964 Pinocchio (Japan, 1991)

Nine Things About the Film 964 Pinocchio

1. This is considered to be a cyberpunk film. I personally wouldn't call it cyberpunk - it's unclassifiable. But cyberpunk is the closest genre to whatever this movie is.

2. It's usually compared to Shinya Tsukamoto's revolutionary cyberpunk classic "Tetsuo: The Iron Man". "964 Pinocchio" isn't very much like "Tetsuo", except in its visual style. It's a very kinetic and speed-edited, unexplainable film.

3. It's about a male sex slave named 964 Pinocchio who can't keep an erection, so his mind is wiped and he is thrown onto the streets. He is found by a girl named Himiko, who has her own memory problems and is trying to make a map of the entire city. Himiko goes crazy, imprisons Pinocchio and begins tormenting him. Meanwhile, the corporation that makes the sex slaves decides they better go find Pinocchio. Then things get weird.

4. Some of the scenes in the film are very creative and unique. There are surreal images and sequences that hit deep parts in you. Some of the scenes in the film are really dumb, and remind me of drugged-out college students trying to make performance art, or are trying to be shocking just to be shocking.

5. It took me awhile to recognize that this movie is kind of a twisted retelling of some of the themes in the actual Pinocchio story.

6. The girl that plays Himiko is not a very good actress. But in a movie like this, I don't suppose it matters much.

7. This movie probably has the longest vomit scene of any movie I've watched.

8. People scream a lot in this movie, and yell at each other. That might be part of the reason why the alternate title for this film is "Screams of Blasphemy".

9. This isn't a great film, but for those people who enjoy cyberpunk, or who like films that explore the edges of both cinema and reality, it's definitely worth watching.  Just don't expect to really understand it.

Under the Skin (United Kingdom, 2014)

Nine Things About the Movie Under the Skin


1. This is surely the strangest, most beautifully baffling film of 2014. It's visually poetic, existentially stunning, and impossible to describe.  I think it's brilliant and scary, though I don't know why. This is art that cuts below conscious thought and messes around inside you on the human level. It either speaks to you, or it doesn't; it has nothing to do with your intelligence.

2. It kind of has a plot. Scarlett Johansson plays a woman with the personality of an insect who wanders around Scotland, picking up solo men, and... makes things happen to them.

3. The movie is so abstract that it can be interpreted in multiple ways. I think it's supposed to be about some kind of inter-dimensional vampire alien thing. But this is not an action science fiction movie.

4. The movie could also be about a primitive force of nature that both distracts and consumes humanity.

5. Or it could be about the predatory nature of humans, and how men differ from women in what they're after.

6. There's relatively little dialogue in the movie - most of it is visual.  None of the characters even have names. Most of the characters were played by non-actors, and when they do talk, it was mostly unscripted.

7. The scene with Adam Pearson, the guy with neurofibromatosis in real life, stops you cold with its depiction of the unutterable, lonely intimacy of human relations.

8. This is a complete, perfect package of a film. From the surreal acting to the entrancing visuals, and the hauntingly unnerving soundtrack, you either take the whole thing or reject the whole thing.

9. I'm still not sure if the ending is happy or sad. Or if it even matters.

Enemy (Canada, Spain, 2014)

Nine Things About the Movie Enemy

1. This is one of the only films in my life that actually gave me nightmares. And it's technically not even a horror movie.

2. It's about a neurotic, semi-depressed college professor, stuck in a routine life. When he sees a movie with an actor that looks just like him, he becomes obsessed with meeting his double.

3. From there the movie veers off into very surreal territory, and begins to fold over itself in unexpected and confusing ways.

4. Jake Gyllenhaal plays both the teacher and the actor. While they look identical, you can technically tell them apart because one of them wears a wedding ring. However, Gyllenhaal's two performances are so strong that he actually seems to be two actors. The two characters are so well delineated that you can tell just from Gyllenhall's body language and speech patterns which person he is.

5. There is a real, masterful sense of creeping dread and menace that builds relentlessly to the final scene.

6. Oh, and about that final scene. I don't care how good you are at predicting movies - you will not see this ending coming. And then either your soul will jump in frustrated horror, or you will start the movie over again. Or both.

7. There are a lot of really short scenes that last only a few seconds - or short segments of longer scenes - that provide some clues as to what's really going on. You won't realize their significance the first time you watch the movie.

