Movies Dearz

From his Academy Award nominated turn in the classic Brokeback Mountain to his Oscar-winning role in The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger was never afraid to take chances.

And now it is your chance to pick your favorite of his film performances by placing your vote in the MD Poll located in the right hand side bar. Results will be revealed on August 21.

UPDATE: This poll is now closed; click here for the results, and click here to vote in the latest MD Poll.

Movie Dearest readers showed their support for their local sheriff, voting Woody their favorite Toy Story character in the latest MD Poll.

Woody's pals Rex and Jessie placed high as well, netting 2nd and 3rd place, respectively. See the comments section below for the complete results.

We all dream. Men and women do, children do, even animals do. It has even been said that we would die if we didn't dream, our brains so overloaded with unprocessed thoughts and experiences that they would take a detrimental, physical toll.

As my colleague here at Movie Dearest, Neil Cohen, has already pointed out in his recent review of Christopher Nolan's new sci-fi mind-bender Inception, previous movies have introduced and played with the concept of entering the dreams of others. None of them, though, has depicted the human dreamscape as effectively and provocatively as Nolan.

Nolan needs little introduction as the methodical writer-director of such intelligent and entertaining contemporary classics as Memento and The Dark Knight. With Inception, he has crafted the best, most believable entry to date in an inherently imaginative genre. From the film's opening sequence — in which the action careens wildly from a third-world village under siege to a lavish party thrown by a Japanese tycoon (played by Ken Watanabe) — to its haunting final shot, Inception holds and rewards the attention of alert viewers.


Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Dom (short for Dominick) Cobb, the leader of a crack team of "extractors" who are paid well by rival business and political leaders to drug the competition and steal their best, subconsciously inspired ideas. Watanabe's character, however, charges the group with the never-before-tried task of implanting an idea in the mind of his chief competitor's son and heir. This process is referred to as "inception."

From there, Nolan's seamless script twists and turns as it introduces other characters (including Cobb's father, played by Michael Caine, and an architectural student winningly portrayed by Juno's Ellen Page), explores multiple levels of consciousness, and uses impressive visual effects to literally turn reality in on itself. While I would love to read what a psychologist or dream analyst makes of Inception, it perfectly reflected my experience of the surreal figures and action that normally occur in recognizable settings within my dreams.

Of course, one is led to wonder throughout Inception exactly which characters' dreams are being played out, or if the whole movie might be a dream. This brain-teasing on the part of Nolan and his excellent cast (which also boasts great turns by Joseph-Gordon Levitt, Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard and the long-MIA Tom Berenger) never feels manipulative, gratefully. Rather, it feels natural, even organic given the subject matter. I detected enjoyably intentional nods to James Bond adventures, especially during the team's invasion of a snow-covered fortress in the mountains. Composer Hans Zimmer often seems to be knowingly channeling Bond score stalwart, John Barry.


Inception also reminded me in spots of the very effective, Martin Scorsese-directed thriller Shutter Island released earlier this year, and not just because DiCaprio stars in both films. Both play with their characters' and audiences' perceptions of reality and sanity, as well as the mental toll that loss and grief can take. Shutter Island also benefited from a game, top-notch cast and crew.

Many critics are passionately, even vociferously, divided over Inception. It's been a while, though, since the critical community has had a large-scale debate over a movie. I think this isn't only a testament to Inception's high profile but to Nolan's complex, visionary achievement. See it, and feel free to weigh in here with your own reactions. Like dreams, movies can linger and haunt long after they're over.

Reverend's Rating: A

UPDATE: Inception is now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon.com.

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Orange County and Long Beach Blade.

“People really like the film,” actor Mark Ruffalo said regarding The Kids Are All Right. “Beats the hell out of pushing a stinker up the hill, which I’ve had to do.” Ruffalo, who also starred in Martin Scorcese’s Shutter Island this year, plays Paul, the freewheeling restaurant owner who discovers that he’s a sperm donor dad eighteen years later. His is the most difficult role, since he becomes an interloper into the seemingly happy home of Nic and Jules (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore), and his fate is far from certain thereafter.

