she must find a way to free Howl (a handsome wizard) from his fire demon Kalcifer.  I smile every time I watch this.  While the story was a little confusing towards the end (it took a second viewing to really understand it), I love the characters.  If only my life was full of magic...

Princess Mononoke - The message woven throughout the story is the lament for industrialization at the cost of our environment.  Miyazaki is such a wonderful storyteller.  Ashitaka is a young prince who must leave his village in order to alleviate a curse brought upon him by a demon.  He encounters the gods of the forest and a women who's quest for power leads her on a dangerous hunt.  And there are cute little forest creatures called Kodama.  For the longest time I wanted a little doll of one, but could not find it. 

What is your favorite Miyazaki film?  If you've never seen one, start with these.  I'm sure you'll love them as much as I do.  

-Frances Illa

I was lucky enough to catch "That Evening Sun" last year at the Independent Film Festival Boston last spring. It's written and directed by first timer Scott Teems, based on a short story by William Gay, and it's incredible. The trailer paints it very loosely, but the film clips along at an amazing pace, never letting up on the tension, never dragging or seeming superfluous in any way. Hal Holbrook stars as a curmudgeonly southern farmer looking to protect what he feels is rightfully his, facing off against the younger generation exemplified by the family currently residing on his land.

The film is taut and gives the expression "slow burning" a whole new meaning. I simply cannot recommend "That Evening Sun" highly enough.

"That Evening Sun" was recently picked up for distribution by Freestyle Releasing, and is set for a limited release November 6. If you get the chance, definitely check out Scott Teem's "That Evening Sun." Indie film making at it's finest.

-Mitchell Geller

A few of the reviews have taken cracks at Spike Jonze’s re-imagining (directing and co-writing the screenplay with Dave Eggers) of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are.  In doing so, they miss the film’s most visionary aspect—its vivid study of storytelling. With painful acuity, Jonze captures how authors (Sendak, Jonze, Eggers), but also all people (Max, his mother, the audience members), must construct stories about their world so that they can live in it. 

“Where the Wild Things Are” ushers the audience into the inner world of Max (Max Records), the little boy from Sendak’s story who runs off to a wild island of his own imagining after being naughty to his mother (Catherine Keener). The process of story making is ingeniously captured in a shot of Max’s mom, shown from his perspective, telling him she could “use a story,” and then typing up the fanciful tale he tells. In this instance of good mothering, she honors his creations by requesting and recording them.

When Max arrives on the isle of the Wild Things to be their king, they ask him to build them a world without pain. Max’s failure to protect his wild new family from suffering serves as a reminder that no matter how well-constructed the utopia, the dystopian inevitably creeps in. In keeping with this, Jonze spares us nothing, not even the pile of human bones that is all that remains of the previous kings.

In short, the bad reviews are humbug. The film’s motor is Max’s imagination and its potential for transformation; in a comic, meta-moment, even the Warner Brothers emblem has been drawn over with wolf ears. 

Every shot and line of dialogue reflects Max’s creative methods of confronting the rage, hope, and heartbreak of childhood. With characteristic whizzing speed, Jonze refracts Sendak’s story through the whip-smart, aggressively beautiful  prism of his own cinematic storytelling, while still maintaining its original light.

--Caroline Hagood

Is there a better way to pay homage to a great city and the idea of love in one fell swoop then in film?   I think not.  So when I hear that the producers of Paris, J’taime where taking that concept to the Big Apple, I was very excited.  After seeing the trailer, I’m even more so.

 See why after the jump

Just look at the cast!!!  It's like they assembled the Dream Team for Cinema: Natalie Portman, Shia LaBeouf, Cloris Leachman, Christina Ricci, Bradley Cooper, James Caan, Julie Christie.  Even Andy Garcia!! It's like they read my mind!  And don't even get me started on the directors. What a pool of talent. I can't wait to see what Natalie Portman was able to do behind the camera.  (I just love her).  

I think the concept is brilliant.  Assemble a mass of talent both in front and behind the camera.  Give them 2 days to shoot, 1 week to edit, and a 5 minute window to give their interpretation of love, with NYC as their background.  

That is film making.

-Frances Illa