The story concerns Max (voiced by Jason Marsden, singing voice by Aaron Lohr) and his relationship with his father, the classic Disney icon Goofy (voiced by Bill Farmer). Max is in high school and wants what most teenage guys want: to fit in, have friends, and get the girl. In the first act, he highjacks a school assembly to ask out the girl of his dreams, Roxanne, but in doing so ends up getting in trouble with the principal. When Goofy hears that his son is causing trouble, he takes parenting advice from his neighbour Pete and tries to get his son “under his thumb” (i.e., earn his son’s respect) with a little bonding time on the open road.

If someone told you that there was a Goof Troop movie, would you expect much more than a made-for-TV cash-in? Surprisingly, this movie is more than that. Yeah, it’s a goofy cartoon (get it?) with tons of slapstick, but it never forgets to include the undercurrent of drama required to maintain your attention for the running time. When the film needs to be quiet and mature, it can be — and there are quite a few touching, insightful little moments thrown in — but A Goofy Movie never forgets that it’s essentially a big-screen Saturday morning cartoon. Personally, I think that’s what makes it so good. I don’t want Goofy’s movie to try to be The Lion King. As a family road trip movie, it works.

The film is also a musical, and though the songs aren’t the greatest tunes you’ll ever hear, they’re not too bad either. They work within the context of the film, and one or two of them do stand out as being memorably good — most notably the first song, “After Today”. The song that marks the beginning of the road trip, “On the Open Road”, isn’t that spectacular on its own but is accompanied by countless visual gags that elevate it. There’s isn’t much to complain about, but nothing to write home about either.

The animation, as I said, is a bit bad by Disney standards. Watch the backgrounds and you’ll see extras conspicuously frozen in place, elements that are clearly painted onto separate cells (having mismatched colours as a result), and there’s even a few sequences that appear to have been artificially slowed down in post-production, causing the frame rate to drop erratically. It’s nothing worse than you’d see in a TV show, however, and the movie makes up for it with some very clever use of colour; I especially like the red light that illuminates the map every time someone looks at it dramatically. It isn’t subtle, but that’s what makes it fit this style of animation so well. For a feature film, a bit more effort could have been put in, but it’s passable.

A Goofy Movie isn’t a grand epic tale that digs deep into important issues — it’s a fun little tale about a boy and his dad. Goofy is definitely my favourite Disney character, and the script does an incredibly good job of keeping him ridiculous while still making me feel some genuine emotion about him. Like in Goof Troop, Goofy is a single dad, but now that Max is a bit older, he finds himself struggling to maintain his relationship with his son. Max is embarrassed by his dad in that way teenagers frequently are… and when your dad is Goofy, it’s a pretty believable embarrassment. I can empathize with Max’s desire to gain some independence from his parent, but I can just as easily sympathize with Goofy. The relationship is done very well. Some people might have wanted something with a bigger scope, but I think this modest story does the movie a favour: the emphasis is on what made the TV show good, while still expanding it to fit a movie format. Maybe a “Goof Troop Saves the World” movie could have worked, but that formula has been done to death. This works fine.

Is it a masterpiece? Probably not, but A Goofy Movie is still one of my personal favourites, bias taken into account. I grew up with those old Goofy cartoons, and I can see a lot of myself in Max and his relationship with his father. Sometimes, it is hard for a little boy to tell his dad, “I love you.” If you don’t understand that, you probably won’t understand what makes me like this movie so much. And if you don’t like Goofy… well, don’t expect him to suddenly endear himself to you.

If you’re a fan of Goof Troop, or if a father-son road trip movie with Goofy sounds like something you would enjoy regardless, check this one out. Maybe it’s not really the best Disney movie, but it’s far from the worst.

Jesse Eisenberg stars as James Brennan, a shy, introspective nerd who plans on going to grad school after the summer. But after the unexpected job loss of his father, Brennan finds himself taking up a summer job at the local amusement park, Adventureland. Here he meets the mandatory assortment of kooky characters: the snarky slacker Joel (Martin Starr), the hot chick Lisa P. (Margarita Levieva), local macho man Mike (Ryan Reynolds), and the love interest, Em. Kristen Stewart plays the lead female role of Em in her typical lip-biting style, but it does work in this instance, proving that she really doesn’t deserve the hate she gets from being in Twilight. She can act when her character actually has a personality.

