![\"cronos\"](\"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/cronos.png\" "\\"cronos\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nCronos<\/strong><\/p>\n This 1993 film from director Guillermo del Toro is a bit of a \u201cvampire origin\u201d story. An old man stumbles upon a \u201cCronos\u201d device, an immortal-insect powered machine made by a 16th century alchemist. When someone uses the device by filtering his blood through it, he becomes immortal, and quite vampire-like (he wants to drink blood and stay out of sunlight, for example). It\u2019s classified as a \u201chorror\u201d movie for its definite horror elements and visuals, but at its heart, like del Toro\u2019s Pan\u2019s Labyrinth<\/em>, it is really a fantastical drama; the horror elements are not there simply for their own sake. Fun movie, even while some of the visuals were definitely quite repulsive.<\/p>\n Blade Runner: The Final Cut<\/strong><\/p>\n I had never seen this 1982 Ridley Scott sci-fi film all the way through before, and the pieces I\u2019d seen on TV were from the theatrical \u201cnarrated\u201d version which I couldn\u2019t stand. The narration was poorly written, poorly performed, unneeded drivel. So I was happy they made a version without the narration. It\u2019s certainly a visually stunning film, a very engaging world of night with smoke and rain and neon signs. The pre-CGI special effects are remarkable. Unfortunately the story itself was too loose for me; Deckard, as performed by Harrison Ford, needed more personality and drive for his replicant-murder quest. And the theme of wondering what it means to be human by pondering the nature of replicants is just not a very interesting philosophical question to me; I\u2019ve already thought about it too much myself for such a film to engage me with such philosophical predicaments. But I can understand why the film seems so iconic.<\/p>\n The Human Condition \u2013 No Greater Love<\/strong><\/p>\n This 1959 Japanese film is the first installment of an epic trilogy (based on Japanese novels) directed by Masaki Kobayashi. This first film tells the tale of Kaji who is sent to supervise a prison camp where prisoners are forced to work in mines. Kaji works to overturn the injustice he finds there, but meets very few who agree with his moral positions. The roller coaster of drama often makes the 3-hour film feel more like a TV miniseries than a self-contained story, but it is fantastic. A great story with great acting and constantly gripping conflict.<\/p>\n Ivan\u2019s Childhood<\/strong><\/p>\n This 1962 tragic Soviet film from director Andrei Tarkovsky tells the story of a child named Ivan (who woulda thunk?) who is orphaned by the tragedies of World War 2 and can no longer stand to merely wait on the sidelines. So he joins Soviet army doing reconnaissance missions as they battle the Germans. The film features great cinematographic composition, great use of sound (when the sounds and visuals don\u2019t match, but you can tell what the film is \u201csaying\u201d), and great acting. The story seemed rather sparse to me, which can sometimes be disconcerting for my American-ized tastes, but I think it was purposefully done in this case in the effort of making the film seem more like a bundle of distant childhood memories than a clear-cut this-then-that sequence of events, and from that point of view it is successful.<\/p>\n The Pirates: Band of Misfits<\/strong><\/p>\n This 2012 animated feature from Aardman Animations provided some great light-hearted fare after watching those somewhat depressing black-and-white war films. A glimpse at some non-CGI animation was also quite refreshing, as characters do not move and arc through their motions in the quite the same way. I love the way stop-motion can feel so much more tangible than CGI, like toys come to life. While the story itself was a bit too<\/em> light-hearted for me (The Pirate Captain wants to win the \u201cPirate of the Year\u201d award \u2013 don\u2019t mind me if I can\u2019t quite relate to the gripping conflict that implies), I loved the wild ridiculous humor of it all, and the storytellers did form a well-structured cohesive story out of it. I had feared the humor would be too cheesy and childish for me. Some of it was, but some of it was hilarious, and I found myself laughing out loud. (Though the row of seven or eight children behind me did have some pre-show commentary, such as \u201cThe movie is starting!