8. The opening epigraph of the film is a quote from the novel on which the movie is based: "Chaos is order yet undefined". It not only sets the tone for the film, but provides the key for at least one of the film's possible meanings.

9. Part thriller, part allegory, part existential nightmare, this is perhaps the most brilliant and inscrutable movie of 2014.

The Fountain [USA, 2006]

Nine Things about the Film The Fountain

1. This movie is about a Hugh Jackman traveling through space in a giant snowglobe, talking to a tree and tattooing himself when he’s not meditating.

2. No, actually the movie is about Hugh Jackman playing a renegade cancer researcher who ignores his dying wife and loses his wedding ring.

3. Ok, seriously, the movie is really about Hugh Jackman in the role of a Spanish conquistador looking for the Biblical Tree of Life inside a Mayan pyramid.

4. Director Darren Aronofsky wove these three storylines together, spanning 1000 years, in a hypnotic, gorgeous allegory wrapped in metaphor and myth. Of course, it was a box office flop.

5. The movie does start out very confusing. And if you can’t maintain attention to it, it will remain confusing. But if you make the connections between the storylines, patterns begin to emerge. Aronofsky has called this movie a Rubik’s Cube, which has only one solution… although you can get to it in different ways.

6. The movie is about death. Specifically, it’s a conflict of perspectives about death. Either “death is a disease”, or “death is the road to awe”.

7. From the millenium-spanning, continent-crossing, religion-blending stories, it all ends up centering on a man afraid of the fact that he’s going to die.

8. I think this is Hugh Jackman’s best performance.

9.This is a hallucinatory. philosophical experience that many people will find frustrating for reasons they can’t quite explain. But for those people who can get on the movie’s wavelength, Aronofsky uncovers some core psychospiritual concepts that dwell hidden within each one of us.

Wild at Heart [USA, 1990]

Nine Things About the Movie Wild at Heart

1. David Lynch is my favorite director. “Wild at Heart” is my least favorite of his films. The movie is still good, but Lynch seems to be forcing things together that don’t really mesh..

2. This is a darkly comic, punk-rock riff on the American Dream. It is Lynch’s funniest film, and has the most quotable lines. Of course, funny is relative with Lynch.

3. The core plot is about Lula and Sailor, two young people in love who are on an “us against the world” road trip. Lula’s insane mother sends her boyfriend off to kill Sailor, and then a hitman off to kill her boyfriend.

4. There are many references to “The Wizard of Oz” throughout the movie, except the ruby slippers don’t work, and you can break down on the yellow brick road, so you have to wander off into the wild. Or small-town Texas.

5. Lula, played by Laura Dern, is the Dorothy character - if Dorothy was raped as a girl and turned into an oversexed chainsmoker that falls for bad boys. Dern’s real-life mother, Diane Lane, is the Wicked Witch character - if the Wicked Witch was a codependent alcoholic with rage issues.

6. Nicolas Cage plays Sailor, a thief and killer who has an Elvis obsession. And Willem Dafoe steals every scene he’s in as a creepy sleazoid. A lot of the rest of the cast comes from Lynch’s other projects, “Blue Velvet” and “Twin Peaks”.

7. The movie is incredibly over the top. Everyone overacts their characters, but in such a specific way that it forms a complete tapestry.

8. There are plenty of Lynch’s trademark visual and verbal non-sequiturs that may or may not make sense, and that you may or may not like.

9. There are several awesome scenes in this movie, and it did win some awards. I really like it, but I can’t help feeling that it is missing some unnameable key ingredient that his other films have.

The New World [USA, Britain, 2005]

Nine Things about the Movie The New World

1. The thing about Terrence Malick is that you are either a fan or you are not. He has made 6 films in 40 years, each covering a different time in American History. But in a sense, Malick has really only made one film - and he’s made it six times. His movies are always basically about the incomprehensibility of the world and our place in it. One could even go so far as to say he doesn’t make movies - he films philosophical poems. And he doesn’t seem to care if anybody understands him. Needless to say, I am a fan.

2. This movie, his fourth, has all his trademarks. It’s full of quiet voiceovers, poetic musings, and images that don’t match the plot. It is gorgeous, lyric, and breathtaking. The soundtrack is hypnotic. Malick once again proves he is a visionary, infusing the mundane with the sublime in ways that cannot be described in words.

