ShiiStyle

It's not clear what the point of this video is. Although representatives of both Pantex and protesters are interviewed, the director prefers to interview local eccentrics at great length. How is an Amarillo man's trips to various countries relevant to the storage of disassembled nuclear weapons? I have met an eccentric like him in another town; does it prove something about the nature of the town? Consider that Amarillo has a population of 200,000! It seems like the creator wanted to create a cartoonish image of thousands of ignorant locals and an evil corporation that manipulates them. The documentary presents no evidence that this is the reality of the situation. I'm sure the good people of Amarillo consider the town portrayed in this video to be unrecognizable.

The main focus of this film is the interaction of scientists with the LHC and its data. Many shots are either banter in the CERN offices or YouTube-like video contributions from scientists themselves. Basically, it adds a human element to what you might read in the news. The engineering of the LHC is scarcely touched upon, and while the film (directed by a physicist) attempts to explain the consequences for particle physics, its dramatized overview is not really accurate; the viewer would be advised to read Lee Smolin's book "The Trouble With Physics". The substitution of pictures of difficult-looking math equations for real scientific exposition became irritating. Furthermore, while we see people interacting with each other in a superficial way, the film doesn't really dig into the culture of theoretical physics -- for example, I enjoyed a shot where physicists discuss how rumors are displacing older methods of data distribution like the arXiv, but the context of this discussion was not given and I worried most of the audience would not understand it.

I subtract four stars for lack of depth and would probably extract more, except that the screening I went to had an interview with the director afterwards, and I realized from him that it was quite difficult for this documentary to achieve what it did. The science the LHC produces comes in the form of millions of spreadsheets full of numbers, which must be analyzed by thousands of experimental physicists sitting at computers around the world. It is rather hard to make a long documentary film about people analyzing numbers on computers. The director made a number of clever stylistic decisions, like mainly interviewing people who were physically present at the CERN buildings, and separating the segments of experimental and theoretical physicists. To get theoretical physics onto the big screen in a thoughtful and entertaining way is really an accomplishment in itself. It was also pointed out that the documentary skillfully focused on a few likable subjects among many to give a hint of the vast size of the project. All in all, the film is a decent portrayal of the kind of willpower and teamwork that is needed on a project the size of the LHC, but don't go to it expecting to gain a very deep knowledge of today's physics or the scientific community.

Obviously this film is not the worst film ever. Camera work, actors, setting, even concept were all great. I could award it 5 stars out of 10 just to be fair. But in the days after watching it, the essential lie of the plot has been bugging me more and more, and I've started to outright detest it.

All of the good elements of this film can be found in the book "All Creatures Great and Small" by James Herriot. The down-on-his-luck virtuoso who goes to the countryside, visits many different kinds of families, and has to work for a forgetful and self-contradictory old man who in the end teaches him a lot about life. It's all there, so neglect this movie if you can and give that a read instead.

I know, what about the death part? Isn't that the real beauty of the movie? How death becomes an important moment of parting?

No... it looks beautiful, but that's the lie of the film. Consider that this guy's job is literally putting lipstick on a corpse. Yes, that sounds unpoetic and insulting to the film, but that's not an exaggeration. That's literally what he does.

All the bodies in this film appear to have keeled over and expired without injury. Real life corpses are not always so lucky. The suffering of death cannot always be whitewashed over like this. The traditional Buddhist meditation on death is on the destruction of the body, the disgusting things that happen when bodies decay. This film is doing something evil. It tells us to purchase a pound of make up and await the perfect funeral, when we can cry out our unresolved conflicts. Funerals are not meant to be perfect. Death in real life is not as convenient as it is to the plot of this film.

The ancients had death all around them, from untreated disease or violence. It is we of the 21st century who have no understanding of what it means for a life to have an end. The film gives a little taste of that during funeral scenes, but in such a warped way. It dresses up and masks the end so we can imagine that all our bodies can be cleaned up and exhibited with such dignity. The friends and relatives of the character, who exhibit distress over his choice of work, are correctly showing the cultural reaction of a traditional society that understands that a dead body is something apart from society. The film has no patience or sympathy for this reaction. It is portrayed as stupid, ignorant bigotry.

