My Collection

Lars Von Treir & Bjork...the musical. It doesn't sound ilike it could work but it does, I don't like musicals but I find myself humming "Ive Seen It All", more than I'd like to admit. Bjorks voice and playful character are perfect compliment to Treir...(read more)'s brutal tragedy. Like Werner Herzog's "Strozek" meets "Singing In The Rain", unforgettable.

There was a lot of hype about this being the best Godard film after Breathless, but I beg to differ. I think Breathless is my least favorite film by him, but this one was surprisingly good. Its a simple heist/love story but it's brought to life in a very unique Godardesque way, and the minute of silence and the dance scene(where Pulp Fiction lifted there's from) are absolutely brilliant. It's a clever, fun film that can be enjoyed by film fans while not being inaccessible to the average person who doesn't care about Marx or Sartre and the usual Godard coffee table subjects. Not that this film removes those ideas or arguments, it just intergrates them well enough so that, they pass over us almost undetected. A great piece of film history worth multiple views.

"The most depressing film ever made."

...or so I said the first time I saw this. Even now though I can't really think of anything bleaker, nihilistic, or generally cruel as this film. See human biengs dance to tune of desperation, despair, apathy and greed. A rainy day movie.

The only weird thing David Lynch had left to do was make this movie, and it's amazing.

An old man sets out across the country riding his lawn mower, in order to visit a brother he hasn't seen in years. He's too old to legally and drive and doesn't have the money to pay for travel. The trip of only a matter of states will take him almost a year by mower, and he will meet a myriad of characters along the way.

Lynch's absurd and dark humor works gently here, but still rears it's head at the right moments (the woman who always hit's deer). Still though, it's worlds away from Eraser Head and Blue Velvet, but feels like an artist expanding his horizons, than trying to make a "traditional film". The movie has a unique perspective and natural beauty and earnestness, that's stirring and never sappy. It's a straight forward, emotionally engaging movie about the absurd, miraculous, and honest in life. Beautiful

It's on every third t-shirt and lunch box, but it's still one of those great films of it's time. I was 8 when this came out, and I can't remember how many times I watched it. I think the point is...it shits on the Corpse Bride

Really Kill Bill 1 and 2 are one movie, split for marketing reasons, into "volumes". And as one movie, it's gold, all the reasons you either hate or love Quentin Tarantino are right here at your fingertips. The Battle with the Crazy 88 is one of the best fight scenes ever captured, so that helps too. But there's lot's to love here, it's the entertainment apex for action movies of the new millenium. All aboard the "Pussy Wagon" to revenge!

I don't know how old I was when I first saw it. But his film's always left an impression on me. Of all the classic Universal Monster films, "Dracula", "Frankenstien", "The Wolfman", the creature has always been my favorite.

For it's time it is a special effects marvel a fully functioning body suit was worn and swam in through many of the films underwater shots(new film technology was designed specifically for it.).

As far as stories go theres not too much to tell, an evolutionary missing link(I'm between mermaids and bigfoot) is found in the Amazon, and a team of scientists dynamite there way into the ancient Black Lagoon that's been sealed away from the main river for centuries. Well then the creature shows up and abducts the ships only female (presumably for tea and hand holding) and so the guys go after the beast, and after numerous failed attempts and close calls, save the day and get the girl...but what if the creauture wasn't the only one of it's kind...well then watch the sequels I know I didn't. 5 stars because it's Friday, and my socks are black, and because once upon a time, fanstastic creatures could be seen on tv just after your bedtime, 5 stars just becuase.

One of the few comics adaptations that might be better than the book. I love Dan Clowes comics, but this movie has a life beyound and maybe above it's original material. Funny, poignant, cathartic, and genuinely emblematic of it's times.

Orpheus(Orphe'e)" is a masterpiece. Jean Cocteau is french poet laureete of cinema, when Luis Bunuel was working on confrontational surrealist assaults like Un Chien Adalou, Cocteau was developing his own surreal film making language, one just as arresting and startling, but with a poetic and mythic cohesiveness where Bunuel would place an absurdity. Visually, I really cant say enough, it was just stunning even by modern standards, I had to rewind several parts, just to see them again before I could go on. The marriage between poetry, comedy, surrealism is blurred her into a distinct hybrid myth and fairy tale. A poet discovers Death or at least an agent of Death has fallen in love with him and wants to take him to other side, he resists of course, and eventually his wife is taken, leading to a journey into the world of mirrors (for in mirrors one can see Death's hand working). A great film that resonates on numerous levels and glows with intriguing concepts, mesmerising trick photography, and a mythic scope funneled through a modern landscape. Brilliant. Recommend

I you liked the sprawling narrative of "Waking Life", you will love "Slacker" which takes mid 20's early 90's Texas collegiate aimlessness and makes it into minimalist cinematic poetry. Some vignettes don't work as well as other's, but taken all together it's a phenomenal film.

