Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen, 2011 (9.0*)
Woody is back! This is a light romantic fantasy in the same vein as The Purple Rose of Cairo and Alice, which mixes reality with a fantasy world that obviously comes from the mind of the protagonist.

Owen Wilson is a young American, on a trip to Paris with his domineering fiance, Rachel MacAdams, whose right-wing parents are wealthy capitalists there for a business deal (naturally - why else would capitalists go anywhere but for some tax deductible reason, because the wealthy don't have to pay taxes since they can deduct everything from travel to meals by claiming they are 'for business purposes' - then the rest of us have to make up this shortfall).

Wilson is a screenwriter attempting to write a serious novel, while everyone urges him to do what he's successful at already. He seeks solitude at night by wandering around Paris alone. After midnight, magic happens, and he runs into people he assumes are in costume, but finds out that he's been transported in time to Paris of the 20's, first being found in the streets by F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, who introduce him to Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates). He later meets Picasso, and his beautiful model, played by Marion Cotillard, a muse for all the famous artists of her era. Naturally, the two strike up a platonic romance.

Wilson's fantasy world is centered around creative artists who spent time in Paris: Cole Porter, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Luis Bunuel, Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Salvador Dali ("I paint you, with your lips melting into the sand - and of course, a rhinoceros!" - hilariously played by Adrien Brody), Paul Gauguin, and Toulouse-Lautrec are just a few of the famous artists who come alive for Owen Wilson on his post-midnight walks around Paris.

This film is superficially a light romantic comedy, but beneath all that is the underlying and beautiful idea that art not only is immortal, but will influence and inspire future generations of creative people. It also contains the protagonists desire to live in another era (don't we all?) he imagines is greater than his own (for Wilson, Paris in the 20's).

As an artist (painting and writing) this film reinforced my lifelong belief in the power of creativity. Most of the awards are for Allen's screenplay, which should be a favorite for an Oscar®. I would elevate this work above Woody's other output of the last 15 or so years.

Note: in the rating, PG-14, in the beginning, it is mentioned that "features smoking" - holy smoke, are we now warning people when there are cigarettes in films? what's next, "characters eating pork", or "loud noises emitted by fireworks", or "capitalist merchants overcharging for coffee"?

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Lost Horizon

Frank Capra, 1937 (8.2*)
Exotic, unspoiled locales around the world have always appealed to the more daring individuals of more populous regions, such as Europe; just look at the nationalities of all the famous explorers. In 1923, Frenchwoman Alexandra David-Neel was the first known westerner to enter the forbidden Tibetan city of Lhasa. She then published her accounts in her 1932 book Magic and Mystery in Tibet.

Shortly thereafter, novelist James Hilton wrote a short novel about a flight of western travelers that crashes in the Himilayas, and the survivors are rescued and taken to a fictitious hidden city in a mountain valley, called Shangri-La. Basically, this is a story of an exotic utopia untouched by civilization and the ills of modern society. The westerners are treated like welcome guests, and their’s is an adventure of a lifetime.

Frank Capra went out of character for this film of adventure and fantasy, starring Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, and Edward Everett Horton as the crash survivors, and Sam Jaffe miscast as a Tibetan spiritual master. It's contains none of Capra's homespun humor, nor is it a glimpse at classic Americana. A newer partially restored version has the entire soundtrack, but some scenes are filled in with only still images. It looks like the Hays Commission deleted scenes where people were simply talking, but within their bedrooms - innocent enough unless you're under the cloud of censorship.

The story may also be taken as a metaphor of a spiritual quest to find one’s center within, away from the distractions of the material world. Often we get a peek at this realm, and find it difficult to return due to life circumstances. Like the beautiful Australian film Walkabout, this utopia may exist in one’s past, and you can either remember it nostalgically, or make the physical effort to return to the same location where you once found bliss.

Since the late 1800’s, there have been many accounts by westerners of this little-explored region of earth and it’s philosophies, until during the 60’s it blossumed into an international cultural movement, generally called The New Age. The allure of the Himilayas and it’s mountain people have had a profound effect on western civilization, whether intentional or not. This story was an early entry that added fuel to that fire.

Nominated for 7 Academy Awards for 1937, including picture (a year when there were 10 nominations, the winner being The Life of Emile Zola), it won two, for film editing and art direction.