The reverse is true. We are the ones who are stupid and ignorant for inventing the false image of death portrayed in this film. The lie of the camera is so embedded into the fabric of this movie that I cannot justify giving it a good review.

The announcement of this film was a pleasant surprise after Ponyo and From Up on Poppy Hill, which both had simple, childish plots. Few films in Japan have tackled the lives of imperial period heroes; the ghosts of the 1960s urge people to denounce what really happened in that time and memorialize an imaginary anti-war movement, for example in this year's film "Shounen H". For Miyazaki to choose a subject like this showed that he was really going for a huge challenge. Miyazaki is of course anti-war and environmentalist. But Ghibli films are never negative. What sort of positive image of the Zero bomber inventor would Miyazaki produce?

The result is astounding. As everyone has noted, this is not a children's movie. It's complex, so it doesn't have the epic sense of Miyazaki at his best, but history and adulthood are just as complex, and Miyazaki does justice to both. The film indeed stays positive throughout, by showing from start to finish how everyone wishes they themselves would behave, rewarding the viewer with virtue and beauty, but without being condescending about the hardships of real life. In a sense, the film is about the "importance of dreams", but it's also about what it means to be a dreamer in real life, and how our highest fantasies can be turned into beauty if we put our minds to it. The cartoon medium is put to full, extravagant use in dream sequences that merge right into the narrative. Certain elements at the end of the film leave the obvious unsaid in a peculiarly Japanese and fulfilling way. The most classic films of Japan, like the great works of Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu, say something profound about the meaning of life, and Kaze Tachinu deserves a place among those ranks.

The first half of this documentary is very strange, mostly focusing on Eva's life flashing back and forth with scenes of Auschwitz, like a demented version of Kubrick's famous 2001 switcheroo. Although we do feel sympathetic for Eva by the 20 minute mark, having learned about her troubled adulthood in a world where the Holocaust was silently passed over, the directing is almost too kitschy and weird to be a Holocaust documentary. It was not pleasant viewing.

The film picks up around the 25 minute mark when Eva's quest to raise awareness of the Holocaust takes an unexpected turn. She does not only want guilt and shame, she wants the Germans to know her forgiveness. We hear some fascinating debates, but only for a few minutes. Perhaps the directors didn't want to bore us with real conflict and debate.

Midway through, and again all too briefly, we get to see a real treat: a one-room Holocaust "museum" built not with government dollars and NGO support, but by and for a single woman who wanted people in her small town to know her story. With this you start to understand the real meaning and importance of Holocaust education for ordinary people. But this segment ends abruptly.

Then, two unrelated segments. First, Eva's own capacity to listen and forgive is given a test when she meets with Palestinians. Here, she does not come off as very compassionate at all. This was hard to watch, and again, not pleasant.

Finally, inexplicably, Eva's museum is burned down in an act of arson. This is also dealt with all too briefly. We don't see the museum being rebuilt or a new plan being drawn up -- but a new museum does appear for a split-second shot.

All in all, an uneven and unsatisfying film, that introduces us to an independent thinker, but doesn't seem to take her very seriously.

It is never explained why Eva wears blue every day.

Mori's original documentary about Aum Shinrikyo, "A", leaves the viewer a bit confused. The Aum followers seem to operate in an independent world where their religious leader did not dispatch followers to seriously injure and kill hundreds of people on the Tokyo subway system. It doesn't even seem to enter into their cult-addled worldview; some are just beginning to parse it at an intellectual level, and others are acting like nothing ever happened, as if their separation from worldly desires also means a separation from their own group's murders.

In this sequel something interesting is happening: the entire cult is dissolving even as the national enacts laws against it. In the absence of their leader, Shoko Asahara, and surrounded by those who question his basic morality, the cult members have no one to tell them to strictly keep the rules. So, right at the beginning of the film, we see unusual behavior that quickly ascends into the bizarre. The anti-Aum citizens' groups who police the surroundings of Aum members are acting like the stern parents of a hundred disobedient children, inspecting their food for weapons and chatting with them. Soon we see anti-Aum patrol members fraternizing with the "enemy". Their anger drops away, but they aren't the only ones changing: suddenly Aum leaders are making papercraft in their bedrooms, lacking anyone to seriously criticize them for their "worldly desires". And unlike the last film, when food was a barrier to enlightenment, in "A2″ they now care what the director Mori thinks about their homemade vegan meals.

