Film Reviews
Once Upon A Time In America
Directed by Sergio Leone, 1984
In Once Upon a Time in America, Sergio Leone marries a European art-film sensibility — embodied by the film’s two framing devices and an intricate flashback structure — to his flamboyant and slightly cartoonish trademark cinematic mannerisms (tight close-ups, charged revealing shots). The result is a haunting, thematically complex movie that, instead of a straightforward genre film, works like an elegiac poem about the cost one pays for dreaming big and trusting blindly. Leone is interested in the mood, the atmosphere, and the grand gestures of the gangster novel primarily as a means of reaching some larger truth about human interaction - how man’s dreams and desires are driven by feelings of self-interest, self-loathing, and self-doubt, and how one’s motives are always inscrutable to others. It’s an entrancing and stirring epic from one of cinema’s most expressionistic artists, and one of the most consistently fascinating films I’ve ever seen. ~J.R.
Renaissance
Directed by Christian Volckman, 2006
As much as I hate to admit it, I was rather disappointed with this film. I was initially drawn, of course, to the striking animation and special effects (and the fact that it takes place in the near future, which is always intriguing because, let’s face it — who among us doesn’t want to know what the world will be like in 30 or 40 years?). However, it turns out that the animation was indeed the only impressive elements present in this movie. While it is apparent that the artists worked tirelessly on their portion of the movie, the purpose of absolute black and white with no shades of gray has absolutely nothing to do with what the movie is about, doesn’t add anything to the story, and it ends up becoming quite distracting and annoying at times. It’s hard to see what’s going on at times and nearly impossible to tell one character from another. The story is unsatisfactorily ordinary. Scientists make the genetic breakthrough of the millennium. Then they lose all sense of the difference between good and evil and moral and immoral. What should have been a discovery that could ultimately make life perfect for us all, ultimately dissolves into utter chaos. And of course, only one man can save the world from this catastrophe. ~J.B.
The Science of Sleep
Directed by Michel Gondry, 2006
Interesting concept here — once I figured out what was going on. If fairy tales were real, this is what they would be like. However, it was somewhat disappointing in the end, because…well, I guess I can’t really say without giving away the ending. The unhappy ending (presuming that it was created to reflect an “unhappy” ending) is not what disappointed me. It was the fact that once it was all over, the end result didn’t seem to be completed. What was it all for? Everyone seemed to be back where they started and I don’t think that was the director’s intention. Overall, I enjoyed it. The characters were quite charming. And I appreciated the opportunity to look in on their world for a couple of hours. ~J.B.
