Spring 2003 Reviews:

Spider-Man (2002)
The last major comic-book hero to earn a legitimate film franchise, Spider-Man fully surpassed both the box-office and even the critics' expectations established by the Superman, Batman, and X-Men films. The top-grossing film of 2002, Spider-Man is the rare "summer blockbuster" that fully deserves the public's embrace.

Tobey Maguire, best known for his roles in apologist-liberal tripe like Pleasantville and The Cider House Rules, surprises with an engaging, confident performance as Peter Parker, the geeky high school photographer who is bitten by a radioactive spider while on a class field trip and subsequently develops super-powers that result in some literally breathtaking action sequences. Kirsten Dunst (The Virgin Suicides, Drop Dead Gorgeous) also finds the appropriate tone as girl-next-door Mary Jane, who falls in love with Spider-Man after several last-second rescues. As was the case in the Batman franchise, however, the flashiest performance comes from the film's arch-villain, in this case Willem Dafoe's (Shadows of the Vampire, American Psycho) Green Goblin. Dafoe snarls and leers with gusto, revelling in his over-the-top, high-profile role.

Director Sam Raimi (A Simple Plan, the Evil Dead trilogy) wisely chooses a more-is-more approach to the material, while deftly avoiding the high camp of the 1968 Batman film. He does little to mask that the source material is a comic book-- there's no "graphic novel" pretense, and that's largely why Spider-Man succeeds. With its spectacular visual effects, a star-making lead turn from Maguire, and just enough back-story to account for everyone's motives and actions, Spider-Man is pure escapist filmmaking at its best.

Barbershop (2002)
Drawing the outrage of Rev. Jesse Jackson, 2002's Barbershop generated considerable (and needless) controversy from Cedric the Entertainer's (The Original Kings of Comedy) jokes about several major figures of the African-American civil rights movement. What Jackson clearly overlooked was the context of the film's humor, which is derived from a genuine warmth found within a unique community, and the use of that humor as a means of coping with dramatic, sometimes violent change. Barbershop easily rates as one of the year's finest comedies.

The film follows two closely-tied stories-- protagonist Calvin (Ice Cube, Three Kings) contemplates selling the titular barbershop, which he inherited from his father, to a repulsive local loan shark, while the south Chicago neighborhood around the shop reacts to the remarkably inept overnight theft of an ATM. Over the course of a Saturday, both the theft and Calvin's decisions threaten to compromise the vital, lively community inside the barbershop. While the plot is predictable, Barbershop is still a thoroughly successful film because of the uncommon level of respect that director Tim Brown (helming his first noteworthy film) and screenwriter Mark Brown show for the types of supporting characters that, in lesser films, are typically reduced to simple punch-lines.

Fully earning that respect, then, is an exceptional ensemble cast. In addition to Cedric the Entertainer's scene-stealing performance as the shop's resident social critic and philosopher, Ice Cube, who continues to prove himself a consistently solid actor, turns in a nuanced, conflicted performance that gives Barbershop a securely-grounded moral center. Sean Patrick Thomas (Save the Last Dance), hip-hop star Eve, and Leonard Howze (Antwone Fisher) all impress with their contributions to the barbershop, as well. The smart interplay between these thoroughly engaging characters makes Barbershop one of the most enjoyable ensemble pieces in recent memory.

In Like Flint (1967)
To say nothing of their relative box-office or "artistic" successes, the three films in the Austin Powers series are proven almost entirely redundant by the first film in KFS' "James Coburn Memorial Week," 1967's In Like Flint, a first-rate send-up of the James Bond franchise, at a time when it made at least somewhat more sense to parody James Bond. The second of two "Flint" films, In Like Flint is both daring for its time and still quite often hilarious. Benefitting greatly from a larger production budget from the success of 1966's Our Man Flint, the film follows the titular secret agent to the Virgin Islands, where he attempts to stop a conspiracy of women from converting the world into a matriarchy. Eventually, Flint converts these women to his way of thinking, so they can unite to overthrow the real enemy, who has replaced the president with an impostor.

That some of the humor of In Like Flint is sligthly dated is of no surprise, but it doesn't lessen the appeal of either the campy, over-the-top production design or of Coburn's winning performance. Also an exceptional dramatic actor, Coburn truly shines throughout In Like Flint, fully recognizing the absurdity of not only his character, but of the cultural attitudes represented by that character. Because its targets are so well-chosen and the humor so engaging, In Like Flint serves best as a logical endpoint for the secret agent genre, which had precious little to say in response to such well-executed satire.


The Magnificent Seven (1960)
A sweeping epic about 16th century Samurai honor hardly seems like the source for a major Hollywood studio blockbuster, but that's the case for the final film in KFS' salute to the late James Coburn, 1960's The Magnificent Seven, a masterful reinterpretation of Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai that stands as one of the finest Westerns of all time. On the surface, the film follows a straight-forward "good vs. evil" archetype, as seven American gunfighters are hired by a small Mexican village to stop the regular pillaging they've faced from a roving band of marauders. What gives The Magnificent Seven true substance, then, is the extent to which each of the seven men (including Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson, in addition to Coburn) is developed as a fascinating, distinct character.

By the film's conclusion, countless casualities have accumulated, but The Magnificent Seven, unlike so many films of its genre, resists the temptation to glorify the cowboy myth. That each character is shown to be fundamentally alone in the world makes one survivor's final assessment-- "We lost. We always lose."-- all the more powerful. The Magnificent Seven is a deceptively intelligent film that boasts some breathtaking action sequences and consistently excellent performances from its ensemble cast, and it is certainly a worthy companion-piece to Kurosawa's epic.


Very Bad Things (1998)
KFS kicks off its "Jon Favreau is a Bad-Ass Week" with 1998's Very Bad Things, a relentlessly cynical and grim deconstruction of the American dream from writer-director Peter Berg (best known as an actor on "Chicago Hope"). Very Bad Things polarized critics and audiences upon its release, and it now stands as perhaps the definitive conclusion to the lengthy series of films inspired by Quentin Tarantino's amalgam of irony and ultraviolence. The depravity showcased throughout the film is akin to Peter Greenaway's controversial The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, meaning that Very Bad Things is not a film for the faint of heart. It also means, however, that the thoroughly reprehensible characters and actions serve a definite purpose.

