Nick and Dion's Room

Charlie Kaufman is a Genius

I saw two great movies this weekend. The first was Dawn of the Dead, the second was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Dawn was a very cool, very scary, action-filled movie, which happens to have zombies in it. It is not a "zombie movie", those movies are not good, this one is. Those movies have bad special effects, and are often so bad you can laugh at them. That does not apply to this Dawn of the Dead, which is based off the original Dawn of the Dead by George Romero made in 1978. If you want a kick-ass/sometimes scary action movie, go see this one.
Eternal Sunshine is simply the greatest movie I have ever seen. I've already seen it twice, and I'm not sure I'll ever get tired of watching it. I can't even put into words what it was like seeing it the first time, it was more of an experience to be had than a film to be watched. The only thing I can compare it to is sky-diving, which is an experience that cannot be relayed in words, it won't do it justice, you've just gotta do it. The film's premise is that Jim Carrey goes to this clinic to have all of his memories of Kate Winslet erased from his mind. The story itself is straightforward enough, but the greatness of the movie comes from the writer, Charlie Kaufman, and the director Michel Gondry. Kaufman has written three awesome movies; Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Being John Malkovich. While those had great directors, Gondry does an outstanding job of shooting the story exactly the way it needed to be shot. I had expected the movie to be good, but not as good as it is.