The Red Violin / ***1/2 (1998)

The obsessive nature of man is stirred by desires of impossible reach – desires to capture perfection, to acquire something greater than the mind can comprehend, and to bask in a glow of inspiration that may open a pathway to unmatched elation. The fault in possessing such aspirations is that the human soul is usually too frail to endure the lessons it must confront. For all the important players in “The Red Violin,” that message is shown within the presence of a singular object that transcends time and culture. Crafted in 1681 by the hands of a gifted violin maker named Nicolo Bussotti (Carlo Cecchi), a remarkable violin – so named in the title because of its distinctive red hue –becomes a physical and emotional current affecting various sets of lives from one century to the next on a journey of divine mystery. It possesses great secrets. And in all instances, it passes from one owner to the next as if a muse meant to inspire them (and their observers) to masterful heights – heights, unfortunately, so great that they bend the will of men and women to equally tragic depths.

Melancholia / **** (2011)

Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia” is a symphony of poetry conducted with almost fortuitous precision, the kind of movie that happens not because it was calculated with certain dedication, but because all of its key ingredients come together in the right time and place when its director is emotionally mature enough to assume the material. Few films are as effective at evoking the purely intuitive nature of their directors, but they do exist in rare instances. Think of Werner Herzog’s “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” or Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal.” Achievements of this regard abandon structure and grounding because they are impulses in motion, and are conducive to the development of artists who are ready to step beyond traditions in order to seek transcendence. The journey von Trier has taken to this one immaculate moment has been bold to say the least, but at long last, he has revealed his full ability, and the result is his masterwork.

Lessons from Criterion:"Antichrist" by Lars von Trier

To make a film as divisive as “Antichrist” in a movie climate that laps up torture and despair at the hands of cruel sadists, Lars von Trier made more statements than he perhaps intended to. Created in a vacuum of professional uncertainty and often described by the director as his “therapy” in very dark personal times, the end result became a hot discussion during its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009. Some lauded what they saw with thunderous cheers (most of the European press was captivated by its frontal implications) and others engulfed that enthusiasm with equally-commanding boos and lashings (one prominent American critic even branded the material as “worthless,” and questioned the sanity of the Festival board for including it in the competition). The festival went on to even honor the endeavor with an “anti-award” – one of the fewest in festival history – and called the end result an exercise in misogyny. In both extremes, the display became the precursor to similar outbursts of enthusiasm (or repulsion) in the hands of its eventual audience. No person who saw the movie was unaffected by the suggestions it made, and no response lacked passionate conviction.

Joyful Noise / * (2012)

The title “Joyful Noise” is as much a misnomer as you can find when it comes to descriptive movie names. Noise it is, joyful it is not. Somewhere in some dark and quiet room, potentially with sad music playing softly in the background, the person who opted to fund this ill-conceived comedy is sitting in dead silence with his head in his hands, shamed by the same question that all investors who once faced financial ruin have pondered over time: “where did this all go wrong?” Endorsing the movie to any audience with favorable IQ points would be an insult, but there is a certain morbid fascination I uphold in what viewers with some knowledge of church choirs would think of what they see. My gut tells me their reactions would be even more spiteful than mine, and the enthusiasm in those convictions would no doubt be more energetic than anything the filmmakers have conveyed.

Pacific Rim / *** (2013)

With the Japanese being the primary victims of giant monster attacks over the course of decades in the movies, it’s just as well that they get to be the ones who name the giant creatures who wreak havoc in “Pacific Rim.” Dubbed the “Kaiju,” these giant alien beasts begin making sudden appearances on Earth in the year 2013, causing mayhem and catastrophe along the pacific coastlines in routine intervals before being conquered by military forces, only to be replaced by others much more ferocious than the previous. A voiceover at the start of the picture points to the source of their arrival: a portal nestled at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean which allows beasts from another world to pass from theirs to ours with minimal fuss. But why would they even want to invade us in the first place? By means of educated guesses, we suspect that these alien life forms are simply eager at eradicating the human race for the sake of planetary takeover. Thinking further about the idea of dimensional doorways being the source of movie monsters in general, I half wondered if a similar gate in the Atlantic is what essentially unleashed the creature in “Cloverfield.”