Next, the final contradiction of a socially despised religious group in Japanese society reveals itself. Legally, the courts have decided that members of Aum who did not personally try to kill anyone (and there are many) should be allowed their constitutionally guaranteed freedom of belief. But as Aum members explain, there are many mentally weak people who join their group, simply because they are a religious group promising answers; and after several years of outside pressure– however friendly– to leave the cult, some of these people attempt suicide and require physical force from group members to restrain them. This, in the eyes of the Japanese legislature, is unpalatable. As the images on the screen remind us, this is a group that straps high voltage electric wires with unexplained liquid-filled pouches to their foreheads on a regular basis. The public does not trust Aum, so it does not make sense to allow fragile, dependent, suicide-prone people to be housed in Aum buildings.

I see in these exchanges a few of the frayed ties of modern social fabric that led to the creation of Aum in the first place being mended at a person-to-person basis, as volunteers try their best to reintegrate Aum members into their village. Aum lives in an intellectual world that prevents this from happening so quickly, but clearly the foundations of the cult are crumbling. From the beginning of "A" its members have been confused about how to relate to society: how to have discussions with media and police, how to explain themselves. The contradictions of a group that exists in society without any concept of relating to it can't help but be noticed, even by its members who did not personally try to kill anyone. In this film, we see them clean their homes and wash their hair for the first time, as well as grapple with the concept of making an apology, which is intuitive, almost reflexive, to most members of Japanese society.

This is an easily watched and enjoyed film for its portrait of premodern India. This is the film that kicked off Indian cinema! It claims that its actors actually held non-acting careers but took time off for the film, creating an entirely new industry in India. The cinematography is great, and it seems that several of the actors went on to be directors and producers. We also have a cast of thousands, hired hands from the colonial streets, mystics and fruit sellers. The director claims that no sets or mock-ups were made and no make-up was used, a unique sort of claim for the 1920s; was this the first Dogme 95 film?

On the subject of the life of Buddha, which I'm most qualified to comment on, this film is a little weird, so I subtract just a little from its ranking for that. For a story which is meant to teach Buddhist audiences about the twin vices of wealth and asceticism, the film seems to relish its display of royal splendor a little much, and unfamiliar aspects of the Buddha story are emphasized for the Imperial British audience. But this does seem to demonstrate how different aspects of the Buddha's story interest people of different places and times, and how the Orientalist tastes of the 1920s differ wildly from our own. So, I can't be too harsh on what's actually a very interesting part of the film.

Also, occasionally a great image of Buddhism shines through-- for example, Siddartha looking at her wife, only to be shocked by a vision the poverty implied in her wealth, and a vision of the old age that awaits her in the future. The scene that follows this is chilling and worth watching and excerpting.

I was shocked to see the filmmakers unchain and let loose a real cheetah to kill a deer for a hunting scene-- most of the scenes are not so dangerous as that one, but none of them were monitored by the ASPCA, and the differences are apparent. (Sensitive viewers will find that Buddha is just as aggrieved about this as they are.)

There's no need for another review of this film but I just had to write one to give it the praise it deserves. All the dark things bubbling beneath the Wall Street psyche, and the American upper class psyche in general, are raised to the surface with this film. It feels clear to me that all the executives shown in the film are very similar to Bateman, only their sociopathy is better hidden, obscured even to themselves. In Bateman the inner chaos battles for control with reality. He tells us that what's inside his head doesn't matter, but of course the inside and outside are blending together, driving his life out of control. What this film accomplishes is very rare. It approximates a message about the modern era without having to stick on some morality play or quest for political redemption (because, after all, on Wall Street today there is still no salvation). I was very happy to watch it.

I'm not sure why nobody else has noticed that this movie had no characters. It was incredibly disappointing to walk out of the theater realizing that this is the best movie of the summer and there were no meaningful interactions between the characters. Strangely enough, the appeal of the first movie was inverted; in Toy Story, we were surprised and delighted to see toys have emotions like human beings, and in Toy Story 3, we are apparently satisfied (duped?) into enjoying allegedly human personalities thrown around as toys.

