Ryan and the Movies

"I feel like I've been in a coma for the past twenty years."

2012-02-12T23:45:00.000-05:00

American Beauty (1999) There are laughs in American Beauty, and there is tragedy, and it all adds up to beauty. But the tragedy overshadows the comedy by far as we watch a midlife crisis and personal struggles culminate in a senseless act of violence and lives being torn apart. The story - which is told from the perspective of Kevin Spacey's Lester Burnham, a man in a midlife crisis who

"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

2012-02-12T01:55:00.001-05:00

Chinatown (1974) Chinatown is a great mystery and a noir that remains ambiguous. Its protagonist, J.J. Gittes, is a man who is hard to place. Everything is seen through the eyes of Gittes, who appears in just about every scene. We learn details about his case and find out information as he uncovers it. But we never really learn about him beyond the surface, though we get hints at his values,

"Sure, just cut them up like regular chickens."

2012-02-11T03:00:00.000-05:00

Eraserhead (1977) David Lynch's cinematic debut is a bizarre, eccentric film that seems to defy explanation and analysis. It is a bold movie - though by comparing it to Lynch's later movies, it definitely feels like a first film - that was constructed in a way as odd and eccentric as the final movie itself: over the course of a few years, with sets constantly having to be rebuilt with two

"We fail, but I think we should strive for spiritual perfection."

2012-02-10T15:00:00.000-05:00

The Passion of Anna (1969) The Passion of Anna is a movie rather devoid of passion, that exists in the pain of past emotions and lets us look at characters haunted by their past spouses - one left in a divorce, the other in a violent car accident. They come together but do not love, they live with each other but do not connect, the man has an affair, but all is meaningless, because though that

"A war we could be proud of."

2012-02-08T23:00:00.000-05:00

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) Tomas Alfredson's adaptation of John le Carre's spy novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a film of subtle emotion and dignity. Its visuals are stylized and entrancing, with a unique color palette of muted yellows, reds, and blacks; it shows off London, Paris, Budapest, and other worldly cities through the streets, showing defining monuments for a sense of place

"A day can start out beautifully yet end in misery."

2012-02-08T16:00:00.000-05:00

The Virgin Spring (1960) Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring is a masterful revenge story, one of the most entertaining of Bergman's films that I have seen and yet difficult to watch because its story is so tragic. Based on a 13th-century ballad, The Virgin Spring tells the story of a young, naive maiden, with golden hair and parents who love her so much that they give her a little too much

"Fundamentally, people are suckers for the truth."

2012-02-07T01:00:00.000-05:00

JFK (1991) In honor of Gary Oldman receiving his first Academy Award nomination, Focus Features has paired with Landmark Sunshine Cinemas in New York City for a three-day retrospective of Oldman's career, culminating in a screening on Wednesday, February 8th of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, with Oldman in attendance. He will host a Q&A after the film. I attended the first two screenings of this

"I couldn't live without ya."

2012-02-06T21:00:00.000-05:00

Sid and Nancy (1986) Alex Cox's Sid and Nancy is a movie driven by sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Its characters are doomed to failure through their success. Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen meet, fall in love after Spungen buys Vicious some drugs, and fall apart bit by bit while internally struggling with their own pains and hurts. Nancy is ambitious and has made nothing of herself. Sid got fame

"Is there no absolution for such as you and I?"

2012-02-05T19:00:00.000-05:00

Cries and Whispers (1972) Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers is one of the most emotionally painful films I have ever seen, featuring characters who exist and wallow in their own misery and failings, who are selfish and dreadfully strained, who would prefer death to life in many ways and who only band together out of a feeling of forced loyalty to one another under painful circumstances. A

"Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?"

2012-02-05T15:00:00.000-05:00

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a landmark of film animation; it holds the distinction of being the first feature-length animated film in color, set the standard and formula for just about every subsequent Disney movie, and won praise and admiration around the world - it won Disney a special Academy Award (with seven smaller Oscars to put

"I wonder what's really wrong with her?"

2012-02-01T03:00:00.000-05:00

Persona (1966) *** Much of this review is taken from a short essay that I had to write analyzing a chosen film from a chosen artist in one of my writing classes in film school. When I first watched Ingmar Bergman's Persona, I was blown away and had a hard time comprehending what I had seen. It is undeniably a difficult film, but my initial reaction of it being "above my comprehension level"

February 2012: A Preview

2012-02-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

Cinematic Releases for the Month of February *includes limited releases not coming to major multiplexes Friday, February 3rd: The Woman in Black, Chronicle, The Innkeepers, Big Miracle Friday, February 10th: The Vow, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, Safe House, Rampart Tuesday, February 14th: This Means War Friday, February 17th: Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, The Secret World

"Man or beast? You can't tell."

2012-01-31T17:00:00.000-05:00

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a visually gorgeous, moody film. It is a movie that shows wide, open landscapes in long shots. We see the wind rustle over tall yellow grass in the night. We see hills at sunset. For the majority of the film, we are out in nature, surrounded by harsh countryside, with a storm approaching

"I used to think I knew. Now I'm not so sure."