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The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

Luis Buñuel, France, 1972 (8.6*)
Best Foreign Film (AA)
#99, Top Ranked 1000 Films, 2011 Update, all polls.

Probably the most affable and accessible of the Spanish master’s films, as many are a bit serious or obscure for the average filmgoer. On the surface, this is a comedy about a suburban dinner party.

However, as you would expect from Buñuel, you don’t exactly plan then have a successful dinner party. This story begins innocently enough, but you soon find yourself once again in the mind of an inventive and creative filmmaker, the same one who in his The Exterminating Angel, has guests to a dinner enjoy the meal and the company then find they cannot leave the room.

The dinner party gets delayed by a series of random and spontaneous events that include the hosts having afternoon sex, and a military patrol on war game maneuvers uses the house for a field headquarters.

As usual in his films, what you get out of this is going to depend on what you bring into it, but I wouldn’t look for anything too deep here – I believe this film is more enjoyable than most of his because of that, and for the excellent cast led by Fernando Rey, and the award-winning Stéphane Audran.

Winner of the Foreign Language Film Oscar® for 1972, and six awards total out of 11 nominations

#16 on the Top Ranked Comedy Films of All-Time, 2011 Update

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The Bird People in China

Takashi Miike, Japan, 1998 (8.3*)
A young Japanese salaryman, played by Masahiro Mitoki (Departures) is sent by his company to China to evaluate a local find of a natural jade vein. Little does he know that he is shadowed by a yakuza who loaned his company money and is out to protect his interests.

The two are taken by train, bus, auto, then on foot, past the last road, to a really remote Chinese village. Along the way they meet another Japanese man there looking for mysterious "bird people", who are said to be the tribal ancestors of the Japanese from the Chinese mainland; he has a prehistoric rock with a bird symbol that he shows them, found in Japan, and he's hunting for similar stones in China.

When the men finally arrive their mission runs into various obstacles, not the least of which is their guide's amnesia, caused by a blow to the head. They are also more interested to discover a mysterious young village girl and a school she has for teaching flying, her haunting English language song and other mysteries that border on folk tales.

Winner of 4 awards, including two acting awards for Mitoki, who won several for Departures.

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The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T

Roy Rowland, 1953 (8.2*)
Totally fantastic story by Dr. Seuss, who also provided the set design and some song lyrics. This wonderful spoof of childhood music lessons features Hans Conreid as diabolical Dr. Terwilliker, who is writing the world's first piano concerto for 500 boys on a monstrous serpentine piano of his own creation, hence the film's title - his concerto takes 5,000 fingers.

Tommy Rettig plays one of the music students, who are basically held prisoner, and forced to play rehearse nearly all the time, staying in cells, and with the music school surrounded by an electrified fence. His help comes in the form of a surrogate dad, played by Peter Lind Hayes, who is an amateur inventor with a planned surprise invention for Dr. Terwilliker.

This is a fun movie all-around, it's surprising that it's not better known, given it's Dr. Seuss connection. It's just crazy enough to be an unforgettable children's fantasy.

Just one of the goofy set designs of

Dr. Seuss in 5,000 Fingers

The piano that seats 500 boys

I want one of these hand beanies

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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Steven Spielberg, 1989 (8.5*)
After the critical flop of the second in the series, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, not very many people were likely waiting for the third. Perhaps in order to boost interest, Spielberg added Sean Connery to the cast as the father of Harrison Ford, which seems a bit of an age stretch to me, Connery's not that old is he?

But the two's comedic chemistry helped add a little spark to this entry, which also brought back more religious mysticism, in this case the "Holy Grail". Often speculated about, and if it's even a real object or a metaphysical analogy, this film defines it as the cup Jesus drank from at the last supper, which supposedly gave it immortal powers, similar to a fountain of youth concept.

Dad joins Junior in a search for the cup before the Nazis can find it; after all, we don't want Der Fuehrer to have everlasting immortality on earth, do we? Joining the search is a blond Germanic beauty, Alison Doody [photo below] who may or may not be a double agent, who of course dazzles Indiana as well.

There are some nice twists to the legend, and also some intellectual puzzles involved, but this adventure maintains the high standard of pace and action set by the original entry, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), which single-handedly revived the "Saturday matinee" style of adventure films for kids. They mind-blowing climax was actually filmed in the hidden ancient ruins of Petra, Jordan, which is a canyon cleft in the desert, almost invisible from above.