In the first movie, Woody is the hero and leader of the toys, then he meets Buzz and his personality is suddenly conflicted. Watching the tension between these characters build and break was legitimately interesting, a sort of Shakespearean kids' movie. It took the silly idea of animated toys and turned it into a real drama. Now, in the third movie, the drama is artificial and stupid; it comes from an outside evil force that has only a shallow personality and cannot be swayed. The main characters are only good people in a bad situation, which they need to get out of. THEY DID NOT DO ANYTHING TO GET INTO THIS SITUATION; their only duty is to escape. Nothing meaningful happens to them.

In the first movie, too, the cognitive dissonance between "toys being played with" and "toys acting up when nobody sees them" was very small. Woody was the same person whether or not there were kids in the room. In the third movie, somehow there is a complete disconnect between these two behaviors. Woody is not really a toy, but a sort of soul-infused plastic man who is forced to be a full-time actor, who performs "improv" for the kids and needs to be "in character". The deep, unexplained longing of the toys for children to come back and play with them is more than a little creepy.

In short, the metaphor of Toy Story is broken by this sequel, and no meaningful story is told. I would not show it to my kids. I'm sorry I watched it. Two stars for a decent ending scene.

Um, so another reviewer is describing the storyline of this movie as "fairly straightforward". Actually it is fairly ridiculous. The lead character is a doctor who randomly gets a prophecy that he is the Chosen One to fight off demons who have been sleeping (?) for 5,000 years. Then he goes back in the past 5,000 years to kill the demons who were around then too. When he comes back to the future, I guess he just missed some demons or something because they're still around. A lot of demon battles happen. The only notable scene in the movie is when he punches a demon in the nuts and it hops around hooting and hollering. However, this is the only joke in the entire OVA. The rest of the OVA is completely deadpan and horribly bad. I'm giving it 1 extra star because it has high camp value, but you probably have to get drunk first.

The first two movies of this series excelled for their footage of the natural world and ordinary people stuck in the midst of society. This movie doesn't have any of that natural footage, which I understand is part of the point, but it really makes the entire video component of the film seem like random images stuck together-- ones and zeroes flying around, computer models of human skeletons, and so forth. Occasionally the stock footage is put to good effect (the nationalism/finance segment around 35:00), but usually it makes the video appear to lack any meaningful content, and demands you accept the context of the stock photographers rather than the context of the director. It's no better than the video displayed on a karaoke machine. Three stars added for the Philip Glass soundtrack.

I know people will hate me for giving this movie 2 stars, but allow me to explain why the rating is deserved. I watched this movie twice and my initial impression of it was confirmed on the second viewing. The tagline of the movie is "Welcome to a world without rules." But even someone who likes the movie must realize this is absurd, because the rules of the film are strictly defined from the start. Batman is PERFECT GOOD, and the Joker is PERFECT EVIL. Whenever it's the cops versus Batman in this movie, we know the cops are wrong and Batman is on the side of good. He's just that good. And the Joker is so evil that he doesn't even have a motive. He's there to create a force of perfect chaos which Batman is duty-bound to fight.

To deny that this movie is about terrorism is to deny the well-executed thrill elements such as the videos released to the press and closed-circle moral tests (on the ferries; similar to United 93). These are borrowed directly from the terrorist playbook, and one persistent element, the ticking time-bomb scenario which Batman solves by brutally beating people up until he gets the information he wants, is derived from our fear of terrorism even though ticking time-bombs NEVER happen in real life. When you compare the movie to reality, though, an outrageous discrepancy is made evident. Terrorists are not born psychopaths like the Joker. They are poor, scared people driven to violence only by persistent reinforcement of hatred and duty. That's WHY there are no ticking time-bombs: true psychopaths do not act like the Joker, and terrorists are not true psychopaths.

In this movie, the only mistake Batman makes is when he injures himself swerving his motorcycle so that he doesn't kill the Joker. He is just too good to kill his enemy. Three thousand years of storytellers are laughing themselves to tears in Heaven at our image of a hero. Read Shakespeare. Read the Iliad. See if you can figure out for yourself what kind of travesty this is.