Where Superbad tried to be a straight comedy with only small dramatic elements to keep it afloat, Adventureland tries to do the opposite. In this, the film is fairly successful.

The characters are, for the most part, well-written and well-developed throughout the narrative; even the archetypal hot chick has a little more depth than you would expect, dating the main character for a brief time and letting some details spill about her background and outlook. The movie has something in common with Lost and Delirious, in that the characters act so consistently stupid and make such obvious mistakes that you want to slap them — but their actions fit their age and situation, and you can’t help but relate to them. If you were ever a teenager, you’ll recognize the people in Adventureland. Even the two-dimensional, undeveloped guy who punches everyone in the nuts is a realistic character, really: I know several people I met in high school who still act like that and never seem to have any depth no matter how long I’ve known them.

Drama is where the movie really shines. Where it starts to falter a bit is the comedy. The structure of the film pools a fair mix of drama and comedy into the first act and partially into the second, but it’s always in the form of a dramedy rather than a comedy — meaning that the scenes are mainly dramatic and have light humour to punctuate them, rather than being primarily funny. The problem is that the movie doesn’t really do this consistently, and ends up becoming a straight drama by the halfway point. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but when the movie starts out like that it starts to wear on your nerves a bit and makes you think, “What happened to the jokes?”

I’m not saying Brennan should wear a clown suit, but the tension is just a tad too much in later scenes of the movie, to a point where it almost starts to seem melodramatic. These are teenagers, yeah, they blow everything out of proportion and act like every little betrayal is a bullet to the head — but they’re teenagers, they’re supposed to be sarcastic and blow off a bit of steam while doing so. For a movie with so many stoners in it, there’s a distinct lack of funny stoned people and an overabundance of philosophical prats. It’s not too bad, but it kills a bit of the movie’s rewatchability — once you know what happens, you can’t muster up that edge-of-your-seat I-want-to-know-what-happens-next feeling, and it becomes a lot less entertaining.

Adventureland is a good film. Hell, it’s a great film that deserves way more recognition than it gets. Is it perfect? Not really; it does go a bit far with the drama at times. But it’s so much closer to being perfect than most movies like it, you have to see it at least once. It’s no Dazed and Confused, but how many movies are?

Splitting the source material into two films means that the final confrontation against Voldemort and the Death Eaters is allowed to span roughly five hours instead of the usual two and half, and this means that the story can linger and pace itself a little bit better. For a series as massive and epic as Harry Potter, a suitably huge conclusion would be needed to cap it off — and for the most part, the director David Yates succeeded once again. Part 1 is a leisurely first act that draws you back into the characters and setting quite effectively, with plenty of action creeping into the second act just to keep the viewers on their toes, then Part 2 is for the most part just a super-extended third act. And while my gut instinct for a situation like that would be to criticize Part 2 for stretching out what’s traditionally supposed to be punchy and to-the-point… I can’t deny that the enormous climax of Deathly Hallows just works.

That’s not to say that the two films are masterpieces. Being made in 2011 amongst the craze of pointless CGI and superhero movies, it seems like the post-production visual effects team decided to be lazy and just reuse some PlayStation 3 graphics instead of doing actual work. For $250 000 000, don’t tell me they couldn’t have made the effects look better than that. Half of the movie feels like a video game cutscene, Attack of the Clones style. But then, I’m really biased against CGI in general. I’ve always held up the other Potter films as my example of CGI done well (you either use it sparingly or have enough dough to make it look flawless), but Deathly Hallows hangs a big asterisk over my example, and that just annoys me.

There’s also a serious problem with the subplot distribution. For whatever reason, either the screenwriter or the director decided to put all that negative stuff about Dumbledore that was in the book into Part 1 — but then didn’t actually follow up on it satisfactorily in Part 2. Unlike in the book, Deathly Hallows doesn’t redeem Dumbledore, and his winking smile to Harry when we do get to see him one last time just sort of makes him look like a prick. What was that about? The majority of the story was done quite well in Deathly Hallows, and it’s not like they didn’t have enough running time to expound on everything they wanted. The humanization of Dumbledore is pretty important to the series’s themes, but if they wanted to cut it so badly, they could have at least cut all of it.

