Movie Reviews

In the tradition of the Matrix trilogy, Inception takes on the question of “What is Reality?” This is an incredibly complex dream within a dream within a dream theme that is surprisingly coherent and detailed for such an endeavor. Leonardo De Caprio plays a dream thief of the future, an expert who steals ideas from other people’s subconscious by hacking into their dreams. Now he is asked to plant an idea in business mogul’s subconscious mind through a dreamscape that becomes increasingly complex and requires a whole team to perform. Complicating matters is Leonard’s past and his own out of control subconscious that warps into the planned dreamscapes.

Conviction

A well acted film about the true story of a convicted man’s sister’s phenomenal fight to get his murder conviction overturned by new DNA evidence. Hilary Swank does her usual excellent job as the mature soul scholar sister who becomes a lawyer to save her young sage brother. This is an excellent example of the mode of perseverance and the goal of growth working together to handle an almost impossible situation. The fact that her brother has an obstacle of self destruction makes the job even harder. The sister by the way, has an obstacle of stubbornness that at times, threatens to get in the way of her hard work.

The Grammy’s

This of course is not a film but television’s showing of the 2011 Grammy music awards. While many people have no interest in television award shows or even in popular music, they do represent what is happening in the world of creative artists, the prophets of the coming times.

Stieg Larsson’s series of three murder mystery novels and subsequent films based on the series have caused an international sensation and the interest is not diminishing but growing exponentially. So what is the fuss all about, especially since these stories involve revolting scenes of sexual abuse and violence and a heroine, Lisbeth Salander, who is seriously dysfunctional with what appears to be Asperger’s syndrome.

2003 – William H. Macy / Maria Bello: An interesting film about a sad sack server (played well by William Macy who is a server).

1999 – Jody Foster / Chow-Yun Fat: This lavish and lovely film retells the true story of a proper English schoolteacher who travels to Siam to tutor the King’s son and ends up powerfully influencing the king and falling in love with him.

1999 – Toby McGuire / Michael Caine: Toby McGuire, a mature server, plays an orphan who grows up in an under the tutelage of Michael Caine, a sage.

2000 – Parker Posey / Catherine O’hara with ensemble cast: A brilliantly cast hilarious spoof on dog shows and the dogs’ owners.