The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)

While it isn't the most inspiring film of last year, it certainly did not merit the barrage of negative reviews it got. The wildly inventive film keeps its viewers engaged and minds tantalized with great visual tricks.

Doctor Parnassus unwittingly wins immortality from the devil as well as many other prizes, but they only bring him despair. The episode told in this film is more contemporary and his friends try to save him from yet another botched deal with the devil.

The film is both serious in its nature, but too playful to take at all seriously and this might be its downfall - it can't decide what it is. But then again, the film does have a fair bit to say about choice so this demonstrates the quality quite well.

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New York, I Love You (2009)

This is a response to Paris, Je t'Aime - a collection of short films by various directors demonstrating the vibrancy of one of Earth's largest and popular cities.

Again, like its Paris counterpart, it is a hit and miss with the shorts. Some are very entertaining, original and engaging, others are shallower. I didn't find the films as moving as the Paris ones. The project managed to attract many big name actors.

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Topsy Turvy (1999)

This has been on my to see list for 10 years. Mike Leigh (director of one of my favorites - Secrets and Lies) delivers the epic tale of Gilbert and Sullivan's struggle for meaning towards the end of the 19th century.

Despite far-reaching fame and impressive riches, lyricist W.S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan are having difficulty putting together a new musical opera. Gilbert is not happy with the total whimsey that his material is treated with and Sullivan wants to be known as a more serious composer. Their stage collaborators all have their own struggles too and it is with strained effort that one of the their final original productions, The Mikado, makes the stage.

The film is long. Really slow and long. We are left sometimes just watching rehearsals and performances of G & S's musicals for 4-6 minutes. This really kills the pacing, but it also gives us a true feeling of what entertainment was like and what the writer/composer pair were struggling with.

Great acting. Great costumes. Great music.

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The Star of Bethlehem (2007)

The Star of Bethlehem is a surprisingly good documentary from the Christian community. Taking a rational approach, not without some skepticism, Frederick Larson seeks to find the mystery behind the wisemen's star in the nativity story.

Larson, a lawyer, is inadvertently drawn into solving what the star was that the magi of the east followed to Jerusalem and then Bethlehem at the time of Christ Jesus' birth. By studying the Old Testament and the nativity story and complementing it with software and extra-biblical historical records, Larson deduces the dates of both Jesus birth and His crucifixion and interprets the planetary positions among constellations at those moments.

The film is essentially an edited blend of an intimate lecture, interview, re-enactment, and Starry Sky software generated night sky images.

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RKO 281 (1999)

Liev Schreiber plays a great Orson Welles in this true story about the making of Citizen Kane.

When William Randolph Hearst ran the newspapers in the United States, there were few people that would dare question, let alone insult him. Orson Welles, with his writer friend Herman J. Mankiewicz, decide to make a film loosely depicting Hearst's life, but they have to do so secretly in order to avoid persecution from Hearst's empire. RKO 281 is the code name for what becomes Citizen Kane.

The film tells the story well and not without a little bittersweetness at the end.

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Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)

A prison drama with a fantasy element delivers surprising depth.

Somewhere in Latin America, Luis shares a cell with Valentin a political prisoner. Luis is a flagrant homosexual who despite repulsing Valentin, is able to entertain him with stories of a bewitching spider woman. Luis is bribed to spy on Valentin by the warden and the tension mounts as the viewer is teased by the possibility that Luis would give up his cell mate to the secret police for his own freedom.

The acting in the film is compelling and the simple story is overshadowed by real human drama. I must say that the dream sequences and story telling is a bit out there and difficult to correlate with the main tale.

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Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

Spike Jonze guides us into the heart of a troubled, lonely child. The journey is very affecting.

Max has no one to play with and so he acts out, bothering his sister and then his single mom. When he really goes over the line (while wearing a wolf costume), he takes off, gets into a boat and sails to a land inhabited by giant wild creatures. Max's time with these seven emotional and destructive beasts helps him understand that he can't understand or fix everything.

Every element of this film is exactly perfect. Max's character is played by a gifted young actor. The soundtrack is cohesive, original and worth listening to again. The camera work gorgeously works in lots of natural light (at least it looked like natural light). And most superbly, the Jim Henson Creature Factory outdoes any kind of computer graphics by giving us the most real creatures I've ever seen on screen.

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Man on Wire (2008)

This documentary won an Academy Award earlier this year for it's excellent portrayal of a stunt artist and his greatest illegal act.

Phillippe Petit is a French tight rope walker who passionately tells the tale of his 1974 forty-five minute dance on a high wire between the World Trade Centre towers in New York city. Helping him tell the tale are the men and woman who help him set up the stunt.