Overall, though, the two parts of Deathly Hallows are pretty good. Not incredible, but none of the Potter series was really incredible anyway. They’re just fun.

See also: my review of Half-Blood Prince, my review of the first five Harry Potter movies.

If you’ve read other reviews from me, you might have noticed that I have a thing for heavily flawed movies that manage to still be good. This is one of those movies.

The film follows a quiet, introspective girl named Mary, played by Mischa Barton. In the beginning of the movie, Mary tells us that her mother has passed away, and her emotionally-distant father has decided to enroll her in an all-girls boarding school. Arriving there, she soon meets her roommates, Tori (Jessica Paré) and Paulie (Piper Perabo). In shocking juxtaposition to the main character, Paulie is outspoken and open about everything, never flinching when the truth needs to come out — except, of course, when it comes to Tori, whose parents can’t be allowed to know the true nature of their relationship.

The first time I watched this movie, I thought it was pretty damn good, but it gets worse on every subsequent viewing. The reason, I think, is that it’s extremely lopsided — movies are a combination of plot, characters, visuals, music, pacing, and theme (the last three forming the broader category of atmosphere), but Lost and Delirious doesn’t do many of these aspects well. The plot scores an absolute zero, hitting nearly every single cliché in the queer and feminist books and being as boring as humanly possible. The visuals are fairly bland, with only one scene being memorably well-composed and many, many scenes which comprise a series of heavy-handed visual metaphors. The music is… well, there’s a reason critics have called it melodramatic. Even the theme, though it’s not done terribly, is kind of… generic. Are you surprised that a movie about lesbians and a shy girl is about feminism? Surprised that a movie set in an all-girls boarding school has something to say about patriarchy?

No, I understand fully why critics hate this movie. It’s very, very flawed, doing many key aspects of filmmaking utterly and completely wrong. But it does one important thing right: characters. The characters are amazing.

Regardless of what you might personally think of them (trust me, you’ll probably want to slap them a few times during the film), one thing you can’t deny is that they are completely honest. Yes, the overwrought musical sequences are melodramatic… but the movie is about teenagers going through what is, to them, the end of the whole damn world. The lengths Paulie goes to to win the heart of her girlfriend are absolutely insane, but I can name three people in my life who would actually do that.

Does that mean the movie can be forgiven for all it does wrong? No, not at all. A great movie takes a personal, emotional scenario, blows it up, and turns it into an experience that accurately conveys the complexity and meaning of the situation to the audience, including and especially outsiders who wouldn’t have understood the situation otherwise. But Lost and Delirious just isn’t a great movie — it’s a cult movie, or maybe you’d call it an insider movie. A movie made by a lesbian, for lesbians; by a woman, for women; and it makes no attempt to include the outside world in its equation. You’re in, or you’re out.

So no, Lost and Delirious isn’t good — but it isn’t necessarily just the clichéd mess that people claim it is. If you can relate to the characters, relate to the melodrama, relate to the age and place where a trite visual metaphor seemed supremely poetic — then you can get swept up in the movie and walk away feeling like someone just stabbed you in the heart. But if you can’t relate to it, you’ll be throwing popcorn at the screen. That’s just how it is with this one.

For the record, I’ve never read the source material myself so I can’t comment on why and how the movie could have been improved in that manner. However, I read that the newest edition of the book has a foreword by the author praising the movie, despite its differences. Take that as you will.

With that out of the way, here’s something I’m completely sick of: the James Bond franchise.

For 20 straight movies, it had a consistent style. Whether or not you actually like it personally, it doesn’t matter. The objective fact of the matter is, all 20 of these movies had basically the same tone and meaning to them: a light-hearted story about a spy with plenty of humour thrown in, meant for entertainment only. As the times changed throughout the 30+ years that these films were released, they each updated the franchise to fit the times without completely altering the franchise. For that reason, every Bond movie up until Die Another Day was at least recognizable as a Bond movie.

