If only we could be children forever. Miyazaki's most genial film, My Neighbor Totoro is par excellence in expression of the energy, the wonder, and the fun of being a child. Energy, there is a pervasive energy throughout the film, an endless fascination with all things, the curiosity, the running about in play. The energy and curiosity are so envied as it seems that becoming adults we lose these in favor of jaded attitudes, lethargy from our daily grind to…

War, human energy at its most destructive. It runs deeper than the explicit bombshells that leave villages in a wreckage. There is an insidious line of corruption that runs with it, crippling a society more than its explosive physical power. Birthday Boy achieves, in only about ten minutes, an antiwar film more upsetting than many a major full features. The setting takes place during the Korean War in a ravaged village where a little boy named Manuk brings the audience…

"I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply...evil." What more can be said, that hasn't already been said, about one of the most well crafted American horror films of the twentieth century? This isn't one of the most successful independent films ever for no reason. Halloween launched one of the staples in American horror--the slasher. The…

Christopher Nolan set himself up with a virtually impossible task after delivering us The Dark Knight; how can we make it better? In what way(s) is this possible? His answer, well, evidently, just make it bigger. Or rather, banal given its overuse, make it more epic. Nolan sets out to cap the trilogy with a bang, an atomic bang. Does he succeed? Is it on par or better than the prior films? Not surprisingly, no. It's all absorbed the same…