Ruffalo loves Paul’s journey. “He’s someone who lives his life completely by his own rules and is very comfortable with himself and most of his life is set up for his own pleasure. And then, he just comes apart at the seams from this interaction he has with this family. I think he realizes that life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be without someone to share it with.”

The handsome star joked that he wished he had been a donor back in the day. “At $60.00 a pop, I could have used the money. I wasted a lot of talent back then,” he laughed.


At seventeen, Josh Hutcherson already has a couple of solid hits under his belt (The Bridge to Terabithia, Journey to the Center of the Earth), but the best is yet to come. He plays the C. Thomas Howell character in the Red Dawn remake and is set to take over the lead duties in the Journey sequel (Brendan Fraser is not returning). The Kentucky native seems to have a level head about his rising success, and was especially excited to work on The Kids Are All Right.

“The script was incredible,” he explained, adding that he had a real connection with Lisa Cholodenko, the writer/director. “It was so real and so natural I thought their relationships and the dynamic between the characters was something that I had never seen before in a script.”

Despite the spacey name, Hutcherson loved the character of Laser. “He was such a real kid. As a teenager, he's at the point in his life where he's trying to figure out who he is and how he fits in to the world, and who are his friends. And, what his relationship is to his family. Being a teenager myself I can definitely relate to that.”


Hutcherson also didn’t care that the parents were same-sex. “This is Laser's family. I don't think that 'family' is necessarily defined by a mom and a dad. I think it can be whoever is around you who loves you and is there for you and cares for you and raises you. I think that Laser's parents have done a really good job of raising him. For me, there wasn't any extra preparing because they were a same-sex couple. One of the really cool things about the story is that it wasn’t focusing on the fact they were a same-sex couple but that it was really a story about a family.”

It is Laser who pushes his sister (played by Mia Wasikowska) to contact their donor father, and Hutcherson understands why. “I think it's something that Laser's been thinking about for a while just out of curiosity and wants to know what that's like, to have a dad around. I don't think he necessarily needs to have a father figure but I think he wants a guy he can hang out with; a lot of people in life, not just with lesbian families, don't have fathers and they have that yearning to know what that's like.”


Of course, when Laser first meets Paul, “He has this idea of what he's going to be like in his head and when he sees he's kind of this free spirited, kind of Los Feliz/Silverlake guy, it's not exactly what Laser was expecting.”

And what mothers! Hutcherson admitted that before he met Moore and Bening, he was a little nervous and intimidated. “I thought, “How am I going to act compared to these guys, and even Mia and Mark are both insanely good actors. And then when I met them, they were all so down to earth, such real people. And Julianne and Annette, they're moms, and so for me to pretend they were my moms, was not hard at all.”

UPDATE: The Kids Are All Right is now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon.com.

Interview by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Films about dreams have been good (Dreamscape), bad (In Dreams) and ugly (the Freddy Krueger oeuvre), but few directors have devised a dream world as regimented as Christopher Nolan’s in Inception. Although well acted and full of stunning visuals and creativity, Inception’s dream worlds are depressingly familiar. The characters, except for Leonardo DiCaprio’s Cobb, are sketchy and under-developed, and even Cobb is a variation of Leo's character in Shutter Island. The unlimited potential of fantasy scenarios is somewhat wasted by Nolan, who also wrote the screenplay.

Cobb and his co-conspirator Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are high tech spies who “extract” corporate secrets from people’s dreams. After a botched assignment, their intended target Saito (Ken Watanabe) entices Cobb into “one last job” that will clear Cobb’s name and allow him to reunite with his children. The catch is that this time, they have to plant an idea into the mark’s mind, a very dangerous and complex process. Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy) is the lone heir to a huge oil conglomerate, run by his cold and withholding father (Pete Postlethwaite). Cobb’s job is to convince Fischer Jr. to dismantle the corporation upon his father’s death. It requires planting the idea three levels down into Fischer’s psyche, which is, as you can imagine, very difficult, and is complicated by the fact that Cobb’s personal demons keep invading his dream worlds, including his wife, Mal, well-played by Marion Cotillard.