But since 2006, Eon has produced two Bond movies (with a third currently in production), all of which are part of their “rebooting” of the franchise. None of these new movies are even remotely similar to the old movies, other than sharing one actress (whose character has been changed beyond recognition). Now, I really don’t care if people like these new movies. I personally don’t, but that’s not the point. The point is that this “reboot” is completely unnecessary and insulting — not just to fans of the old franchise, but to anyone who puts their money forward to Eon.

What they’re doing is part of a big trend nowadays: companies that have or gain the rights to a franchise, change everything about it other than the names, and claim it’s a “reboot”. People who liked the series before will buy the new rendition even if they don’t like the new direction the series is taking, so the company is successful. The thing that’s so insulting about this trend is that these “reboots” aren’t just a new direction that the series is taking — they’re entirely different series released under the same name solely for the purpose of making a quick buck.

Yes, I am aware that making money is the point of a company, but they’re supposed to hide that fact by making quality products that are actually worth money in the first place. If you need to defend a company by saying that they’re just trying to make money, you’re an idiot.

If you want to make a serious, true-to-the-books rendition of James Bond, go ahead and do it. But don’t call it James Bond. There’s already a franchise using that name. There might be an argument for using that name anyway if the new franchise were closer to the books (since the books had the name first), but that’s not the case at all. The Bond stories were trashy stories about a spy written for pure entertainment, and the original film series already is the movie adaptation of that. Even if the new Bond movies are superficially more similar, their tone and style is nothing alike; the new ones act like they have some kind of deep meaning behind them. That’s the only part that actually matters, not the superficial crap like whether Q should be named Major Boothroyd or not. If you don’t believe me, look up what Ian Fleming had to say on the subject: he was alive for much of the franchise’s early history and thought it was exactly what he wanted: a fun story about a spy.

I just watched Princess Mononoke for maybe the third time in my life: this time, in Japanese. The copy came with both audios, but only one set of English subs: so I was watching the Japanese version, subtitled with the text of the English version. But that shouldn’t be a big deal, right? They’re roughly equivalent, right?

What I saw was a portal opened to the greasy, cavernous depths of human evil.

You really don’t understand, until you have happened to watch a movie this way, just how disgusting the dubbing process really is. There is an opening shot of a forest, music plays. I am looking at subtitles telling me in an omniscient, authoritative tone (I can imagine a Disney trailer voiceover just reading them) about an age of gods and demons. This narration is not present in the movie I am watching. But it had to be there for the English dub, or we might not have known what the movie was about.

It soon becomes clear that in every scene with humans, dialogue subtitles are appearing even when no one is speaking. This is not an exaggeration: every single time a human is present in a scene, and you don’t have a clear look at their mouth, they do not speak in the animation. And every single time this happens, the English version makes them speak. There can be no silence; these gaps must be filled by mediocre English voice acting, without fail. Otherwise the audience would wonder what was going on. Huh? Why are we looking at those people being killed? Oh, the character just told me it’s a massacre! Good thing, I might have missed that! I know when I watch animation, I close my eyes and just listen to the characters tell me what’s happening.

As you can imagine, an entire movie’s tone can be changed this way. Friendly interjections are thrown in where there once was formality. A simple call to a steed becomes “Yakul! Come here boy! Good boy! I have to praise you verbally or the audience won’t know I’m a kind person!” Ashitaka gives instructions to people, and they run off. The subtitles respond for them, “All right! Don’t get hurt!” Ashitaka later must leave his village; his tribesmen cannot go with him, cannot say goodbye, cannot even watch him go. He departs in silence; the subtitles say, “Farewell.” This is all in the first five minutes.

It only gets worse as the pacing increases. A convoluted battle scene: a caravan is attacked. It is very obviously a supply caravan. But there is bustle, confusion. Through the battle, the subtitles give, over the crowd’s grey noise, calming instructions. “Come on! Keep moving!” The attackers disappear; there is suspense. “Where are they?” the subtitles ask helpfully. Men have fallen off a cliff. “What about them?” The caravan leader’s response is given curtly, to leave them for dead. The scene cuts there, but not before the subtitles can add, “Let’s get the living ones home!” Because they might have been moving on for some other purpose.