The true story is often as tense as the wire Petit walks upon and it is told using a combination of old footage, current day interviews and animation/recreation of the events. It is a neat story of an event that didn't really change the world, but speaks of passion, art, and people's recognition of both of these.

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Stone Reader (2002)

A man discovers a giant of a book in his library that he meant to read 25 years earlier and never got around to it. After reading it and being thoroughly moved and inspired he decides to research the author and read his other titles only to discover that there is no information on him and there are no other books by the author.

The documentary filmmaker decides to shoot a film about the search for this master author. In its stead, the film becomes one about how we relate to books, their authors and how great books become successes.

From the get go, I was surprised by the method that the filmmaker used to draw in the audience and have them look at the books they've read and allowed to become a part of them (though he didn't give much time to reflect on them). We become active participants. The first action in the film is him talking about making the film with his camera man. He brings us backstage and into the editing room and talks about the making of the film as it's being made. This is kind of fun really.

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The Fall (2006)

This is a gorgeous film using a child's viewpoint to interpret the pain of an adult.

I sanitarium in early 20th century California houses an injured stuntman whose lover left him and a young girl who has a broken leg. She has a vivid imagination and he has some pain to release which he does by recounting his story as an epic with outlandish heroes playing their parts in outlandish landscapes.

There is plenty of comedy to juxtapose the drama - and there is some heavy drama to be sure. The cinematography and design makes the film more like an art gallery of primary colours and texture.

I only critique the pacing. It was held up at some spots. Thoroughly an extraordinary work.

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Barton Fink (1991)

The Coen brothers have made heaps of films since this most acclaimed art house film came out. Barton Fink is even characterized as an anti-type story on every level which, when done by master filmmakers becomes an instant classic.

When Barton Fink is charged with writing a money making wrestling movie for a hollywood studio after moderate stage success back in New York, he experiences writing block. Between the severe heat, a pesky hotel neighbour and difficult to read studio executives, Fink can barely get an opening line typed out. 

But the film is much more than a comedy about a self-absorbed writer, it's about story-telling and representing others. The role of authors carries an enormous burden to retell the plight of one part of society, but to tell it after listening to them.

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The TV Set (2006)

This film centres in on the production of a TV pilot episode and the artistic integrity that gets hammered in the process by the network execs.

I liked that the film kept the main character, a writer played by David Duchovny, real and grounded in some sense while his opponents were practically joke characters - impossible to take seriously. Everything goes downhill and we are asked what it is that we watch on TV if it isn't crap.

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For Your Consideration (2006)

From the makers of Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind comes a film to lampoon the film and award industries. For me, this is the weakest of the bunch. There are of course a handful of really funny lines and situations, but there are just as many groaners and boring stretches.

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Dead Letter Office (1998)

An interesting blend between myth and reality, Dead Letter Office is a sweet and quirky film set in Australia.

Alice's father abandoned her when she was young. It didn't stop her writing letters to him. When her life is going nowhere, she decides to see if she can find her dad using the experts at the Dead Letter Office by getting a job there herself. Her supervisor is a Chilean who escaped General Pinochet's death squads. A relationship ensues; the story takes off, slowly.

The acting and direction is fine in this film. The writing is perhaps just a touch over dramatic and there are serious pacing issues about 3/4 of the way through. 

Viewers will likely be drawn into the Chilean's issues as they are more veiled and his social group much more interesting. Alice mopes around in a melancholy funk for most of the film - not exciting cinema.

One of the principle themes as it relates to the title is that sometimes we find ourselves at an impasse, unable to move on. At these points, we need other people to help us regain traction and find a new direction.

Truth: "Where did we come from?" is just as important a question as "Where are we going?" 

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The Aristocrats (2005)

This film takes forever to get where it wants to go. Or, it arrives in the first 10 minutes and you're left lingering for another hour.

This is a documentary about the dirtiest joke of all time, or so it is heralded by the filmmakers. We then get 100 versions of the joke told to us by famous comedians, some history, and some explanations about the joke.

While I appreciated the explanation of the mechanics of joke telling, I didn't actually laugh a lot during the film. The joke in all of its incarnations is very, very filthy. The film is well edited, but it should have been a short-subject doc.

Truth: Sometimes a joke is funnier to the teller than the hearers because of the reaction he can draw from the crowd.

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Shattered Glass (2003)

A smart film about a recent event. We get a glimpse behind the scenes of a scandal that almost took down a magazine.

