One of the benefits of being a hardcore Beatles fan is that I don’t really need to buy the covers of the best Beatles songs of all time presented in “Across the Universe.” Instead I have the entire soundtrack and much more in my grasp. Ain’t it sweet? “Across the Universe” gets a lot of guff for being that representation of the Beatles that wasn’t mean to be. It’s a movie, a mainstream movie, with a rather cliché story, but you know what? Fuck it. “Across the Universe” is an absolute masterpiece, a thrilling, chilling, and incredible musical experience that takes the best of the Beatles and transfers it into an awfully excellent romance and war time story under the direction of Julie Taymor who takes a movie and makes it into a cathartic experience for the fans.
So, I opted on the DVD to watch the Unrated version, which sported a few F bombs and a little more edge. I’m sure the Rated and Unrated version probably didn’t sport many differences, but I owed it to myself to give the Unrated version the top priority. I won’t babble about Die Hard, or why the PG-13 rating is stupid, instead I’ll talk about Mary Elizabeth Winstead. This girl is absolutely gorgeous and sure, she may not be Meryl Streep, but she’s definitely one of the finer girls in film today and I dig her role her as John McClane’s daughter Lucy who is, like her dad, rebellious, smart mouthed, and always seems to stare evil down the throat with a smirk.
It’s sad that the days when a spoof showed potential of pure brilliance or cult standing are long gone and now usher in nothing but incredibly awful or mediocre movies that assume spoofing is done best when satirizing the scenes and not the ideas. “Epic Movie” is the next step in the evolution of this sub-genre where you can see the writers getting collectively lazier with each title as the years pass.