Favreau (PCU, Swingers) stars as Kyle Fisher, who is engaged to a spoiled princess, played with appropriate hysteria by Cameron Diaz (Being John Malkovich), who intends to have her perfect wedding at absolutely any cost. That a prostitute ends up getting killed at the bachelor party is only the beginning of what turns into a horrifying sequence of events that ultimately destroys anyone and everyone in its path, including most of the wedding party. Jeremy Piven (PCU, Black Hawk Down) and Daniel Stern (Home Alone) turn in exceptional supporting performances as two of the groomsmen, while Christian Slater (Heathers) continues to shamelessly impersonate Jack Nicholson in his role as the group's closet psychotic.

What makes Very Bad Things so intriguing is that, in light of the gore, Berg has crafted a curiously moral film. By the conclusion, the audience has observed the absolute worst of humanity-- and has also observed what Berg posits as their rightful punishment. If not quite the comedy it's marketed as, Very Bad Things is undeniably a thought-provoking film that, in spite of its more unpleasant aspects, demands more than one viewing.

Chicago (2002)
--Todd Detmold, '06--

My expectations for Chicago were unreasonably high. I've felt let down by a lot of the big movies this Awards Season. Catch Me if You Can was good fun, but it went on way too long and was kind of lazily put together. The Hours was well-acted, but shallow in that A Beautiful Mind sort of way-- there's a difference between understatement and not saying anything at all. 25th Hour was just plain offensive, and Gangs of New York, Daniel Day-Lewis' charisma aside, seems to have been made a group of people suffering from fatigue and hangover.

So when I sat down for Chicago, I had really high hopes that Hollywood might redeem itself completely with one small film. The musical is full of classic songs and cinematic potency; it's just the right material to mold into a happy pick-me-up movie. Ideally, Chicago would have been a perfect, shimmering jewel of a movie that would make me happy to be sitting in a theater again. It was unfair of me to go into a movie with hopes this high. No movie can reasonably be expected to be this good. So, that Chicago went above and beyond what I'd desired makes it all the more successful. It's the happiest movie since Monsters, Inc.

In the history of movie musicals, Chicago immediately takes its place in the top ranks. We have Moulin Rouge! to thank for making musicals trendy again, and Chicago to thank for taking that film's vivacity, running with it at full steam and turning into a film so seamless and perfect that even Baz Luhrmann couldn't have improved upon it.

Renée Zellweger plays Roxie Hart, a naïve girl who dreams of being a star in the 1920s Chicago jazz scene, but when she realizes that she won't be able to sleep her way to the top, she murders her lover and rides infamy into the spotlight. Richard Gere, who can, in fact, sing, plays her manipulating, media-savvy lawyer Billy Flynn, and Catherine Zeta-Jones finds the best role of her career as the admired murderess Velma Kelly.

The farcical story is peppered with brilliant, surreal musical set-pieces. The songs in this movie are staged and filmed with an intensity so enveloping you have to hold your breath and they are edited into the story of the film unlike any other movie musical I can think of. Director Rob Marshall's sexually suggestive choreography is delirious eye-candy. Remember in Moulin Rouge! when Ewan MacGregor suddenly belted out the first lines of "Your Song" and the world sort of dropped away? Well, in Chicago, that's every song.

The cast is full of great players, with John C. Reilly leading the pack as Roxie's devoted husband (Reilly has the show's only sad song - it's a real tear-jerker, and he absolutely nails it. This is a movie that made me cry out of both happiness AND sorrow.) Christine Baranski has her best role since Cruel Intentions and Lucy Liu, who I generally roll my eyes at, has a cameo that makes me absolutely love her.

Chicago is a beautiful, light-hearted movie that's more pure fun than anything else the studios put out in 2002. It's one of those movies in which everything has come together to form a tightly paced, exhilarating ride worthy of the most ridiculous critical hyperbole. I challenge anyone not to love this movie.

PCU (1994)
Updating the classic National Lampoon's Animal House to incorporate new social mores, 1994's PCU stands as the definitive "college film" of the past decade. And, like the film that inspired it, PCU is driven by situational cultural satire that has aged surprisingly well. That the film's conclusion-- individual dogma notwithstanding, everyone can enjoy a good keg party-- is so deliberately low-brow doesn't negate its still-relevant humor.

PCU follows an unwitting "pre-frosh," Tom (Chris Young, The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars), accidentally assigned to spend a weekend with the members of "The Pit," the most offensive house at Port Chester University. Under the guidance of seventh-year senior Droz (Jeremy Piven, Black Hawk Down), Tom manages to incur the wrath of every militant activist group at PCU. The activists then conspire with the school's president, Ms. Garcia-Thompson (Jessica Walter, Play Misty for Me, Slums of Beverly Hills), and her corrupt lackey (a perfectly cast David Spade) to shut down The Pit by charging them $7K in building damages. Droz rallies the other residents of The Pit, including Jon Favreau (Your Friends and Neighbors) as a stoner named Gutter, to organize a fund-raiser keg party. Needless to say, the day is saved, and Tom learns far more about the college experience than he had anticipated.

The plot is undeniably formulaic, but it serves only to tie together the individual, excellent comic setpieces. The humor in PCU is largely of the broad, vegans-pelted-with-raw-meat variety, but screenwriters Adam Leff and Zack Penn include some shrewd, more obscure jokes, as well-- Spade's smarmy Young Republican, for instance, is named after novelist Ayn Rand. The result is an intelligent satire that somehow manages to be light-hearted and pleasant, rather than smug and condescending. The real irony of PCU, then, is that it is so thoroughly inoffensive.

Swingers (1996)
The final film in KFS' "Jon Favreau is a Bad-Ass Week" is one of the true high-points of independent filmmaking in the mid 90's, 1996's Swingers. What sets Swingers apart from so many other low-budget Tarantino knockoffs is its smart, funny, and ultimately sensitive screenplay, written by actor Favreau, who also co-stars with Vince Vaughn (Clay Pigeons, Psycho) and Ron Livingston (Office Space, Adaptation). Made for just $250K, Swingers spawned one of the most lucrative bidding wars in recent memory, eventually picked up for distribution by Mirimax for $5 million, and it's not hard to understand why the film was so competitively sought.

Swingers centers around Favreau's character, Mike, who moves from New York to L.A. in order to pursue a career in stand-up comedy. In doing so, he leaves behind a long-time girlfriend, who ends up as the focal point of any conversation Mike has with another woman. Mike's "support group" of four male friends, including Vaughn and Livingston, decide to show him a good time and to find him a female companion during a trip to Las Vegas. Not surprisingly, Mike's dream girl eludes him, despite his friends' best intentions.

