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Ink (2009)
dreams
Filmmaker(s): Jamin Winans

Invisible forces exert power over us in our sleep. A mercenary named Ink, on a literal nightmare mission, captures the spirit of 8-year-old Emma in the dream world. To save her, the dream-givers marshal all their resources, focusing on saving the soul of Emma's tragically broken father.

Paper on Ink is this good cinema. It has energy and imagination. It has internal self-reference: the storyteller in the thing has her audience as one of the characters, someone who appears in three persona unknown to each other. The way things are revealed and...


Published December 1, 2022
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Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Fantasy (1976)
The world's favorite bedtime story
Filmmaker(s): Bud Townsend

Alice offends her would-be lover William by rejecting his advances. Upset, she falls asleep reading Alice in Wonderland. The white rabbit appears to her in a dream and takes her into a sexual wonderland. The story loosely follows Carroll's original plot, and includes many of his characters, but with considerable sexual license.

Mock Turtle appears in scores of films, and many of the appearances are subliminal. I’ve made a hobby of collecting all the references and looking to see how cleverly they exploit the story. As it happens, there is a natural fit between Alice and sex,...


Published November 30, 2022
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Alice in Wonderland (1951)
A world of wonders in one great picture!

On a golden afternoon, young Alice follows a White Rabbit, who disappears down a nearby rabbit hole. Quickly following him, she tumbles into the burrow - and enters the merry, topsy-turvy world of Wonderland! Memorable songs and whimsical escapades highlight Alice's journey, which culminates in a madcap encounter with the Queen of Hearts - and her army of playing cards!

Charlie’s Flowers spent a goodly part of my life becoming an expert in the Alice material, so have had to work to temper this comment: My initial feeling on this project is one of utter despair, as Walt and company took something that was both...


Published November 30, 2022
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Hereafter (2010)
Touched by death. Changed by life.
Filmmaker(s): Clint Eastwood

Three people — a blue-collar American, a French journalist and a London school boy — are touched by death in different ways.

Chabrolet a certain point in some filmmakers’ careers, the films cease being discrete works of art and start becoming chapters in an engaging life. Eastwood is not the most weighty artist out there. He has made a couple worthwhile films and much chaff but has...


Published November 28, 2022
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Heavenly Creatures (1994)
Not all angels are innocent.
Filmmaker(s): Peter Jackson

Wealthy and precocious teenager Juliet transfers from England to New Zealand with her family, and soon befriends the quiet, brooding Pauline through their shared love of fantasy and literature. When their parents begin to suspect that their increasingly intense and obsessive bond is becoming unhealthy, the girls hatch a dark plan for those who threaten to keep them apart.

The Fourth World of the Third Man the premier concern of modern filmmakers is locating somewhere in the film exactly where the filmmaking process is. This is often incorrectly called irony, self-reference or the odd construction of reflexivity. I call it “folding” and it seems...


Published November 28, 2022
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Freaky Friday (2003)
Mondays are manic. Wednesdays are wild. And Fridays are about to get a little freaky.
Filmmaker(s): Mark Waters

Mother and daughter bicker over everything -- what Anna wears, whom she likes and what she wants to do when she's older. In turn, Anna detests Tess's fiancé. When a magical fortune cookie switches their personalities, they each get a peek at how the other person feels, thinks and lives.

Borrowed Eyes am convinced that many movies are about movies as a matter of demand. When we enter that darkened room, we often expect not be taken to another real reality, but to a movie reality that has some degree of self-awareness. A great many of...


Published November 28, 2022
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Finding Neverland (2004)
Where will your imagination take you?
Filmmaker(s): Marc Forster

During a writing slump, playwright J.M. Barrie meets a widow and her four children, all young boys—who soon become an important part of Barrie’s life and the inspiration that lead him to create his masterpiece. Peter Pan'.

Still Not Found have I been so disappointed. This movie is right up my alley: I’m studying so-called “folded” films. A fine example is when you have a movie that has a play inside it and the reality of the two blur, like with “French...


Published November 28, 2022
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Field of Dreams (1989)
All his life, Ray Kinsella was searching for his dreams. Then one day, his dreams came looking for him.
Filmmaker(s): Phil Alden Robinson

Ray Kinsella is an Iowa farmer who hears a mysterious voice telling him to turn his cornfield into a baseball diamond. He does, but the voice's directions don't stop -- even after the spirits of deceased ballplayers turn up to play.

Mann’s Book how you remember movies. My memory is of the sickly sweet score and Costner’s obnoxious fawning manner. All that sentimental BS about baseball that is intended to trap the casual viewer. But in re-seeing this, I remember how very clever it is. It is...


Published November 26, 2022
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Enter the Void (2009)
Filmmaker(s): Gaspar Noé

This psychedelic tour of life after death is seen entirely from the point of view of Oscar, a young American drug dealer and addict living in Tokyo with his prostitute sister, Linda. When Oscar is killed by police during a bust gone bad, his spirit journeys from the past -- where he sees his parents before their deaths -- to the present -- where he witnesses his own autopsy -- and then to the future, where he looks out for his sister from beyond the grave.

Tomorrow Never Knows of our next great filmmakers, yet another South American, makes a film about French filmmaking. That once great tradition was compromised in the sixties by a burst of non-sustainable creativity that ate itself. A decent enough metaphor is that cinema overdosed on...


Published November 25, 2022
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The Golem (1920)
Filmmaker(s): Paul Wegener, Carl Boese

In 16th-century Prague, a rabbi creates the Golem - a giant creature made of clay. Using sorcery, he brings the creature to life in order to protect the Jews of Prague from persecution.

Life is the most exciting film I have seen of those made before “Kane.” It is far better than those usually clumped into the so-called expressionist movement, particularly better than “Caligari”. The lighting, framing and rhythm of the thing is about of the same fine quality....


Published November 25, 2022
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