Currently ranked No. 107 on the IMDB 250. Winner of one Oscar®, for sound effects, 5 awards total.

Quote: "We named the dog Indiana"

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Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

David Hand, supervising director (5 others credited as "sequence directors"), 1937 (8.7*)
Notably, the first full-length animated film, from Walt Disney Studio, features songs for kids like "Hi Ho, Hi Ho", without which the film would seem even longer than it does. Snow White is pursued by a queen jealous of her beauty, and she flees into the forest and discovers the house of the dwarfs while they are away at work and invites herself in. Of course, the dwarfs fall in love with her and want her to stay. She is later given a poisoned apple by the queen and falls into a sleep that only a prince can awaken with a kiss.

The best artwork was in the static backgrounds, in the style of the earlier Silly Symphonies cartoons from Disney Studios, probably the height of their talents (check out the Oscar®-winning Water Babies sometime to see what I mean), which provided an artistic setting for the simply animated characters to exist in. Here, the two styles blended together well, and became the Disney standard for a few decades, later copied by The Triplets of Belleville (2003), hand-drawn by Sylvain Chomet as a tribute to the early Disney style. animation

As innovative as this was, when it came out it only received special awards from the New York Film Critics, the Venice Film Festival, and an honorary Oscar®.

You know, as a kid, I always wondered about this film - I mean, a single babe of a young woman is suddenly living with seven adult dwarfs - it kinda makes you wonder.

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A Matter of Life and Death

a.k.a. Stairway to Heaven
Michael Powell, Emric Pressburger, 1946 (9.2*)
Not exactly your average war story: while returning to England from a bombing in 1945, pilot Peter Carter, played by David Niven, is too damaged to make it back, and his parachute is also destroyed. He has his crew bail out, and as what he assumes is his last act, he talks on the radio to an operator named June (Kim Hunter), a young American woman, who is touched by his situation.

Then he jumps out over the ocean, and instead of dying, he wakes up in the surf, walking to shore. It was his time to die, but his death angel (a 'conductor') couldn't find him in all that fog (see quote below). Of course, having already fallen for her, he soon meets June in person, and naturally they fall in love for real. When his angel finds him and tells him of the error, Peter argues that it's not his fault he's still alive, now he's in love, so just leave him in peace. The celestial beings who run heaven agree to a trial to decide his fate, so the trial becomes a matter of life and death for Peter.

He is sent back to earth to prepare for his trial, and continue his life there for a day anyway. There are some very innovative sequences when the angel appears, all the action freezes, but Peter and the angel continue in real-time, once during a ping-pong game with the ball in mid-air. The colors are sumptuous, Powell's attention to color details in small props like chess sets places his films a level above all others in their cinematic artistry. The heavenly trial and corporal earth-time are woven together flawlessly in the story.

This is another beautiful film from Michael Powell and Emric Pressburger, known as The Archers. It's generally assumed that Powell was the director and Pressburger the writer, but they shared each credit. Powell began as a Technicolor® specialist, a color film advisor trained by that company in the late 30's. This is one of their best collaborations, the others being Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes. All are beautiful to look at, among the most artistic in the history of film.

The title was changed to Stairway to Heaven in the U.S., because they thought America wasn't ready for a film with 'death' in the title the year after the war was over. (That's so funny, the U.S. being the top homicide nation of all time). A Matter of Life and Death was Powell's own personal favorite of all his works. IF this had more ratings from viewers (only 7k so far), it would be in the IMDB top 250, the average of 8.1 is high enough to be ranked around 190-200.

Quote: The fog was so thick I could've stepped out of the plane and walked back to England.

Note: Martin Scorsese was heavily influenced by Powell and flew to England to meet him and he brought him back to the U.S. to meet all the other directors, like Coppola and Spielberg, that were also students of his films. Powell was surprised to find that he was this well-respected by the next generation of filmmakers.

