J. Michael Pence

Wow. Who would have thought the entire meaning of life could be summed up in 6 minutes. The greatest of this film is its greatest irony, considering it questions the worth of success based on material wealth. The piece fits its soundtrack (Elegia by New Order) excellent as well. It's a shame this short lost out in the 1998 Oscars, I'd like to think that the voters had a chance to see it before deciding (although they probably didn't.) A definite 10.

Armitage is, dare I might say, one of the best anime ever. It covers a number of well-tred themes that anime seems to thrive on such as technical advancement, robots that seem human, humanity spread beyond the grasp of its home planet, and more. It's not the use of these topics that make the movie unique, but how the movie deals with them. Armitage has one of the best -plots- in an anime, people behave like people, not like one dimensional characters (a problem rampant in anime). Naomi Armitage, who first appears to be yet another scantly clad lead female character, instead proves herself to be a truly deep and meaningful character. It is this aspect (the extraordinary plot) which makes the movie such an experience to watch, the animation isn't as great as say, Ghost in the Shell, but this anime the way it was meant to be, a cohesive body of beautiful music, plot, and animation aimed towards a singular goal. As a friend told me once, "Anime should be an experience, it shouldn't go where you can go with simple live-action." Armitage III is an experience.

RKO 281 is based on the making of Orson Welles's masterpiece, Citizen Kane, but unlike the movie it portrays, RKO 281 lacks Welles's fiery signature of creativity. The movie itself is well-filmed, with elaborate backdrops and a captivating depth of the 30's period in which it was shot. However, the plot outside this remarkable backdrop, is sadly quite shallow.

Outside of the obvious battle between Welles (played by Liev Schrieber) and media magnate William Randolph Hearst (played by James Cromwell), we have no sense of any underlying motivation for the story. This is pretty sad considering the film they wished to portray was none other than one of the greatest films of alltime, setting many of the technical standards used today. Indeed, the viewer is given little more than a fleeting glimpse of Citizen Kane's production, and only a few of the most blindingly obvious innovations in the film (such as slanted camera angles). The disturbing part of these remarkably few revelations is that they come after 50 minutes of a historically unrelenting plot outlining everything from the land-lease law to Hollywood gossip rags of the 30's. I also found it odd that they never mentioned that Citizen Kane was booed at the 1941 Oscars, of which most he was snubbed.

The black-and-white confrontation of the movie is little more than grey-and-grey. Welles apparently doesn't want to make the movie because Kane represents the hollowness of greed, but because he feels that Hearst is a hypocrite. Hearst is not so much egnimatic and soulless as Kane, but more of a helpless withered shadow of a man. This attack of Hearst's character is never truly resolved, because the story never makes it clear that Citizen Kane was based on Hearst, but isn't about Hearst.

Sadly, there is one more note I wish to add. The actors in this movie seemed like 8th graders forced into a Shakespearian play, they either misunderstood the meaning of this picture, or failed to connect emotionally. As Shakespeare in Love taught us, even the Bard's works can be made interesting with the right mindset. This could have been a great movie, but fell far short.