REVIEW - some movies i saw, and how i feel about them

how better to welcome newborn sobriety into the world by spending the day grading 80 bibliographies/proposals and writing about movies?

damned if i can think of a better way.

i've been watching movies crazily lately (i mean that as "i've been watching movies while i am crazy"). there's not much else to do between 3am and 8am while coming off an anxiety attack. so...

1) juno - i loved ellen page in this movie. she was great. jason bateman was jason bateman, and jennifer garner was a psychopath. i don't know if it is my own natural fear of women who are borderline obsessed with reproducing regardless of how it impacts anyone but them (even that statement is phrased pretty judgmentally, huh?), but her character was one of the bad points of the movie for me. i didn't see jason bateman's character wanting to leave her because he wanted to "be Kurt Cobain", i saw him leaving her because she was fucking nuts and extremely selfish. did anyone (preferably women) think this also? it seemed like they weren't right for each other, but he was at least halfway trying to deal with it, while she was trying to patch it over by procuring The Baby.

there were some points where the dialogue seemed a little ridiculous. not as much as lots of critics have complained about, but occasionally. not enough to detract significantly from the movie. but it seemed like the movie was tripping over itself in trying to get us to feel real-world emotions while at the same time presenting us with a girl who just happens to be the Coolest Girl Who's Ever Gone To High School. it's like a superhero movie where we're supposed to feel bad because the superhero can't get his girl back. so fucking what? you're a superhero!

which leads to my last gripe: i loved michael cera's character (and why not?), but i didn't really buy that he was The Guy for Super Girl. so he's not a complete sleezebag, but what was so magical about him that it was worth spending 1/3 of the movie that could have been spent focusing on juno dealing with her pregnancy on, instead, his trials and tribulations with her? oooh, he skipped track practice to show up at the hospital for the birth of his son. wow! any guy who doesn't do that should be fucking punched in the balls. have we hit the point in our culture where if you're not beating and/or berating your girlfriend/wife you're a hero? what the hell.

despite my ranting, i really liked this movie. it was cute, if a bit schizophrenic, there was a lot of good dialogue (even if sometimes it seemed like diablo cody was making ellen page just act like she would at 30 instead of a 16 year old), and the characters were largely interesting and engaging (and i liked the parents; i think there really ARE parents out there like that in the world because i've met some). i dislike (generally) the moldy peaches and am frustrated by the idea that because they sound different that they are somehow immediately good at music. but that's just me. i think in a way it was a good soundtrack for the movie, if you're into that sort of music.

overall score: a stack of pancakes that would be better if only they didn't have that "new" ingredient that everyone was talking about and were instead just good pancakes.

2) into the wild - this movie made me cry. granted, i was a little bit of a whack-job at the time. but still. that's a rare feat. usually only girls and onions make me cry. or cute girls chopping onions when i am standing near them.

i really, really like this book, and so i had pretty high expectations, especially considering the movie involved sean penn (who i don't like), emile hirsch (who i like), and eddie vedder (who i sometimes like and sometimes dislike). okay, so perhaps my expectations were mixed.

the movie stuck shockingly well to the book, which in this case i think was a bonus. it employed a system where it switched regularly between chris's stay at the magic bus (as he slowly sort-of starved to death) and the trip he took to get to alaska in the first place. this is occasionally broken up by panoramic wilderness shots, often combined with voiceovers either by hirsch (playing mccandless) or jena malone (who i would send flowers to if it would end well, which it wouldn't, and who plays chris's sister). the transitions from the "present" (in alaska) and the past are pretty seamless and aren't marred by really obvious markers; i really appreciate when filmmakers are willing to assume their audience has at least a 70 IQ and can follow these sort of narrative shifts. if nothing else, you can tell which part of the story is happening by looking at the landscape around chris, which is a really good technique to employ (whether intentional or not on the part of the filmmakers) because the movie really is a lot about place, and landscape.

