Films

A Song of Human Empathy: Reflecting on The Apu Trilogy’s Restoration

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Everything I’m going to write here pales in comparison to Roger Ebert’s great insight in that clip above. He calls movies “a machine that generates empathy.” That’s an idea that’s stuck with me for a long time and through many movies. It might not be the first thing that leaps to mind when I consider something like Mad Max, but it’s always there. No matter how poorly crafted or cynically conceived, every movie has the capacity to connect us with the experiences of others. Most of the time that’s engaged simply to get us cheering for the protagonist and jeering at the antagonist, but our capacity for empathy can go far beyond that. It can make us stare without blinking at our own awful past. It can make us consider the furthest stretches of our capacity for love and connection. Or it can make us sit down, eat some popcorn, and see a way of life that is  both utterly foreign and thoroughly recognizable. That’s exactly what I did last week when I took in the sterling 4K restoration Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy at The Music Box Theatre.

I wrote the above paragraph on the night of Tuesday, June 16th. The next night a white supremacist terrorist took nine innocent lives in Charleston, South Carolina because he hated them for their skin color. That attack has shaken me up and brought about a significant rewrite to the rest of this piece.

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Mr. Rostan at the Movies: “Inside Out” and Pixar’s Ambitions

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Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, but he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every two weeks, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

Inside Out

One of the most indelible memories of childhood moviegoing was twenty years ago, watching a cartoon the likes of which I had never seen before called Toy Story. Since that day in 1995, Pixar has given the world a gift of extraordinary all-ages films from studio chief John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, and others that have redefined both the style and substance of modern filmmaking. However, Pixar post-2010 has fallen into a rut, mostly producing films of lesser quality. Inside Out, the new feature from Docter (who also helmed Monsters, Inc. and Up), is a sign that this trend is about to change.

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The Tired Nostalgia of ‘Jurassic World’

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Image of Jurassic World poster

First of all, spoiler alert.

The Jurassic Park franchise has historically been a major draw. The original 1993 film was the largest grossing movie of all time until Titanic came along four years later. The second film, though largely sub-par when compared with the first, held the record for the largest opening weekend until 2001, when some movie about a little boy wizard came along and took over. These were original event pictures, massive draws that were required summer viewing for the young millennial generation. Dinosaurs are cool, and people love seeing dinosaurs.

That seems to be holding true for Jurassic World, the latest entry in the series. Originally forecast to make something in the vicinity of $125 million in its opening weekend, the movie made nearly that on Friday alone. Early reports have the movie taking in an opening weekend haul of $204 million, which puts it at the third best opening of all time. Meanwhile, across the world, the film took in a staggering $511 million dollars, an all time world record. People still love their dinosaurs.

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Mr. Rostan at the Movies: “When Marnie Was There” and the Studio Ghibli Legacy

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Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, but he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every two weeks, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

whenmarnieposter

Last August, one month after they released their twentieth feature film, Studio Ghibli announced they would be taking a hiatus in the wake of Hayao Miyazaki’s retirement. Miyazaki has insisted that the studio will go on without him helming features, but this did not stop many fans from fretting that one of the most exceptional production companies of all time is done for. I’m inclined to believe Miyazaki, but if Ghibli indeed shutters for good, that twentieth film, Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s When Marnie Was There, which Disney has now released in the United States, would be a beautiful and fitting finale.

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Our Month in Mad Max: Fury Road

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We here at The Addison Recorder read stuff. We also watch stuff. And play stuff, even are sort of wild about Mad Max: Fury Road. Sometimes, that stuff is interesting. Sometimes we just need to talk about whatever pop culture ephemera occupies our time Mad Max: Fury Road. Here’s some of the staff of the Recorder talking about their favorite parts of what’s shaping up to be one of the best action movies of the decade. Chrome on. Our Month in Pop Culture Mad Max: Fury Road

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How Does This Hold Up?: 10 Things I Hate About You

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How Does This Hold Up? is a series where Alex and a guest check out a movie they haven’t seen in ages or that they’ve always been meaning to watch. They’ll compare the experience of watching these movies now to when they first saw or heard of them and explore the differences there-in. [Read more…]

Mr. Rostan at the Movies: Cannes and Canon

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Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, but he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every two weeks, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

Carol

Right now, one of the largest events in the movie world is happening across the ocean. The Cannes Film Festival is where lots of deals are made for lots of schlock, but also where the world’s greatest filmmakers have long chosen to showcase their newest work. The news filtering over to America has mostly been underwhelming: snippets of The Hateful Eight and Steve Jobs apparently made no one present start talking Oscar. But some films have been getting a memorable reaction, and I’d like to highlight five that we should pay attention to in the next few months.

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Mr. Rostan at the Movies (and Music): All Or Nothing with Ol’ Blue Eyes

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Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, but he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every two weeks, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

Capitol Sinatra

His mother spoke over fifty dialects of Italian and helped neighborhood girls with abortions. His father was a barkeep who boxed under the last name O’Brien because people thought only the Irish could fight. His voice teacher was a drunk ex-opera singer who lived over a restaurant in New York. He was friends with lawbreakers and Presidents. He was a teen idol who became an institution.

Charlton Heston said at a testimonial dinner that every one of his songs sounded like a four-minute movie. Frank Sinatra, who celebrates his centennial this year (and died seventeen years ago today), had a past that fueled a lifetime of stories.

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