However I bought the Criterion Collection version of this because it came with Linklater's first unreleased film "You Can't Learn To Plow By Reading Books", which is without a doubt the most boring thing I have ever seen. It's pretty much just the director staring out of some windows as he takes a trip around Texas. Do not watch it, and do not pay the extra price for it. Rent it, not worth it.

That being said "Slacker" is one of my favorite films, and one which helped start the "indie" film revolution of the 90's. Great smart, hip, poetic, funny stuff, that was and is emblematic of a generation. "Wanna see something cool....it's like...a... Madonna Pap Smear...man the real thing....the real Madonna!"

This isn't a great film by any stretch of the imagination, but it did manage to completely capture my childhood mind. Dracula, The Wolf-Man, Frankenstien, The Mummy, and a swamp creature (ala Creature From The Black Lagoon), all converge on a small suburban town some time in the 80's. Dracula is attempting to bring about the end of the world(never mind why or how), and it involves Frankenstien, the stroke of midnight, and a magical amuelet. Thankfully some junior high kids find a book by Van Hlelsing, and since they already have a horror themed monster club, they decide they are best suited to save the town.
Bieng a boy who watched an innapropraite amount of horror films for his age, I ate this film up, devoured the frames repeateadly for years, and though I am clearly biased, I think alot of it still holds up very well. I can't imagine a time when "Wolfman's got nards!", or "...they call me...(shotgun cocking sound)...Horace!", wouldn't bring an easy smile to my face. All and all it's an imaginative and witty little children's horror film, from the director of "Night Of The Creeps" a hilarously bad 80's throwback to 50's drive in zombie/alien movies. Anyway, it's good kids adventure stuff, with a little more sex/voilence than your average childrens film (or maybe it's just 80's children's film's in general, Artex dying in NeverEnding Story, etc), but still fairly acceptable for all ages. So if your babysitting an eccentric child or feeling that synthesized dayglo 80's nostalgia, Monster Sqaud is good way to kill some time

A film about just how hard it is to balance, an active fantasy life, an active creative life, an and active sexual life. Fellini' turns his own life into a circus, and reminds us of the thrills and chills, of all the aspects of our lives, our failures and fantasies composing a far greater chunk, than most people would like to admit. From the music to the cinematography, the dialogue, to the many wonderfull and infamous scenes, (the imaginary harem and the bullwhip, I think just about every human being can relate to). It's essential viewing for anyone who likes movies, it's long and it has it's slow parts, but it's merging of oeneric fantasy and auto-biography was and is revolutionary to film making and story telling in general. If only to understand what people mean when they say "Felliniesqe" see this movie.

It's bleak and tragic, manages to invert and avoids a few cliché's, and the directing, sound, and especially lighting are excellent. The stories nothing too special, but that's not what's important here, it's the claustrophobic, dark, lost, nightmarish quality that all horror films seek, but rarely achieve, that is captured really well here. Anyway, I saw it for free, and I thought it was pretty good. I'm tired of CG ghosts with long hair and backwater slashers anyway. Make sure you watch the UK Ending too, it's the icing on the cake, literally, the US version is s*%$.

I don't mean to subtract too much from the story, but at the time this was coming out I think there was another horror film called, "The Cave"."The Descent" was made first though it was released in the states after, and though their basically about the same thing, which is people fighting monsters in a cave, "The Cave" was every horror/action cliché you could imagine, while this managed to generate genuine suspense and a sense of doom, as well as the usual gore. Also it includes an all female cast, a rarity in horror films, especially since the characters are not just sexualized teens. Not to mention a the movie has a smogesborg of allusions to movies like "Picnic at Hanging Rock," "Carrie," "2001 A Space Odyssey" "The Third Man," "The Fourth Man," "Don't Look Now," "The Blair Witch Project" "Vertigo," "Apocalypse Now","Deliverance", "Aliens", etc. The film plays with a very primal myth of bieng lost in the dark and surrounded. It evokes hellish visions, from paintings like (Goya's Black Paintings, Fuseli's "The Nightmare") to gothic gargoyles and Dore's engravings for Dante's "Inferno." But even if your not so savvy on the post-modern interplay it's still, and most importantly, an effective adrenalyn shot for all viewers. Easily
One of the best horror films of the past decade, which serves as a working example that a talented director(I wrote this before "Doomsday" mind you), writer, cast and crew can make any idea into something worth viewing.