3. This movie is Malick’s account of America’s beginning - the founding of Jamestown, and the story of Pocahontas. The surface plot of the movie is not complicated: British settlers come to America, and meet the local natives. Captain John Smith falls in love with one of them, and the cultures clash as they try to work out their differences.
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4. But the movie is three hours long. It doesn’t take three hours to tell the story of Pocahontas. That’s because America’s origin story is fertile ground for Malick to ask the Big Questions, even though we will obviously never get the answers. This movie might be the most philosophically challenging of all his films. And that’s saying a lot.

5. The movie asks questions about religion. What is God? One group of people calls God “Father”. The other group calls God “Mother”. How does one’s religion shape the way you see and treat the world?

6. The movie asks questions about love. What is love? Why is it so intense and uncontrollable?
If it’s true that God is love, or that love is truth, then what does it mean when the person you love does not love you back? What does it mean when love goes away entirely?

7. The movie is itself a metaphor for the battles inside one’s own soul. It’s an illustration of how we can never really know any other person - maybe not even ourselves.

8. Predictably, the movie was a box office flop. Audiences (and some critics) were confused, bored, and frustrated. It was given credit for being historically accurate in it’s setting, but disliked for being a complete myth in it’s story. And yet, other critics defended it fiercely. It was even proclaimed by some people to be the best movie of the 2000’s.

9. If you are looking for a historical adventure romance, this movie is way too long and boring to be useful. If you aren’t familiar with his work, but want to give him a shot, this may not be the best movie to start with. However, if you can connect with what Malick is trying to say, this movie becomes a vital, challenging, fundamental study of what it means to be alive.

The Thin Red Line [USA, 1998]

Nine Things about the Movie The Thin Red Line

1. I first saw this film about the year 2000. I wasn’t ready for it. All I remember thinking is, “this is the strangest and most beautiful war movie I’ve ever seen.” I had just discovered director Terrence Malick without realizing it.

2. I need to make a clarification. This is actually the strangest and most beautiful ant-war movie I’ve ever seen.

3. I’ve seen plenty of movies that show the physical and mental trauma of war. This is the most powerful depiction of the emotional and existential trauma of war that I’ve ever seen.

4. The actual plot of the movie involves one of the key battles of Guadalcanal in World War II. But it’s really about the inner monologues of soldiers talking about death, existence, and God.

5. The cast itself is strange and eclectic, containing performances from John Cusack, Jared Leto, Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly, Nick Stahl, George Clooney, and John Travolta, among others. Some of them only really appear for death scenes. There were also stars who were filmed and then cut out of the movie.

6. Sean Penn gives a wonderful performance as a sergeant who wishes he didn’t care about anything. Nick Nolte is awesome as a political and cowardly colonel. Adrien Brody is in one of the shortest and most memorable scenes, when his crew discovers a dead soldier. And it should have been obvious from Jim Caviezel’s role that 16 years later he would play Jesus on film.

7. There is a lot of physical violence in the film. But the real damage is dealt to the characters that live.

8. The title of the film does not become clear from the movie itself. It’s actually from a Kipling poem that calls foot soldiers “the thin red line of heroes.”

9. This is a gorgeous, profound film that a lot of people don’t like. It uses war against itself to show the savagery - and the humanity - of violence.

As I Lay Dying [USA, 2013]

Nine Things about the Movie As I Lay Dying
1. I was in college the first time I read Faulkner’s mysterious, profound, stream-of-consciousness novel “As I Lay Dying”. It blew my mind. I didn’t know people could write like that. I also agreed with the general consensus that it was one of those books that could never be made into a movie.

2. James Franco took on the challenge to make it into a movie. So with a fellow student, Matt Rager, he turned the book into a script. Then he directed it and starred in it, as well.

3. It’s about a Mississippi family in 1930 that is nearly destroyed - mentally, physically, and emotionally - while on a trek to bury their dead mother.

4. In order to capture the unique and difficult style of the book, the film often breaks up into a split-screen form, with the same scene playing from different angles or different times. Sometimes there are two separate scenes playing simultaneously. There are a lot of voiceovers. It uses a lot of Faulkner’s actual writing.

5. Yes, the coffin is built on a bevel. Vardaman's mother is a fish.

6. While Franco is technically the star, and plays Darl (probably the biggest character in the book), this is truly an ensemble cast. The most memorable performance is from Tim Blake Nelson, who plays Anse, the hopeless, luckless, toothless father. His performance is mesmerising.

7. Even though the movie is American, you will probably need to turn the subtitles on, since the dialogue is spoken in an uneducated Southern drawl.