Mismarketed as some sort of new generation "Rat Pack" movie, Swingers avoids the cooler-than-thou conventions of most of the Sinatra/Martin Las Vegas films. Swingers comes to life because of the way Favreau and director Doug Liman (Go, The Bourne Identity) interject some very effective comedy into a film rooted in its protagonist's realistically drawn angst.

To Sir, With Love (1967)
Released to both critical and popular acclaim at the beginning of "The Summer of Love," 1967's To Sir, With Love is a film that now actively seems to defy criticism. It is a film that is very much of its era: To Sir, With Love is marked by troubled, rebellious teens-- presented by director James Clavell in a manner that, by today's standards of school violence, comes across as naive and idealistic-- a not-so-subtle racism subplot, and even a full-blown production number of the title theme song by co-star Lulu.

Sidney Poitier (In the Heat of the Night, They Call Me Mr.Tibbs) carries the film with a performance that, as is the case with his entire body of work, exudes sheer class. He plays Mark Thackeray, an engineer from British Guyana who takes a job as a teacher in impoverished East London after he's unable to find a job within in field. As Thackeray reaches out to his troubled students, he discovers a love for teaching. It's no shock that Poitier's performance is excellent, but the degree to which the largely unknown cast of students hold their own with such an accomplished actor is one of the film's most pleasant surprises.

That To Sir, With Love is so clearly dated does not mean that it isn't entertaining. Viewed as high camp, it remains energetic and entertaining, and Thackeray is one of Poitier's most enduring roles. Poitier was the first African-American to win an Oscar in a Lead Actor category (for 1963's Lilies of the Field), so one of his best-known performances is presented to open KFS's "African-American History Month Week."

Monster’s Ball (2001)
The critical and popular backlash against Monster’s Ball in the wake of Halle Berry’s sincere, tearful acceptance speech at the Academy Awards was both inevitable and, more importantly, unmerited. And it speaks to the same fundamental social insecurity that marked nearly all of the criticism of Moulin Rouge: expressions of genuine emotion make people-- faux-intellectual film critics, in particular-- very, very uncomfortable without some sort of ironic distance as a shield. Monster’s Ball, at its best moments, removes all distance, ironic or otherwise, from its deeply and irrevocably tortured characters. If not quite the best film of a very strong year, Monster’s Ball is certainly 2001’s most emotionally challenging film.

The series of coincidences that bring Hank (Billy Bob Thornton, in a performance that matches the range and power of his work in The Man Who Wasn’t There), a second-generation corrections officer and a man whose few words are largely shaped by his racist father, Buck (a contemptuous Peter Boyle), and Leticia (Berry, fully earning her Best Actress Oscar with a devastating, raw performance as brave as any in recent memory) together is the stuff of Greek tragedy. Both Hank and Leticia are terrible parents- Hank constantly berates Sonny (A Knight’s Tale‘s Heath Ledger, in a surprisingly effective turn) for his weakness, while Leticia is outright abusive to her overweight son Tyrell (newcomer Coronji Calhoun)- but neither of them can cope with the sudden loss of their child. Unsure of what else to do, Hank and Leticia turn to each other for temporary solace, despite their inherent distrust and a hostile social environment.

Were Monster’s Ball a more simple-minded, naïve film, its conclusion would be some predictable, apologist-liberal message about how overcoming racism is one path to personal redemption. That its actual conclusion offers no real resolution and is rooted in the sheer desperation of the two lead characters makes Monster’s Ball a film of almost literary depth.

Six Degrees of Separation (1993)
Although he lost to Denzel Washington’s performance as a renegade cop in Training Day, Will Smith was also nominated for his first Best Actor Oscar this past year, for Ali. While many critics hailed his portrayal of Muhammed Ali as his arrival as a “serious” actor, Smith’s little-seen film debut in 1993’s Six Degrees of Separation leaves no questions as to his genuine talent. His turn as deeply disturbed, predatory con man “Paul”-- whose real name is never revealed-- is simply captivating.

Adapted by writer John Guare (The House of Blue Leaves) from his successful play of the same title, Six Degrees of Separation unfolds as a series of flashbacks, as Flan and Ouisa Kittridge recount their encounter with “Paul” at the seemingly endless sequence of dinner parties and social functions that the couple uses to define their well-to-do but otherwise empty lives. That their witty, hyperliterate dialogue isn’t lost in the translation from stage to screen is to the credit of director Fred Schepisi (Fierce Creatures), who retains a skillful control of his gimmick and elicits consistently top-notch performances from his cast. Donald Sutherland (Animal House, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is appropriately smug as art-dealer Flan, and Stockard Channing (Grease, The Business of Strangers) deservedly earned an Oscar nomination for her role as Ouisa, who ultimately comes to realize that Paul’s con fundamentally changed her.

Channing’s work aside, Six Degrees of Separation is at its most engaging when Smith’s performance is the focus. A montage of his transformation from street urchin to the cultured “son” of actor Sidney Poitier, all under the guidance of smitten boyfriend Anthony Michael Hall (The Breakfast Club), is both hilarious and an example of fine, accomplished acting. That such a noteworthy performance and such an intelligent film are overshadowed by the “Kevin Bacon” game they inspired is really quite sad.


Bowling for Columbine (2002)
When critics refer to a film as “important,” that’s typically one of the hallmark signs that said film is little more than a didactic “message movie” about any one or number of social values that smug film executives in Hollywood believe that most of Middle America is too stupid to figure out on their own-- patronizing offerings like Dead Man Walking or The Cider House Rules, for instance. As the United States moves ever closer to war, however, it’s hard to imagine a film that is legitimately more important than Michael Moore’s 2002 documentary Bowling for Columbine, which offers a hardline examination of the underlying sources of our nation’s bloodlust.

Before examining the deeper social ills that spawned America’s fetishistic approach to violence, Moore opens Bowling for Columbine with an indictment of the fact that the U.S. has a significantly higher rate of gun-related homicides than any other Westernized country. That he resists the urge to turn this indictment into a simple propaganda piece and somehow finds a sort of absurdist humor at its core makes Bowling for Columbine one of the past year’s truly “must-see” films.

As was the case with his 1989 film Roger and Me, Moore’s skills as a true documentarian are decidedly un-subtle throughout Bowling for Columbine-- at one point, he honest-to-God sets a lengthy list of foreign-policy initiatives to the song “What a Wonderful World”-- and some of his tactics-- the uncomfortable and unnecessary interview with Alzheimer’s patient and NRA president Charlton Heston, for example-- transcend mere condescension to come across as flat-out bullying. What redeems Bowling for Columbine, then, is the fact that the film stems from Moore’s very sincere horror, outrage, and concern.