German direcor Wolfgang Peterson best known for his realist WW2 submarine drama "Das Boot" did the ultimate 180 and then directed "The Neverending Story", in a wild adaptation of the German fantasy novel.
The result is one of mine, and many's most treasured childhood classic. A fantasy film about, what else the imagination, and in particular reading and literacy. Great set and designs, and some of the most original characters to ever grace the fantasy genre. A film whose visual excess had a big impact on how and why I watch movies.

The title is a Hopi word meaning "life as war". This documentary takes images of modern life and the real world, and digitaly augments and alters them into a fantasia of living images, showing man developing into the technology based society of today.

There are no words, and no real story, just a kaledscopic series of images to the music of Phlip Glass and Yo-Yo Ma. Basically it's a long music video. Earlier films by director Reggio are similar in their approach and subjects, dealing with nature and then industrial societies, and now technological culture and the future.

A beautiful, inventive, abstract documentary

"Barton Fink" was a film about Hollywood, and this is one about Los Angeles, and they both have John Goodman. Great performances, direction, and writing. The Coen brothers at there best here.

It's the story of a burn-out bowler named "The Dude", whose precious rug "which ties the room together", is peed on by a group of thugs, which sends him on an odyssey to fatherhood, death, Facism, suite cases full of money, and of course freindship.

And besides Steve Buscemi get's created at "Sunken City", a place from my home town in San Pedro, overlooking the Pacific. Perfection.

Great performances, great script, great directing. A hot summer day and racial tensions on the verge of exploding. An ensemble piece that feels as much designed for theater as it does for the screen. Few films really capture an era, but this is one that get's it spot on. Spike Lee is here at his creative apex, a pinnacle he has not yet topped.

A perfect movie. The music, the editing, cinematography, writing, all working on overdrive and complimentary each other perfectly. Each time I see it, I'm impressed and enthralled. Experimental film as a parlour game, it's brilliant. One of the top ten best films of the 90's.

I'm the first one to review this film, an odd beginning, but here it goes.

Vera Chytilova's Fruit Of Paradise, is a lost masterpiece of a film. Lost because Chytilova was not permitted to make any films for decades, after her first film Daisies(an...(read more)other gem), was censored and banned by the Soviet/Czech government. These films show us a new language in cinema, that never got to develop. Her use of sound alone in this film puts her on par with Godard and Leone, her use of color is unlike anything I have ever seen(the first 10 minutes in Eden are a luminous collage of images, patterns, and live actors), and her sense of story(arguably her least accessible trait) is like Bunuel or Svankmajor(her fellow Czech), albeit with a distinctly feminist, whimsicle, slapstick bent.

The story is an allegory of Adam and Eve, in a modern(made in 60's) Health Retreat. The action involves our heroin wandering the grounds where she becomes obsessed with a mysterious man in red, who may or may not be a killer. What follows is a fragmented story of awakening, it's pains and pleasures, but don't look more literally than that, like Lynch's Inland Empire, it's best to view this film topologically(on the surface), as an aesthetic object like a painting, rather than a cinematic tool for conveying a "message". Not that you cant or shouldn't get anything more out of this film, than a lesson in the expansive possibilities of film-making itself, but you get out of it, what you put into it. If you want to just watch the pretty colors, it's got that, if you want to argue about "ontological freedom and meaning", you could use this film as a trampoline, but that role rests here on the viewer.