There is no denying that Nolan has created a fantastic world with Inception, and it is an incredibly dense narrative that requires absolute attention to follow. That makes the lack of imagination in the dream worlds that much more disheartening. The Los Angeles shoot-out scenes feel like a Bourne Identity retread, while the snowy fortress scenes feel like a standard issue James Bond knock-off. The dreamers are never in mortal danger, even if they are killed, so the suspense is somewhat muted.

Inception is leaps and bounds above typical summer dreck like Transformers. The cast is uniformly excellent (especially the hot Tom Hardy as the cool “forger” Eames), although Ellen Page is a little lightweight for her role. Still, when you consider where our dreams can take us, in the words of Eames, Inception “shouldn’t (have been) afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.”

UPDATE: Inception is now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon.com.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Congratulations to David H. of Fayetteville, NC, the winner of our "Chloe on DVD" contest, sponsored by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment!

Chloe, the sexy thriller starring Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried, is now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon.com.

Thanks to all who entered!

It’s been eight years since Lisa Cholodenko directed the indie hit Laurel Canyon and a lot has changed. Despite the fact that Cholodenko, the out director and co-writer of the Sundance hit The Kids Are All Right, took time off to have a child with her girlfriend via artificial insemination, and even looks similar in hairstyle and glasses to Annette Bening in the film, she stresses that it is not autobiographical.

“Only as much as anyone else who’s been in a long term relationship and has a kid,” she remarked. “The idea of the film came about in doing all this research and thinking about sperm donors. You know, what that means and what that’s going to be like for my kid when he turns eighteen. He’s potentially going to reach out and find this person.”

“It feels mostly really positive and really appreciative and validating,” Cholodenko said, when asked how the GLBT community has taken to the film. “You know, there’s always people who are on the left of things and the right of things, and some people are kind of old school and say “Oh, why does she (Julianne Moore) go off with Mark Ruffalo.” And I just come back with, “If you want to see it a different way, I’ll come see your movie.”


“If anything, we did not want to be overtly political, and we thought it would be subversive to do it that way. This family is not on the far left, there aren’t rainbow flags, they weren’t ostracized. They were just like any other family in that socio-economic strata that are trying to raise kids with values.”

She and co-writer Stuart Blumberg (Keeping the Faith) thought, “Let’s put this family out there and not fetishize and not get all fussy that it’s a two mom family, and just really focus on the humanity in this and focus on the complications and humor in the dynamics of the relationship and find what’s universal here. That’s what’s going to be appealing and subversive about it.”

Another subversive element was the way Nic and Jules use 70’s gay male porn in their lovemaking, leading to a hilarious set of reveals. “It shows that sexuality is counterintuitive,” Cholodenko quipped. “Sometimes you just don’t know what’s going to do it (for people).”


Cholodenko loved working with Blumberg, who brought not only a more commercial eye to the project, but also the personal insight of having been a sperm donor himself. He echoed his character Paul’s explanation of why he did it:  “It seemed a lot easier than giving blood.” He also felt good about helping people. He admitted that none of his possible donor offspring have looked him up … yet.

Blumberg worked to infuse humor into the film, but shared Cholodenko’s goal that it not be cheap. “Everything we did came from “What really happens? What feels real? Some of my favorite stuff to write was the literal description of (Nic) sitting down (after discovering Jules’ possible infidelity) and the blood rushes away and everything goes silent and you’re just trapped in this world where everyone is laughing and you just feel so alienated.”

UPDATE: The Kids Are All Right is now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon.com.

Interview by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.