The New Republic, a political magazine with a history of important readership, finds itself with a renegade reporter who not only fabricates stories, but the sources and references for the story. What is also remarkable about this reporter is the deft manner he draws allies to himself and insists his innocence to the end.

I enjoyed this film quite a bit. It's neither pretentious nor does it over explain the story. The acting is very strong, particularly with Peter Saarsgard, one of the antagonist. The a less than likable protagonist's character, Glass, is particularly manipulative and we get a glimpse into a bit of his psyche thanks to Hayden Christensen. The film is pretty straight forward.

Truth: We tend to believe who we want to believe.

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Who is Cletis Tout? (2001)

Not as fast paced or zippy as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang or Smoking Aces, but along the same lines. We get a narrated story from a guy at gunpoint. The man holding the gun likes movies and makes the story into a movie before our eyes. If the movie is good, the good guy will live.

It's easy to see why many good actors flock to films like this one - small part, big money. While the film isn't horrible, it doesn't stick with you for any amount of time after the credits roll either. It's simply meant to entertain and get you going for 90 minutes.

As I mentioned earlier, the story is transformed into a screenplay and old movies get quoted throughout. The screenwriter wants to make us aware that he knows what he is doing and this really didn't work here - not nearly as effective as Adaptation. The story is unique, but quite far-fetched and there really isn't much we can relate to (for instance, my father never spent years in prison, nor have I ever worked with homing pidgeons).

What ultimately fails is the effort to try and exude a 1950's through 1970's film atmosphere - and it's because it tries too hard.

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The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

After reading The Lord of the Rings I wanted to make the film. Peter Jackson beat me to it. That's probably a good thing, because he did perhaps the best that anyone could have done. I've watched each of the three movies at least 15 times - many of those times in theatre. They are some of my personal favorites and I could write several pages in response to the films. Here is some of what I think about film 1 (hopefully this isn't a repeat of what the millions of other people have commented on the film):

I watch this film as a gorgeous metaphysical poem. The journey of life which is full of camaraderie, the struggle against sin, prophetic voices, doubt, resilience, and pain. Each of the characters mean so much more than a direct metaphor for some theme or truth because they are dynamic characters in a narrative; they react surprisingly.

Continuing with the characters, this is what really drives the film. And there are so many main characters: The nine in the fellowship, the elven royalty, the enemies and their henchmen, Bilbo Baggins, and the ring of power. A great strength of the film is that it introduces each one of them to us and keeps them alive with revealing dialogue and unique passions.

The pacing of the film is careful and correct, but it still leaves the Tolkien fan insatiated. We want to see the barrow wights, Fatty Bolger, and less of Arwen, but ultimately, the fullness of the story is communicated. The sweeping and majestic panaramic views of Middle Earth say almost as much as the pages of description in the book.

As I consider the work put into the film, be it designing sets to sewing costumes to pondering the lines of the film, I know that it was a film meant to be made. We are all meant to watch it. It is a visual feast.

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Finding Neverland (2004)

A refreshing, though sad film, Finding Neverland carries its viewer back to the point where he or she grew up and abandoned that little boy or little girl.

Johnny Depp plays a terrific Peter Pan playwrite and gives us a glimpse into the roots of the story, his friendship with a widow and her four sons. Though the adults are superb in the film, it is really the children who carry the emotional weight of the story, in particular the Peter character.

Another conflict besides the growing up theme is that of work and home. Depp's character is so absorbed in his work that his already cold marriage grows colder, perhaps an issue of his wife having grown up too much.

The camera work is super, especially in the theatre. There is a playfulness to it and it adds just enough nuance to make the viewer gravitate to the screen, sometimes a rare feature for a drama.

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William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999)

I've seen this play on stage twice and then with this film. I can say with assurance that live performances are much more fun even if the acting, sets and costumes aren't as exotic as they are in this film. The film is still fun though, full of laughs and production originality. The play within the play is still my favorite part and I howl with laughter at each production I see.

The pure magic of the story is of course Shakespeare's wit. The wide vocabulary, sharp puns, and rhyming make this a joy to simply listen to, let alone the imaginative setting and colourful characters.

This production went all out getting half a dozen of the hottest actors of that year and then filling the rest of the cast with another half dozen familiar faces. Kevin Kline is by far the stand-out actor in the bunch and you can tell he's having fun as Bottom. Calista Flockhart plays a great skinny Helena and Stanley Tucci is a likeable Puck.

Watching it again after 4 years, I was surprised that the special effects weren't more elaborate. The sets and costumes were certainly over the top with a lavish setting in 19th Century Italy. All fun and seductive.

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