Catching up from the weekend

Have a bunch of stuff from this past weekend. Don't have much time today though. So I am going to start with the least important so the most important goes to the top:

This weekend my girl and I went to the movies. I let her pick since the last... um... every movie we have seen has been my pick. She picked Juno. I wasn't really thrilled, there were lots of other things I would rather have seen, but Roger Ebert thought it was good and I generally respect his opinion.

I hated the movie with some caveats. Ellen Page is a good little actress and the movie had some shimmers of being good, but the execution was awful. Jason Reitman, son of legendary Ivan Reitman, directed it like a knock-off of a bad Wes Anderson movie. From the horrible ironic-east village-folk songs, to the way they titled the seasons, to the way all of the characters were so precious, and finally the feel of the entire movie. By the end I was ready to puke if they played another "cute and weird" post-modern folk song and they did. But I didn't puke.

The story was good, Ellen Page was excellent, and the screenplay was good as far as how it exposed the characters emotions without seeming to do so, but Jason Reitman trying to do Wes Anderson is worse than Wes Anderson trying to do Wes Anderson, which is basically all he seems to do these days. But that's another story.

The other problem I had with the movie was the characters ridiculous hip slang. "Honest to blog?" Honest to shoot me in the head, is more like it. It was like we had a bunch of weird teenagers doing ironic impressions of inner city people, but that appears to be the way they actually talk. I don't know any teenagers who talk like that, unless they were raised by MTV.

Could have been good, wasn't, don't understand what all the hype is about.

Some Movie Reviews

Idiocracy - I had heard good things about this movie and I am a big fan of Mike Judge so I had pretty high expectations. These expectations were made even higher by the first 10 or 15 minutes of the movie, which were hilarious. But the rest of it totally sucked. Good idea, bad execution. It turned into a one joke movie.


Match Point - This film was absolutely brilliant. I am a big fan of Woody Allen and love most of his films. They have been getting kind of stale lately, but I guess London suits him because this, the first Woody Allen film I have ever seen that is not set in NYC, is absolutely brilliant. I can't say enough good things about this movie. Thank you, Woody, for doing something totally awesome to shut up your critics.

Inland Empire - Weird. I love David Lynch so I had high expectations for this movie. It took me about a year to figure out what Mulholland Drive meant so I wasn't expecting too much immediate logic. I loved the movie, but I'm not sure if there is an explanation. Lynch has said that he wrote it basically scene-by-scene as he was filming. The actors claim to not know the meaning. So either this has a meaning buried very, very deep or it has no meaning. Lynch says it is about "a woman in trouble." And Laura Dern is incredible as that woman. But as for the rest of this film I don't know whether it's just surrealism for its own sake or if there is anything underneath it all.

Lars and the Real Girl

Saw a screening of this movie last night and it was actually pretty good. Plot summary from some site:

Lars is a young man who spent much of his life alone with his widower father. When his dad finally passed on, his brother, Gus (Paul Schneider), moved home with his wife, Karin (Emily Mortimer). With his brother back and his father gone, Lars retreated not only to the garage, but further into himself. Karin, however, is determined to break Lars out of his shell and get him involved in the family. It is obvious that he cares about them, but at the same time, he uses any excuse possible to avoid Karin's invitations.

I always say that in good movies the plots are largely irrelevant to what the movie is about, and this movie is really about loneliness and community. Lars is extremely shy and socially awkward and also has a problem with being touched by others. He orders a sex doll off of the internet and is absolutely 100% convinced she is real, and the whole town plays along because they all care about Lars.

The film is very funny, largely due to the reactions of people to having this doll presented and addressed as a real live person, but it is not a comedy. It never plays for laughs - they are incidental. At its core the film is about loneliness, how one escapes loneliness, and how people can come together when you least expect it. In this case the whole town comes together for Lars as he works out some of his issues through his delusion of Bianca.

Ryan Gosling plays the part brilliantly. He and director Craig Gillespie were at the screening to discuss the film but didn't really have anything terribly profound to add. And Gosling, while a fabulous actor, came off as a bit of an ass. Gillespie did not.

This film opened at the TIFF earlier this year and I don't know if it is slated for theatrical release and, if so, when. If it is I highly encourage people to see it. And I smell an Oscar nom for Gosling. His performance is so incredible - he really drives and carries the whole movie. He was nominated last year for Half Nelson, which I still haven't seen but have heard nothing but raves about, and I expect he will be nominated again this year. The supporting performers also do a very good job. All of the acting is very understated for the most part.

High Fidelity

My wife and I read books together. Actually I read them to her out loud. The last one we read was High Fidelity, which although it is extremely sentimental and male chick-lit, was still decent. So then we watched the movie. I had heard good things about it but it was absolutely terrible. The acting was horrible, the characters were one dimensional, the plot was extremely contrived. Even the timelines were impossible. Based on the songs they used playing in scenes - not soundtrack but characters listening to it - the timeline was completely impossible. They had songs from the late 90s playing presumably at some point in the late 80s or early 90s.

I also hated the changes they made from the book to Americanize it. I especially hated the way they changed the music. As a record collector myself I could appreciate the music in the book - it was good, obscure music that people would legitimately want to collect. In the movie it was just pop garbage. Green Day? Please.

I detested the film so much I almost turned it off a couple of times. Normally I will sit through a movie from end-to-end, no matter how bad it is. I figure that I at least owe the movie a chance to explain itself or redeem itself or something. I watched "The Devil Wears Prada" from end-to-end, it's just a compulsion I have. I see movies as works of art and you don't critique a painting or a sculpture without seeing the whole thing. But this was just absolute garbage. And I've sat through some pretty terrible, contrived, precious movies so there must be something else about this one that makes me hate it so much.

Or maybe it's just a crappy movie.