Why? What is the philosophy that justifies making your own movie out of someone else’s work? Princess Mononoke was taken, with its spare dialogue, and visually driving style, and raped. It was bound to a table, legs spread, and violated with stuffing and folderol, crammed into its cavities by the sweaty fistful. Were the translators being paid according to how many words they produced? Would Billy Crudup and Billy Bob Thornton only sign onto the project if they got a certain number of lines?

Translators — perhaps this is the problem. The movie is not dubbed by translators, it is dubbed by dubbers. All this time I thought I was getting translations of Miyazaki movies, when I was actually getting adaptations. Adaptations with American writers, American producers, American actors. The American audience expects nothing less.

What’s sad is, the adaptation isn’t actually that bad. It’s still a good movie, good enough to be one of the best I saw as a child. About fifty times better than Lion King, and I liked Lion King. Maybe that’s why they get away with it. But I have a problem with the ethics of rewriting a text (and a movie’s script is a text) with the imposition of one’s own ideas, and representing it as equivalent to the original. Please have this in mind, the next time you are watching a dub, if you watch dubs (most people do). There is no regard for the original tone in the dubbing process.

Miyazaki himself has said he wants audiences to watch his movies in their native language, whatever it is, so as not to distract from the animation. There’s something to be said for this; subtitles do distract. But they do not corrupt and defile, hopefully. They do not add and inflate. This cannot be said for Miyazaki dubs. Watching Miyazaki dubbed is not even watching his movie, but something else, with a cloudy, veinous coating on it. I thought I had seen Princess Mononoke before, but I feel like I haven’t really seen it until today. And since I was still reading the story from the English dub, perhaps I still haven’t seen it.

Now mind you I have read three of the four books and watched the first two movies so I had expectations for this film and on some levels you could say I was disappointed.

Story
In an attempt to cram every last bit of the book into a two-hour film, it seems the writers overlooked the fact that watching this all at once is a tad nerve racking. You’re never given a moment to think because there’s always something happening. Depending on your taste, this is either good or bad.

It may be good due to the fact that the movies are primarily for those whom have already read the books and are expecting every last bit in the film.

On the other hand if you’ve only ever watched the movies or are just jumping into the saga for this film (which I strongly urge against) you may not be happy with all the story being thrown your way at once and it’s possible you’ll be lost at times.

Choreography & CG Animation
I’m not going to lie the action sequences were intense. It took a good portion of the film to build up for the finale but it was well worth the wait for an incredible battle that easily made it’s way on my top ten.

Now it wasn’t necessarily the battle itself that was so amazing but more so it was the delivery. The sound effects, animations, choreography, and editing were perfected leaving you with an ultra-realistic battle royale. I could go on about it but it really has to be seen to be appreciated so I’d advise you to check it out when you have the chance.

Soundtrack & Score
The soundtrack and score of the Twilight Saga films have always matched their corresponding feature perfectly and Eclipse is no exception. I was only disappointed that Muse’s track recorded solely for the movie was probably played for about ten seconds and in the background no less. To whomever chose the music sequence for the movie, have some respect for Muse.

So to sum it all up, I liked the movie, I expected more but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. They were high expectations to be honest and because of them I probably didn’t enjoy the movie to its fullest extent which is why I’ll be checking it out again. I’d recommend it anyone, there’s actually a more than decent film behind all the ridiculous criticism the franchise gets for its portrayal of vampires and overload on romance, but that’s what this series is about so I don’t see any reason in pointing out the obvious. So if you’re going to hate on the franchise at least give it a chance, don’t just senselessly follow the crowd.

8/10

Reposted from: TechVoo

On the other hand, I found the film to be fantastic; stylish, gritty and darkly witty, it’s everything I expected executed with the slick visual style which has been the target of much praise. As for the comment regarding the film’s “degrading” nature – I couldn’t disagree more. The prostitutes of Oldtown are dangerous, ruthless, and determined to protect their business and their truce, which is all but shattered by Rafferty’s death. These whores aren’t the subject of objectification; they’re businesswomen, exchanging services for cash with no judgement from others or accusations of moral depravity, much superior to the dirty reputation of Amsterdam’s red light district or Hamburg’s Reeperbahn.