The Illusion of Influence

My admiration for Johnny Depp and the dexterity he brings to his movie roles has been unwavering for decades, but the diatribe he and his cohorts from “The Lone Ranger” went on during the recent U.K. premiere plays like a blatant absence of sanity. In the press room, the brains behind Disney’s biggest flop of the year rallied around director Gore Verbinski and continued to push their faith in their big-budgeted remake of the famous television series, but took the argument against its domestic failure up a notch when they opted to direct the crosshairs of blame onto the critics.

Lincoln / ***1/2 (2012)

The opening scenes create a clear distinction: war is not the sole component dividing this society. The man in the tall hat seated in the center of a military encampment stares beyond the piercing rains and sees his supporters trapped in a cycle of building and preparing, mindful of the reality that many will not be left standing alive after the inevitable battles that remain to be fought. Their drive nevertheless is inspiring, and reflects the enthusiasm for the ideals being set forth by the visionary who calls himself the commander-in-chief in these dark and tumultuous times. A young black supporter wanders nearby and reminds the president, somewhat unintentionally, of the importance of the mission: his eyes beaming with a light of hope, he recites the introductory lines of the famous Gettysburg address. For him, and thousands of other slaves who were victimized and persecuted for countless generations before the dawn of the civil war, these words were more than just a call for important change: they were, in essence, the keys to opening the door that had long been shut on a sect of population. The subsistence of these proclamations underscores the greatest desire of all human life, which comes down to, quite simply, freedom and liberty for all.

Lessons from Criterion:"Ali: Fear Eats the Soul" by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

If German history books must paraphrase the sum of its important contributions to world cinema, all statements begin and end by referencing the country’s two most essential eras – that of “Germanic Expressionism” in the 20s, and the more recent “Neuer Deutscher Film,” which began in the 60s as a way to usher in a generation of thinkers who thought beyond the proverbial boundaries of their culture. In both instances, young aspiring artists were conditioned by the fallout of Germany’s involvement in two World Wars, and under the weighted influence of a social structure seeped in uncertainty, they were eager to embrace the fires of chaos in order to obliterate the illusion of harmony that was used as an oxygen mask.

A Muse of a Different Color

Photographed by Cherie Renae, of Cherie Renae Photography.

The second act of the movie that is my existence began in a moment of slow motion clarity. He walked across the grass with an entourage of acquaintances come to exchange greetings with the gentleman I was then seeing. Superficial gestures masked a transparent need to feign interest in one another: an action, I guess, based on a need to simply keep good face in a crowd of people already pretending to care more than they did. A drag queen ferociously lipped the words of Rihanna’s latest hit remixed to thumping trance beats, and all attempts at conversation were muted under the reverb. There were no words necessary; he smiled slyly in all directions, and sharp brown eyes under a shaded face shot gazes through the crowd that were disarming. The music stalled for a moment, and a man stoned out of his head lumbered forward, clasping his shoulders as he passed. “If you don’t mind me saying, you look like dinner,” he announced. He continued to walk on, and the circle of conversationalists glanced past as if amused. My face revealed honest impatience with such a transparent come-on, and I responded without the faintest hesitance: “And what does that make you, a leftover?”

Silver Linings Playbook / ***1/2 (2012)

The internal conflict that overwhelms the main character in “Silver Linings Playbook” is obvious even before a word is spoken. His eyes shift to and fro with a sense of unease, and the mannered, almost calculated way he speaks to staff and fellow patients within the psych ward he is soon to be released from suggests a knack for exaggerating the truth, possibly because it makes it that much easier for him to stay within the confines of denial. But all will be okay in the long run, he believes, because “Excelsior,” the Latin word for “ever upward,” is on his lips relentlessly when in the face of his heavy-handed reality. Alone, somewhat detached and clueless as to the damage control that will be required in the world he alienated, Pat is ready to face the future head on with absolute optimism. And that means finding a silver lining in all day-to-day situations even if he has to practically beat it out of himself.

Django Unchained / ***1/2 (2012)

There is material in “Django Unchained” that is unconventional even by the standards of the notorious Quentin Tarantino, whose movies over the past twenty years have been celebratory excursions through all things eccentric and inspired. Some new energy, or desire, must have possessed him here. After gleefully rewriting history for the purpose of an audacious payoff in “Inglorious Basterds,” no longer does the cinema’s most blunt self-made director seem content on just unscrewing the wheels on the car in the last lap of a narrative racetrack. Now, the cars veer off the track itself long before the first sequence even plays out, and characters are beckoned into the shadows of ambition that provide no promise of anything other than long stretches of stylish violence and dismay. The obligatory touches of quirk coupled with repeated nods to the vengeful nature of spaghetti westerns still exist, but here is the movie in the director’s ever-evolving catalogue that finally arrives at the center of an exhaustive trek through the corners of lurid cinema, marking a critical tipping point in a creative march that suggests, yes, Tarantino’s education is at last complete.

