Simon's Movie Reviews

George Carlin once said the answer to the age-old question “why are we here” just might be: “Plastic! Assholes!” That is way too simple of an answer for most people, so for thousands of years people have been debating about the meaning of life, what happens after death, and why the bloody hell do we have to die in the first place. The Fountain (2006) by Darren Aronofsky is a convoluted exploration of some of those questions as it follows a version of the same character in three different eras. In each he seeks eternal life, not for him but for the love of his life. It helps she is played by Rachel Weisz. Before the movie was released it gained notoriety for its troubled production, as it had to shut down because of production costs. If I recall well, they were even auctioning off props of the movie at one point. But then Aronofsky tinkered the script, found ways to make the effects for cheap, and shot the whole thing in Montreal to save money. Upon its release it did not exactly...

Christopher Nolan, easily one of the best directors working today, likes to play with his audience’s perception. In “Memento” the audience follows a character whose memory should never be trusted as it vanishes after 10 minutes. In “Inception” the characters navigate through a world that is an illusion within an illusion within another illusion. Even Batman in his Dark Knight trilogy has a flair for the theatrics. Hence it makes perfect sense for Nolan to have made “The Prestige” (2006) a movie about feuding magicians. In a film where two rivals try to outwit each other with the world’s best magic trick, don’t be surprised if the ending has fooled you. Released one year after “Batman Begins” and two years before “The Dark Knight,” “The Prestige” showed Nolan had more than one trick up his sleeve. I saw it during my first year at the University of Sherbrooke while spending one of my holidays with my mom in Quebec City. You know you have a good movie when audience members are disc...