8. The studio that made the movie decided not to release it in theaters.

9. I don’t use the word “masterpiece” very often, but this is one. In it’s own way, it is as mysterious and profound as the novel itself, while also making it (slightly) more accessible.

And you can say what you want about James Franco, but he continues to be one of the only true artists around that can bring unique visions to cinematic reality.

Apocalypse Now Redux [USA, 2001]

Nine Things about the Movie Apocalypse Now Redux
1. I saw “Apocaypse Now” for the first time when I was in college. And I didn’t totally get it.
I understood it intelletually, but I didn’t totally get it.

2.It was made in 1979. But in 2001, director Francis Ford Coppola did a complete re-edit of the film, and he added in almost an hour of footage that was cut from the original version.
Now I get it.

3. If the saying is true that “war is hell”,then this is the tourist route. It’s a gonzo, trippy, epic Vietnam war masterpiece. I don’t even know how this movie got made.

4. It’s about an ex-soldier named Benjamin Willard, that obviously suffers from PTSD. He talks about his disastrous attempt to regain his old life, only to return to Vietnam to hunt down a renegade colonel named Walter Kurtz, and kill him.

5. Most of the movie chronicles Willard’s experiences before he even finds Kurtz.

6. The picture of Vietnam that is shown to us is of a morally desolate landscape where no-one is usually in charge. If someone is in charge, they are insane.

7. Vietnam is a place where sex is negotiated for gasoline, soldiers take acid to make their tour more enjoyable, and special forces soldiers become gods.

8. The cast of the movie contains many actors who were famous at the time, and some that would become famous later - like Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall, Lawrence Fishburne, and Dennis Hopper.

9. Vietnam was a unique chapter in American history. “Apocalypse Now Redux” is a unique, depressing, insane chapter in American cinema. Love it or hate it, you won’t forget it.

Berberian Sound Studio [Britain, 2012]

Nine Things about the Movie Berberian Sound Studio

1.This mindbender is a movie about making a movie. It’s partly a drama, and partly a tribute to the giallo films of the 1970’s. It’s by a fairly new director, Peter Strickland.

2. It’s about a shy, introverted foley artist (that’s the guy in charge of sound effects in movies) named Gilderoy that makes a trip to Italy to work on a film that he thinks is about horses. Gilderoy discovers the movie is actually a horror movie, and he is responsible for making the torture and killing scenes sound realistic. This does not sit well with the more peaceful nature of Gilderoy, and he has trouble doing it.

3. The producer and director of the horror film are rude, egotistical, and sexist. Their behavior gets progressively worse. The horror scenes get more extreme. Gilderoy is feeling more stressed and uncomfortable. 

4. Eventually, his reality begins to crack. He starts to become detached, and the boundaries of his life get fuzzy. And then, well, it’s hard to explain what happens next. He seems to slowly become fictionalized. His life transforms, in bits and pieces, into the movie he’s working on. I think.

5. While the movie being made is a horror film, we never see any of it.The director of the real film, Strickland, reverses everything. Instead of seeing the various tortures and murders being depicted, we just witness the ways in which the various sounds of it are created. This makes the movie quite educational.

6. Fans of 1970’s Italian giallo directors like Argento and Fulci will appreciate the camera work and the soundtrack of this movie (and the one in it).

7. As you might suspect, this movie is all about the sound. Pay attention to how and when sound is created, used, and repeated. They provide one of the few clues to what is actually going on.

8. It’s hard to say if the movie actually means anything, or if it is just a “Twilight Zone”-ish head scratcher. If Strickland is trying to say something deeper about movies, or life, or whatever, it probably comes from the fact that the killers in giallo films stereotypically wore black gloves and a trenchcoat. Look for where that shows up in this film.

9. This is an impressive film for the director, who had only made one film before this, with his uncle’s inheritance money. It’s a creative, strange tale of movies and madness. And lots of garden vegetables.

Nymphomaniac [Denmark, 2013]

Nine Things about the Movie Nymphomaniac

1. This is the third film Lars von Trier’s Depression Trilogy, after Antichrist and Melancholia. It’s a 4-hour movie that was released in theaters in two parts. The original version is over 5 hours long, but, as of the time of this writing, has never been released anywhere. It’s the most straightforward and easily understood of the three films, but it still requires focus, stamina, and an open mind.

