Across The Universe

By Joel Stein

Film directors don't always deliver when they make music videos. Gus Van Sant's goofily dark vision of Hanson's Weird was interesting, and Martin Scorsese's story line for Michael Jackson's Bad was pretty good, but Brian De Palma's Dancing in the Dark was kind of silly, and Abel Ferrara's upcoming effort for the Phoids looks like an overly earnest drug documentary. Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights) has beaten them all with this black-and-white, slow-motion interpretation of Apple's dreamy Beatles cover from the Pleasantville sound track. While a makeup-free Apple dreamily croons in a '50s diner, mod-looking boys in steel-toe boots trash the place. Sure, we've seen the juxtaposition of music and violence before, but rarely done so well.

--By Joel Stein