The Pianist (2002)
-- Todd Detmold, '06 --

The Pianist tells the true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a renowned Polish piano player who managed, through what the movie presents as a series of lucky close calls and long stretches in one-room apartments with little dialogue and less story, to survive World War II. Director Roman Polanski also survived World War II. When he was seven, he escaped from the Krakow ghetto and lived in hiding for the duration of the war. One might think, thus, that Polanski would be an ideal person to tell one person's story of surviving the war.

One might think. Polanski, who directed two of my favorite movies, Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby, has taken some severe blows to his prestige in the past few years. Not only is he currently in exile from the United States because of statutory rape charge, but he also made The Ninth Gate with Johnny Depp, which I've never seen but has a pretty bad Battlefield: Earth-caliber reputation.

The Pianist is at least very well shot; Polanski captures some horrific, gut wrenching images of the Holocaust. Also, Adrien Brody plays Szpilman. Brody's had forgettable roles in forgettable movies throughout his career (Liberty Heights? The Affair of the Necklace?) and he finally has a lot of screen time in which to show off what has to be the saddest pair of eyes this side of Morrissey. He reportedly starved himself to play this role, and he shows up onscreen simply degenerated. To make a good, sorrowful, powerful movie about the Holocaust, these are definitely necessary ingredients. You need to show horrible things and you need thin, sad actors. But what you also need is a story that the images are telling and characters for the actors to play. Roman Polanski, in his haste to show how horrible everything was, has forgotten to follow certain basic rules.

It is not difficult at all to film horrible things. But you need to earn the right to do so; otherwise you're just a pornographer. The Pianist provides you with absolutely nothing to care about, save maybe the plight of the Jews, but we did care about that anyway, right? It's not fair to the audience to just blast them with two and a half hours of brutality and not give them anything to root for. Brody, as Szpilman, seems to be into his role, but we know nothing about the person he's playing, except that he loves to play the piano. In the film's opening scene, Szpilman is playing for a radio station as bombs are falling around him; the war is beginning. From here, the war continues through to the end of the film, tossing our "hero" around Warsaw attics and alleys like a pinball, and expecting us to care. As Szpilman's sister is about to be brought away to a concentration camp, he says to her, "I wish I'd gotten to know you better." Don't we all.

Polanski torments us with shooting after shooting, bombing after bombing. He presents realistic, disturbingly choreographed sequences of disaster and death. But with nothing to say except "All this stuff that happened in Europe in the 40s was really bad," he's merely exploiting the war, and making pornography out of the deaths of six million Jews.

The Pianist is an insult to the intelligence of its audience. At this point, there have been so many movies about World War II, you really need to have a fresh take on it to make anything worth watching. The last straight-forward, matter-of-fact Holocaust movie that was any real good was Schindler's List, a full decade ago, and Steven Spielberg went ahead and drove that one into the ground with Saving Private Ryan. Unless you're Roberto Benigni, you can't make a good Holocaust movie today.


American Movie (1999)
Were it not the concluding film in KFS' "Documentaries Week," it might be easy to mistake American Movie for a Christopher Guest inspired mockumentary: the subjects are just that hilarious. That director Chris Smith (Home Movie) resists the too-easy temptation to skewer these individuals allows him to speak to the deeper issues that drive them, making American Movie a film that truly chronicles the current state of "The American Dream."

American Movie follows Mark Borchardt, a Wisconsin "filmmaker" with incomparable amounts of drive and, at best, questionable amounts of talent, as he attempts first to finance his full-length feature Northwestern and then settles for the easier 40-minute horror film Coven. One of the film's many running jokes is that Borchardt stubbornly mispronounces "coven," insisting that he doesn't want the title of his movie to "rhyme with oven." However misguided, that's indicative of this man's ambition, even when the rest of his family insists that he'd be better suited for factory work, or they comment that they're relieved he didn't grow up to be a serial killer. But filmmaking is Borchardt's passion, and it is this enthusiasm that distinguishes him from the entirely reactive personalities around him.

Smith doesn't attempt to hide his subject's flaws-- Borchardt openly drinks too much and appears to be affected with some degree of Bipolar Disorder-- and even manages to present Borchardt as a sympathetic character for the duration of American Movie. The result is an endlessly fascinating film that isn't merely about one man's desires and aspirations, instead encouraging the viewer, like Borchardt, to act on those aspirations.

Elling (2001)
Essentially the antithesis to Garry Marshall's repulsive The Other Sister-- possibly the worst film of all time-- 2001's Elling is a film that is refreshingly apolitical in its handling of mental illness. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, Elling deftly avoids too-easy labels or morals, to the credit of Norwegian director Petter Naess (Absolute Hangover) and writer Axel Hellstenius.

40-year-old aspiring poet Elling (Per Christian Ellefsen) is sent to a state institution when his mother, who has sheltered him for his entire life, dies. He is housed with Kjell Bjarne (Sven Nordin), a female-obsessed virgin, also in his 40s. After two years, the pair is released from the institution and into a state-funded apartment, with the goal that they can look after each other sufficiently well that they can live in "typical" society. Elling derives most of its offbeat, gentle humor from the reactions Elling and Kjell have to the world for which they are both so unprepared.

Director Naess has said that his goal for Elling was to create a film that was both commercially viable-- and Elling was quite successful at European box-offices-- and did not "sink to the lobotomized depths of mainstream American cinema." That Elling overcomes its seeming combination of The Odd Couple and Charly to meet this second of Naess' goals qualifies as one of the most pleasant surprises among what was an incredibly strong year for international cinema.

Spirited Away (2002)
That its primary competition for the title of 2002's best epic is either flawed (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers) or simply terrible (Gangs of New York) in no way reduces the achievement of master animator Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away, a rare animated film with the intellectual and thematic depth to match its visual splendor. The top-grossing film of all-time in Japan and the first film ever to make over $200M before opening in the United States, Spirited Away has enchanted audiences worldwide, failing to secure massive popular support only in North America. That the film was picked up for US distribution by Disney was both a surprising and encouraging move entirely undone by the fact that Disney slighted Spirited Away to promote their inferior Treasure Planet. From its very first frames, Spirited Away clearly establishes itself as one of the absolute finest animated films in ages.

