Life of Pi begins in a magical, animal kingdom in Pondicherry, India. Birds and monkeys flight through the trees is especially vivid in 3D. The seamless blend of real animals and digital replicas makes us sit back and relax, confident we are in the hands of a masterful storyteller. Director Ang Lee staged magical moments in his Academy Award winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The crouching tiger in Life of Pi is also Oscar worthy. He commands our attention, a... Read more
Veteran’s Day is an important time to pause, remember, and honor our fallen soldiers. We are all the beneficiaries of their blood, shed on battlefields far and wide. But what about those who fought for peace without the use of guns or ammo? How do we honor fallen peacemakers? Jonathan P. Larson celebrates the legacy of his lifelong friend, Dan Terry, in Making Friends Among the Taliban: A Peacemaker’s Journey in Afghanistan and in the companion documentary, Weaving Life. (Free... Read more
Anticipation is rising for the December 14th release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Each installment in The Lord of the Rings trilogy remains ensconced in the Top 25 films of all time on the Internet Movie Database. When the Hobbit trailer runs in theaters, fans applaud at the first peek of Middle Earth. Audience interest in director Peter Jackson’s latest adaptation is so massive that J.R.R. Tolkien’s first book will be stretched into three feature films over the next... Read more
I’m disappointed by the dismal box office returns for Cloud Atlas because it is serious fun. Those two concepts, “serious” and “fun,” are rarely melded together in movies. Juggling those disparate tones is particularly tricky when you have six stories in play. The effort to adapt David Mitchell’s 2004 novel, Cloud Atlas, to the big screen may have been doomed to failure (or at least, misunderstanding) from the beginning. Yet, I found it both engaging and entertaining, highly deserving of... Read more
Argo is a rousing, nail-biting throwback to the best of seventies cinema: timely, topical, and tense. It begins with Islamic protesters burning American flags and besieging the U.S. embassy. No, this isn’t a study of current events in Syria or Libya. Argo celebrates spies and the far-fetched plans necessary to get State department employees out of Iran circa 1979. A religious and political revolution lead by Ayatollah Khomeini had deposed the hated Shah of Iran. When the United States harbored... Read more
How could an artist of such originality and vision as Vincent Van Gogh sell almost no paintings in his lifetime? Groundbreaking television series like Arrested Development and The Wire struggled to find an audience during their initial runs. Searching for Sugar Man tackles a similar conundrum. How could a songwriter as deft and poetic as Rodriguez be ignored by radio stations and overlooked by the public? Moreover, what happened to Rodriguez after his evocative albums failed to sell? Did he... Read more
Why do zombies increasingly haunt our pop culture? From surprise box office hits like 28 Days Later to the breakout cable television hit, The Walking Dead, zombies appear more prominent and problematic than ever. In Undead: Revived, Resurrected, Reborn, first-time author Clay Morgan connects our fascination with zombies to our most nagging spiritual questions. We relate to the survivors navigating post-apocalyptic scenarios, dogged by shortages in supplies and human contact. We sense that refuges are only temporary, a momentary lull... Read more
As the Chicago teachers strike played out, I kept thinking of the new film Won’t Back Down. How rare to find such a topical drama. Debates about public education continue to bubble up across school systems. In most cases, parents end up pitted against teacher unions. Should parents be allowed to choose where their children go to school? Should teachers’ job security be based upon seniority or effectiveness? If parents choose to test teachers, then how should effectiveness be measured?... Read more
How do you make a provocative movie about the founder of one of the most litigious organizations on the planet? How deeply would you have to disguise your artistic intentions to tell hard truths? In The Master, director Paul Thomas Anderson wades into the legends surrounding the birth of Scientology and may earn Oscars rather than lawsuits. Now, that is true artistic genius. L. Ron Hubbard’s ability to turn his cracked personal narrative into a mythic origins story is remarkable. ... Read more
Can a motion picture be great even if it is thoroughly unpleasant? Do we need to like characters in order to love a movie? What about a film that nearly shuts out half the audience, dealing almost exclusively with male lust for sex and power? The Master mixes the sacred with the profane, delving into our ancient struggle to tame our drives, to master our base instincts. Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman offer powerhouse performances exploring humanity’s bestial... Read more
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