The film’s nudity is barely ever in a sexual context; the most sexually charged scene in the film is Jessica Alba’s dance, which oddly enough also has no nudity at all. No, the use of nudity here is purely artistic, a supplement to the already unique and eye-catching visual aesthetic of the black-white-red-blonde colour scheme. Everything is exaggerated, even the plot and the animated gore, and the film’s protagonists are primarily strong, self-sufficient women. Degrading? No, Sin City is nothing but empowering to women, and you’d think the film would have some reputation for that. But no, my sister, so thoughtful and educated thinks that Sin City is a shitty, degrading film, and her mind is set on that notion before she’s even seen the film – which knowing her stubbornness, she probably never will.

The plot involves Jim Sturgess as Jude, a young man from Liverpool who illegally moves to America to see his estranged father. While doing this, he runs into Max (Joe Anderson), who introduces him to rich college life — knocking golf balls through windows, running away from people, going to pubs, singing about true love, and smoking pot. This, of course, turns Jude and Max into fast friends, so Max invites him over to his mansion for Thanksgiving. There, Jude meets his love interest, Max’s sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood). Max drops out of college and decides to go bohemian in New York with Jude, moving in with the aspiring singer Sadie (Dana Fuchs), her guitarist Jojo (Martin Luther), and yet-another-Beatles-reference Prudence (T.V. Carpio). Soon thereafter, Max is drafted into the Vietnam War, and the movie follows the hippies into a long drug-laden anti-war message, with Jude as the tortured vaguely-apolitical artist who just wants to be with Lucy.

Obviously none of the Beatles songs in the film were written with this plot in mind, so it’s all working backwards from lyrics written almost fifty years ago. With that in mind, I think it does an incredibly good job. Yeah, it doesn’t always make a lot of sense, but that’s more the writing than anything. The actual plot does make sense, it just sort of gets lost under all the music. Watch the movie a second time if you don’t understand it the first; trust me, there are going to be things you missed. There are only a few songs that really seem forced, I think. Most of the music is incorporated very well into the story, and the fact that it’s often only tangentially related to the movie kind of makes thematic sense — this is, after all, a trippy movie about the sixties.

Cinematography is gorgeous overall. The dance numbers all seem very well choreographed to me, not that I know anything about dancing. The singing is very good, doing admirable justice to the original songs while still changing them enough to befit different voices (women, most obviously). Special mention goes to Sturgess’s hair, which beats Mia Wasikowska’s Alice in Wonderland style for the Bran’s Favourite Hair award. Seriously, I’m drooling on my keyboard over here.

Here’s a little rundown of the songs, since they’re so important:

Girl: Strong choice to open the movie on. It functions like the chorus in a classic play, summarizing some of the key plot points of the movie. Very effective.

Hold Me Tight: This is just used to introduce Lucy early, before she’s met Jude in-story. For some reason the soundtrack disc excludes the bass that’s in the movie, which makes the song a lot more like the original — and thus, a lot less interesting. If you’re going to cover a song, make it different, otherwise why cover it at all?

All My Loving: Ironically used by Jude to console his British girlfriend. The fact that he breaks all the promises in this song makes him 1) an asshole, and 2) an honest portrayal of long-distance relationships. Zing!

I Want to Hold Your Hand: Sung by a woman despite the “I want to be your man” line, which gets turned into a joke about heteronormative relationship values being applied to homosexual relationships. (I might be reading too much into that.) It’s not especially important to the movie, but it’s still a pretty decent musical number.

With a Little Help From My Friends: Kind of a lame cover, but used quite well in the film to show Jude and Max bonding. Drugs are absent from the movie until this song, when they suddenly appear two seconds before the relevant line in the song — am I only one who finds that hilarious?

It Won’t Be Long: Lucy’s equivalent to Jude’s All My Loving, but with less blatant lies. Fairly bland.

I’ve Just Seen a Face: I like this cover way more than the original Beatles song, which had sort of a country feel to it. I wish it was a bit longer in the movie, but oh well. It’s really catchy and highlights Jim Sturgess’s amazing singing talent (as if the rest of the music didn’t already do that).