Chytilova's film's however cannot be accurately described by text, they have to be viewed, listened to puzzled over, drank with(a glass or two of wine), and then viewed again. If your looking for a novel experience in a sea of modern cinematic redundancy, the Fruit Of Paradise, is the food for you. If you want to watch realistic characters, exchange in pseudo-naturalistic dialoge about modern issues of social import, "Crash" can be found at your local blockbuster, if you've watched Maya Deren, Luis Bunuel, or Kenneth Anger, and said, why can't there be more films like this; then Netflix, steal, beg, borrow,(or try your local library), but find this film. That goes double for Chytilova's first film Daisies, which is as adventurous as this, but is more slapstick to this films baroque; basically a lot more fun

What is "The Proposition" a lawmen new to Australia(which was settled first by English convicts and prisoners), sets out ot avenge the horrible and violent death of a pregnant woman and her family(of whome his wife was a close personal freind). His plan is simple he will capture two brothers from the famous Burns gang and will ask one Charles(Guy Pierce), to kill his older brother the savage Arthur(who commited the murders), or else the lawman will kill his younger brother the mentallly handicapped Micheal. What follows is Charles quest to find his brother, and the lawman's quest to civilize the new country.

Since it's set in Australia it's technically not a "Western", though aside from that detail, and the replacement of Indians with Aboriganals, you'd hardly notice. However the distinction is important, because The Proposition is a deceptively clever film. The proposition in question is whether you should kill your brother to save your brother. The inherint drawback in chosing civilization over the wilds is it puts one instantly at odds with the wilds, in binary us vs. them, civilization vs. non-civilzation. Civilazation is the town, the law, it's fashions and fears, the wilds are the country itself, it's natives and non-whites, it's criminals, it's desolate terrain and animals. In choosing to kill his brother, Charlie Burns, takes up the proposition of civlization, to kill the strong and the other, in order to spare the meek and familiar. Had screen-writer Nick Cave, left the story there it would have been a midly interesting new western, what makes it great however is it complicates further.


The sherriffs wife wants revenge for her freind and demands the younger Burns boy be punished, as does the town and his superiors who don't understand why he released Charles in the first place. If the sheriff punishes the boy(a public wipping he will likely not survive), the pact will be broken, and he himself will have to face the Burns brothers should they return.

In the wilds there are angry natives, roaming criminals and mercenaries, and a pregrant woman can be raped and murdered in her own home. While in the civilized town a young handicapped boy can be beaten to death publically for something he did not do and by rights does not understand. The proposition, or choice between the new nation or anarchy, is not one that can be easily made, and this is the subltle brilliance of this movie. Arthur burns at one point says when asked by another member of his gang wheter or not they are misanthropes; people who hate the world and everyone in it, to which he replies "Were not misanthropes were family".

On one level it's just a very gritty western with lush cinematography and amazing music, and on another level it's a story about the founding of a country like Emir Kusturica's "Underground" was to Yugoslavia, and on yet another it's an weighing of the pros and cons of all civilizations(as many people pointed out Australia around this period resembles the wild American west to a T).
You don't have to think about all this during the film to enjoy the story, but in it's at times thin or slow patches it might help to know that there are greater forces at work in this film than meet the eye(consider John Hurt's wonderfull speech early on the film, about why they are in Australia).
I don't particularly care for Westerns, it's rare when I fall for one, along with "3:10 To Yuma" another film which can go over peoples heads, this was a film that breathed great life into a genre I would not normally look at. It's difficult stuff in this film, but with a little thought and patience it rewards, where many similar movies just cram in extra gun fights.

Songs From The Second Floor, is the second feature from director Roy Andersson, whose spent his career making according to fellow swedish director and legend Ingmar Bergman, "The best commercials in the world"(Youtube his name for proff of this). And...(read more)erson takes an advertisers eye to this film and inverts it, into around 40 or 50 short vignettes, some with recurring characters, like the man seen on the cover who has burned down his buisness to collect the insurance but bumbled the job, while most include walkons, and many characters drift in an out of scenes before the movie ends. These short vignettes are nearly all deadpan and absurdist tragi-comic advertisments for peoples lives broken or on the verge of breaking. The antagonist, if there must be one, is capitalism(a subject which the commercial making Anderson is very much aware), and it's de-humaizing effects on all its touches. As bleak as all this sounds, the material is played more often than not for laughs. There's a traffic jam which has clogged the city as if everyone were leaving at the same time, a girl who is blindfolded and lead of a cliff by her village elders, a man accidentally sawed in half by poor magician, men and women in buisness suits walk down streets in paradees flailing themselves as an act of pennance to God so he will prevent the further falling of stocks, and a man followed around by ghosts of freinds and strangers. If that werent enough each scene is composed with a static non moving camera, giving each vignette the detailed composition of a photograph or a painting. The movie could be considered a tragi-comic funeral song for western capitalism and modernity(the film takes place just before the new millenium I think), but a tag like that really doesn't communicate how humane, clever, funny, and acessible this movie really is. It's like a lyrical Monty Python film, or a an absurdist Ingmar Bergman, and yet again it's a film all it's own, structurally, conceptually, and aesthetically, if your interested in where film-making may be going in the future and right now, Songs From The Second floor, is the movie to see, and one of the best of the new millenuim

