Fools Who Dream

1 week ago | foolswhodreammovies.com | Bennett Campbell Ferguson

2 weeks ago | foolswhodreammovies.com | Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Celine Song's "Materialists" is a romantic not-comedy so entrancing, honest, and heartfelt that nothing could ruin it-not even being ordered to out yourself as single in a sold-out movie theater. I wish I were speaking hypothetically, but believe it or not, the host of the screening I attended asked all unattached attendees to raise their hands. Apparently, she fancied herself a matchmaker, like the film's suave antiheroine, Lucy (Dakota Johnson).

1 month ago | foolswhodreammovies.com | Bennett Campbell Ferguson

From across Seattle's Pier 47, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) gazes at his ex-wife, Julia (Michelle Monaghan). They smile as their eyes meet. She raises her hand in farewell. He vanishes in a swirl of steam. That wordless reconciliation concludes Brad Bird's "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" (2011), but it wasn't supposed to. In an earlier script, Julia was killed, a twist that uncredited rewriter Christopher McQuarrie couldn't abide.

2 months ago | foolswhodreammovies.com | Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Yoda warned me, but I didn't listen. "Fear is the path to the dark side," Frank Oz's wise Jedi master wheezed in "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace" (1999). "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads...to suffering."Did I suffer when I first saw "The Phantom Menace"? Hardly. I was 11 years old-not yet seasoned enough to know that Jar Jar Binks' Gungan colloquialisms weren't the height of cinematic wit (okay, I'll admit it: "Mesa no have a booma!" still cracks me up).

2 months ago | foolswhodreammovies.com | Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Chow Mo-wan files his nails, dons a dark jacket, combs his hair, and turns out the light. Maybe he's going out for the night. Maybe he has a date. Embodied with sublime elegance by Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Chow cameos in the final scene of Wong Kar-wai's "Days of Being Wild" (1990). It is the only time he shows up in "Days," but the first of many appearances in Wong's luxuriant tales of heartbreak in Hong Kong. "A man like me has nothing much except free time," Chow declares in "2046" (2004).