Spirited Away is told from the perspective of a 10 year-old girl named Chihiro (Daviegh Chase of Donnie Darko, The Ring, and Lilo & Stitch, providing exceptional voice-work), who, along with her parents (voiced by Dumb and Dumber's Lauren Holly and Michael Chiklis of television's The Shield), ventures through a mysterious tunnel into a world of spirits, where she is forced to work in an enchanted bath-house run by evil sorceress Yubaba (voiced by Suzanne Pleshette) in order to reunite with her family. To say much more of the plot is to rob Spirited Away of a good deal of its charm, in how Miyazaki actively resists predictable storylines even while borrowing elements of, among other familiar influences, Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz. That Miyazaki focuses so intently on the deeper aspects of Chihiro's character makes Spirited Away a more effective and ultimately more satisfying film than Princess Mononoke, the most well-known of his films in the United States.

Japanese myths often rely heavily on shape-shifting, in which a character's facade is removed to reveal something wholly different, and that theme is used repeatedly throughout Spirited Away, reinforcing the series of subtle changes Chihiro experiences as a result of the challenges presented to her. Like many of the best recent films-- Memento, Donnie Darko, or Solaris-- Spirited Away emphasizes the ways in which seemingly disparate states of reality-- dream and nightmare, the garish and the beautiful -- are vastly more similar than the film’s characters and, by extension, the audience expect. That its challenging ideas are presented without the sermonizing of most American animated features makes Spirited Away even more of a treasure, easily one of 2002’s most outstanding films.

Final Destination 2 (2003)
-- Todd Detmold, '06 --

Ali Larter is so hot. She's got these pouty lips that simply scream "I was born to play characters with names like 'Clear Rivers' in bad teenage horror flicks!" And her hair is the perfect shade of dyed blonde. Oh, Ali Larter. If she spoke at Kenyon, I'd totally go to hear her talk, even in this weather. That's right, Clear Rivers. As in, her parents, Mr. And Mrs. Rivers, had a daughter, and thought that it would make sense if her name were Clear. Not Clair or Clara, mind you. Clear. But that's a name that came out of the first movie, so we can't really hold it against Final Destination 2.

And we shouldn't, either, because Final Destination 2 takes the nifty premise of Final Destination and makes it fun!

So. One year ago, Devon Sawa was on a field trip to France in FD1 and he suddenly had a bad premonition right before take off and made his circle of friends get off their plane right before take off. By escaping death when the plane lifted into the air and exploded, the group, to quote the first movie, "caused a rift in death's design!" Following, Death stalked Devon Sawa and all of his friends, killing them off one by one in wonderful, hilarious ways. Now, a year later, it's time for Final Destination 2, with an oxy-moronic title and even funnier deaths. Clear has survived by locking herself in a padded room at - get this - the Sunnybrook Mental Hospital, and she shows up to help Kimberly, an equally shallow hottie who might as well be "Clear Rivers 2" or maybe something like "Calm Blue Oceans." Kimberly is on a road trip with Blonde Girl-Friend, Weed-Addict Boy-Friend and Pretty-Boy Abercrombie-Friend, and she has a vision of a horrible car accident which you've seen most of in the trailers. She stalls traffic to save everyone's lives, but of course, Death is more stubborn than that.

So. Now. Six or seven (un)lucky folks have caused yet another rift in Death's design, and he's going to get back at them by killing them with extra gore and creativity. In FD1, this led to a grim, soulless movie without humor or life. But now, this formula has spawned a hilarious, colorful flick, complete with killer pigeons, lacerating barbed wire flying through the air, and an elevator scene ripped from Caples mythology. That the characters are all stock make it even more enjoyable. Macho Cop pretends to run the show even though he knows nothing about what's going on. Naïve Mother doesn't believe in what's going on until Sitting Duck Child gets it, and then she has nothing left to live for, the poor woman. Female Yuppie doesn't have time to deal with Death, she has appointments to get to. Braindead Stoner thinks it's funny, and Token Black Guy runs his own life, so he's not going to mess with all this. Clear Rivers doesn't even need a condescending epithet, because she already is one; I'm just surprised that they didn't end up at a cabin in the woods.

Is this movie's hilarity intentional? This, I cannot answer. But the fact is, Final Destination got really boring because it took itself so seriously. Final Destination 2 is a laugh-a-minute, and I honestly can't believe that any group of collaborators would be so pointedly stupid as to have tried to make a serious, scary horror movie and ended up with this. Also, it's really well-shot. You've seen that opening traffic wreck in the movie's trailer. Could those logs flying at the camera be any creepier? The crazy violence in this movie is so perfectly choreographed, I can't help but believe that everyone knew exactly what they were doing.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
All KFS can say in its defense of the now massively inappropriate title of this theme week is, “Well, it seemed like a funny idea when we made the schedule for this semester.” Fortunately, each of the films in “Homeland Security Week” stands quite strongly on its own merit, even if they no longer offer the escapist diversion presented by most of KFS’ schedule. If nothing else, political satires like director John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate are now as timely as ever.

The film opens with an unsettling sequence in which a troop of American soldiers is hypnotized, and one of the men, Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey, The Running Man, Of Human Bondage), is commanded to do some shockingly nasty things. He’s been programmed to return to a normal life in the US until the hypnotic suggestion of his controllers turns him into a political assassin. That his father (James Gregory) becomes the Republican party’s leading presidential candidate is, obviously, not a coincidence. And the depths to which his mother (Angela Lansbury, cast decidedly against type) sinks in her efforts to control her son over the course of the film almost defy belief.

Another of the soldiers in Shaw’s company, Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra), later emerges as the film’s hero, when he begins to experience vivid, terrifying flashbacks of the hypnosis, and then attempts to investigate their origins. When Marco very quickly falls in love with a mysterious woman (Janet Leigh, Psycho) he meets on a train, merely another layer of intrigue is added to a plot that already plays out effectively as a horror film, a very bleak satire, a psychological thriller, and a political melodrama.

Set in the early 1950s during the height of McCarthyism and intense socio-political paranoia that Communists from both Russia and China were planning to overthrow the US’ government using, among other tactics, advanced brainwashing techniques, The Manchurian Candidate was deservedly praised by critics upon its initial release, although it was a box-office failure. That its satirical elements hit perhaps a little too close to home was underscored just a year after the film’s release, when it was all but buried (thanks in no small part to Sinatra’s efforts) following the assassination of President Kennedy.


WarGames (1983)
A far less controversial offering is 1983’s WarGames, an early-80s teen film that was well ahead of its time and inspired an entire generation of computer hackers. With its “Is it a game, or is it real?” premise, WarGames, for better or worse, brought both hacking and a good deal of technophobia into the mainstream media. That the technical and thematic proficiency of the film fully compensate for the dramatic changes in PC technology in the twenty years since its initial release is certainly a pleasant surprise. If even more of a cult classic, WarGames has aged much better than Tron.