Let It Be: Pretty sure I’m the only person in the world who doesn’t like this song. The original is boring pretentious shit and this version is no different.

Come Together: The lyrics have nothing to do with anything, but what did you expect from a song with stuff like “He got monkey finger, he shoot Coca-Cola”? The cover is pretty good and is used in the movie to introduce Jojo as a soulful musician — for that purpose, it does a great job. I’m still waiting for someone to use this song for a sex scene, though.

Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?: Used mostly as background music in a pub that Jude and Lucy go to. Nothing to really say.

If I Fell: Again, nothing to really say. It’s just Lucy falling in love with Jude.

I Want You (She’s So Heavy): Not an especially great cover, but used amazingly in the movie. “I want you” refers as much to lust as it does to the military Uncle Sam posters. “She’s so heavy” shows the soldiers carrying the Statue of Liberty. There has never been a less subtle anti-war message, but that’s what makes it so great. Your mileage may vary on the music video; I love it, but I can see why it would be unpopular. The only complaint I have is that I wanted more of that famous guitar riff in the song.

Dear Prudence: Nothing to say again. It’s a pretty good cover, but not really relevant to the plot at all.

I Am the Walrus: Sung by Bono as a shameless expy of Ken Kesey, while driving the gang across the country in his psychedelic van. Everyone is on LSD by this point (seriously), so the lyrics actually kind of make sense. Bono’s character is irrelevant and just used as an excuse to show off the hippies; I would have preferred it if the movie had come with an excuse to show the Vietnam war instead, but at least this song is good.

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!: Absolutely terrible cover of a song that wasn’t really that great to begin with. Makes no sense whatsoever in the movie. Bad in every possible way.

Because: More irrelevant stuff from the LSD trip. This and Mr. Kite should have been cut from the movie entirely.

Something: The cover isn’t nearly as good as the original, but at least we’re done with the LSD trip by this point in the movie. I don’t know why we need yet another song explaining how and why Jude loves Lucy, but this is the right place to put it, right before their relationship starts getting turbulent. Good musical number overall.

Oh! Darling: Sadie and Jojo play this song on-stage. It’s pretty good.

Strawberry Fields Forever: I’ve always liked this song, but this cover is even better. This is without a doubt the best song in the whole movie. Jude sings it while designing a strawberry logo for Sadie’s band, intercut with Max in the war singing with him. The strawberries are used as a metaphor for hearts and grenades, with the juice (the blood) being related to both of them. I’m not normally a big fan of the “true art is angsty” tone that it has, but it really does work here. It’s hard to explain without seeing the movie, but suffice to say: this one is incredible.

Revolution: Another great song, sung during a fight scene with no trippy effects added in post — very effective. I think Jim Sturgess could stand to sound a bit more angry, but oh well. The Chairman Mao line is just as clever as always.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps: Just used to show Jojo going solo with his music. A decent song. Not much to say.

Across the Universe: Very emotional, about on par with the original. I was expecting this to be a big song, given that the film is named after it, but it sort of just gets glanced over. It doesn’t even end properly, as it gets mixed into the beginning of the next song.

Helter Skelter: Way worse than the original, and used quite badly in the film. It gets mixed into the ending of Across the Universe (the song) and just comes across as really dissonant and anticlimactic for a scene that’s probably supposed to be the climax. The lyrics are used entirely as a metaphor for chaos; the actual Helter Skelter slide doesn’t appear in the movie.

Happiness Is a Warm Gun: Reinterpreted really effectively to be about a character’s morphine addiction. I’m not a fan of the ridiculous dancing in the movie, though.

Blackbird: The lyrics are completely irrelevant as far as I know, but it’s still an emotional song that’s used effectively to show someone’s sadness.

Hey Jude: It takes a long time to get to Jude’s song, but it’s worth it. The song is exciting and uplifting after all the sad/angry songs that lead up to it. If the original still gets stuck in your head, this one will too. Icing on the cake: the lyrics make perfect sense in the film. I’m going to guess it was one of the songs the plot was specifically built around.

