In the effort to engage in the larger cultural conversation about “important” films, I realize that it must seem like I can only appreciate a movie if it tackles topics of great thematic heft or breaks some sort of cinematic mold. But truth be told, I love a movies like “Ernest & Celestine” just as much because it possesses a remarkable sort of magic. It has the power to return me to a childlike sense of spectatorship, allowing me a pleasant regression to a simpler state of mind.
The film’s story is nothing particularly extraordinary, but it charms from the get-go. The indomitably curious mouse Celestine (voiced by Mackenzie Foy) wants to know what could really be so bad about the big, scary bears of whom all mice are warned to fear. This very nearly ends her life when she goes above ground and winds up in the clutches of the hapless bear Ernest (Forest Whitaker). Celestine doesn’t just convince him not to eat her; she makes him a friend.
Sadly, no one else is willing to accept their unconventional relationship. It’s unnatural and scary to both species, unwilling to budge from their present ideologies. And yet, the bear and the mouse persevere, teaching very important lessons about acceptance and affection. As Abraham Lincoln once said, “The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.” That’s a lesson “Ernest & Celestine” radiates with clarity as well as warmth, and I hope children from 3 to 93 everywhere take it to heart. A- / 
Recently, the South has seen a bit of a revival at the cinema. An emerging generation of filmmakers, headlined by Jeff Nichols and David Gordon Green, have found the region’s rich heritage to be fertile grounds for stories largely passed over by the coast-focused Hollywood.
I’ve always been fascinated by people on the cutting edge of their art, and even more enthralled by those who are forming just what that art will be. (Perhaps this explains my recent fascination with early film history.) One such iconoclast is Marina Abramavic, a performance artist who is pushing boundaries that don’t even exist for her medium yet.
Los Angeles Film Festival
Documentaries can sometimes get a bad rep as boring, no doubt due to the success of films based on Al Gore lectures and other intricate political exposés. But many people tend to forget that much of what they watch on television is in the same vein of non-fiction storytelling. I’m not talking the fabricated “realities” of the Kardashians; I’m referring to programming on channels like Discovery and History that set out to inform while they entertain.
In 2010, Gareth Edwards unleashed the ultra-low budget flick “
In 2012 and 2013, whatever time I had that wasn’t devoted to studying for finals in late April and early May was devoted to cramming in some important movie watching. Around mid-April, the lineup for the Cannes Film Festival is announced, and both years promised new films for prominent directors whose filmographies I had largely (and shamefully) neglected.
The miscarriage of justice in the case of the West Memphis Three, a group of Satanist wrongfully convicted of murdering young children in rural Arkansas, has received plenty of attention from non-fiction filmmakers. Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky have created the “Paradise Lost” trilogy about their case; the final film netted them an Oscar nomination. And if that wasn’t enough, Academy Award nominee Amy Berg made her own documentary on the subject, “West of Memphis,” to great acclaim.
Marshall and the Movies 
Recent Comments