Avatar

IMAX 3D is a pretty amazing experience. I used to go to The Omnimax at The Museum of Science in Boston, which was always exciting, but the movie fare was limited to one hour documentaries. Although the screen does not actually wrap around the audience as in Omnimax, the glasses and 3D effects of Avatar make it seem so; it is a truly unique viewing experience. A virtual reality movie about virtual reality, the story revolves around a soldier remotely operating an alien replicant on a distant moon in the distant future. Said moon contains vast deposits of a rock…

Happy Together

I am lucky to have friends whose media recommendations I can always trust... I had never seen a Wong Kar Wai film before "Internet Poster Person/Stringer Bell" introduced me at BAM and it was quite an experience. Happy Together tells the story of the dissolving gay relationship of two Hong Kong expatriates living in Buenos Aires; it is chaotic and disorienting in the same mostly great way that foreign travel is and the cinematography captures it perfectly, using different speeds and color techniques to make it one of the most visually remarkable movies I've ever seen. There is a beautiful…

The Road

From start to finish, this film emotionally abused me. I have never felt so consistently sad watching a movie; The World presented here is bleak and life seems to lack any purpose beyond simple survival. Through flashbacks and dreams of the life before, we become aware of the contrast and how much has been lost -- not just in terms of human life, but in terms of human values. Aside from anything that sustains life, which includes food, shelter and love, everything precious is now worthless. I found one of the most devastating scenes to be a flashback sequence of…

3:10 To Yuma

Who doesn't have a fascination with the Wild West? I hate murder more than anything in the world but justice can be sweet... This movie (2007 remake) tells the story of an outlaw captured and taken to prison while his henchmen attempt a violent rescue. At once a villain and a hero, he is confronted by an Everyman, a broke rancher playing a mercenary guard for morality. It is a head-to-head, psychological chess match between two great actors, Russell Crowe as corrupted Ben Wade and Christian Bale as family man Dan Evans. Westerns are about Honor more than anything else,…

Voodoo and Zombies

Last night we went to see a great production of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones at The Irish Rep. It is primarily one man's descent from "Emperor" into a voodoo-induced nightmare and John Douglas Thompson is awesome and terrifying in his psychosis. The scenery dances and puppets play ghosts as the audience journeys inside a head of madness. We then came home and watched Shaun of The Dead. I have never seen a movie that combines comedy, tragedy, love and horror in the same way. How scary would life be if the undead wandered the streets consuming human flesh? How…