Metaphors often work for their ability to succinctly capture and elucidate a complex idea, employing more accessible terminology and concepts than their perhaps obscure counterparts for which they stand. Too stretch a metaphor to its logical conclusion might come across as tedious or, worse, a dead horse beating contest. The inquisitive conceit of Cold Souls [...]
Before anybody became somebody, they were practically a nobody. That’s the understanding, anyway, and Coco Before Chanel is an extended case-in-point. However, if it exemplifies the previous adage, it also stands testament to the power of two things, unrelated but connected: benefactors and femininity. Though “everyone must start somewhere,” it helps to have someone eventually [...]
Horrors occur all around the globe, under varying levels of spotlight beams. Some, however, deserve (to use the term pejoratively) much more exposure than they have ever received previously. One such macabre violation of dignity is the dolphin genocide taking place in Taijii, Japan, where a group sanctioned by the government is herding, trapping, and killing [...]
A film set in the 30’s in France, Faubourg 36, or Paris 36, feels like a film actually made in the 30’s. The costumes and the outdoor sets have a contrived artificiality to them, the whole town seems within arm’s reach, and the quality of the shots are more often than not reassuringly melodramatic, in a [...]
One of the major obstacles of an animated feature length film is pleasing both young and old alike. The young flock to films like this, but they only flock because their parents are willing to take them. If they can please the older movie-goers, then they have achieved a level of success that many animated [...]
One of the wittiest films of the year turns out to be another stunning example of clever animation (puppets) and to be fully aware of how witty it is (extremely). Wes Anderson certainly knows what he’s doing, both in the sense of how to make films and in the tongue-in-cheek quality that his films so [...]
Films based on memoirs are a particular sub-genre in the Based on a True Story realm. They are from a particular vantage point, seen in retrospect though the eyes of an individual who lived though the events. For such reasons, they often have an uncanny ability to speak with poignance and insight. An Education is [...]
A return to classic Disney animation, talking animals, musical numbers with song and dance. The Princess and the Frog is Disney’s first attempt in nearly a decade to tell an original story in that classic style of animation those of us who were born before the new millennium grew up with and came to know [...]
Up in the Air takes its name, it seems, from a song of the same name (or perhaps vice versa). The opening stanza is as follows:
I’m up in the air,
Choices drifting by me everywhere
And I can’t find the one
That would help me do the work I’ve left undone,
‘Cause I’m up in the air.
The entirety of [...]
One of the best original stories in recent years, the saga of Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling is a story about a boy, his friends, his school, and his efforts to defeat the one figure who threatens the safety of the world. It is a story of Good v. Evil. It is a story that [...]