The plot, no less light-weight fare now than it was during the paranoia of the Cold War, centers around an intelligent high school student (Matthew Broderick, The Cable Guy, Election) who inadvertently hacks into the country’s NORAD missile-defense system. While he innocently assumes he’s just running a simulation, the NORAD staff frantically attempt to avoid a massive nuclear war. As this potential crisis unfolds, WarGames provocatively questions the changing attitudes about the power of and the emerging reliance on technology during the early 1980s.

Band of Outsiders (1964)
If WarGames was ahead of its time for its take on social perceptions of technology, the “time” for the entire catalogue of films by French writer-director Jean-Luc Godard has only now come into focus. Godard was fascinated by the idea of characters-- and, in his later work, of entire films-- defined by movies and the media. And this “meta” concept drives many of the best films of the past year-- Adaptation. and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind are perhaps the two most obvious examples of films that aspire to Godard’s high-mindedness. It also offers a damning appraisal of the current state of mainstream cinema, in which self-reflexive garbage like The Hot Chick and the Austin Powers series have reduced movies to the extent that they’re about nothing more than other movies.

A brilliant re-imagining of the American “gangster” film, Godard’s 1964 masterpiece Band of Outsiders opens “KFS Shows Off its Impeccable Taste” Week. What makes Band of Outsiders possibly Godard’s most accessible film is that, while crafting three fully-realized characters from a synthesis of genre stereotypes, Godard never loses perspective on the larger world. Filmed in and around Paris, Godard makes clear the distinction between his characters’ thin fantasies and the dingy reality of their lives.

The film follows two high school friends, Arthur (Claude Brasseur) and Franz (Sami Frey), in their attempt to locate a large sum of money which they overhear a classmate, Odile (Anna Karina, married to Godard at the time of filming and the muse for his entire career), discussing. Odile willingly assists Arthur and Franz in their gangster fantasy because she’s desperate for their-- or anyone’s-- acceptance, while, to the two boys, she is never simply a means to finding the money. By its inevitably tragic conclusion, Band of Outsiders illustrates the emotional poverty of a life defined by the fantasies offered in movies, and it does so in a way that reaffirms the appeal in the poetry and the sadness of those fantasies.

24 Hour Party People (2002)
For an American audience, Factory Records and its role in the Manchester music scene probably seem like an unusual choice for a rock-and-roll film. While British rock critics named it the best single of the rock era in a recent NME poll, Joy Division's brilliant "Love Will Tear Us Apart" left a relatively minor impression on the mainstream music landscape in the US back in the 80s, and New Order, the band that emerged following the suicide of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis, fared little better commercially. Factory's last notable act, The Happy Mondays, are even more obscure stateside. The obscurity of its setting, however, in no way diminishes the appeal or the accessibility of director Michael Winterbottom's unconventional 24 Hour Party People, deservedly one of 2002's best-reviewed films.

Although the film spans from the explosion of punk with the Sex Pistols to the dawn of acid house, 24 Hour Party People remains focused on Factory Records' founder, Tony Wilson (British comedian Steve Coogan), even though he breaks the fourth wall early in the film to inform the audience that he is little more than "a minor character in the story of [his] life." Wilson never re-establishes that fourth wall, either, frequently taking extended asides from the action to offer an explanation of his own motives, a bit of salacious celebrity gossip, a hilarious one-liner, or to tell the audience that a missing scene will probably turn up on the film's DVD. In his own words, the Tony Wilson depicted in 24 Hour Party People "was post-modern before it became popular." It's a testament to the skill of Winterbottom (director of Wonderland and Welcome to Sarajevo) and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce (also of Welcome to Sarajevo) that this gimmick never grows tiresome. Instead, it's the type of aggressive storytelling device necessary to capture the appropriate spirit of the punk and, later, the New Wave movements, even while 24 Hour Party People is more about Wilson's gleefully contradictory perspective than it is about the actual music itself. As a result, the film is self-consciously dizzying and, more than anything else, fun.

As Wilson, Coogan gives a droll, dead-pan performance in a role that's considerably more difficult than it seems. Not only does he have to balance the opposing aspects of Wilson's character-- a narcissist with a self-deprecating sense of humor, a wide-eyed opportunist with absolutely no business savvy-- but he has to balance them unapologetically. And, because the film is perhaps an even more self-reflexive media study than Confessions of a Dangerous Mind or Auto-Focus, there's even a scene in which the real Tony Wilson plays a producer for Coogan's Wilson on a faked installment of the real television show that the real Wilson hosted. The film's supporting cast is equally exceptional. Of particular note are relative unknown Sean Harris, remarkable in his portrayal, complete with eerily accurate recreations of grand-mal seizures, of the doomed Curtis, and Andy Serkis (The Two Towers' Golum, minus the CGI) as excessive producer Martin Hannett.

In 2002, only George Clooney's Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Roger Avary's The Rules of Attraction match the type of frenetic, very much "alive" feel Winterbottom generates throughout 24 Hour Party People. Wisely framing Wilson's engaging tale in an Icarus parable, Winterbottom unironically celebrates the fact that Wilson and his peers did, however briefly, soar.


Far From Heaven (2002)
Many of 2001’s best films-- Memento, Donnie Darko, and Moulin Rouge! to name just three-- experiment with sometimes wild variations on traditional cinematic narratives, frequently folding back on themselves in surprising, innovative ways or just as often breaking the audience’s tenuous hold on the narrative entirely. The best films of 2002, then, move beyond such experimentation to explore the varying degrees of artifice inherent in the medium of film itself. The two impossibly clever films penned by Charlie Kaufman are the most obvious examples of this, but Kaufman isn’t the only person working in Hollywood who is fascinated by the challenge of stripping away this artifice. It’s an idea that comes into play in some of the year’s worst (Punch-Drunk Love, Storytelling, Full Frontal) and in many of its best films (The Rules of Attraction, Talk to Her, Solaris).

What elevates writer-director Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven above all of them are Haynes’ razor-sharp intellectual focus and, more importantly, how that focus doesn’t limit the film to a mere intellectual exercise. Instead, Far from Heaven is a film of genuine emotional resonance that succeeds because Haynes so meticulously exposes the deeper issues-- primarily, hypocritical and oppressive social conventions-- that drove the 1950s melodramas of Douglas Sirk (Imitation of Life). An unqualified triumph, Far from Heaven is the best film of what turned out to be a surprisingly strong year.

