Ariel Melton

Others have written about this amazing film - and of course a film based on an Upton Sinclair story starring Daniel Day-Lewis has to be extraordinary, but to my mind Paul Dano was the revelation here (pun intended). It's no mean feat to meet and even surpass a Day-Lewis performance, but Dano does it. Menacing from the opening sequence, it's a twisting, turning tale of greed, narcissism, hatred, and inhumanity - with the occasional glimpse of light and kindness. Watch it.

If you want to think of it as a Japanese ghost story, that's fine, but it is more of a look deep into the souls of men and women and the sorrows and joys of each. Atmospheric, haunting (no pun intended), and completely self-contained based on stories from the 18th century writer Ueda Akinari. For a 21st century global citizen it might seem these stories were written for someone living on the Moon, they are so far from our usual realms, but the souls of these characters still resonate. Well worth an hour and a half of your time.

This is a fictional story based on the Columbine shooting. Long shots of never-quite-introduced people walking down wide, empty hallways combined are combined with tight shots of almost expressionless teenagers going about their routine high school business until two young men decide to "have fun" by committing a massacre. At first I felt negatively toward the film as I tried to guess at the motivation of the people on the screen (I can't really call them "characters") for behaving how they did, especially the young woman who refused to wear shorts to gym class. As the film went on I began to see that the point of all of the drudgery was the pointlessness of it. American kids grinding their way through the educational system with no apparent appreciation for anything left me just as cold as the shooters. Pointless lives were taken by pointless violence. This is about as nihilistic a film as I've ever seen. I can't really recommend it as a "movie", it's more of a shallow, almost voyeuristic look into the lives of people you never met... and now never can.

This film is so powerful because it depicts Bob Flanagan as a whole person, not as a masochist or as an artist or as a person with cystic fibrosis. Everyone is more than the sum of their parts and Kirby Dick shows us the person Flanagan was - surprisingly humorous, gentle, gritty, wondering. The film doesn't shy away from death or sex. To me it wasn't sensational at all, it was a true portrait of an amazing person. If you're just interested in him because of the NIN video, give it a watch and learn about the other parts of this whole, amazing person.

Atmospherics is what you expect from Zhang, and this movie takes it to an entirely new level. Special mention for Sun Li (one of my favorite actresses anyway) for showing that the 'Queen of Chinese Television' has much deeper acting skills than that implies. Not for people who like their stories all neatly wrapped up in a bow at the end. Gorgeous, striking performances, thought-provoking. Great stuff.