2. While all three films can be seen as stand-alone films, they should be seen in order, as “Nymphomaniac” shares the casts of the first two movies, and brings the themes full circle. There are several explicit references to “Antichrist” in this movie.

3. Charlotte Gainsbourg returns once again in the third episode, exposing herself in new and humiliating ways. This time, she plays a sex addict that is found beaten in the street by a kindly, intellectual old man who brings her home. She tells her life story to him.

4. The movie makes the claim that sexuality is the single most powerful force in a person’s life. As a consequence, this is an extremely sexually graphic movie - all of the main actors had to employ body doubles (which means porn stars) when filming the actual sex scenes.

5. In this movie, sex is described not only literally, but also in metaphors. Music, fishing, mathematics, delirium, religion, and systemic violence are some of the perspectives through which the movie looks at sex.

6. Von Trier deconstructs sex and love and shows that they are really manifestations of loneliness, emptiness, and meaninglessness. They are sometimes useful distractions, and sometimes destructive forces, in a random and coincidental world that cares nothing for us.

7. The anti-woman themes that many people see in “Antichrist” are explored and expanded in this film, which is a raw and anguished cry of a woman’s struggle with her natural power.

8. The acting in this movie is uniformly good; Shia LaBoeuf does a great job (although his accent sucks), and Uma Thurman delivers a jaw-dropping performance of an abandoned wife. But Jamie Bell almost steals the whole movie in his portrayal of a sadistic man offering his services to discerning women.

9. This movie is a long, angry look at the hypocrisies and social inheritances in modern life. I would hesitate to recommend this movie (or the other two films in the trilogy, for that matter) to anyone who has never experienced Lars von Trier before. But for those that are ready for this scorching, sexual, existential howl, it’s a fascinating conclusion to a remarkable trilogy.

WARNING: This trailer is NSFW.

Melancholia [Denmark, 2011]

Nine Things about the Movie Melancholia

1.This extraordinary film is the second in director Lars von Trier’s Depression Trilogy, after “Antichrist”. It’s not a sequel, it is a companion film. It examines similar themes, although this time in a science fiction genre. This movie is not as extreme as “Antichrist”, and is easier to understand. But that doesn’t mean this movie is a walk in the park. After all, it is Lars von Trier.

2. Von Trier wrote the movie based on a depressive episode he actually had, and the insight that depressed people tend to be more calm in situations of high pressure - because they are already prepared for the worst result.

3. The opening sequence of the film is a breathtakingly beautiful, surreal montage of scenes that represent themes explained during the course of the film. These scenes are juxtaposed with images of the destruction of the Earth as another planet collides into it.

4. The first half of the movie takes place at a wedding reception for Justine and Michael at a secluded country estate. The reception slowly unravels, partly because so many attendees make the evening about themselves. But the main problem is that Justine suffers from a debilitating depression, and is unable to hold herself together.

5. The second half of the movie takes place at the same country estate, shortly after the wedding. Justine is living there with her sister Claire and Claire’s family. A rogue planet, aptly named Melancholia, is making a near approach to Earth.

6. Claire is terrified that the planet will hit Earth. Her husband tries to convince her that the planet will miss Earth. Justine is calm in her knowledge that Melancholia will actually destroy our planet.

7. Charlotte Gainsbourg, who starred in “Antichrist”, plays Claire here. Her two roles in these movies make fascinating counterpoints. Kirsten Dunst almost burns a hole through the screen in her portrayal of Justine. It might be her best performance ever.

8. Von Trier wasn’t concerned with making the collision of the two planets scientifically realistic - his point was to illustrate the behavior of the human psyche under extreme circumstances.

9. This movie is a gorgeous, intimate apocalypse. Von Trier is telling us that whether it’s a brain problem or a cosmic one, we are all alone in this universe. Nothing we do ultimately matters, and we’re all helpless to control our own fate. We are just thrown around by forces greater than us until we die. But it’s still beautiful.

If that’s not a message you want to hear, then you should stay away from this movie.

Antichrist [Denmark, 2009]

Nine Things about the Movie Antichrist

1.This is the first film in director Lars von Trier’s remarkable “Depression Trilogy”. I had to watch it twice to really start unpacking it enough so that I could start writing my thoughts about it.

