I’m Not Scared

Maybe the title resonates better in Italian, but I found it incomprehensible when I tried to fit it with the story that unfolded. A 10-year-old boy in a tiny town—hardly a town at all, just half a dozen crumbling buildings—in southern Italy in 1978 (which, I learn, was the hottest summer on record) discovers a boy his age living at the bottom of a well.

(Another thing I discovered ... Read more »

I’m Not There

I’m Not There (2007) About halfway through this “rumination on the life of Bob Dylan,” I asked myself, what would be the point of making a standard biopic about the former Mr. Zimmerman? I mean, it would be largely guesswork. No one has worked harder to be obscure in all aspects of his life, to be incoherent and stumbling in interviews to the point that we wonder, could this disheveled, ... Read more »

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

What’s the deal with Terry Gilliam? If I was a believer, I’d almost think God was out to get him. He has had more trouble getting his films made and distributed than anyone I can think of. The story of the legal fight over Brazil is legend in Hollywood. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was hardly released at all due to a regime change ... Read more »

Imaginary Heroes

A beloved son commits suicide, and a family tries to deal with it, mostly pretty badly. We’ve seen this family before, and done better, in both The Ice Storm and Ordinary People. This movie is all over the place, can’t decide what it wants to be, and I’d have given up on it but for its emotional center: Sigourney Weaver. The lady is getting better and better. The right part in a movie ... Read more »

Imagine Me and You

Imagine Me and You (2005) The Beatles sang:

“Do you believe in a love at first sight?”
“Yes I’m certain that it happens all the time.”

This movie is about love at first sight. Does it happen, or is it wishful thinking? Well, it’s never happened to me, but it happens to a woman in this film who is, literally walking down the aisle to get married, glimpses a person and ... Read more »

IMAX Space Station 3D

There’s a few of these out on DVD now. I remember seeing IMAX NASCAR 3D on the shelves. I didn’t see much point to it. Neither film is 3D on DVD, and even the biggest HDTV with the coolest home stereo isn’t going to give you 1/100 of the IMAX experience. On the other hand, this is the International Space Station, and I’d probably watch grain 8MM black ... Read more »

The Imitation Game

I think it’s really true that Alan Turing belongs in the short list of people who affected the course of WWII, right along with FDR, Churchill, Stalin (that monstrous motherfucker), Eisenhower, Yamamoto, Halsey, Montgomery, Zhukov, Patton, McArthur, and John Wayne. (Well, we would never have won without the Duke guarding the home front and dodging fake Jap bullets, would we?) And until ... Read more »

Imitation of Life

Lawsy mercy, honey chile! Ain’t it be some kinda miracle, de way colored folks has come a long way fum de way dey wuz always behavin’ in de movin’ pitchers back in de t’irties and how we sees ‘em now? Why, I do declare, it wuz dat way in de fo’ties, too, and even de fi’ties and sum into de sixties, I swan!

If I continue in that lame dialect any longer I’ll throw up. But nobody ... Read more »

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

I think Oprah Winfrey really wanted to make a good film about this incredible story, but somehow she ended up making it mostly about herself. It’s far too complicated and technical for me to detail it all here, but the short version is that cancer cells taken from Ms. Lacks in 1951 and cultured in a lab are still in use today, and though various companies and institutes have made fortunes ... Read more »