response 247 of 290:

Sep 6 02:10 UTC 1998

Some recent rentals:

TITANIC (still a solid A) -- I remember thinking when I saw it in the 
theater what a sumptuously visual movie this is, and that there are 
images in it I'll never forget: the ship upending and breaking in two 
and the stern falling hugely back into the sea; the shelves of 
never-used plates tilting and sending their contents to the hard floor; 
Kate Winslet on her back on a drifting headboard, pale and frozen, 
looking up at the stars and singing a little song at them.  There is one 
image that tops them all, though: seen from below, the dead body of a 
young woman hangs suspended in the submerged ballroom, which is still 
lit from above by the ship's lights, her limbs sprawling gracefully, her 
voluminous and complex nightgown floating around her.  Where have I seen 
that before?  A Victorian Ophelia?  A Renaissance angel?  Anyway, it's a 
movie made by someone with an artist's eye for such things.  To think of 
throwing such an image into the film -- the sheer heedless extravagance. 
Cameron loves details.  [When I was a kid, my favorite cartoonist was a 
man named Wallace Wood, and what I loved most about his drawings was the 
fantastic amount of detail he filled them with, all more or less 
functional.  You could spend fifteen minutes on each frame.  That sort 
of thing.]

SENSELESS (C) -- It starts off with a potentially hilarious premise, and 
it does run with it for a while, but then it kind of falls apart.  The 
tacked-on ending, wherein the main character, who accomplishes all kinds 
of miracles due to a sense-enhancing drug, is required to spend a year 
earning the job of his dreams the hard and normal way, is, 
paradoxically, as phony as can be.

DREAM FOR AN INSOMNIAC (B+) -- So self-consciously aimed at the 20-30 
generation that I almost felt as if I were eavesdropping.  Jennifer 
Aniston is stuck playing a version of Rachel again, as she seems to be 
stuck in all her movies.  (There's even a Central Perk-y coffee shop 
where everyone works or meets.)  The movie does grab your attention, 
though, and eventually you actually start to care about the characters. 
I guess I should admit the ending is "contrived" or "too pat."  Didn't 
bother me.  Plus, Ione Skye is adorable.  (For you above-it-all 
cineastes, Rachel is the character Jennifer Aniston plays on the NBC 
Thursday night sitcom "Friends," and Central Perk is the name of the 
coffee house she used to work at.  It used to be one of my favorite
TV shows, but it's become an institution and lost its edge.  It still
has its moments, though.)