Sunshine” Provides Legal Drug Use

“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”

Have you experienced a painful breakup in your love life? Have

you done something stupid lately you wish you hadn’t? Has a loved

one, be it human or pet, passed away recently leaving you stricken

with sorrow? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could make it all just go

away?

Well, that’s the general idea behind the new movie, “Eternal

Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” And what a movie it is.

Funnyman Jim Carrey gives drama another try as Joel, a

mild-mannered man whose free-spirited girlfriend, Clementine (Kate

Winslet) has just dumped him. If that wasn’t bad enough, she has

also had an operation where all memory of Joel is erased from her

mind. Perplexed as to how to deal with the thought of all this,

Joel decides to have the same operation to erase his ex from his

mind.

Tom Wilkinson plays the doctor who makes it all happen and

Kirstin Dunst, Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood play his assistants,

who along with Carrey and Winslet, provide excellent

performances.

While undergoing the procedure, however, Joel has a change of

heart, or mind as it were, and decides he has many memories of

Clementine he wishes to hold onto. In order to stop these memories

from being erased, Joel desperately attempts to hide Clemintine

away in the corners of his mind.

Sound weird? Well it is, but in such an enthrallingly sublime

way I found myself completely wrapped up in the film’s originality.

The film was co-written and co-produced by Charlie Kaufman

(“Adaptation,” “Being John Malkovich”) and his signature stamp of

weirdness is present in this, his best work to date.

The film is very complex and sometimes painfully confusing,

warping your brain into a drug-like stupor. Characters occasionally

smoke pot onscreen, but the film provides its own natural,

non-toxic, legal high.

Aside from the intricate plot, “Eternal Sunshine” alters the

mind with some truly boggling visual effects. As Joel’s memories

are erased, the audience is lucky enough to view it in all of its

zany splendor. It is impossible to forget the images of Joel being

forced to forget.

This movie is a masterpiece!

4 out of 4 rams

More Movies

“Taking Lives”

Angelina Jolie stars in this solid thriller as a criminal

profiler trying to catch a serial killer who assumes the identities

of his victims. Ethan Hawke plays a potential

witness/suspect/victim/love interest.

As a whole, the film isn’t completely memorable, but it does

pack a few genuine jump-out-of-your-seat moments and some crafty

surprises. I saw the biggest “surprise” coming, but it is still one

of the best twists I’ve seen in a while and received a huge

reaction from the audience I saw it with.

Three out of Four

“Dawn of the Dead”

In this rather frightening remake of the horror classic, a group

of strangers seek refuge in a deserted shopping mall after the

world becomes overrun by flesh-eating zombies.

Considering the characters are holed up in a mall, the action

and scares are not as consistent as they could be if those

characters were made more easily assessable to the zombies.

As far as zombie movies go, though, this movie isn’t quite as

good as last year’s “28 Days Later,” a million times better than

last year’s “House of the Dead” and maybe a little more

entertaining than the 1978 original.

Three out of four

“Secret Window”

Johnny Depp gives another good performance as an author who gets

accused of plagiarism by a country bumpkin (John Turturro) in this

thriller based on a Stephen King novella.

The movie stays quite faithful to King’s entertaining, though no

longer original, story. That is up until the last few minutes,

which are curiously altered from the source material, resulting in

a silly and almost explanation-free finale.

Two and a half out of four

“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”

Rating: R

Run Time: 1 Hour 48 Minutes

Showing at: Carmike, Cinemark

“Taking Lives”

Rating: R

Run time: 1 Hour 43 Minutes

Showing at: Carmike and Cinemark

“Dawn of the Dead”

Rating: R

Run Time: 1 Hour 40 Minutes

Showing at: Carmike and Cinemark

“Secret Window”

Rating: PG-13

Run Time: 1 Hour 46 Minutes

Showing at: Carmike and Cinemark