Jacob

By Jacob Mertens. Moral relativism can make for a lousy film. Characters bark and growl about their actions being justified, the narrative halts to brood, the nature of God and sin are clumsily introduced, all for an elusive truth that might as well be out of the filmmakers’ reach. To […]

By Jacob Mertens.  In film, there are any number of ways the world can end: zombies wreak havoc across the globe, colossal monsters terrorize earth from an inter-dimensional riff in our ocean’s depths, the biblical apocalypse forces mid-grade celebrities to bunker down in James Franco’s house and whine incessantly about […]

By Jacob Mertens.  A couple years ago, I traveled to England for an internship and decided that so long as I was on that side of the ocean, I would go ahead and see Malta, Italy, and France as well. I remember stepping off the train into Rome and stumbling […]

By Jacob Mertens.  I cannot write a review for Fruitvale Station without having the recent verdict of the George Zimmerman trial dig at my sides, seeking some corresponding resonance. The risk here is that I let Ryan Coogler’s film become something more than it ought to be: a simple portrait […]

By Jacob Mertens. “It was to be the fate of this patient little girl to see much more than, at first, she understood, but also, even at first, to understand much more than any little girl, however patient, had perhaps ever understood before. Only a drummer-boy in a ballad or […]

By Jacob Mertens.  Yasujiro Ozu makes films that sneak up on you. They may feel simple and slow-paced at first, but the heart of his stories are too delicately expressed, and far too complete, for an audience not to be moved. To call Ozu’s Floating Weeds a masterwork may be […]

By Jacob Mertens.   It would be easy to dismiss Monsters University as a child’s film with little pull for adults, or even to warm to the film’s slapstick and nostalgia for its predecessor and let it be at that. Unlike earlier Pixar films such as Wall-E (2008), which easily transcends […]

By Jacob Mertens. “We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry glass Or rats’ feet over broken glass In our dry cellar Shape without form, shade […]

By Jacob Mertens. I must be getting old. Three or four years ago, I would probably find This is the End a humorous apocalyptic romp not be taken too seriously, a worthy diversion of my time. Now, I laugh here and there and leave thinking “What do I take away […]

By Jacob Mertens.  Cinema can be seen as an act of illusion. Scenes that filmed separately become a cohesive whole, real footage blends seamlessly with CG, and a story moves at the behest of a surreptitious screenwriter. Naturally, Louis Leterrier’s Now You See Me finds an appropriate medium for its […]