anyway, if you have read the book (and if you haven't you should, right now), things play out pretty much as expected, although through a series of great acting performances and a touching and subtle score including some acoustic eddie vedder songs (only one of which seemed intent on beating you across the face with a catchy chorus trying to communicate A Message). the thing that really sold me on this movie is that it's interpretable. again, it requires you to care about, and to think about what's happening. sometimes you want to punch chris in the face for being an ass, sometimes you're jealous of him, and sometimes you just don't know what to think. he himself seems to go through these stages also, and so the whole thing ends up being a really engaging movie-viewer dialogue. if you think the idea of running off to alaska, burning all your money, and hitchiking through the yukon is completely fucking stupid, you're not going to like this movie. if you hate society and think that being a hermit in the wild is the best idea ever, you're not going to like this movie. if you actually want to think critically about these two things, you'll like this movie. i also liked this movie.

overall score: watching a frozen waterfall thaw on the side of a mountain in the rising sunlight.

3) dan in real life - i came into this movie expecting something like "in good company"; another movie about life and the things that sort of pop up unexpectedly that you deal with as best you can, and how that's a little bit of heroism in itself. that's not really what it was about, mostly, and so i was a little disappointed. however, it's also not a bad movie for what it was.

what it is (and i'm biased because i don't get these movies), is another one of those films where an upper-middle class white family goes on an annual (i assume) trip from their home in the northeast to somewhere else in the northeast, closer to the beach. there they stay in a cabin for a week, have an amazing rapport with each other (even though there are 30 of them), play games that no family would enjoy playing together, talk about their problems, show no signs of dysfunction, and otherwise escape from the pressures that they assumedly have in their real lives. the protagonist, as it turns out, is the single, late-30s-something son of the family who (surprise!) has kids of his own and (surprise!) lost a wife who he never stopped loving. and goddammit if he doesn't just get to the family's ocean retreat and fucking learn things about his life! he totally walks on the beach, and plays on the lawn, and fucking meets this girl who might just change his life for the better! sw33t!

so steve carrell is pretty great, as always, though he seems to be fighting against the material he's given to reach his usual range of goodness-ness. he is playing opposite dane cook, who doesn't do too badly in a not-completely-bodily-humor role, though he's cast as the douchebag, womanizing brother who appears to maybe have feelings but really doesn't, presumably so he didn't have to work too hard on his range.

the whole shebang is overlaid by music by sondre lerche, which is pretty badass and would be badasser if it was easier to care about the actual movie. the chemistry (how i hate that word, but what else is there?) between carrell and juliette binoche (who i thought was a weird casting choice, but of course she's excellent) is really well done, as are the scenes featuring carrell and his daughters, but a lot of the rest of the film falls into the sort of white-people-in-rhode-island-on-holiday genre, and so the film feels uneven. nobody explained to me either how this random french woman not only ended up in rhode island but ended up dating a total douche to the point that he starts having Real Feelings. or maybe binoche is supposed to be covering up her french accent. if so, though, well...i have bad news for you.

this was a good film, nothing spectacular, but better than lots of other movies that try to do the same thing. it loses or gains points on the super-cheesy ending, depending on how i feel at any given time. okay, it might have gained some points for the ending with carrell and his daughters chasing down binoche (which was cute, but fit into the story well), but then it immediately lost those points by transitioning directly to the credit sequence/wedding footage, once again putting forth the awesome american cultural idea that:

1) you know who The One is for you after a weekend in rhode island and
2) marrying that person cements the rest of your life in some sort of perfect closure that eliminates all sadness, change, or variables.

overall: like a banana split. you eat the two out of three ice cream scoops you like the best, but by the time you get to the third you're sick of ice cream and/or have an ice cream headache.

as a sidenote, i totally slept for something like 10 hours last night. apparently i just need to get drunk whenever i want to sleep, and i don't have panic attacks and/or wake up in the morning wanting to kill everyone. i can't possibly think of a downside of having six drinks every night, so i guess that's what i'll start doing...