If youve seen this movie, enjoyed it, but strached your head at the end wondering what Jarmusch was getting at. It's something that hes been getting at since "Mystery Train", that is people who have interests in cultures outside their own.
In Myste...(read more)ry Train, a japanese couple obsessed with american rock and roll of the 50's come to visit Memphis, in "Dead Man" an Indian is taken an educated in England, til he reads William Blake and is inspired to escape, only to meet a man in American named William Blake, who he educates in the Indian way of life(this actor appears in Ghost Dog as well in deliberate homage"Stupid fucking white man!"), so theres alot of cross cultural trading going on Jarmusch,...alright now Ghost Dog.
Ghost Dog features a black assasin, who lives by the Samuria code, Italian Mafioso who only like watching cartoons, a Hatian icecream driver, an old man building a large wooden ship on the roof of a tenement, a little girl reading "Frankenstien" and "Night Nurse", a mobster listening to "Flava Flav," etc. The characters of Ghost Dog have interests that you would not initially prescribe to them. This is a film about culture wars and how they are not always chronological, the old vs. the new, here we have the old vs. the ancient. Ancient samurai code or no, Ghost Dog still listens to Wu-Tang Clan (hardcore rappers obsessed with Kung Fu films and Asian culture), suggesting a pick and choose culture, as opposed to one which is just handed down on high from cultural elders, he doesnt cut himself off completely from the world, just chosess to live in his own version of it. The lead mafioso's daughter(if youve seen the film she's the one who starts all the trouble), is in this position of cultural malaise with her aging mobsters, turning similarly to Japanese literature and cartoons for escape.
The performances are all dead pan, some quite funny. This is my favorite Jarmusch film, for a few reasons some personal(bieng a black kid who liked alot of shit black kids arent expected to be interested in I relate...I like Wu-Tang too.), and some aesthetic, this is after "Night On Earth"(just remembered the european cabbie trying to immerse himself in New York culture in that movie, for more evidence of Jarmusch as cultural trader) is his most acessible film. It's also one of the best films about samurai hitmen and mobsters you're likely to find, working from a place of bizzare genre(Blacksploitation/Action/Kung-Fu), Jarmucsch is able to create a moody, atmospheric, urban samurai noir, that actually tells us something about the shrinking and overlapping modern world in the wake of Globalization, not to an easy feat.
But that's what it's about, what it is, is a great mix of intensity and humor, action and reflection, a juncture of both the old and the new, which actions fans and Jarmusch indie fans can enjoy.

This is the Alejandro Jodorowsky film not the old silent one about mountain climbing, anyway this film had pretty much everything I wanted out of a movie. Every frame is visually engaging, it's easily one of the most visually dense films I've ever seen, but not in an eliptic David Lynch way, these are symbols, not emblems, and they represent ideas not included in the film as opposed to representing ideas in the film, simple right? It's a pinnacle merger of surrealism, satire, philosophy, and science fiction. The sets, the images and the story itself blow me away, and the ideas though chaotic at first flow together not seemlessly, but in a New Orelans Mardi Gras Parade kind of way, confused, drunk, and many limbed, but all ambling in the same general direction, a conclusion which breaks "the fourth wall" in more ways than one.

The story and I will it keep as simple as possible, is about a wondering thief, who meets an alchemist and joins with this group of the 9 wealthiest people on Earth(the lords of Industry who secretly control the material earth, each named after a different planet in the Solar System, like the Pantheon Roman Gods), who want to become Immortal by stealing the Immortalty from the 9 Immortal Men who sit on the Holy Mountain and trully rule the world in secret. What follows is a spiritual, psychologial, and if you had'nt guessed it yet, surreal journey of enlightentment.

