The American President (1995)

In all that is holy, may God bless Aaron Sorkin. Now that I really ponder myself, I really wish that I have a chance to see his television show, The West Wing. But other than that, I try very hard to seek out everything that this man has written. The Social Network boasted one of the single best screenplays I have ever encountered, and that Best Adapted Screenplay win was well-deserved indeed. This year, I went out of my way in search to see Moneyball solely on the idea that he was a part of the screenplay. And it was an amazing screenplay, just as much as this screenplay is. Directed by Rob Reiner only a year after he made what is said by many to be one of the worst motion pictures ever made, North, which I have yet to see, The American President stars Michael Douglas the president of the United States, a widower of the previous year with a daughter, who falls in love with an environmental lobbyist (Annette Bening), who is trying to get a crime control bill passed, where she is on the opposite side of the playing field as the President on that matter. Featuring a supporting cast including Martin Sheen and Michael J. Fox, this film does have a wonderful score, direction, and screenplay, which Sorkin actually admitted he usually wrote while on crack cocaine (there are no uses of ‘winning’ in the script, because after this past year I think that’s what the drug does to famous people). This film is just amazing. It is charming, dark, funny, harsh, dramatic, and delightful. Like everything else Sorkin makes, I will watch the DVD multiple times, especially when I am on my writing slump. Again, God bless Aaron Sorkin.
9/10

Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol (2011)

It’s been fifteen years spent since Brain De Palma made Mission: Impossible in 1996. That dumb action film was good only for the sheer spectacle. Then John Woo made Mission: Impossible II in 1998, a movie that a lot of people really hate, but I actually consider it better than the first, due to the fact that it has a plotline. The third one was even better, directed by JJ Abrams, who is awesome. So in 2006, ten years since the first one, we all pronounced the series dead, and considered Mission: Impossible III the last call. And then there were four. Directed by the director of The Incredibles, Brad Bird, Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol keeps on the theory that every one of these films is better than the former. The first movie of this series that actually plays out more like a movie than a Tom Cruise movie, this film brings back Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt and Simon Pegg as Benji, along with newcomers Paula Patton and Jeremy Renner to assemble the impossible mission force, who, during a mission trying to steal classified files from the Kremlin, are the prime suspects when a bomb blows up the Russian building. These four are disavowed by the government, and are on course to be sent to Washington when they are nearly assassinated by spies. Over the course of the next few days, the team has to clear their name, find out the actual bomber, and survive a lot of different amazing set pieces. Because, honestly, this movie is so simple-it is a simple stupid film that is just set piece after set piece. And that was my problem with the first and second films in this series, much more the former than the latter. The third film still had this as a glaring fault. But watching this movie on the IMAX screen is a true blessing. It is a simple stupid film, but it has so much fun with it that it is impossible to not have the time of your life watching it. This is a film that for some reason is as good or better than some of the dramas of this year. There is one amazing scene in here, where Cruise is chasing a guy in the middle of a sandstorm. You see so little in the scene, but see just enough to have a wonderful action-packed scene, one that was so recognizable in Brad Bird directing. I’m currently in a slump in writing my reviews, they haven’t been very good for the past few ones, and I’m trying to get some cranked out before 2012, so I apologize for the poor quality of this. But still, with Brad Bird’s wonderful direction, the whole team feel of the film, and the wonderful set pieces, including a scene where Cruise is climbing a 100-story building, this movie is a wonderful experience, one that needs to be seen on the big screen, and one that just needs to be seen. This movie is really much better than it should be.
9/10