Don’t Let Me Down: Not a lot to say. This one’s mostly in the background, just to set up the last song.

All You Need Is Love: I’ve honestly never really understood why everyone likes this song so much. It’s not bad, but it’s not that special either — the Beatles have definitely made better songs. Still, its use in this movie is pretty strong and finishes the story on a high note. Jim Sturgess injects a lot of emotion into the first few verses before the others come in, which really helps.

Across the Universe is a movie with a great context and a lot of subtext, but very little actual text. It’s an emotional film that can make you feel something if you let it. It’s just not the kind of movie you can really quote to your friends. I recall the first time I saw the trailer for Across the Universe in theatres, my friend Robin yelled “What the fuck?” across the room. That about sums it up.

The completion of this task, the so-called “inception”, is vital for team leader Dominic Cobb; unable to return home to his children because of legal complications, he is forced to stay on the run, taking jobs to attempt to buy his way back home. Client Saito’s job offer is irresistible: a powerful figure in the energy market, Saito promises to use his connections to let Cobb return home, presuming the inception is successful. What is already a difficult task is complicated by the presence of Cobb’s subconscious projection of his dead wife Mal, seemingly intent on sabotaging his missions to convince him to stay in the dream world with her forever.

Cobb and Mal’s relationship and the circumstances surrounding her death are key plot points in the film; explained through dream sequences, snippets and emotionally charged flashbacks, Nolan does an excellent job of teasing us with the details and leaving us to guess the rest as he returns to the mission. Perhaps most interesting about the situation is that Mal is only a projection of Cobb’s subconscious, and her anger and attempts to trap him are influenced primarily by the guilt with which he is wracked over the notion he is responsible for her death. His physical conflict with her in the dream world represents his internal turmoil; reconciliation would be akin to coming to terms with her death, and the plot accurately depicts the difficulty involved in forgiving oneself.

A definite master of intrigue, Nolan’s primary policy appears to be that of hiding the secrets until the very end; he lets the film become serious and dark before adding a dash of humour to bring the audience back into the action. There’s no break for thinking: in flashbacks, you’ll be lost in the plot, deeply analytical and trying to guess the meaning; then you’ll be thrust back into the action and the accompanying state of awe as we enjoy fast-paced, gravity-defying fight scenes rivalling those unreal, carefully choreographed scenes seen in The Matrix. His preference for practical effects over computer-generated is admirable; even the most complex fight sequences were patiently shot over and over, take after take to match his artistic vision. There’s nothing trivial about the 100-foot motorised hallway set built in-studio, turning at a speed of eight revolutions per second to simulate shifts in gravity; this is the way special effects should be done.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt skilfully navigates the spinning set, throwing his armed assailants against the wall as gravity changes to his advantage; his character is Cobb’s curiously-mannered point man; perhaps even more curious about the character are the similarities in his mannerisms to those of Gordon-Levitt’s last role, Tom in Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer. Undoubtedly a unique and talented actor, it is somewhat interesting to note that he isn’t engaging his full potential here. The fight scenes are awe-inspiring and epic, but in brainstorming sessions it’s easy to forget you’re meant to be watching a trained extractor and point man, not a smitten greetings card writer.

A better example of acting talent well explored is in the case of Ellen Page, perhaps best known for her role as the eponymous heroine in 2007’s drama-comedy Juno, who portrays architect Ariadne, hired to design the levels within the dream to create the impression of realism for the subject they are attempting to deceive. Nolan’s idea here is wonderful; the world, designed by the architect, is populated by projected manifestations of the subject’s subconscious after they are drawn into the dream. However, if the dreamer changes the world of the dream too much, the subject will subconsciously attempt to find and eliminate the dreamer through whatever means possible. In some cases, the subconscious projections are militarised thanks to training by another extractor, making the process more difficult.

Inception is, without a doubt, the best film of the year so far, and is far more impressive than Nolan’s last work, The Dark Knight. Combining a clever plot with strong, emotionally-charged acting and some breathtaking action sequences, Inception will probably go down as one of my favourite recent films. If you haven’t already seen it, see it now; if you have seen it, you’ll know exactly why I’m such a fan of this film.