Justin Cecil's Blog

  Not too long ago I mentioned a brief, bizarre nude scene in the Werner Herzog film “Heart of Glass.” Personally I’m not against nude scenes in movies at all, but I feel like they should at least kind of fit into the story and make sense. For this article I now want to discuss another strange nude scene from another European film, this time from the 2004 French movie “A Very Long Engagement.” “A Very Long Engagement” stars Audrey Tautou and was directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, both of whom were involved in “Amelie,” one of the first foreign films I ever saw. Jodie Foster, who is fluent in French in real life, also plays a supporting character. It tells the story of Mathilde, a sickly but beautiful young woman cursed with polio, who tries to find her presumed dead lover during the trials and tribulations of World War I. Throughout the film Mathilde meets soldiers and their lovers who suffered during the war, and there are several scenes showing the horrors of the First World W...

(SPOILER ALERT!) Every now and again when I watch a movie I find myself relating to a character on a deep level. In a previous blog article I wrote about how I related to multiple characters in the animated film “Kiki’s Delivery Service.” Now I would like to talk about Lydia Howland, a character played by Kristen Stewart in the movie “Still Alice.”   “Still Alice” stars Julianne Moore as Alice Howland. She’s the type of person that seems to have it all; she has a prestigious and honorable position as a linguistics professor at Columbia, is married to a doctor (played by Alec Baldwin), and has three children (with a grandchild on the way) now grown. Tragically, Alice discovers shortly after her 50th birthday that she has early onset familial Alzheimer’s disease; while most people who sadly get Alzheimer’s do so when they’re in their old age, Alice gets it when she’s still relatively young. Lydia is one of Alice’s three daughters. She’s played amazingly by Kristen Stewart in a...

  “Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.”           - Walt Disney           I’ve always been a big fan of animation. Like many children growing up I of course watched my share of cartoons and animated films, although I think I took it slightly further. As a child learning to read I began to devour books about pioneers like Walt Disney. As I grew into an adult I also grew into a fan of cinema, although I kept watching animated films and added to my knowledge about them. In fact I oftentimes found some animated films, whether or not they were primarily meant for children, to be more mature (especially thematically) than many comedies and other movies meant for a more adult audience (think of much of Adam Sandler’s work).   Recently I saw two animated works that not only e...