Lessons from Criterion:"The Phantom Carriage" by Victor Sjöström

In tracing the origins of Ingmar Bergman’s screen identity back to the Swedish silent fable “The Phantom Carriage” – a movie he claimed was instrumental in his desire to become a director – one also unearths other important revelations within the frames of this puzzling endeavor. Produced and filmed in 1921 at the height of Swedish cinema’s love affair with fantasy and folklore, the movie seemed to write a language from which a future of important filmmakers would be passively influenced. Consider a sequence in which in which the conflicted anti-hero, David Holm (Sjöström), hacks down a locked door in a vain attempt to prevent his wife and children from deserting him – this harkens us immediately back to a key moment in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining,” when Jack Torrance does the same in a flash of psychological splintering. Other measures are equally striking: the overreaching presence of death as a puppet master directly inspired the core theme in “The Seventh Seal”; the conflicted main character’s reckless and destructive pattern would be later echoed by the likes of “Scarface” and “Taxi Driver”; and the use of redemption in the climax, especially in the face of certain mortality, would become the defining tone evoked in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

...And so begins the third act

Two months into reviewing movies again following a discernible absence, I am possessed by a drive that bewilders even me. Output seems to come from an unknown source imbedded in some deep dark spot of my cranium, funneling material to my fingers that previously only seemed to come in brief stretches of inspiration. Maybe the state of mind I occupy in 2013 is indicative of this new desire, but I’m not entirely sure. What I am sure of, however, is that I don’t care so much about trying to be perfect anymore, or burdened by a worry of releasing something of mediocre standard. No one who cares about their craft improves by simply exercising a creative muscle in infrequent passages. Perfection just does not exist. I have written nearly 30 movie-related articles and essays in just the span of six weeks, far exceeding my level of prolific output of the past eight years combined, and of all the lessons to be learned from this new venture, the most important is that the activity has armed me with a level of self-confidence that was noticeably absent in the recent years. Moreover, what is the point of stressing over the idea of each endeavor being precise if in the end you are improving yourself overall with each conscious attempt?

Ratatouille / ***1/2 (2007)

It was no small feat to feign enthusiasm at the prospect of Walt Disney Pictures acquiring ownership of Pixar Animation, especially on the eve of the release of “Ratatouille.” After a string of successes on part of the CGI-geared cartoonists – all of whom had nearly full creative ownership of all their stories and images prior to Disney’s distributing of them – the idea that the future material of this immensely successful studio would be under direct guidance of the gargantuan Mouse House corporation felt, well, like an uncertain reality. For the company whose founder gave birth to the medium of feature animation, this prospect is dismaying, and underscores a surprisingly underwhelming trend of in-house animated endeavors in the recent years, which seems fueled less by creative desires and more by mass marketing potential (save for “Treasure Planet,” which was full of wondrous ideas but failed commercially because of its narrow appeal). The question then becomes, how can the consistency on part of the Pixar name possibly keep up, especially in the hands of a system now long absolved to settling for the median in this genre?

Lessons from Criterion:"The Seventh Seal" by Ingmar Bergman

A sobering awareness rushes across the face of Antonius Block as the waves of the ocean crash on his beach like relentless reminders of a bleak reality. His eyes glance suspiciously to a vision beyond his comprehension: a man in a hood who observes the spot at which he rests, his face grimly sinking into the visage of a skull, and his dark robes all too eager to invite one into an unknown fate. There is no moment of reaction, only short exchanges. “Who are you?” he asks. “I am Death,” the figure responds. “Have you come for me?” “I have long been at your side.”  The dance of banter leads to an indomitable wager: Antonius and Death will engage each other in a game of chess, one in which the outcome will offer the determined knight reprieve from his stalker’s grim clutches, or to mortal conclusion. But in all things for this simple being of a thousand internal struggles, is the final destination really relevant if any of the answers he has agonizingly pursued throughout the painful trek of his life do not come?