From its opening frames, what is immediately striking about Far From Heaven is that it is undeniably one of the most breathtakingly beautiful films ever photographed, to the credit of cinematographer Edward Lachman (The Limey, The Virgin Suicides). The excruciating detail in which Haynes (Safe, Velvet Goldmine) recreates a small, post-WWII Connecticut suburb-- his spectacular use of vivid color schemes that gradually leach from the background over the course of the film is, in and of itself, a thing of both genius and beauty-- demonstrates the type of high-minded, thoughtful mise-en-scene that's often nothing but a burden to most modern filmmakers. That the action that unfolds in this carefully manicured setting is so devastating is Haynes' shrewd means of exploding the issues that Sirk only implied.

The year’s most consistently well-acted drama, Far from Heaven boasts outstanding supporting performances from Dennis Haysbert (“President Palmer” from television’s 24), Patricia Clarkson (Wendigo, The Pledge), and Viola Davis (Solaris, Antwone Fisher), and a career-reviving turn from Dennis Quaid (Frequency, The Rookie), as a successful business and family man coming to grips with what he perceives as a crippling disease. Still, Far from Heaven irrefutably belongs to Julianne Moore (Boogie Nights, The End of the Affair). Her Cathy Whitaker, married to Quaid's closeted homosexual and falling in love with her African-American gardener (Haysbert), embodies an entire culture’s social pretenses and repression. The greatest achievement of Far from Heaven is that her opportunity for personal redemption-- an opportunity that shrinks exponentially as her life crumbles around her-- seems to bear the exclusive burden for the social changes she doesn’t know will eventually come. Via this unwitting radical, Haynes turns simple dramatic irony into something deeply affecting and tragic.

Lolita (1997)
KFS kicks off "Inappropriate Relationships Week" with the 1997 adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita by director Adrian Lyne (9 1/2 Weeks, Fatal Attraction). Lyne's career has been plagued by criticisms of "style over substance," and, while that means that he glosses over much of the more sinister, disturbing aspects of Nabokov's controversial source material, his efforts in bringing such a difficult work to the screen are truly commendable. If suffering from similar atonal thematic problems, Lyne's version feels more authentic than the dark comedy reinterpretation Stanley Kubrick released in 1962.

For all of the controversy surrounding its release-- the film never found a theatrical distributor in the United States and eventually premiered on the Showtime cable network-- Lyne actually shows a great deal of restraint in his direction of Lolita. With the exception of Melanie Griffith (Milk Money, Crazy in Alabama), who has proven herself capable of playing only "hooker with a heart of gold" characters, he evokes uniformly superb performances from the cast. Jeremy Irons (Die Hard: With a Vengeance, Dungeons and Dragons) is "appropriately" obsessive as pedophile Humbert Humbert, and Dominique Swain (Face/Off, Pumpkin) is unnervingly convincing in the title role.

L.I.E. (2001)
KFS continues its "Inappropriate Relationships Week" with L.I.E.-- which stands for "Long Island Expressway"-- one of the most controversial films of 2001. Independent films that tackle difficult, taboo subject matter often run the risk of becoming little more than cheap, self-congratulatory exercises in shock value-- David Cronenberg's nearly unwatchable Crash, or purely exploitative trash like Kids and Bully, both directed by Larry Clark. In his debut feature, however, director Michael Cuesta confronts an especially thorny issue-- pedophilia-- with an objectivity that makes L.I.E. an intellectually refreshing film, albeit one that is, at times, a true challenge to watch

L.I.E. documents one devastating week in the life of 15 year-old Howie (Paul Franklin Dano, The Emperor's Club), who attempts to numb the pain surrounding his mother's death by ditching school to engage in some casual breaking-and-entering. One of Howie's new friends, Gary (Billy Kay, the "baby" of Three Men and a Baby) also happens to be a hustler with a regular customer named Big John (Brian Cox, Manhunter, Adaptation.). After botching an attempt to rob Big John, Howie quickly finds himself in most precarious circumstances-- with his father (Glengarry Glen Ross' Bruce Altman, excellent in a small but crucial role) in jail for fraud, Howie has to choose between being entirely alone or furthering the advances of a known pederast.

By suspending any sort of judgment for the film's duration, Cuesta has crafted a film that is undeniably tense and still strangely delicate in its characterizations. Having originated the role of Hannibal Lecktor in Manhunter, Cox is no stranger to difficult, socially appalling roles, but his performance as Big John is simply remarkable in that, more than anything else, it's so utterly, terrifyingly believable. As Howie, Dano manages the tough distinction between generic teen angst and genuine confusion and despair. In their performances, both Dano and Cox match Cuesta's deliberate, brilliant directorial ambiguity such that L.I.E. never makes it clear what the truth of this complex situation really is, while the subject matter itself raises questions as to whether "truth" is even relevant.

Audition (2001)
"Inappropriate Relationships Week" concludes with director Takashi Miike's Audition, which arguably surpasses David Lynch's Mulholland Drive as 2001's most vicious mindbender. To say much about either its structure or its legitimate shocks is to deny Audition of a great deal of its appeal, but rest assured that it more than earns its place in this theme week. Certainly not a film for the faint of heart or the squeamish, Audition is both a throwback to the character-driven, pre-Halloween horror films -- Polanski's Rosemary's Baby and Friedkin's The Exorcist spring immediately to mind, though neither are this nasty-- and easily the finest film to emerge from the recent renaissance in Asian horror films.

Audition follows an unassuming and ultimately very nice widower, Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), on his search for a new wife. On a friend's dare, he agrees to pose as a filmmaker and to hold an audition for a non-existent film as a way of meeting a large number of women in a reasonably short time. He becomes smitten with the damaged, mysterious Asami (Japanese fashion model Eihi Shiina, disproving the notion that all models are incompetent actors), and they tentatively begin a courtship.

Thematically, Audition is possibly the most dense horror film in ages-- even though, at most, one-third of the film can legitimately be categorized as a horror film at all. While the film works as something of a cautionary tale about regarding women as objects-- even if as objects of reverence and awe-- Miike doesn't reduce his work to anything resembling a simple "good vs. evil" structure, nor does he shy away from the challenging issues of misogyny and abuse that drive the film. For its undeniable visceral and psychological gearshift in its final third, perhaps the greatest shocks about Audition are its critical possibilities and its underlying sensitivity. That said, Audition is not for everyone, though fans of Peter Greenaway (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover) and early Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead trilogy) will definitely be pleased.