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Here Comes Mr. Jordan

Alexander Hall, 1941, bw (8.8*)
A man named Joe, played by Robert Montgomery, is grabbed by an angel just before his assumed death, but in heaven it's discovered that he wasn't due to die yet. So due to their own bureaucratic bungling, they decide to send him back down, only his body is no longer available and he has to get another body. He's a professional boxer, due for a title fight, so he's fairly picky and doesn't want just any old body. The head angel, a Mr. Jordan, or Claude Rains, tells him he can't dawdle around or the big guy may change his mind.

Unfortunately, the best one available is a recent murder victim, as his wife and her lover are trying to get rid of a selfish millionaire and live on his money. The one personality trait Joe maintains is his desire to play the saxophone, but he's not very good at it. This is the classic mix-up of godly proportions, and I guess to be accurate you could call it a 'fish out of his body' tale.

This is the original bw classic using this idea, which was later re-written and remade by Warren Beatty and Buck Henry in 1978 as Heaven Can Wait, which featured Beatty as a football player with a clarinet, Julie Christie, James Mason (as Mr. Jordan) and Charles Grodin and Dyan Cannon as the hilarious would-be murderers.

Winner of 2 Oscars® (Story, screenplay) out of 7 nominations, which included picture, director, cinematography, and two for lead actor.

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The Seventh Seal

[This is our 700th film reviewed]
Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1957, bw (9.2*)
Though not particularly pleasant viewing as it deals with a dying world amid a plague, this is probably Bergman's masterpiece, and a film that generally goes beyond cinema and into the realm of mythic art. Max Von Sydow plays a medieval knight returning home, who is trying to escape the bubonic plague with his family.

He is constantly shadowed by death, the Grim Reaper (Bengt Ekerot, as the most compelling character in the film) who tells him its time - a pale faced figure in a black cloak with whom he plays an ongoing game of chess for his life [see photo below], with whom he discusses life and death and God. Full of moody, gothic, yet beautiful black and white images, the film almost seems to be medieval paintings in motion. The overfall effect of this film is hypnotic; Bergman was at the height of his directing eye in composing these frames. I'm not usually a Bergman fan (his films are sometimes more painful than a trip to the dentist, and often longer, without the same positive result), but this film is easy to recommend. I'm just rating it down a notch from perfect because it's just so grim a story.

This is one of just three films that Woody Allen said went "beyond cinema and became art" - the other two being Antonioni's L'avventura (1960) and Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937).

The famous chess match with the Grim Reaper

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Poltergeist

Tobe Hooper, 1982 (8.5*)
"They're here!"
Produced by Steven Spielberg, with special effects from the Industrial Light and Magic studio, this is one of the most effective ghost stories ever filmed. Coming on the heels of Star Wars and Close Encounters, the same production values went into this tale of a suburban nightmare in which a little girl, played by Heather O'Rourke, along with the family dog, senses the attempts of contacts from "the beyond".

Pot-smoking parents Craig T. Nelson and Jobeth Williams are skeptical and confused at first but thanks to a miraculous display of kitchen chair stacking, both become aware that something supernatural may be present in an otherwise normal and boring household.

This may get a little over the top toward the latter stages with a lengthy ending, but it's still a bone-chilling excursion into the unknown. Add the fact that over 70% of Americans surveyed feel that they've been contacted by deceased loved ones, and that eerily two cast members died shortly after the film's release (O'Rourke died, and Dominique Dunne, the older daughter here, was murdered by an ex-bf), this story strikes a familiar and credible nerve in most people.

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Mary Poppins

Robert Stevenson, 1964 (8.1*)
This film was a lot of family-oriented fun, with nonsense songs and fantastic happenings, all after a magical nanny shows up in the form of Mary Poppins (who floats in using an umbrella), played with energetic gusto by Julie Andrews in a star-making and Oscar®-winning performance. Dick Van Dyke co-stars as a lower-class chimney sweep, who also has a bit of magic and music in his veins. Don't look to deep into this one, but expect lots of family-style Disney entertainment, with some magical animation overlaid over live action, a la Song of the South.

There was more than a little irony on Oscar® night when Andrews won for actress and Rex Harrison won for actor in My Fair Lady, since the two made the London play a hit yet Andrews was snubbed for the film in lieu of big box office draw Audrey Hepburn, whose vocals were dubbed by off-camera specialist Marnie Nixon, who also dubbed vocals for The King and I and West Side Story. (Nixon finally got in front of the camera in The Sound of Music, singing "A Problem Like Maria".) It's a shame that audiences were robbed of Andrews brilliant interpretation of Eliza Doolittle, as she is British while Hepburn is American, and Andrews made the role famous to begin with; the original cast recording will bear out my argument. In the history of major cinema, this remains one of the major casting gaffs ever committed. One can only assume that the Oscar® for Poppins was the consolation prize for the snub of Andrews for the bigger film, which won best picture and seven Oscars® overall.