The areas where this film deviates from standard superhero crap only condemn it further. Batman creates a magical cell phone network, which his buddy says a violation of privacy; the film makes his buddy out to be a spineless coward, because Batman needs his magic to do good. Do you see the problem here? Here it is: Batman doesn't exist in real life.

To call this movie the best film of the year, or, as IMDb currently reckons it, the best film of all time, is to admit that we want to believe in a world where good battles evil. It creates a worldview where "good" people will not have to admit their own problems, and "evil" people can be rounded up and beaten half to death without any moral qualms. It is EXACTLY this kind of mentality which has caused the war in Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo Bay.

I award this movie eight stars for execution, but subtract five stars for its incorrect, dehumanizing, and morally stunted outlook on human nature. Thus, it ends up with three stars, which I think is more than generous.

Maybe you expected some sort of rite-of-passage film? Hah! Good one. Instead what you're going to get is a two-hour waste of time that starts with an air of "inane old boys' club" and then drags on forever in the style of "sadistic frathouse." This movie won awards?! It's the sort of film that you gain absolutely no understanding from, unless if you count some obvious points: don't gamble; don't drink too much; and there are places in Australia where those are the only two things you can do, which a civilized person naturally wants to get away from the minute he comes upon it. Well, you heard the lot, now go ahead and miss this movie, please. If you want a downer watch "Woman in the Dunes" instead. Same depression, same sand, much more thoughtful.

The movie opens great, if a bit haphazard in its pacing. The suspense slowly builds up. The realistic, amateurish style is used to better effect than in Cloverfield where the idea of someone lugging an HD camera around with night vision was slightly absurd. At some point I noticed the movie was over halfway done and I was not yet caught up in the suspense. It was still kind of silly and I would have turned it off if I hadn't paid money for it. When we finally reach the "thrill," it's a predictable letdown. This movie does not excite the imagination, and the ending is satisfying to precisely no-one (maybe the directors were trying too hard to make it realistic by giving it a crappy ending). I won't spoil it here, but if you watch it through, stick around for the Animal House-esquire exposition in the last half-minute, which is laughably bad.

Bunuel's troubled production depicts the life of Simon, 4th century Stylite. Simon's pious suffering in the name of God is treated with irreverence and instead the content of his character is examined. Simon lives in a dismal world where Jesus never appears but Satan's temptations are frequent. His poor mother lives a life like his, but is ignored by the world; he is literally put on a pedestal and looked to for fake miracles, which both monks and people do not take seriously. It seems that for all his lauded attempts to cut himself off from the world, and his otherworldly mindset, he is still very much wracked by its diseases and hardships, an interesting point that would be more interesting if it were fully explored rather than so lamely mocked. As it is, the jokes were shooting fish in a barrel. The movie ends abruptly (the production ran out of money) when Simon is abducted by Satan on a plane ride to 1960s America. I spoil the ending because the contrast is striking: the devil becomes a modern-day woman, trying to coax him into dancing, and Simon becomes a gruff hipster, smoking tobacco and making wry, intellectual comments while simultaneously trying to distance himself from temptation. This clever-- if hurried-- ending puts an interesting light on a film that is otherwise difficult to take seriously.

The Seventh Seal tackles death in a fashion which must have seemed horridly confrontational at the time but now seems too specifically Christian to me. The prince is gripped with existential angst about being unsure if he can meet God or Satan. In the world of the film, neither is there to comfort him; Death is the only sure thing. To some this may seem like a cause for despair, but to me it smacked of forcing the universe into small-minded Western forms. God, Satan, and Death are all names we have ascribed to the general metaphysical mish-mash; even the corpse they meet at the beginning of the movie is only "dead" insofar as it is clear from context that it was once a living being but is no more. When it becomes a fertilizer for the grass it will hardly be dead anymore. The judgments we make and feelings we attribute to these things are our own invention. If the prince were Buddhist he'd be handling this subject from quite a different approach.

