The Mumpsimus

Will Lasky at The House Next Door suggests that The Fall is destined to be a cult classic, and that seems right to me. It's a movie that causes viewers to split quite strongly, some feeling the film is visionary and powerful, others finding it pretentious and boring. Inevitably, as we try to tell people what we thought of the movie and what the experience of watching it is like, we compare it to other films -- The Princess Bride comes up a lot, but I think that's a bit misleading, and likely to cause dissatisfaction in a viewer who watches The Fall expecting the other film's whimsy. A closer approximation would be Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , a movie that is as full of stories-within-stories as Princess Bride and The Fall , and also shares The Fall's darker view of human motivations, attention to imagery, and sometimes messy (some might even say flabby ) narrative structure. The other particularly valid comparison, I think, is to th...

Thanksgiving is a hit-or-miss holiday for me -- I've had some wonderful ones with friends and family, but some of my favorite Thanksgivings have been ones where I've hung out on my own and taken a break from everything. This year was one of those, and a memorable one, because I decided to see two movies I was sure would be interesting to see together: I'm Not There and Across the Universe . Both films are based on the work of some of the most recognizable, revered, and influential musicians of the last fifty years: Bob Dylan for I'm Not There and The Beatles for Across the Universe -- musicians who came of age and influence at roughly the same time. Both films are helmed by idiosyncratic directors: Todd Haynes and Julie Taymor . Both films have gotten wildly divergent responses from viewers . I am far more of a Bob Dylan fan than a Beatles fan (though I did go through a bit of Beatlemania as a kid, and so most of the words to their best-known songs come immedi...