The Fountain Is Amazingly Grand In Both Its Visuals And Emotional Power

There exist a recurring subgenre of more substantive and ambitious high-concept fantasy/science-fiction movies dedicated to using the stylized tendencies ingrained into their specific genres to explore larger-scale ideas about mortality, our place in the world, death, etc. Some of the best films in this subgenre include A Monster Calls, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Cloud Atlas as well as the subject of this review, Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, an absolutely beautiful motion picture that spans centuries and dances around the cosmos all in the name of an intimate tale depicting man's inability to cope with the looming prospect of death.

This Is Gonna Sound So Weird, I Know, But I Wish Black Swan Was Much Freakier Than It Is

Remember how Black Swan was an actual box office phenomenon? This thing grossed well over $100 million domestically despite being such a crazy horror film that frequently relies on the kind of stylized atmosphere that audiences have rejected in many other motion pictures. It's odd, it's crazy, it gives ya a little hope for the world that something this strange can find such an audience. It's also a movie that obviously resonated with plenty of people too given its sheer ubiquity in pop culture since its initial release, though I must say I'm the Grumpy Gus of this scenario because I found Black Swan to be among director Darren Aronofsky's weaker movies, though it's still got plenty of virtues to extol.

Mother! Is Mighty Interesting But Also Mightily Plagued By Pacing Problems (MASSIVE SPOILERS WITHIN)

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW OF MOTHER! IS SOAKED IN SPOILERS BECAUSE I'VE FOUND IT IS DIFFICULT TO TALK ABOUT MOTHER! WITHOUT DELVING INTO PLOT DETAILS THAT CONSTITUTE ACTUAL SPOILERS DUE TO THE SECRETIVE MARKETING. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT

Requiem For A Dream Is An Uncompromising Slow-Burn Look At Addiction

Director Darren Aronofsky loves to put the characters in his movies through pain. Not just through conflict, he loves to toss the assorted individuals in his stories through a meat grinder of agony and then proceeds to hold the audience's eyes wide open as they witness these characters being incinerated. Keeping that in your mind, it should be no shocker that that Aronofsy's 2000 effort Requiem For A Dream (his first film to garner any sort of Oscar recognition) is entirely oriented around the process of destruction that, for varying reasons, consumes the lives of four different people in drastic ways.

Director Darren Aronofksy Offers Up A Slice Of The Unconventional With This Pi

The 1990's saw a large number of great directors make their feature film debuts, particularly in the first half of the decade that saw the likes of Richard Linklater & Quentin Tarantino make their marks on the world of cinema. But that doesn't mean all the notable directorial debuts could be found in the first half of the 1990's since Wes Anderson leaped into the realm of feature films with 1996's Bottle Rocket while Darren Aronofsky entered feature-length filmmaking with his 1997 motion picture Pi, a film that certainly establishes a large number of the specific filmmaking traits many associate explicitly with Aronofsky to this very day.

The Wrestler Is A Harrowing And Brutal Tale Of A Man Unable To Function In Reality

It's a pity that, in the decade since The Wrestler was initially released, Mickey Rourke seems to have vanished almost as quickly as his comeback arrived. After having major supporting roles in two 2010 movies that cracked $100 million domestically (Iron Man 2 and The Expendables), he did Immortals and Sin City: A Dame To Kill For and has otherwise been relegated to B-movie fare that, at best, will end up in the direct-to-video bargain bin. Finally seeing The Wrestler for the first time makes such a turn of events feel truly tragic given the massive amount of talent the guy exhibits in the lead role of this Darren Aronofsky directed motion picture.