It’s hard to believe, but some people don’t actually watch the Simpsons on TV and DVD or whatever, so if you are among that group don’t take my recommendation to see the Simpsons movie. It is filled with references, both concrete and abstract, to characters and incidents and even this review probably presumes a close knowledge of the classic series.

But if you understand this to be, as Lisa once said in an episode about the “Itchy and Scrathy Movie,” “the defining event of our generation,” then you will enjoy the numerous references to all sorts of Simpsons characters and plots of years past, cleverly woven together in a story that may get a bit syrupy and slow at parts [Marge and Homer’s marriage drama is a bit slow..] but offers so many new jokes and clever angles (Martin multiplying his force with a simple wooden board and taking his rage out on the bullies, Bart’s sudden taste for Jack Daniels, the customary stab at Disney, the NSA’s spying program, and other stuff) that it’s definitely worth seeing–and I don’t think I’d seen a movie in a theater for a year before seeing it today.

The satire is just a bit more over the top and visceral in the movie theater–and still the film seemed to have a much closer connection to reality than the show does, in terms of the random themes and characters–over the top socio-political satire and farce, with a much needed reference to Alaska’s reverse income tax from oil drilling funds.

Most of the elements are familiar, with (mercifully) only a rare new character introduced here and there, so the only thing really lacking for me was the close involvement of the Springfield community as key components of the plot–aside from Lenny and his part in setting the crisis in motion with his call to Homer and the obligatory mob scene. Classic old episodes revolved around town’s issues, but that is less true in the later seasons and anyway it might be hard to get the scope needed from a movie with a simple Springfield plot. Most of the story revolves around large-scale events that even involve (still-unconstitutional-for-now) President Schwarzenegger–so in that sense the movie is basically a large-screen, long-form episode fitting more into the later seasons of the show than the earlier ones.

It was quite entertaining–and in my opinion a sequel centering on Mr. Burns would be a good next project.

In his first major movie, Pi, Darren Aronofsky used a cramped New York City conurbation as the backdrop to the even more cramped mind of the troubled genius protagonist. Then the brilliant Requiem for a Dream saw an expansion out to a wider cast of characters, more open spaces in Brooklyn and, in a few unpleasant scenes late in the movie, the American South. Six years on show that Aronofsky is leaving New York far behind in The Fountain.

Or is he? I seem to remember hearing about a revival of interest in hip New York circles about the “ethnobotanicals” of Central and South America mentioned early on in the movie. How exactly these jungle compounds, Amerindian culture, the Book of Genesis, pyramids and modern medicine weave together with film-making, myth, legend and mysticism must be necessarily complicated; and therefore The Fountain is an epic work of extreme ambition, mystery and darkness.

The movie stars a sullen Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, who is an intense, vulnerable and magnetic anchor for a story that spends much of the time weaving together ethereal threads–the kind that seem to confuse and bother people like this reviewer writing on the-reviewer.net.

Some people find fault with Aronofsky’s ambition and intensity. But that’s what he does, and this movie is one that his fans will find more to like about than not. Here’s an assessment by Weisz as quoted by wired.com:

‘It asks the most adult question of all: How do we relate to our own mortality? But it’s still messing with you on so many levels.’