2. It’s not really about the Antichrist. At least, not as most people think of it.

3. The “Prologue” is one of the most gorgeously tragic and sexually explicit opening sequences in film history.

4. It’s about a therapist and his wife whose child has died. The wife is undergoing extreme grief over the loss, and her husband tries to help her by taking her to a secluded cabin in the woods. Once they get to the cabin, he starts getting visions of things like foxes eating themselves. She thinks the ground burns her feet. It just gets worse from there.

5. The cinematography is entrancing, trippy, and gorgeous. The soundtrack is surreal and disconcerting.

6. Nick is the only named character in the movie, and he’s dead five minutes into the film. The husband and wife (played by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsborg) are never given names. In fact, every other person in the movie actually has their faces blurred out.

7. This film is an examination of many things - death, grief, internalized misogyny, the evil of human nature, and the meaninglessness of everything. It requires a lot of reflection to make sense of what’s actually going on. Von Trier does not make easy movies.

8. This movie was quite controversial when it was made because of it’s extreme sexual imagery and violence. A few scenes were filmed with porn stars taking the place of the main actors.

9. This movie is definitely not for everyone. It’s a difficult, brave, important, psychosexual nuclear bomb. It’s not a horror film, but it uses horror movie conventions to make the point that the real horror is life itself… and maybe our own souls.

Charlie Countryman (Romania, 2013)

Nine Things about the Movie Charlie Countryman

1. The original title of the movie (and the title that appears onscreen) is “The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman”.

2. For some reason, mainstream critics tore this movie apart, perhaps because it denies easy classification. I don’t know. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t deserve the hate that was heaped on it.

3. It’s kind of a violent, drug-fueled, romantic drama wrapped in magical realism.

4. Shia LaBeouf stars in it, and I think this may be his best performance ever. LaBoeuf plays Charlie, a depressed young man who has a tendency to talk to people even after they’re dead.

5. Charlie’s dead mother tells him to take a trip to Bucharest, where he meets a cello player with a dead father and a psychotic husband. Charlie falls in love with her, and he gets drawn into her problems.

6. The guy that played Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter movies, Rupert Grint, does a good job here playing an over-eager druggie. He’s definitely not at Hogwarts anymore.

7. The movie is bafflingly good at capturing that “damn-the-consequences-I’m-in-love” feeling that young people tend to fall into.

8. The soundtrack fits the movie perfectly. The original score meshes well with tracks from Moby and M83 to keep the slightly hallucinatory, dreamy atmosphere going through the whole film.

9. The ending wraps everything up a little too neatly, but this is an oddly beautiful film that needs to be better appreciated.

General Orders No. 9 [USA, 2011]

Nine Things about the Movie General Orders No. 9

1. This mysterious, beautiful film is literally unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

2. Full of ambiguous, almost archetypal images, it seems to have about as many interpretations as viewers. This guarantees that some people will find the movie boring.

3. It starts out like an experimental documentary about Georgia. But it’s not.

4. Then it seems like one of those “people are bad, nature is good” statements. But it’s not.

5. It’s a poem about change.

6. It’s a meditation on the order of things.

7. It’s a prayer of a broken person.

8. It’s a bitter acknowledgment of loss.

9. It’s a surrender.

her [USA, 2013]

Nine Things About the Movie her

1. This movie is a complex, poetic work of genius. And I NEVER use the word 'genius'.

2. WARNING: This is not really a love story. At least, not in the way you think. Made by Spike Jonze (who also did “Being John Malkovich” and “Where the Wild Things Are”) it’s a science fiction philosophical romantic character drama fable with a transhumanist twist. It’s funny and sad and happy and melancholy.

3. It’s about an introverted, heartbroken man named Theodore who works for a website that writes personal letters for other people. Theodore buys a new artificial intelligence operating system for his computer. Then he falls in love with it.

4. The operating system evolves and grows and starts to fall in love with Theodore, too. Well, sort of.

5. This is a movie about ideas much more than actions. Characters in the movie aren’t really characters, but perspectives on topics. Long stretches of the movie consist of nothing more than Theodore talking to his computer.

6. People that are not engaging with the ideas in this movie, or who can’t connect with its pacing, will find this movie really slow and boring.

7. The movie openly acknowledges the contradictions of advanced technology and human relationships. Jonze shows us a world where technology has freed us to connect with other people, no matter what our private fetishes are – even at the expense of isolating ourselves from most other people. By embracing these contradictions and refusing to take a stand, the movie offers a new definition of connection and intimacy.