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Alice

Woody Allen, 1990 (8.6*)
Unhappy in her marriage, wife Mia Farrow develops an incurable backache. After traditional healthcare fails to help, out of desperation she visits a Chinese herbal healer on the advice of a friend.

She gets far more than she bargains for; the Chinese shaman gives her various herbs (one each visit) that each seem to have magical properties, such as making her invisible or making anyone who drinks a tea she prepares fall in love with her. Of course, in the hands of Woody, the ramifications are hilarious, as he uses the magic to uncover more of the mundane, such as being invisible allows her to uncover her husband's infidelities by eavesdropping unseen on her friends.

Joseph Montegna becomes her new suitor after she meets him at their kids' private school, and her partner in magic, and the two have a nice comedic chemistry together. This is one of the more imaginative of Allen's romantic comedies, even though lighter than some (Hannah and Her Sisters, Annie Hall), it all works beautifully. It's also another worthy late member of his "New York Romance" series.

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Federico Fellini's 8 ½

Federico Fellini, 1960, Italy, bw (8.3*)
Federico Fellini's 8 ½ is probably Fellini's most famous film, and is certainly his most artistic. It's a bit surreal for most audiences, but if you don't mind getting visually assaulted with all types of seemingly unrelated images, such as rockets on launching pads, nuns, beautiful women modeling high fashion, and don't get overwhelmed by all the symbolism, then this could be an enjoyable ride through the senses.

Otherwise, it may provide two hours of tedium as there is no real story progression, nor any gripping characters or plotlines. It's more about the style and inner mind of Fellini himself, and less about a vehicle of entertainment for the masses. The title supposedly refers to Fellini, who is the one-half, played by Marcello Mastrionni, as a director plagued by self-doubt, and eight women in his life, mostly ex-wives.

Personally, I prefer his study of decadence among the famous, La Dolce Vita, as it's Italian realism; this is Italian surrealism, closer to Salvadore Dali's artwork than, say, a Vittorio De Sica drama. Yet this ranks very high on all-time film polls. It's #37 on our survey of all internet film polls..

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Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy

Gore Verbinski, 2003-2007
The first pirate films in history to actually make money are based on the tame kid's ride at Disneyland, another first. The three films grossed over 2 billion dollars, and actually cost over 600 million to make. They succeeded by being unabashed mindless adventure films with plenty of violence, special effects, and no sex, the perfect PG combination allowing them to provide daycare for parents hoping to raise kids typically immune to violence to prepare them for the adult world, where, as Tarentino said, "if you kiss a breast, it's a R rating, but if you slice it off, it's only PG."

(1) The Curse of the Black Pearl, 2003 (7.7*)
[#233 in the IMDB top 250, rated 8.0 by 244k viewers]
The first film is named for the ship that is skippered by Johnny Depp in a drunken performance as Capt. Jack Sparrow, an engaging ne'er do well pirate with more makeup than an aging Keith Richards, who looks more like Cher than Depp. Ironically, he received a baffling Oscar® nomination for best actor. How cutthroat pirates are willing to follow a fairly effeminate buffoon of a pirate is never explained.

Olivier Bloom is only slightly more hetero as Will Turner, in love with Elizabeth Swann, played with vigorous anger by Keira Knightly, who somehow manages to keep from being mauled by shiploads of men as all battle the evil Dutch East India Trading Co, the first stock-based corporation in the world, which later went bankrupt in 1800. Here it replaces the British Empire, though seemingly run by British sailors, as the resident evil that has people cheering for the pirates. Geoffrey Rush shines as the former Black Pearl captain, intent on getting his ship back from Sparrow; to me, he actually steals the acting kudos for all three films.