2012-01-31T01:00:00.000-05:00

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin seemed, in its advertising, to be a sort of sequel to Rosemary's Baby, in a way. I expected a supernatural angle - for Kevin to be some sort of demon child. Then, the film began to throw red herrings my way right from the start. Tilda Swinton's character, Eva Khatchadourian (Kevin's mother), spends the majority of

"Any guy that'd fall in love with your daughter ought to have his head examined."

2012-01-29T18:00:00.000-05:00

It Happened One Night (1934) Frank Capra's It Happened One Night begins on a boat with Alexander Andrews, a wealthy man, asking his daughter, Ellie, to eat, because she refuses to consume any food until he agrees to accept the fact that she is married to a man whom she loves, King Westley. Andrews wants the marriage annulled, so what does the feisty Ellie do? She jumps off of the boat, swims

"Remember boy: when it comes to women, you're never too old for humiliation."

2012-01-29T00:45:00.000-05:00

My Week With Marilyn (2011) Simon Curtis' My Week With Marilyn offers us a glimpse into the life of two movie stars and the people that surround them during the film shoot of Laurence Olivier's 1957 film The Prince and the Showgirl. The movie is told from the perspective of an ambitious young man named Colin Clark, who desperately wants to work in the film industry and gets his chance through

"In these once familiar streets I feel shadows..."

2012-01-27T23:11:00.000-05:00

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) *** Edited and expanded from a review of the film that I wrote in 2010 *** Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd is a film that I find endlessly engaging and entertaining. No matter how many times I see it, I never grow tired of it. The combination of its gothic, brooding visuals and performances, mixed with the marvelous score written by Stephen

"You shouldn't think of her as being a woman. That would be a mistake."

2012-01-27T17:45:00.000-05:00

Haywire (2012) Steven Soderbergh's latest is an international espionage thriller - or at least an action movie posing as one - that looks good and contains fight scenes that are fun to watch, mostly due to lead actress Gina Carano. Carano plays Mallory Kane, an agent set up and framed by her agency. At times, she teams up with characters played by Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas, Michael

"Tomorrow the birds will sing."

2012-01-24T22:00:00.000-05:00

City Lights (1931) The plots of Charlie Chaplin's films are all quite simple - in City Lights, his Little Tramp poses as a gentleman in his home city after saving the life of a millionaire one evening (the millionaire's wife left him and he wanted to commit suicide by leaping into the river tied to a rock) and falls in love with a blind flower girl, the infatuation making him try everything

Nominations for the 84th Annual Academy Awards

2012-01-24T12:00:00.000-05:00

The nominations for this year's Academy Awards ceremony were announced early this morning by Academy president Tom Sherak. As always, there were a few surprises with the list and a few snubs. Here are the nominees; my reactions will be printed below. For the most part, I merely listed the title of the nominated film, not the actual people nominated. -------------------------------------------

The Problem With Movie Trailers, Part 2: Misleading the Viewer

2012-01-24T00:45:00.000-05:00

As I've already addressed, movie trailers today are terrible in that they reveal to the audience entirely too much about an advertised film's plot, twists, and surprises. Endings are spoiled, important story points lose their meaning within a film, and preconceived notions about how everything will play out are all results of watching most movie trailers. Exceptions - well-crafted trailers that

The Problem With Movie Trailers, Part 1: Too Much Information

2012-01-23T13:45:00.000-05:00

A thought occurred to me as I sat in Manhattan's Film Forum theater yesterday watching Asghar Farhadi's A Separation: I wish I hadn't seen the trailer first. There are many joys to watching movies, but one of the joys comes in seeing a story unfold as it moves along, taking in the surprise of twists and turns in the plot. The trailer for A Separation is just over two minutes long. Within the

"Didn't you say it's not serious?"

2012-01-22T16:00:00.000-05:00

A Separation (2011) A Separation begins and ends with the terms of a divorce, but I believe the reason for the divorce is subtly different between the two occasions. Nader and Simin are a couple in Iran, married for fourteen years, with an adolescent daughter named Termeh. Simin wants a divorce from her husband because she asked him to leave the country with her to live in a better place, but

"Don't love the ocean. It doesn't love you back."

2012-01-19T16:04:00.000-05:00

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009) Have you ever wanted to watch a passenger airplane fly through stormy skies, while inside a flight attendant on board says that everything is going to be okay to a man who is scared that he isn't going to be able to make it to his wedding alive because of a little turbulence right before a giant Megalodon prehistoric shark leaps out of the water below and

"You mean more to me than any scientific truth."

2012-01-19T02:00:00.000-05:00

Solaris (1972) Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris is a brilliant and harrowing science fiction odyssey that bends the mind and captivates the senses. It is rare for a film to engage me for so long on so many levels, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually - it does not happen very often at all. But it happened while watching Tarkovsky's film. Solaris is bold and provocative science fiction that