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

What I love so much about Sherlock Holmes was that it was a smart, competent thriller masquerading as a dumb, soulless mystery. The American public does flock to dumb films (I couldn’t even review Transformers: Dark of the Moon because I spent the entire time playing on my computer, not paying attention to the stupidity of a movie that made over a billion dollars), I have to say. And disguising this as stupidity was the best thing marketing could do, because nobody expected how well-made this film was. Based off of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, some of which I have read, Sherlock Holmes stars the scarily brilliant actor Robert Downey Jr. (I hate to say this, but he played a convincing black man in Tropic Thunder [and played Charlie Chaplin, played Iron Man, and played Sherlock Holmes], this man can do anything) as the title character, Jude Law as his realist partner Watson, Rachel McAdams as Holmes’ love interest, Irene Adler, and Mark Strong as the bad guy of the bunch, Lord Blackwood, who has escaped from beyond the grave to wreak havoc in London with the help of villainous black magic, which (Spoiler alert!) can be all turned back to basic science. Sorry kids, but at least in this universe, there is no such thing as magic. Or Santa Claus, just getting that out there on the table. But either way, that is the basic plot of Guy Ritchie’s take on England’s greatest detective. Shadowed by the release of James Cameron’s inferior Avatar, this movie, even though it did make a decent amount of money, has acquired the Shaun of the Dead status, being that movie that people show to their friends over and over again at home where only the cream of the crop are released. And films that have acquired this status are very special films, ones that I love very much. And with the style, action, high-quality acting and characters, and a super-sharp script that I really need to find out if it is being sold in book form. I am not great at writing these reviews while watching other films, and I am currently on my fourth movie in a row, so my writing is a little hasty and cluttered, but I do highly recommend this film. Please go see this, and get the Blu-ray, and show it off to friends, because this is a film so good that it deserves to be seen.
9/10

Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011)

Nothing makes me sadder than seeing Jim Carrey fall farther and farther in obscurity. Based off of a book written in the 1930s, Mr. Popper’s Penguins is the riveting tale of a man who goes completely insane after a penguin arrives at his door. Divorced and mentally estranged from his children, Thomas Popper (Carrey) is painted as a horrible person who actually puts effort into his job, and tries to have a life for himself. What a terrible person. But the film shows that this is because he has daddy issues, and his father left him with six penguins when he died. The kids fall in love with the penguins, and he starts dating the mom again, all because of twenty minutes and penguins, which makes perfect sense. But, due to their infatuation with penguins, he has to keep them from the environmental agency, his boss, and the owners of his apartment, Mr. Popper has to defy all logic and moral ideology for a bunch of penguins. And even though this makes absolutely no sense, it could work if it was funny. But this movie just is not funny. There are no memorable jokes in this film. There is one sweet moment in there, and if the film had cut off then, I might have warmed up to it. But it kept for twenty more minutes, with bad jokes, bad acting, and this one chick who kept using the letter P so much I wanted to strangle the letter out of her vocabulary. But there is just no reason to see this movie. The characters are annoying, the jokes are terrible, there are actually so many jokes about Jim Carrey squeezing the actual poop out of a penguin, I couldn’t believe that. Apparently that part was left out of March of the Penguins. And speaking of that, you’ll have a better time watching Farce of the Penguins, the trashy direct-to-video spoof than this. I only bothered to watch the trailer for that and I enjoyed it more than this entire movie. This movie is just a terrible movie, and since I have no better segue, I have two points to make. One-On the cover of this DVD, Jim Carrey just looks sad like he is asking for help. Two-this movie was about 5 years too late. In 2006, March of the Penguins and Happy Feet ruled the penguin craze, and now, along with Happy Feet Two, this movie is too little too late. Three-The self-referential segue is the best way. Four-I lied about there only being three points to make.
2.5/10

Up in the Air (2009)

