The Fall is one of the most visually striking movies you’re likely to see, but the fantasy element is firmly tied to the emotional resonance of the realistic scenes set in a hospital. Some reviewers have complained that the fantasy element is inconsistent, but it is in fact, for the most part, brilliantly inconsistent.

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Warning: profanity follows. This is a re-post from the old blog of Evil’s analysis of Shambly’s Lady in the Water with some Wire first/second season comments worked in.

Jeff

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Someone else is going to have to see Prince Caspian for me and report back. I’m still too scarred from going to see the first film, The Chronicles of Narnia, about which Evil and I had the following conversation back in 2005.

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Charlie Wilson’s War, starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, is a fun romp of a movie about a not-so-serious man who winds up having a serious effect on American foreign policy–specifically by helping allocation funds to the CIA to help conduct a secret war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. This is a comedy, folks, and as such it eschews the use of nuance and complete historical accuracy. (Books like Ghost War, for example, call Wilson a crackpot who did indeed focus attention on the plight of Afghan freedom fighters, but who also was seen by the CIA as a loose cannon. Also, according to that book, Wilson’s contribution was not as significant as others would have you believe.)

Hanks and Hoffman are fine in this movie, but you begin to wish about a third of the way through that the Roberts character–a right-wing, old-money fundraiser from Texas–would have been played by a non-star. The broadness of acting and the face recognition Roberts brings to the role tends to throw things out of balance. Still, as breezy, fun movies go–and the two qualities are not to be scoffed at with so many bad Hollywood movies out there–Charlie Wilson’s War is a hoot. Just remember you’re entering fantasyland when you rent it.

Starring Willem Defoe as one weird obsessive-compulsive detective, Anamorph almost gets it right. A serial killer who deals in setting up scenes of forced perspective may or may not be the same killer Defoe’s character thought he’d helped kill a few years back. Each new staged murder is more horrific and artful than the last. Defoe is quite good as the detective. The cinematography is outstanding. The tension keeps building. And then, and then…

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We rented this movie through cable on-demand because we wanted something fun on in the background while we signed and personalized copies of our Steampunk anthology. However, the first few scenes were too arresting, so we turned it off and went back to it when we had time to actually watch the film with our full attention. We’re glad we did. The Great Yokai War tells the fascinating story of an evil sorcerer (?) who is fashioning a kind of world-conquering machine that feeds off of the essence of various traditional Japanese spirits and mythological creatures. A boy finds himself in the unlikely role of hero in trying to help stop this wholesale torture/slaughter, and in the process tries to save the world.

Many of the special effects involving blue screens have a cheesy feel to them, but the director’s choice to put most of the monsters and spirits in actual physical costumes helps ground the movie in some imaginative, grotesque, and beautiful images. Yes, the plot is a little bit wonky, but when you see all of the weird spirit-things marching on Tokyo…it’s kinda breath-taking.

The Nines is the kind of movie where to review it and include too much summary…is to destroy it. This isn’t because it’s an O’Henry story, but more because of the building emotional content of the film. It’s structured in three parts with the same actors in different roles. The first part shows a drug-rehab actor under house arrest. The second shows a TV writer trying to get his vision made into a series. The third shows some version of that TV series, with a family hiking in the mountains.

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Southland Tales is a ambitious, admirable, sprawling mess of a movie. Caught between satire and reality, reality and science fiction, it never quite works, except for some individual scenes. It’s set in an alternate yet familiar California in which Homeland Security is more invasive and we’re at war in Syria after a nuclear attack in Texas. The Rock plays a movie star who might’ve been sent through a rift in another dimension, only to come back a changed man. Marxist rebels inhabit Venice Beach. A strange Dr. Strangelove-like Nobel-prize-winning scientist/baron has created a new source of renewable energy. And so it goes…

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The Band’s Visit finally made it to Tallahassee theaters this past week. I went in expecting an amusing movie of culture clash and came out realizing I’d seen a deeply profound film that was equal parts comedy and tragedy. The qualities of silence and stillness are used to great effect, especially in the recurring shot of the Egyptian band, lost, standing by the side of the road. In the opening sequences, there’s an understated humor to this shot. In the ending scenes, it’s a source of great sadness.

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The central idea in The Last Mimzy–of the future calling upon the past to save it–is one of great potency and emotion. That this takes the form of dozens (hundreds?) of rabbit dolls sent back through time is potentially sentimental, but also deeply strange, in a good way.

For the first half of The Last Mimzy, which focuses on two children discovering a rabbit doll and accompanying marvels, has a kind of innocence and simplicity that is deeply appealing. The way that this future technology makes them see the world is deftly conveyed.

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