\u201d, I became too engaged in the story of the Pirate Captain to notice whether or not they laughed at all.) (And I had to laugh at how they changed the \u201cleper-boat\u201d joke to a \u201cplague-boat\u201d (with obvious lepers) joke. Because you don\u2019t want to offend lepers in a stop-motion film. Heaven forbid children grow up to be anti-leper, having been encouraged by their youthful watchings of an otherwise harmless animated pirate movie!) Overall, quite a fun movie.<\/p>\n Spartacus<\/strong><\/p>\n The classic 1960 film from Stanley Kubrick of course tells the tale of the slave Spartacus as he leads an unsuccessfully slave rebellion in the days of ancient Rome. Despite some rather cheesy fight scenes, love scenes (characters might as well have just said: \u201cYou can tell how much I love you by the background music and the twinkle in my eye!\u201d), and effects (bright red paint = blood), the story was great and I highly enjoyed it. One of the ending scenes very much reminded me of an ending scene in the book The Hunger Games<\/em>, but seemed much more authentic in how the characters ultimately responded. Great film.<\/p>\n The Human Condition \u2013 Road to Eternity<\/strong><\/p>\n Kaji\u2019s adventures (if they can be called such) continue in this second film from the aforementioned trilogy. In this film, Kaji is sent to join the army itself. If he thought things were bad in the prison camp, the army isn\u2019t much better. This one reminded me a bit of Kubrick\u2019s Full Metal Jacket<\/em>, in how superiors sometimes treat soldiers so inhumanly and slave-like, it is a wonder any war was able to be fought at all. I don\u2019t know my history, so I don\u2019t know how much these movies compare to their real-world counterparts, but in terms of questioning the moral obligations of a man in such situations in the context of a story, this film (not Kubrick\u2019s film) does a great job. Great film.<\/p>\n Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind<\/strong><\/p>\n Another animated film from Studio Ghibli and director Hayao Miyazaki, this one from 1984. This film tells the story of Nausicaa (which looks too much like the English word \u201cnauseous\u201d to me), who is the happy and well-loved princess of a happy community living in the \u201cValley of the Wind.\u201d The princess and her happy people live in a world full of evil toxic chemicals that have made certain areas of the world toxic. Invaders invade the valley, seeking to grow a biological weapon (a \u201cgiant warrior\u201d) in their valley which they hope will destroy the toxicity with fire most powerful, but what if it does more harm than good? Who will save the day? A pretty princess! Overall, this one left me scratching my head. I didn\u2019t understand characters\u2019 motivations, the overall plot seemed too all-over-the-place, and I tend to be annoyed with unauthentic depictions of young royalty being so naturally well-loved by royal subjects. The depiction of believable fantasy cultures, however, was quite fun.<\/p>\n Road to Perdition<\/strong><\/p>\n This 2002 crime film from director Sam Mendes takes place in the 1930s. It tells the story of Mike Sullivan (an Italian \u2013 just kidding) who works for a mob boss. When his mobbish ways indirectly get his wife and son killed, he and his surviving son set out for justice\/revenge. (Not sure the line between the two is very easy to distinguish when both parties have already denied certain moral standards.) A tragic but great film with a wonderful score by Thomas Newman and incredible cinematography by the late master Conrad Hall (who won an Oscar for it). I had heard someone describe the film by saying \u201cevery scene is like a painting\u201d and it\u2019s true. I especially love the scene in which Mike\u2019s son (Mike Sullivan junior) is spying on his father through a hole near the floor and we watch the scene play out from his perspective. And the scene in which Jude Law\u2019s character is walking towards the camera and the camera moves closer and zooms out creating the effect of the world warping around him (opposite of the camera moving away and zooming in, popularly used in Goodfellas<\/em>). And the scene is which it\u2019s dark and wet and rainy and we still see wonderfully defined silhouettes of mob men as they walk to a dark car before meeting their dark fates. Worth watching for the cinematography alone. Great film.