In 2005, when Jason Reitman’s first film, Thank You for Smoking was released, people dismissed it and asked for another film by his father. Then, five years later, with Ivan Reitman’s film No Strings Attached, they dismissed it and asked for another film by his son. Ivan was one of the best directors out there, but now it’s his son’s turn, with the unseen-by-me Thank You for Smoking, the brilliant Juno, the brilliant Up in the Air, and the unseen-by-me Young Adult. Much like Juno and Young Adult, Up in the Air is definitely not a comedy film. It is more of a drama with some very funny one-liners in it. Almost in a way by Aaron Sorkin, this script is dark, serious, and heartbreaking, but yet I was laughing throughout most of it. The first hour of this film sets up the story, with corporate downsizer Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), who goes around the country firing people, with some very funny and inspired scenes having famous people freaking out. But after meeting a girl named Alex (Vera Farmiga) who also constantly travels, and they meet up at their mutual meeting points. Also along for the ride is Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), who is trying to get the company Ryan works for to cut costs by giving layoffs by videoconferencing. This greatly upsets Ryan, as he is working to getting ten million miles with American Airlines, a personal goal for him. In order to get that goal, he convinces his boss (Jason Bateman) to let him mentor Natalie by taking her on one last trek cross-country to learn the business. Here we see a character piece about a man who liked being lonely, but also realizes that other people are necessary for life. This brilliant character piece makes you laugh like a hyena, think and consider yourself and all the other people on this planet, and for me at least, cry. In the final act of this film, there are some major gut-punches that you do not expect, some things that really break your heart. But when you watch this movie, stay for the credits. The first song for the credits is a standard song, I just stayed because I needed a minute to fully digest the film. And then, once that song was over, I decided to turn the movie off. Then I heard a message. I’m paraphrasing, so don’t quote me on this, but here’s what was said basically, “Hey Jason. I just got laid off from my job, and I wrote this song, and I was wondering if you could use it in your movie.” Then a song called Up in the Air played, an actually very good song, even though the sound quality wasn’t that great. It is in that moment that you get hit with the entire film, and the truth it brings and the world we’re living in. I broke down and cried, and I never cry in movies. This is the first movie since Forrest Gump to make me lose breath both by laughing and by crying.
9.5/10

Spy Kids: All the Time in the World (2011)

Let me take you through the timeline of the Spy Kids films. In 2001, Robert Rodriguez made Spy Kids, a movie that was supposed to be much worse than it actually was. Then, a year later, in 2002, Rodriguez made the sequel to the surprise hit, Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams, which was still good, despite not being great. Then, in 2003, there was the movie where Rodriguez went completely all-out with the insanity for Spy Kids 3D: Game Over, a movie I actually went to go see in the theaters. While I am still a fan of the film, I like it in an insane and turn-your-brain-off kind of way. I mean, for God’s sake, it takes place inside of a video game! But, either way, the series was brought back to life a few months ago with Spy Kids: All the Time in the World, a movie that looks like it was a lot more fun to make than it was to see. Honestly, I wish I hadn’t seen this film on DVD, I wish I had seen it in theaters, because I really wanted to rant about the Smell-O-Vision they used for the film, which sadly was not brought along with renting the film for $4 on iTunes. But now I just get to rant on the fallen quality of the actual film. Trying out a brand new team, only bringing back the good team for small cameos for the film, this film stars Joel McHale (from the falling and absolutely perfect show Community), Jessica Alba (from nothing good), and Rowan Blanchard and Mason Cook as the new kids, and Ricky Gervais as the voice of the robot dog (the only good jokes in the film). Alba plays a mom spy, the kids are her step-kids, McHale is the kid’s father and a spy-hunter, and they have to defeat a villain named Tick-Tock, who throws out literally every single bad time pun in the book, and believe me, there are a lot. The film has the same look and feel of the third installment, but without the silly fun of it. The jokes (except for those by Gervais) are fart jokes after vomit joke after poop joke, the action is low-budget, bad, and of poor quality, and the acting is completely atrocious. What is Joel McHale doing in this movie? He is such a funny guy, Community is one of the single best shows out there, it is so funny, it is on the same pace with Arrested Development and Spaced, but this is on the same line of all the other useless kid’s films out there, that are just studio hash after studio hash. The creativity of this series is completely gone, and it just is now a formulaic and boring film.
3.5/10

The Aviator (2004)

