Synecdoche, New York (review)
It was Charlie Kaufman, at the multiplex, with a mindfrak.
It was Charlie Kaufman, at the multiplex, with a mindfrak.

I still can’t get my head around how profoundly awed and moved and overwhelmed and terrorized and rejuvenated I am by this movie.
Welcome to *THX 11-Michael Bay*! It’s not a science fiction movie, but an incredible simulation!
That teaser trailer — you know the one I’m talking about — with the fat old ex-superhero struggling to get into his spandex costume? It left such a bad taste in my mouth whenever I contemplated the film that must go with it. I imagined a gang of former masked crusaders called out of happy retirement, reluctantly huffing and puffing their way back into action, replete with very unfunny cracks about getting fat and old, and probably with an even more unfunny getting-into-shape-a-la-*Rocky* sequence thrown in for good measure.
Michael Moore is pissed off. Not exactly a newsflash, I know, but nobody is as entertaining when he’s about to bust a gut as Moore is, so his rants are always cause for celebration. Though this may only be true if you’re predisposed to agree with the substance of his rants.
Other critics have already dragged out the $10 words to describe this film — some of the ones I’d chose myself are ‘seductive,’ ‘masterful,’ ‘majestic,’ and ‘elegant’ — and you must believe what they say because they say True Things. But the one thing that strikes me most about LOTR: FOTR, besides its seductively masterful and majestic elegance, is simply how utterly right it is.
And they don’t come much geekier or more touchstony than 1975’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail, not only damn near one of the funniest movies ever made but certainly one of the most quotable… at least for us endlessly self-referential types for whom all of life is but a never ceasing trail of opportunities to show off the ridiculous capability we have for retaining movie, computer, and science fiction trivia.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon will make you fall in love with film all over again. Instantly one of the greatest ever adventure movies, it’s also a touching, tender story of love forbidden and denied.
Is Gladiator an action movie? Is it an historical drama? Is it a sweeping epic? Yes. Like The 13th Warrior, this is a thinking person’s action movie. Like Braveheart, this is a story of a brutal era told with stunning realism. Like Terminator 2, this is a violent movie that indicts our appetite for violence. Like The Matrix, this thrills on both a visceral and cerebral level.

Honestly, I’d pay cash money to see either Liam Neeson or Ewan McGregor on his own read from the phone book, and the two of them together is almost too delicious to bear.