This is not a druggie film with no plot and a bunch of crazy stuff, it might appear that way if you view it on drugs which completely incapacitate thought, or with no attempt to think and deliberate (which understandably is not everyones cup of tea) about what appears on the screen after it's gone, but the film is actually quite complex, if anything too complex. Jodorowsky is weaving together a lot of escoteric threads and symbols (the first scene is the Japanse Tea Ceremony, but you wouldnt know it unless you knew, someone else pointed it out to me, after about my fifth viewing) together to tell a quite simple story about the various ways we( and the contemporary audience of the 70's) attempt to escape death. If you interested in watching a gifted film maker at the height of his game paint a truly unique portrait of the world, look no further. If you want something truly bizarre and different because you've seen everything, see it. If you don't care much for symbolism, allegory, or metaphor, avoid this at all costs, there is no realsim here, but there is brilliance, and I don't use that word lightly.

Don't let the lack of sets throw you, this is not a play. This is a greulling and brutal film, superbly written, performed, and directed.

Lars Von Treir is the master of making you question why the hell you are wasting your time watching one of his movies, until the closing minutes, when things don't so much as "twist" as come to a head, the films real message, real emotional peak is finally reached, giving the rest of the film, a new light to stand in.

The satire of American culture , and human nature in general, is as contentious and engenious as any commited to celluloid or print. This movie is the beginning of the "Land Of Oppurtunties Trilogy" started here and continued with more adventure of Grace in "Manderlay" a story about a Plantation where slavery never ceased to exist, after the civil war.
In any event, Dogville is easily, without a doubt or any sense of hesitation, one of the great films of the decade. See it.

It's been one of my favorite horror films since the first time I saw it, when I was too young to know what I was getting into. Sam Raimi aint the best director in the world, but he did invent the Raimi-Rush here, a technique which no one besides him has ever really used to as great effect.

Anyway, this is Bruce Campbell, in a small shack in the woods, with a few freinds who accidentally summon the demon spririts of the woods, and are one by one possessed and transformed.

There's severed human hands crawling of their own accords, a woman raped by a forest, and more blood, gore, and hilarity intentional or not, than you will find in the thousands of films which immitate this one. A horror classic, that's more inventive and raccous than scary. Also the beggining of a trilogy in the saga of Bruce Campbell's Ash character in the horror slapstick "Evil Dead 2", and the full on epic midevil parody of "Army Of Darkness" both fun films, too but it all starts here. And it was never trully as good. "We can't bury Linda...she's our freind!"

The goriest film ever made. And the greatest Zombie slapstick there has ever been or ever may be. It's hard to imagine this is the same Peter Jackson of "Heavenly Creatures" and "Lord Of The Rings" but that's versatility for you (actually this film's infected demon monkey is also from "Skull Ilsand", the native home of another Jackson monster "King Kong"). This is not for the weak of stomach, the last half hour is as blooddrenched a slaughter as your likely to ever on screen. An penultimate horror experience; zombie fans eat your brains out.

The camera work at the beginning got a little annoying, but after you get into "club rectum" it's impossible to pull away though every measure is taken to make you want to. I don't know if all ten minute of rape were necessary for us to know that a character had been raped, but the brutality does alter the context of everything in the film. It's really disturbing, and manages to employ the backwards editing technique to great effect. The acting was amazing, the Godardesque discussion on the train was hilarious, and the 2001 wormhole ending was brilliant. If you want to see a literate, savage, sophisticated "revenge" film, which is far greater than the sum of it's parts, and manages to say some profound things about fate, choice, and of course revenge. Not for the weak of stomach, as this is very, very, difficult to watch, but to the brave go the spoils. Phenomenal filmmaking, and perhaps the best film about "revenge", ever made.

This is one of the most brutal Tragicomedies ever made. For a long time I would appologize to people before showing them this. I watched it(not knowing what I was getting into) for the first time with my mother...and it was awkward to say the least.
However, for the adventerous, not easily offended this is one of the most incredible films I have ever seen. The pursuit of happiness was never more horrifically uncomfortable than it has been here. All perormances are amazing, the script as good they get, the music, cinemtography flawless. Todd Solondz knows every button to push and he does so like a master puppeteer. This film is why he is one of America's current pre-eminent film makers.
A film as hilarious as it is disturbing, completely one of a kind ensemble peice about sex, love, perversion, and the depths to which human beings can sink in the pursuit of pleasure of contentment. (John Lovit's scene at the beginning is one of my favorite in all of moviedom).