Nevertheless, the imagery of the film still earns it the title of masterpiece. The use of black and white is unlike anything else. A lesser artist would simply cover the screen in blackness when Death arrived on the scene. Bergman knows better how to make a contrast a contrast. Death, in his pitch-black cape, stands in the midst of physical scenery. His whitened face is genuinely spooky. The flagellants and monks are also portrayed with overwhelming boldness. The emotions of the characters are starkly real, very Swedish, and never trip up. The fact that I did not find the philosophy engaging will not stop me from recommending this movie to anyone who wants a chilling and powerful experience.

The most positive thing I can say about this movie is that it adheres to the book very faithfully and it is not an unapologetic butchery like The Neverending Story. Apparently Michael Ende oversaw the film himself (he plays a cameo role at the beginning) and made sure it was not tinkered with. However, whether because of his lack of film experience or despite his watchful eye, this film is extremely uncreative. At its best, which is extremely rare, it's how you imagined it. At its worst, if you've already read the book, it is frankly boring to watch and may disrupt the fancies of your imagination: I never imagined Momo with an afro, myself. The special effects don't go that far beyond stage play level and certainly don't live up to Ende's mind-sparking descriptions. This movie has not been released with proper English subtitles, and it's not worth the trouble obtaining illicit versions. Read the book, think for yourself, and enjoy some other movie on the same theme.

In a world where Michael Moore sets the standard for documentaries, this film stands out. The preachy voice of the omniscient narrator is mysteriously absent. There are no silly cartoons, or editorial montages: only a handful of young lives. People who are used to their documentaries telling them what to think will be confused by the prospect of having to make up their own minds about something. But most of us are smarter than that, and you will love being treated as an adult and allowed to exercise your own judgment about the families going to Jesus Camp. This film can be disturbing, funny, or inspiring, but ultimately it is an intimate look into the lives of parents and children from a culture which many of us will only ever meet as street preachers, if at all. American viewers must not miss this opportunity, and I recommend it to anyone in the world who's curious as well.

I do not see how the story of maturity could be told any better than it is in Spirited Away. It is simply the story of a selfish girl who learns to work, told with perfectly executed emotion in the century-long tradition of Japanese film, and brilliant images that will stick in your mind for decades. Doesn't No-Face's monstrous devouring remind you of people, or events? The writhing of the dragon, the sludge of the polluted river spirit-- aren't these images you will come back to in real life? Miyazaki has gone beyond simply trying to tell a story. He understands the very medium of traditional animation and what it is best at doing, the things other media simply cannot pull off. It could not have possibly been executed in live action, or in computer-generated 3D animation. This film is a triumph for animation that sets a bar so high I wonder whether other media could possibly live up to it.

Spirited Away appeals at once to Japanese and non-Japanese, those who have seen Miyazaki's movies and those who haven't, film buffs and casual movie watchers, those who enjoy symbolism and those who want a fun story, fantasy geeks and those who prefer normal characters, those who love exciting scenes and those who only want to get a closer look at the scenery. Miyazaki has firmly harnessed the microphone and nobody can miss his message. Spirited Away should be the picture people see when they look up the word "anime".

This movie is careful not to step on any toes, although it does its best to ridicule the modern Ivy League establishment with silly exaggeration which, although not quite as sweet as an accurate portrayal would be, will definitely make you grin. Most of the movie seems to take place in a Saturday morning cartoon, but personally I found the storyline easier to believe than Little Miss Sunshine, Napoleon Dynamite, and kin. The scenes from South Harmon are certainly fun to watch and the movie never slacks off. If you want a college comedy to knock your socks off, you'd be better off seeing Animal House. But if you yourself are a high school student going through the admissions process or recently got rejected by your first-choice college, I think you'll find this movie a great choice to watch with your friends. Rent it.

Ikiru is unafraid to set itself in contemporary Japan, with the modern threats of bureaucracy and sloth (as opposed to The Seven Samurai, which was guised in a historical setting). The characters are more recognizable and real to the viewer because of this, and Kurosawa exploits their personalities to the fullest. We have the novelist, who can comment on everything but practice nothing; the businessmen, who do their jobs; and the young and vibrant girl, who just lives, and doesn't even understand how Watanabe can envy her. This movie is one of a very few that leave a lasting impression behind, and push the viewer to further pursuits. What is motivation? Is it possible to meet Watanabe's standard, or your own, without the threat of death directly in front of you? Few other movies can express this theme so realistically.