“Alive Inside” opens on a ninety-year-old woman, sitting in a chair set against a black background, explaining that she can’t remember anything. The setting is very deliberate: she suffers from dementia, and as the film will argue repeatedly throughout, people with dementia in nursing homes live in a world devoid of meaning. We watch her start listening to Louis Armstrong’s “When the Saints Go Marching In,” and she lights up, telling us it reminds her of her school days. Then, the film cuts to an old black-and-white film strip, a stand-in for the kinds of memories the music must be evoking. The stories of her life start pouring out. What the social worker Dan Cohen discovered is that music seems to unlock a previously inaccessible world of memories for people with dementia, and “Alive Inside” follows his journey to bring this joy to more people.
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Review: Please Like Me Season 2 is even better and smarter
Please Like Me returns for season 2, and it’s even funnier, smarter, stronger, and more mature.
Radcliffe and Kazan charm in The F Word or What If friends fall in love in this Toronto-set film
Starring Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan as a pair of Torontonian friends, Michael Dowse’s film The F Word (or What If, as its known stateside) asks, what happens when you meet someone you really connect with, and want to hold onto, when dating isn’t an option?
Review: Magic in the Moonlight is a frivolous delight with Colin Firth and Emma Stone
If Magic in the Moonlight were made by any other filmmaker than Woody Allen, it would probably seem like a perfectly agreeable romantic comedy. It stars Colin Firth playing a rendition of his trademark role, the charming curmudgeon, or you know, Mr Darcy, and features a plethora of clever one-liners and lovely 1930s costumes, especially the […]
I Origins: a pseudo-science fiction film that actually gets how scientists operate
Most films that tackle something somewhat scientific take on scientific advisors to make sure they get things right. It’s often a job reserved for prestigious scientists: Carolyn Porco, for instance, who runs the JPL lab, was the advisor for J.J. Abraams’s first “Star Trek” film. Given the absence of good science in most movies, including that one, I can only assume that filmmakers don’t listen too much to their scientific advisors. On the other hand, we rarely see characters who act and talk like scientists – David Auburn’s “Proof”, about mathematicians, is one of the rare exceptions – in part, I would guess, because most filmmakers don’t start out by getting a STEM degree, like Shane Carruth (“Primer”) did.
In Boyhood, a family grows up in real time
Shot over the course of 12 years, Boyhood continues Richard Linklater’s experiments with cinematic time and follows the maturation of a family in real time.