26 awards, 73 nominations

(2) Dead Man's Chest, 2006 (8.2*)
[rated 7.3 by 155k viewers at IMDB]
Since these are really nothing but CGI based adventures for kids, I prefer the 2nd film due to two eye-popping sequences. Best in all the films is a swordfight with Depp and a company rep that begins on a water wheel, which rolls down the island hills and to the sea, while the two battle the entire time. Another involves the pirates being caught and bound in a giant net cage handing off a mountain cliff. The pirates rock it back and forth in order to grab land and pull themselves up. This also introduces us to Bill Nighy as Davy Jones, complete with a live beard of moving octopus tentacles, and a barnacle-encrusted crew.

30 awards (66 noms), 13 for special effects, including a special effects Oscar®. Two awards were for best film from MTV and People's Choice


(3) At Worlds End, 2007 (6.7*)
[rated 7.0 by 138k viewers]
The last film is the most disappointing, in spite of an eye-popping sequence at world's end where the ocean spills over into space, and two ships swirl downward into a giant vortex. This was a disappointing 'conclusion' to a story that had a promising beginning, a dreary slow-moving voyage to nowhere.
16 awards, 29 nominations

The three films totaled 72 awards out of 168 nominations, the lion's share for special effects and popular fan awards. In a hilarious dig at the series, on Family Guy, Peter Griffin wakes up and tells his family "I had the weirdest dream that I was on a pirate ship and the only one who wasn't gay was Oliver Bloom."

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Donnie Darko

Richard Kelly, 2001 (8.4*)
This version is the longer director's cut
Welcome to a "Harvey" from hell. Disturbed teenager Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) doesn't get along too well with anyone in his hellish life. His one friend is Gretchen, who, for some reason, agrees to date him. His psychiatrist discovers hypnosis can help unlock his secrets.

Donnie survives a bizarre accident, perhaps due to supernatural events, which of course will change anyone's life. His ally seems to be an imaginary rabbit named "Frank", which in this case is not quite so harmless and comical as Jimmy Stewart's friend. It sometimes causes him to do not quite the right thing.

This fantasy, bordering on science fiction, is also a mystery, a combination which has made it a cult favorite. Penned by director Kelly, it is a unique vision in recent cinema.

Currently #132 on the IMDB top 250 films, rated 8.3 (not sure I'd rank it this high, but it does have a cult following by now; the highest ranked film at IMDB has a rating of 9.2, because these are the averages of tens or hundreds of thousands of viewers, with 10 the top rank that can be given)

Winner of 11 awards out of 21 nominations, from film critics and festivals.

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Gormenghast

Andy Wilson, 2000, TV, 4 hrs (9.0*)

A BBC production for PBS

A deep, complex adventure fantasy, Gormenghast was a trilogy of novels by British author Mervyn Peake about a huge castle and the birth and life of a new heir to the throne, Titus Groan, which was the title of the first book. The mini-series covers the first two novels, which are quite lengthy.

Describing the plot is futile. Suffice to say there are many eccentric and interesting characters, romances, treachery and machinations over the throne and governing of the feudal castle-state, and enough to interest even jaded fans of science fiction and fantasy. Some truly original ideas are here, such as the castle being built around a huge tree and two sisters who prefer to live in the "room of roots", a maze of giant organic forms.

It's very "Dickensian" in style, yet so unique and rich that it's really incomparable. This is a must-see for fans of these genres, one of the best SF-fantasy series ever made.

Some interesting trivia associated with this
- it was a 19 year project of the producer
- Peake's granddaughters appeared as extras
- Lady Gertrude's white crow was the only known white crow in the world
- the castle miniatures were placed in vats of disinfectant then photographed
- author Peake was also noted for his artwork, he illustrated the books with his drawings

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Micmacs

Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2009, France (8.8*)
aka Micmacs à tire-larigot
A wonderfully inventive and constantly surprising comedy film from Jeunet, director of the more famous Amelie, and the epic and beautifully shot war-romance A Very Long Engagement, his previous film (2004). The story begins with a soldier being killed disabling a land mine. His young son sees the logo of the arms manufacturer in an army photo of the site. Now an adult, Bazil, comically played by Danny Boon, is a video store clerk who takes a bullet in the head in a bizarre crime accident when a shootout occurs outside his shop. Doctors can't remove the bullet, but Bazil is given the spent cartridge, so he now knows the ammo maker as well.