What a haunting and wonderful film this is. Directed by who is arguably the single greatest director of the first century of cinema, Martin Scorsese, The Aviator single-handedly walks into my favorite film list within one simple three-hour viewing, as probably will Scorsese’s entire catalog. Nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning five, The Aviator stars one of the single best American actors, Leonardo DiCaprio, as Howard Hughes, an extremely successful film producer (popping out films like Hell’s Angels and Scarface: The Shame of the Nation) and aviation magnate in his prime, from the late 1920s to 1947, while he slowly grows more and more unstable due to a severe case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. With a wonderful supporting cast including Adam Scott, John C. Reilly, Alec Baldwin, Jude Law, Kate Beckinsale, and Cate Blanchett in an Oscar-winning role playing Katherine Hepburn. This completely star-studded production stands as one of the single greatest American motion pictures in memory, a nearly-perfect film at that. Martin Scorsese very rarely ever makes less-than 4-star films, he made Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Hugo, The Departed, among many others that were awarded a well-deserved 4-star rating for Roger Ebert and everyone else on the planet. Martin Scorsese really can do no wrong. He is one of the single greatest directors ever to grace movies, and every time his name is on a film, I will fight tooth-and-nail for a ticket. Martin Scorsese really should have more than one Oscar under his belt right now, at the very least, he should have won Best Director for this film. The only thing keeping this film from multiple Oscars is Million Dollar Baby, which was also released in 2004. The Aviator is a truly haunting film, one with true, real, and brilliant performances, a wonderful script, and a perfect director. I cannot recommend this film highly enough, both as a study of one of the most disturbed people in film (the final shot of this film is scarier than most of those in a horror film), and as another chapter in the catalog of one of the most brilliant people in film.
9.5/10

The Third Man (1949)

My fellow film nerds out there are probably going to tar and feather me for this review. So let me get something out of the way-I do think that this is a very good film. Heck, in the final act, this was a great film. But I cannot put this on the same level as movies like Citizen Kane, something that has been done many times over. I don’t really think this movie is one of those “great movies”, one that where every single film lover should watch. I think that if a film lover got some of the other films out of the way, they should definitely give this a good watch, but I don’t consider this film a necessity. Starring Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles, both from the American classic Citizen Kane, The Third Man is the tale of struggling writer Holly Martins (Cotton) who, after receiving an invitation by his friend Harry Lime (Welles) to meet him in Paris, finds out that his friend is dead, hit by a car. Martins, unconvinced by the story that has been told to him, believes that Lime was murdered, and works to uncover the truth, only to uncover a completely darker truth than he had ever expected. With a slick noir look and a wonderful score to set the scene, the first two thirds of the film could have been consolidated to twenty minutes, as it is dragging, slow, stylistic, and beautiful. Then the full detective film comes in when a wonderful twist falls in front of the viewers’ faces. Then the film starts to pick up the pace, and it gets exciting and nail-biting along with still being atmospheric and beautiful. The direction is great, the score is phenomenal, the script, even though having some very slow scenes, has conceived some great dialogue. And the acting is phenomenal. Joseph Cotton is great along with the side actors, but I have to take a little bit of space to talk about Orson Welles. Orson Welles possesses a quality very few actors will ever have in this world, where you can just be charmed by seeing them smile. There is a shot in this film, one where I will never forget, where you see a man standing in the blackness. The light comes on, and it is Orson Welles smiling, and then the light turns off. That shot is amazing, and you just are completely charmed by this man by one shot. Other people who have this power-George Clooney. Orson Welles and George Clooney. I do recommend this film, and I do think any film where Orson Welles is in it is a good film, and it is a very fun and enjoyable film, but you can live without seeing it.
8.5/10

Witless Protection (2008)

