Director Jonas Åkerlund‘s 2002 Spun has the pace and editing style of the drug which is the central theme of the movie: methamphetamine.   For example, while most movies have something like 600 cuts in them, Spun contains a record of more than 5,000 cuts.  It stars Jason Schwartzman as Ross, a naive meth addict with a car; Mickey Rourke as The Cook, who manufactures the meth in very dangerous and hazardous circumstances, including motel rooms and rents weird porn while wearing his cowboy hat and visibly shoulder-holstered gun; Brittany Murphy as Nikki, a stripper who is The Cook’s girlfriend; John Leguizamo as Spider Mike, the dealer who buys what The Cook makes and then sells it from his disgusting house; Patrick Fugit as Frisbee, a spacey meth user who buys from Spider Mike and is often found lurking around his house; Mena Suvari as Cookie, Spider Mike’s live-in girlfriend and meth addict; Peter Stormare as The Mullet Cop, one of the two undercover police officers who use meth and make drug busts; and Alexis Arquette as the Mustache Cop, The Mullet Cop’s partner.

Fourth in my ongoing Great Directors series is Darren Aronofsky, best known for Pi, and Requiem for a Dream. He was born February 12, 1969 in Brooklyn, NY, and has always had a love for movies. He attended Harvard University and his thesis film Supermarket Sweep is included on the list below as one I have not yet seen and do not feel myself fit to judge or review. That movie starred Sean Gullette, which has since become one of Aronofsky‘s frequent habits in his films.

Aronofsky is known to frequently employ very fast-paced, quick edited montages in his films to help the viewer get more of a feeling for the repeated action that the montage seeks to display. Additionally, he tend to use a camera which is strapped to one of his actors for at least one of the shots in his films and often features string instruments or techno in his movie’s soundtracks.

I’ve no doubt that I’ll receive a large amount of email and comments claiming someone else should be listed or someone on the list shouldn’t be. Relax, seriously. As with anything I write here, this is my perception and opinion. These happen to be the ones that I feel are the best. Though I’m thinking of editing out Joel Coen for Tim Burton. Anyway, on with the show:

I had high expectations for this movie having seen director Darren Aronofsky’s previous films: Pi and Requiem for a Dream and enjoying both immensely. That said, The Fountain has a significant depth to its plot that is typical for Aronofsky’s work, but in this case it seems to almost over-power the plot. There are at least three revolving sets, scenes, and characters, all of whom are related, but each of which is distinct: a bald Hugh Jackman in a spherical cosmic envelope traveling with a large tree with whom he speaks; a character portrayed by Jackman as a guardian to the Spanish queen as played by Rachel Weiscz at an indeterminate point in time; and what seems to be a present and rational world in which Weiscz’s character Izzy is married to Jackman’s character and is dying of a terminal form of cancer.