Julie Taymor takes Shakespear's most critically sandblasted play (some insist he never wrote it), about revenge, and turned into one of the most visually stunning, and complex shakespear adaptations ever made. Baz Luhrmann's "Romeo + Juliet" puts the classic in a modern garb, Taymor's "Titus" however, distorts notions of time, place, and genre, and presents a trully unique take on Shakespears work, which explores a variety of ideas touched on in the original text, but brought to the surface with our modern knowledge of fascism, racism, power, family, the imagination,etc. This is a film, I have no difficulting calling beautiful, some images have firm taken roots inmy mind, even before I could understand what the characters were talking about. This is'nt just Shakespear made easy, or Shakespear made modern, this is Shakespear transformed by a legacy of critical theory, theatircal evolution, and art cinema. A completely unique film, that can be understood without a text book, though one always helps. Makes "Across The Universe" all the more dissapointing.

Some of the best animated films ever made, Svankmajer combines claymation, stop motion, puppetry both classical and with found objects like shadows, sand, foods, meats, and live actors. It's almost impossible to describe these little features some bieng fairly straight forward while others are as abstract as cinema can get. Pervasive themes are food and consumption, oppression, the mechanistic puppetlike apsects of life, and those mysterious experiences which transorm mundane objects into something more. Theres a few Edgar Allen Poe adaptations here too, of "The Pit And The Pendullum",all shot from the first person pov, and "The Fall Of The House Of Usher", told with sand and footage of abondoned casteles. There's definitely an aesthetic here an entire generation of music video directors lifted wholesale, but few push themselves into as many directions as Svankmajer. Working under the Soviet Czech government, it was difficult to find grounds to censor more abstract material, Svankmajer along with Milos Freeman ("One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest" "Man On The Moon") and Vera Chytilova("Daisies"), was a key part of the Czech New Wave, known for it's wild anarchic and visually surreal films(which more often then not got banned anyway).
Still I think it helps to know this kind of work evolved out of a necissity as well as a desire to be creative and original.
These short films pack more punch than any of Svankmajer's full length films, which remarkable as they often are can get tedious. Ive never met a person who wasn't impressed and at least momentarily hypnotized by the images in these films. An amazing marriage of animation and storytelling. Must see!

There's a scene here were Robert Deniro and Johnathan Price, are escaping from a torture chamber, when suddenly the wind picks up and newspapers and rubbish from the streets, swells up and completely covers DeNiro, when it blows away, he's gone, vanished beneath the trash.

My idea of hell is endless paperwork. And Brazil distills the fears and anxieties of beurocracy into perfect metaphors and scenes like the one mentioned above, where a man is completely erased by the disgarded tissue of the world.

Aside from that, this has some of Gilliam's best direction, music, sets, writing, and performers. It's working title was "1984 1/2" a combo of George Orwell's dystopian sci-fi novel "1984" and Fellini's oneiric and surreal study of the creative process in his film "8 1/2", and if your familiar with these works, this film is a pretty accurat middle ground, albiet in a "Monty Python" kinda way.

Maybe my favorite film ever (it changes from time to time), books have been written about it, and the directors struggle to get it made when studio executives demanded a happier ending.

The imagination and fantasy vs buerocracy and reality. A future which looks like the past. A "future" where terrorism is a daily fact of life, a nauisance like foul weather. A hilarious hell-hole, and pure Terry Gilliam goodness.

Picture perfect unsentimental Romantic comedy, about nuerosis, growing up, obsession, fetish, fantasy, memory, music, and top 5's. This book takes place in London, but the universal appeal of music makes it's transfer to Chicago seemlessly natual (we are all united by pop songs). The characters are deeply flawed, honest, and funny. This is one of best examples of voice over narrative and breaking the fourth wall for direct audience adresses working perfectly, without drawing too much attention to itself. It's excellent, got a great soundtrack, some jokes that are likely to go over a few non music-heads heads, but for the most apart it's a film almost anyone can relate to in some aspect, be it relationships, music, or obsessive listing. But enough has been written and said about this movie, just see it. Good times.

In my opinion, and as objectively as possible, the best film ever made. It's technical prowess alone, has fiilled books, and its scope is as wide as any in film history, showing human evolution and it's possible future development as three chapters going from the dawn of man to (at the time it was made) far future, and beyound. Changed the way I looked at movies forever.