Secretary (2002)
-- Brian Schiller, '05 --
The opening film of KFS’s “Appropriate Relationships Week,” Steven Shainberg’s Secretary takes the sadomasochistic tendencies from Audition and wraps them around an already twisted office relationship. Its straightforward approach to the subcultures that it uses as a vehicle for courtship is initially shocking, but later comes as a refreshing change of pace from the stereotypical Hollywood romance.

Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Donnie Darko) enters the film by exiting a mental institution. Within hours of her release, she attends her sister’s wedding, observes her drunken father, and returns to her lunchbox of tools she uses to cut herself methodically. In an attempt to adjust to society, she takes a training course in typing, and summarily accepts a position at the law offices of E. Edward Grey (James Spader, sex, lies, and videotape). When Grey becomes dissatisfied with the quality of Lee’s work, he begins administering his own personal chastisement upon her. In pain, the couple finds a common bond, and their relationship blossoms.

Taking a brazenly candid attitude toward its subject matter, the screenplay for Secretary, based on a short story by Mary Gaitskill, won screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay. Gyllenhaal’s performance, an astonishingly accurate and touching portrayal of a young woman dealing with her internal agony through self-harm, netted her several critical awards and an unexpected but fully merited Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress, Comedy. Featuring both an expressive cast and an intriguing storyline, this black comedy shows its viewer that there’s much more to romance than contemporary society has to offer.

You Can Count on Me (2000)
KFS concludes its "Appropriate Relationships Week" with writer-director Ken Lonergan's You Can Count on Me, widely and deservedly hailed by critics as one of the finest films of 2000. Lonergan's skills as a playwright translate surprisingly well to the big screen, as You Can Count on Me resonates throughout with some of the most mature, true-to-life dialogue in recent memory. His directorial style is clean and efficient, allowing his ear for dialogue and the stellar performances from his two leads to carry the film. Its only real weakness is its somewhat hokey title, which short-sells the films charms and makes it difficult to market.

You Can Count on Me is first and foremost a character study, focusing on the evolving relationship between two deeply damaged and very realistically drawn adult siblings. A film of very subtle action, You Can Count on Me follows WASPy single-mom Sammy (Congo's and The Truman Show's Laura Linney, who earned an Oscar nomination for her performance) as she adjusts to an unexpected visit from her stoner younger brother Terry (XX/XY's Mark Ruffalo, arguably even better than Linney). As appalled as she is by her brother's not-at-all surprising revelations that he's flat broke and fresh out of jail, Sammy recognizes that Terry's arrival is the type of spark she desperately needs to knock her life out of its deepening groove of politesse and convention. And Terry reluctantly accepts his temporary role as a father figure to his nine year-old nephew Rudy (Signs' Rory Culkin, who acts circles around Haley Joel Osment and any of his own older brothers), even though he knows that he's entirely too flawed to serve as any kind of role model to an impressionable, precocious child.

Lonergan wisely balances these tough, densely woven issues with some biting dark humor, most of which comes from Matthew Broderick (Election, The Cable Guy), who plays Sammy's incompetent supervisor at the local bank. It's a testament to the strength of his screenplay, as richly literary as those for Monster's Ball, Solaris, or The Man Who Wasn't There, that this humor never detracts from the film's overall dramatic momentum. Instead, it's easily incorporated into a film that shows a true understanding of how people don't just shift at a few key turning points in their lives, but instead change in both small and profound ways on a day-to-day basis. Characters in flux to such a real extent are exceedingly rare in film, and that Sammy's and Terry's struggle holds such genuine promise makes You Can Count on Me an absolute treasure.


The Devil’s Backbone (2001)
-- Brian Schiller, '05 --
While American audiences went in droves to view Alejandro Amenabar’s The Others in 2001, Spain and Mexico had their own intelligent ghost story in theatres. The Devil’s Backbone drew much comparison to the Nicole Kidman film, and deservedly so. The Devil’s Backbone brings the same nervous apprehension of a solid ghost story to the screen and uses it as an allegory for the Spanish Civil War. Though it heavily symbolizes the largely overlooked conflict, the characters and storyline stand on their own.

Set in 1939, the film opens with 10-year-old Carlos (Fernando Tielve) spotting a ghost at the school he attends. The school, a refuge for children abandoned during the war, is operated by Casares (Argentinian legend Federico Luppi), and carries as a monument a bomb that fell in its playground some time ago. Within the school, the janitor Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega, Open Your Eyes) uses deceit and an affair with the headmistress Carmen (Marisa Paredes, All About My Mother) to try to steal a supposed horde of gold in the school’s safe. His presence is as chilling as the ghost that haunts the school with him at night.

Director Guillermo del Toro (Cronos, Blade II) uses the actors to express his political message told within this tense ghost story. Del Toro, a former make-up artist, uses visual effects more as a support to his film than a crutch that he leans upon. Along with cinematographer Guillermo Navarro (Jackie Brown), del Toro works to create terrific scenes that are far more startling than the standard Hollywood slasher fare. However, The Devil’s Backbone is much more than a horror film; it wisely uses the terror to engage its characters, who respond with brilliant performances.


Y Tu Mama Tambien (2002)
-- Brian Schiller, '05 --
Alfonso Cuaron’s return to Mexican cinema comes ten years after he released 1991’s Love in the Time of Hysteria. Returning to Mexico during a new drive of cinematic quality, Cuaron gives his native country another fine selection in its recent catalog with Y Tu Mama Tambien. Having spent time working in American cinema, Cuaron takes a common American theme, the coming-of-age road trip, and infuses it with realism, emotional growth, and a beautiful picture of the Mexican countryside.

Trapped in Mexico while their girlfriends go on a tour of Italy, friends Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal, Amores Perros) and Tenoch (Diego Luna, Frida, Before Night Falls) prepare for a summer of freeloading, pranks, and drugs. However, they quickly get bored of this idea and hatch a scheme to take Luisa (Maribel Verdu, Belle Epoque), wife of Tenoch’s older cousin, on a road trip to a fictitious beach called “Heaven’s Mouth.” On the journey, the boys’ plans turn on them, as the quietly wise Luisa seduces them in turn and enables both of them to take more objective, candid looks at their own lives.

The camera in Y Tu Mama Tambien is not much more than an observer; the film plays out very openly in front of the screen, not leaving anything for interpretation. What is shown is a coming-of-age film that actually allows its characters to grow and discover more about themselves and the lives they are living. Its omniscient narrator and sprawling structure draw comparisons to the French New Wave directors Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. A staple film in Mexico’s own “New Wave” of filmmaking, Y Tu Mama Tambien exemplifies life, and celebrates it amidst a straightforward storyline and a stunning landscape.