<\/p>\n Once Upon a Time \u2013 Season 1<\/strong><\/p>\n Not a movie, but I put TV seasons in here too. Once Upon a Time<\/em> tells the story of Disney-fied fairy tale characters who are somehow \u201ccursed\u201d into the modern world in an act of revenge, and the only one who can break the spell is Miss Swan. (Not the MADtv character, which would\u2019ve been more interesting.) I\u2019m not really a fan of \u201cfairy tales in the modern world!\u201d concept, as I don\u2019t think retelling a story in a different setting is at all creative, but fortunately Once Upon a Time<\/em> doesn\u2019t quite do that; it simply remakes the fairy tale characters into modern counterparts. I still found the writing to be a bit too simple, but it seems to be a much more family-oriented show than anything else on TV at that timeslot on a major network. Disney versions of fairy tales always seem to have something annoyingly unauthentic about them, and the romances in Once Upon a Time<\/em> are no different. Still, I find it very interesting to see the storytellers playing with the fantastical elements they\u2019d probably otherwise stay away from; like the cancelled fantasy show Legend of the Seeker<\/em>, I find these shows inspiring from a storytelling point of view; for me, there are often little nuggets of ideas my story-plotting mind can play with, even if the stories I steal them from aren\u2019t completely engaging. You know what I mean? So I\u2019ll keep watching for Season 2.<\/p>\n Fringe \u2013 Season 4<\/strong><\/p>\n This season of Fringe<\/em> was not quite as strong as previous seasons have been, but I think it\u2019s because the producers made the over-arching story too complicated and are now trying to answer questions before the series ends with Season 5. I appreciate that they\u2019re trying to answer questions before it\u2019s too late, but I wish they wouldn\u2019t have made the over-arching story so complicated to begin with. Now they are paying the price. It\u2019ll be interesting to see how the series ends, but I think Season 3 was the overall strongest so far (though that animated episode from Season 3 was absolutely awful).<\/p>\n House \u2013 Season 8<\/strong><\/p>\n I will miss House<\/em>. The last season managed to stay strong despite Cuddy disappearing. I didn\u2019t much care for the final episode. It was nice to get the dead characters back, but in the end they raised the stakes so high that the final \u201cjoke\u201d was just yawn-inducing. Overall, though, great season, great series.<\/p>\n Judgment at Nuremberg<\/strong><\/p>\n This 1961 film directed by Stanley Kramer tells the story of judge Dan Haywood (played by Spencer Tracy) who travels to Germany after the fall of the Nazi regime to act as a judge in the Nuremberg trials, meant to judge the German judges for crimes against humanity during the Nazi regime. The film does not try to show how and why racism and the Holocaust were evil (we all know that). Rather, the film lets us question the role of these German judges. We know they weren\u2019t saints, but they didn\u2019t directly even know about the Holocaust themselves, so were they that bad? How bad were they? For a moment, I was half-afraid the judge was going to make the wrong decision. Great film. I especially loved the last lines. Ernst Janning was one of the judges on trial. He begs Haywood, the judge, to believe him when he says he didn\u2019t realize so many millions of people would be killed:<\/p>\n Ernst Janning<\/b>: Judge Haywood… the reason I asked you to come: Those people, those millions of people… I never knew it would come to that. You must<\/em> believe it, you must<\/em> believe it! The French Connection<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m tempted to say the real \u201cFrench connection\u201d was the influence of that handheld camera look that was popular with French filmmakers near that time, but it was based on a book, so probably not. Anyway, this 1971 crime film tells the true (but fictionalized) story of two police men who uncover and stop a large drug smuggling. Fun movie, especially with its famous car chase scene (the end of which is completely given away in the film’s iconic poster).<\/p>\n Contraband<\/strong><\/p>\n This 2012 film starring Mark Wahlberg tells the story of a ex-drug-smuggler who\u2019s forced back into the world of smuggling to get his family out of danger (which his brother-in-law\u2019s crimes have put them in). Fun movie.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n\n
Judge Dan Haywood<\/b>: Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n