AAAHAHHAHAHAHHAH! You wanna know how I got these scars? Well, I saw a Larry the Cable Guy movie, and…it hurts so badly…it hurts so badly…on the inside I’m crying a river…it’s such a terrible movie…help me…Okay, now let’s let the bashing begin. Witless Protection is a movie starring America’s dumbest human being, Larry the Cable Guy, who is responsible for the only bad PIXAR movies, Cars and Cars 2. Well, there really are no bad PIXAR movies, just bad on the scale of brilliance, which PIXAR used to hold the top spot in-never mind. This movie is probably the dumbest film I have ever had the displeasure of having to sit through. Seriously, it took me three tries to sit through this heaping pile of-just-AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! This movie makes me so angry that I have to sit through it, that some idiots out there paid to go see it, that some crazy demented human being laughed at this sad man’s walking around like a stupid fool! Ah. Now let me try to decipher the “plot” of this “film”. Larry is playing a small-town sheriff who kidnaps a woman who he stupidly thinks is being kidnapped, and he tried to save her, and…AAAAAAHHHHHH! This movie is just so stupid, and so dumb, it makes me angry! I wrote more clever jokes than this when I was THREE YEARS OLD! There is just so much wrong with this film. The jokes reek with disdain, the acting, writing, directing, is just absolutely atrocious and is an insult to the film industry. Seriously, why are there people out there with wonderful scripts and intelligent indie films waiting for their big break when this buffoon is running the silver screen? Larry the Cable Guy, I hope you are hit by a bus.
0/10

Margin Call (2011)

Ah, nothing like watching the complete fall of our economy play out on the screen. And due to the fact that I don’t pay attention to the news, or the economy, all I know is that stocks have those line graphs, which are one of the five things I know in algebra, and that is all I know about the economy. Come on, I sit around and watch movies and TV all day. Seriously, I watched one season of How I Met Your Mother in about a week. I have won the award. Either way, Margin Call follows a stock investment company in 2008, who, when they start to have major layoffs, get people wondering about their future at this pristine and well-paying company. One of the people who is specifically worried is Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), who is working on finishing an equation that might show that their entire company is heading for the toilet. On his way out, he gives his unfinished equation to one of his more favored co-workers, Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto, who is also the main backing behind this film getting made), who that night finishes his equation, and finds out a bunch of fancy financial stuff I don’t know about, but basically, it means that the stock market is about to crash that night or a few nights in the future. As we all know, it did. Either way, after calling the entire team back to work, Peter spends the next 24 hours with co-workers Seth (Penn Badgley), Will (Paul Bettany), and his boss Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), among others (Demi Moore, Jeremy Irons, Simon Baker, Mary McDowell, again, among others), trying to prevent the crisis they’ve been told about. And what I want to focus on here for a little bit is what different movie this could have been. A lesser movie would have been about this sudden crash, and how this company tried to save themselves. But this amazing film, which surprisingly, is made by a first-time director who just announced his second film, which I will go see, isn’t about how people reacted to a crisis. This is a movie about how people see that their world is coming to an end, and how they plan to live their last days. In that way, this film is very much like the new Lars Von Trier film Melancholia, which I am dying to see, but it is actually about the world coming to an end. But it’s not 2012, it’s a movie about how people react on those final hours, and that is what makes Margin Call such a great film. The script in unnaturally tight, the dialogue ripped from the notebook of the great Aaron Sorkin, and the direction cramped, claustrophobic, and atmospheric. The only reason that this movie is not going to end up on my ‘Best of 2011’ list is that we are having an amazing year for movies. If this was released last year, not only would it peak on people’s ‘Best of 2010’ lists, but it might score a few Oscar nods.
8.5/10