8. Always a visual poet, Jonze uses many nonverbal cues to shine a light into the characters' interior lives.

9. There are so many ideas and concepts that overlap and interconnect with each other throughout the movie that it will require multiple viewings to let them all sink in.

Cool World [USA, 1992]

Nine Things about Cool World 

1. This is a silly, creepy, and creative movie by Ralph Bakshi. Since it’s a Bakshi film, you know it will have two things: cartoons and sex.

2. In this case it’s about cartoons that have sex with humans.

3. It turns out that our universe, the Real World, is right next to a cartoon universe, the Cool World. Over there, cartoons are called doodles and humans are called noids.

4. Brad Pitt plays a WWII vet that randomly gets sucked into the Cool World and becomes a cop to stop noids and doodles from having sex.

5. Kim Basinger plays a slutty doodle named Holly Would who wants to have sex with a noid. If she orgasms, she will turn real. No real reason is given for why. Hell, no real reason is given for anything in this movie.

6. Bakshi originally wanted to make a horror movie about a guy that has sex with a cartoon, and makes a deformed baby that wants to kill him. But the movie studio secretly hired the guy that made the “Friday the 13th” series to rewrite the script. He took out the horror themes. Then the studio threatened to sue Bakshi if he didn’t make the movie anyway.

7. Bakshi made the movie, but says it wasn’t worth it. And it’s easy to see why - the resulting movie is a mess. The story makes no sense. Characters just do things. It’s too silly to take it serious, but it’s too dark to be just fun.

8. Visually, the movie is really interesting, though. The mood and setting of Cool World is dark and surreal. There are many animated sequences in the background of scenes that make references to other famous cartoons.

9. Fans of Bakshi, or of fantastic themes in cinema will appreciate the movie. But the studio tried to make a popular hit by walking the thin line between being a kid’s movie and an adult movie; it failed at both.

Eraserhead [USA, 1977]

Nine Things about Eraserhead

1. This surrealist masterpiece by David Lynch is in my Top 10 List of Strange Films. It could be considered an early example of the “body horror” film genre. It also has strong absurdist elements that are sort of funny. Sort of. This is not a comedy.

2. It fills me with a sense of awkwardness, hopelessness, and an undefinable dread every time I watch it. I have to be in just the right mood for it.

3. Visually and sonically, it’s about a man who lives in an industrial dreamscape where it is never sunny and where nothing nice ever happens.

4. The plot has something to do with this man, Henry, who may have gotten his girlfriend pregnant. He ends up raising a deformed child-thing in his tiny apartment and being distracted by a lady that lives inside his radiator.

5. What I just described above doesn’t even come close to explaining what happens in the movie. The less said about it, the better.

6. Even though this is Lynch’s first movie, he has always refused to explain it. One of the consequences of being so unforgivingly surreal is that the movie has about as many interpretations as viewers.

7. One obvious interpretation of the movie is that it is a metaphor for the fears that come with being a responsible father. I used to agree with this interpretation. But there are too many elements that don’t fit.

8. Now, I think it’s about a man who is so alienated and isolated from others that he feels powerless to create the life he wants for himself. Any efforts he makes are either rejected, or are so deformed and shameful, that he doesn’t even understand what he did.

9. Despite being in my personal Hall of Fame, this is a movie that I don’t really recommend to anyone. Like all of Lynch's movies, people need to decide for themselves if they should watch it and what they think of it.

Jug Face [USA, 2013]

Nine Things About the Movie Jug Face

1. This strange and macabre little film is hard to classify. I guess it would technically be called a horror film, but it’s also a domestic drama. It really stuck with me, even after it was over.

2. The movie is really low-budget, and the acting is uneven. But it’s a tight, well-paced, atmospheric indie film.

3. It’s about a small group of backwoods families. They are ignorant, abusive, incestuous rednecks that live off of moonshine and roadkill.

4. They also worship some ancient thing that lives in a pit in the forest. It needs sacrifices.

5. One family member is a mentally slow young man that gets messages from the pit about who is to be sacrificed next. A girl discovers she’s been chosen, and tries to get out of it.

6. The pit isn’t happy with the girl’s refusal, and starts retaliating against the families.

7. This could have been a really cheesy movie – it’s hard to explain the story with a straight face. But the script is very well done; it dares to play the story straight and you just go with it.

8. There is not a lot of violence, so when it does happen, it grabs your attention.

9. This movie could be considered a commentary on blind devotion, cults, and religion. Or else it could just be a warning to stay away from families that live in the woods.