Bazil becomes a street performer and beggar, and decides to seek revenge on the two companies, but doesn't know how. He meets a wonderful group of eccentric castoffs through a pardoned criminal named Slammer (Jean-Pierre Marielle) who have a hidden fortress (called 'Micmacs à tire-larigot') inside a junkyard - a group that fixes and recycles various items discarded by society. This makeshift family takes him in, and also takes on his goal.

With the help of a contortionist, Elastic Girl (Julie Ferrier), who sometimes hides in the refrigerator, a human calculator (Marie-Julie Baup), an inventor (Michel Crémadès), a 'mama cook' (Yolande Moreau), a human cannonball (Dominique Pinon) and others, they devise a long, complex, Rube Goldberg-like plan, which often requires a "Plan B" as things often go awry.

This film often surprises and never follows a straight path anywhere, and is quite unlike any other film - think Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Time Bandits, Fisher King) meets Cirque du Soleil, yet it never takes itself as seriously as either of those. Jeunet, in an interview on the dvd, says that "Micmacs" is an invented word that means "shenanigans". He spends two years on average making a film, and it shows in all the little details you can spot in a world that always seems a little off from reality, as if you're seeing the world through circus-tinted glasses. He says he includes every little inspiration he gets from reality, logging them all on a computer, and part of this came from the tv-series "Mission Impossible".

Sadly, we need more inventive films like this one, which borders on fantasy, yet delivers a seemingly straighforward plotline that has one cheering it's eccentric gang of societal castoffs as they take on major worldwide arms dealers. Jeunet is establishing himself as one of the most visually unique directors in the world, perfect for a new millenium.

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Youth Without Youth

Francis Ford Coppola, 2007 (8.3*)
Francis Coppola's first directorial effort in ten years is a complex, science fiction edged story based on the novel of Romanian author Mircea Eliade. Underused veteran actor Tim Roth, who is always interesting, plays an elderly linguistics expert, Dominic, whose true love has died, and his own research is at a standstill, when he's struck by lightning while crossing the street one night in Austria in the 30's.

He emerges from the burns a much younger man, and apparently oblivious to aging. His first task is to avoid Nazis and scientists, for he realizes his freedom and life would effectively be over. Dominic eventually meets a woman whose own catharsis is born of lightning, so he finds a new purpose in his research.

Much of the film uses the science of linguistics - languages used in the film include English, Romanian, French, Italian, Mandarin, German, Russian, Latin, Armenian, and ancient (and authentic) Sanskrit, Egyptian, and Babylonian.

This film is another that is not straightforward chronologically, and therefore will anger many viewers who need a nice neat storyline. Here the effort will be rewarding to the more diligent viewer, as the haunting and original story will linger for days afterward.

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Synecdoche, New York

Charlie Kaufman, 2008 (7.6*)
Many will be confused and maddened by this complex and epic dark poem to one man's creative and spiritual abyss. Charlie Kaufman is best known for writing some of the most interesting screenplays in the last decade: Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which won Kaufman a screenplay Oscar®. However, unlike those films, here Kaufman also directs his own work, and he seems less reigned in than when directed by Michael Gondry and Spike Jonze.

The story is about theater director and playwright Caden Cotard, brilliantly but sadly played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who receives a 'genius grant' and builds a hugely complex epic play about his own life. The cast, sets and growth of the main set to gargantuan proportions are as complex as this story, as over 200 sets were used as the play grows to last most of Cotard's adult life, as he seems to become dissociated from time, with years compressed into what he feels are days.

The supporting cast of women is superb - Catherine Keener, Dianne Wiest, Samantha Morton, Emma Watson, Jennifer Jason Leigh are all standouts. Keener is Cotard's artist wife who takes their daughter and flees to Berlin, a failure which haunts the rest of Cotard's life, especially his romances, as Cotard is more consumed by his artistic creations than any woman he encounters.

Only Kaufman could write a story this complex about a small life, featuring literally a hundred characters, getting to the level of one playing Cotard directing the play about himself, working alongside him daily like a Doppelganger shadow, who also knows intimate details of Cotard's personal life. This is not a pleasant film, but is a richly conceived and complex dark comedy on the consumption of an artist by his self-indulgent obsession with his own life. This will interest cinephiles and fans of Kaufman's other works, but will likely bore the masses and those more desirous of an easy to follow and happier narrative.

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