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

I have been extremely behind on my reviews, and that is partially due to my laziness, but also due to the fact that there were two films on my agenda that I had to let serenade in my brain before fixating my opinions on them. The first film was Another Earth, a movie that I just posted a review for. The second film was Charlie Kaufman’s Oscar-winning film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, directed by Michel Gondry and starring Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Tom Wilkinson, Kirsten Dunst, Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo, among others including David Cross. Just from the fact that I bothered to mention the entire cast makes you know that I am a fan of this film. This is a very difficult film to review, on one hand because I just finished Jason Reitman’s fabulous drama Up in the Air, which actually brought me to tears during the credits (read my soon-to-be-published review for the full scoop on that), and also because the emotion you get in this film is a word that nobody has invented yet. It has no definition, it cannot be explained in words why this film is so perfect. Because it isn’t. On paper, this is an extremely good film, heck, even a great film, so why does it work so dang well? Because of the imaginary word I am inventing to describe the feeling of this film-Kaufmanium. Kaufmanium is a rare creative element that is sometimes described as just pure joy. Without a doubt, Kaufmanium is something very many films aspire to, but very few achieve. Kaufmanium is the basic notion that something will look better than it does on paper just because it has Kaufmanium in it. There is no real way to describe Kaufmanium, only that this film has a lot of it. Either way, this film stars Jim Carrey in a dramatic role as Joel, a man who finds out that his ex-girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) had her memories of him erased, and so he goes to have the exact same process done to him, with the help of an organization known as Lacuna, Inc, run by the eccentric Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson), his secretary Mary (Kirsten Dunst), and his two field operatives who actually go to your house and hook you up to this MRI-looking machine that wiped your memories, Stan (Mark Ruffalo) and Patrick (Elijah Wood), one of whom (spoiler: It’s Frodo!) is actually using the memories of Clementine to date her, and we see the memories of Joel’s as they are being erased, but they are conscious of it all, it’s all extremely confusing, and I do really hope that I will get to watch it again on Blu-ray quite soon. But either way, as confusing as my plot synopsis sounds, it’s nowhere near as insane as it actually is. But this is a wonderful film, one every single human being on the planet should check out, and dang it, it’s filled to the brim with Kaufmanium. And that should mean enough, in imaginary weird land.
9/10

The Muppets (2011)

Seeing this with a double feature of Martin Scorsese’s beautiful film Hugo, I am forced to not like this film as much as I would on my own, because I love Hugo, and do not love this film. I like this film, I just don’t love it. The film has parts that are extremely funny, and parts that are groan-worthy. But did the 1,000 screaming kids in my theater care? Nope. They are so annoying…But that is for another day. The first theatrical Muppets film in twelve years, The Muppets chronicles a lonely puppet named Walter who loves The Muppets. He and his human brother Gary (Jason Segel…but…what?) and Gary’s girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams) go to see Muppet Studios, only to find it completely run down. They find the Muppets, and get them together to make $10 million to save Muppet studios from evil oil monopolist Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) who plans to drill for oil under the studios, and destroy them. The film is simple enough for a kid’s film, a save-the-rec-center film, nothing more. And as one of those films, it’s not a bad film, I just wish that people would realize that and not say it’s a brilliant piece of art, because it is only playing on nostalgia. There are some very clever and funny bits in here, and it is a good film, but it’s not a great film. For example, there is a scene where Chris Cooper is rapping, and I was laughing so hard I think some of the small children in the theater were scared of me, but there were moments that were so groan-inducing where everybody was laughing-that’s when they should have been scared of me. There are some wonderful musical numbers, this is probably the best musical film since Hairspray, but Hairspray was a good bit better than this.
8/10

Another Earth (2011)

