Date: February 22Location: Clifton Living Room
This goes down as one of the very pleasant surprises of the 2008 movie year. I'd read so many pans of this film that I expected a train wreck, good for some unintentional laughs. Instead I found it to be clever, earnest and lovely. Most of the credit belongs to The Beatles — honestly, how can you go wrong filling a movie start to finish with some of the best music ever committed to record? The versions of the classic songs performed here are wonderful, without exception. Who knew Evan Rachel Wood had such a hauntingly beautiful singing voice? All the performers (most of whom are unknowns) are impressive. And Julie Taymor, definitely one of the finest visual directors working today, pulls out all the stops — the film very much resembles Moulin Rouge in its go-for-broke heart-on-its-sleeve showiness. It has some cornball moments, and the naive kids lose their innocence in the age of Vietnam plot is a bit of a cliche, but I enjoyed the hell out of it.
