Note: I began writing this post before watching the news this morning, but it seems just as relevant, if not more so:

A few days ago, I found myself reading a post that I'd made back in April, way back when this blog was new, about five films that had left me speechless after seeing them. This morning, just before getting up, I suddenly realized that two of the films on that list, Saving Private Ryan and The Last Temptation of Christ, which are the only two films to ever make me cry, both do so for the same reasons. I don't want to give away the endings to either, especially the second one, but I'll say that I cry at both films at a moment near the end when a man, expecting death, receives life instead, and is forced to decide what kind of life would be worthy of such a second chance...that is, when every added day is a gift that you might not deserve. I don't know why this idea moves me so much, but I suppose it ties in with the questions about life that trouble me every day.

Anyway, this is all pretentious prologue to the point that I've seen a movie worthy of being placed alongside the two I've just mentioned, and while it didn't make me cry, it moved me in a way that I haven't felt in a long time at the movies, and finally gave me that one emotional cinematic experience that I've been searching for all year, in vain. The movie is 25th Hour. This is a movie that I didn't especially want to see. Noah will remember that we had the chance to see either 25th Hour or Adaptation, and I chose Adaptation, even though I'd seen it before. Even last night, I only saw 25th Hour because some piece of shit action thriller was sold out. The trailer just didn't grab me, I guess: it just seemed like the sort of movie that I would admire, respect, but not particularly love, and I've seen way too many movies like that this year. (Major example, also from this week: The Hours.)

But what can I say? I was wrong. About halfway through 25th Hour I began to realize that this could be one of those movies, like Chungking Express, that will grow in my imagination for years after I've seen it. By the time it was over, I knew that I would be watching it again and again for years to come. It's hard to explain if you haven't seen it yet: it's about a drug dealer played by Edward Norton who is about to go to prison for seven years, and on his last day of freedom he gathers his old friends (played by Barry Pepper and Philip Seymour Hoffman), his girlfriend (Rosario Dawson), and his father (the amazing Brian Cox) for one night of farewell. It's very tightly structured, but it's one of the very few recent American movies that grants itself utter freedom to be funny, sad, random and beautiful, and to say something about life in the shadow of 9/11. Mostly, it's about the dream of the life you might have led if you'd been aware of what a gift life was. I can't live that way, of course, not every day...but it's always good to find a movie that reminds me that this dream exists.