Miscellaneous Movie Musings

[mousepod]

Whenever there's a new movie out that I want to see, I try to read the first and last couple of paragraphs of the New York Times review to get a gist of what they think and still avoid spoilers. Here are the first two and last paragraphs of Stephen Holden's review of Across The Universe:

Spoiler:

From its first moments, when a solitary dreamer on a beach turns to the camera and sings, unaccompanied, the opening lines of the Beatles' song "Girl," Julie Taymor's '60s musical fantasia "Across the Universe," reveals its intention to use the Beatles' catalog to tell two stories at once, one personal, the other generational. That young man, Jude (Jim Sturgess), is a cheeky Liverpool dockworker with a twinkle in his eye. He quickly emerges as a winsome vocal composite of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, with a personality to match.
From here the movie only gets better. Somewhere around its midpoint, "Across the Universe" captured my heart, and I realized that falling in love with a movie is like falling in love with another person. Imperfections, however glaring, become endearing quirks once you've tumbled.

...

"Across the Universe" believes wholeheartedly in the quaint communitarian spirit it exalts. You share the joy of the blissed-out hippies in the grass. You feel the deepening friendship between Jude and Max that is sealed in Max's incandescent performance of "Hey, Jude." And during the time it lasts, the intoxicating passion of Jude and Lucy, both innocents by today's standards, convinces, for a moment, that love is all you need.

I wanna see it. Now.