I saw Another Earth about a week or so before writing this (I am really behind on my reviews, and haven’t seen a lot of movies in this time, as I have been recently obsessed with How I Met Your Mother), and I didn’t want to write a review immediately, as I wasn’t sure of my feelings towards this film. But after listening to the first official episode of Remote Viewing on the brilliant site Spill.com, I have decided to flesh out my review. Let me get this straight-this is not a science fiction film. This isn’t even a sci-fi drama. The absolutely perfectly wonderful films Solaris or Moon are sci-fi dramas (more Solaris then Moon, but still), this is a drama with a science fiction plot point to push the story along. Personally, I’ve wanted to see this film as soon as it was in theaters, but to say the least, it is quite difficult to convince a group of eighth-graders to see a slow science-fiction drama that costs eleven bucks each. Now personally, watching it on iTunes, this is a wonderful film, but an absolutely polarizing film at that. Much like the wonderful drama The Tree of Life or the very good sci-fi action film Inception, people who have seen this film will fight over it. I have been in fights with people over The Tree of Life, and I will be in fights with people over Another Earth. Directed by first-time narrative director Mike Cahill and written by Cahill and Brit Marling, the indie film stars Marling as Rhoda Williams, a recently-accepted MIT student who, after a night of partying and underage drinking, while staring at this other planet that suddenly appeared in the sky, gets in a car wreck, killing a wife, her son, and putting the father into a coma. Arrested for involuntary manslaughter, Williams is released five years later, around the time that the husband wakes up. The planet that was discovered is said to be another planet earth, exactly like our own, until the moment where we became visible to each other, the night Williams got in the car wreck. Williams, due to the fact that she is a brilliant person who was accepted into MIT with a full ride (I believe that is the case), enters an essay contest (which is about as ridiculous as another planet appearing in the sky, but we can let that go) to fly on a spaceship to Earth 2. While this is happening, she tried to go to the husband’s (John Burroughs, played by William Mapother) house to apologize and beg for forgiveness, but she loses her nerve and pretends to be a maid, who is working for this man while she tries to apologize for, basically, wrecking his life, all while the business with Earth 2 is happening. Personally, I believe that I am talking too much about the science-fiction aspects of this film, as this is a full thorough drama film, a wonderful one at that, but very little a sci-fi film. The science fiction is a microscopic detail that is coated in the drama, the electric score, the absolutely fabulous script, and the brilliant performances by Marling and Mapother. The film was shot for two-hundred-thousand dollars, and it shows with some uncomfortable hand-held shots and just uneven moments, but that is expected with a film like this. I truly hope and pray that more money is given to Cahill for his next film, one that I will definitely see, as he has made one of those movies that show people like me that movies can be made on the cheap. This is a wonderful film, this is Cahill’s Attack the Block, his District 9, heck, it’s his Reservoir Dogs. And that is high praise enough.
9/10

Spirited Away (2001)

Over the course of my film-loving life, I hope to see around twenty-five films that are perfect. This number will probably wager, but my current estimate is that as of 2011, there are 25 perfect motion pictures in the world. And the only thing bad about seeing one of these perfect films is that there is less to enjoy. But I can find perfection to shout to the world. Spirited Away is the fourth perfect film I have ever seen, after Citizen Kane, The Godfather, and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. Directed by legendary director Hayao Miyazaki, Spirited Away is the first anime film I have ever seen. I had a mild period when I was about nine when I read nothing but manga for three months, but I had never seen a full anime film. Now I have. And then I will see many more. This movie won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2002 (the American release of this film was after the awards, but since it won the award in 2002, I am using the eligible release date, the 2001 Japanese one, not the 2002 American release date), and that was a mistake. It really should have won Best Picture, but an animated film would not win, and will not win for a very long time. This was the single best film of 2001, better than the first The Lord of the Rings film. I love The Lord of the Rings, more than nearly anything else on the planet. That just shows how much I love this film. The film follows a ten-year-old girl named Chihiro Ogino, who is moving into a new town when her parents begin to explore. They come across what they think is a run-down amusement park, and begin to go in places they weren’t supposed to be and eat tons of guests’ food. Their gluttony and their trespassing transports the pair and their daughter to an alternate world where spirits roam, ruled in the form of a bathhouse run by the evil Yubaba, who transported the family there to keep them forever. This wonderful fantasy world is magical, brilliant, and astounding. The characters are true, alive, and more real than most of the characters in live action films. You fall in love with these people, and you fall in love with this film. I fell in love with this film like no other. I will recommend this film to every single human being on the planet. And if you are on the planet, watch this. Watch the subtitled version instead of the dub; it preserves the integrity of the film. And this film has such an integrity, one so pure and amazing. So perfect. So perfect.
10/10