Recent movies that make you say..."wow"

[Adam McLeod]

Regarding The Departed, let me say that it doesn't entirely sit right with me, what Scorcese has done. To remake Infernal Affairs I feel like he would have had to be thinking one of two things.

a) I can do it better, or

b) I can tap into the North American market, regain some late 80s/early 90s magic, and hopefully win my Oscar

If b) is the case, and I hope it isn't, he should probably be ashamed of himself. If a) is the case, I'm not a film critic willing to pass judgement on his success or failure in that arena. What I will say is that in Scorcese's film, the ending changes the...moral tone of the piece, if you will, enough to alter the substance of the film significantly. It ends more like the Beijing edit of Infernal Affairs, where the Chinese government had to insist on its own moral message. What I mean to say is: if he wanted to make a different film, maybe he should have made a different film.

Of course I'm aware that there's a school of thought that will believe that adaptations of other films with added personal directorial idosyncracies are just as valid as adaptations of books or plays the same way. There is always the old adage that artists of genius know enough to constantly steal from everywhere (who is that a butchering of...Eliot?)

So I'll say that, yes, Martin Scorcese is a great man in film, a true historian and scholar of the art, and if anyone deserves an academy award at this point it's probably him. With that said, I think he's a little lost.

Regarding Anime, I think Rintaro surpassed Miyazaki in 2001 when he made Metropolis, but...it's up in the air for me. I do love most of Miyazaki's work as well, which is more moving, emotionally speaking, than Rintaro's stylistic masterpiece.