Dark Knight

Surprisingly, I had only seen it once. Way back when it came out.

There’s a lot of very sophisticated (such as it can be in a comic-book movie) good vs. evil stuff going on in it, at several levels of humanity. It’s a fine movie because of that. My favorite part of it is that I relate to the late Heath Ledger’s brilliantly conceived and executed Joker so creepily well. Except for the violence part. A smarter character could bring things down without it.

The thing about the movie in general I just don’t get is the voice of the lead, in the Batman character. Dude (Christian!), it wasn’t all that different from your Bruce Wayne voice, in fact, it was a silly caricature. There had to be a better idea.

Sure, the voice needed to be altered a bit for cinematic and disconnect-from-reality P’sOV, but IMHO it didn’t need to be taken as far as it was.

But the movie all in all is excellent and fun.

 

Grosse Point Blank

IMHO, a grossly underrated movie. Funny, smart, and comically dark in a way I really enjoy.

The Cusacks have some hometown sensibilities I can relate to, and Minnie Driver is fabulously appealing as an actress and sexy thang, and as little as I’ve seen her in “real life,” an equally decent human being.

 

Movies You Are Supposed To Have Seen

One of mine: Cool Hand Luke. (I’m talking start to finish.)

Excellently depressing.

Mankind’s inhumanity to Mankind never ceases to amaze, even if only done cinematically. What’s funny is that the movie is Abu Ghraib and Gitmo except that all the people in the movie are eating and laughing and living after their depiction.

But real people, a small minority of whom deserve it, actually go through it.

Imagine it was you.

 

Non-Guilty Pleasure

Sling Blade, for which B.B. Thornton will never lose my respect completely pretty much no matter what he does from here on in. It’s an amazing movie, and amazing performance. I have free PPV this month, and caught it for the second or third time, first in many years, and just thought, “Boy, that’s a good movie.”

(Side note: The first time I ever “saw” it, it was VCRVille, and all that was working was audio. While I was trying to fix the video, I first heard B.B.T.’s voice of Carl. I wound up listening to the whole thing. That was my first “view” of the movie.

To see what a good actor BBT is, watch Sling Blade and Bandits back to back.

And a shout out to Dwight Yoakam for playing someone we’ve all met, to perfection, in Sling Blade.

 

Guilty Pleasure

Overboard, with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.

Make of it psychiatrically what you will.

Update: But at least consider that Chasing Amy is one of my top 10 all-time favorite movies, among several but not all genres.

 

5 Minutes Into Marley and Me…

…and I know it is going to kill me.

Nobody loves dogs more than I do. I will grant there are those tied for first.

Update: Not nearly as good as the book, to the point of some irritation for me.

This has been another shorter movie review at Beware The Man.

Update 2: And of course I cried like a baby, even though the movie was a piece of shit compared to the book. Fuckers. Manipulative Hollywood fucks.

The book ended OK. It closed the circle. The movie did not.

Fuckers.

 

Slumdog Millionaire

Finally saw it. One of the better movies I’ve seen in some time. I’m glad it won stuff.

The plot was blah blah blah (though nicely Anglicized!), the character development was blah, blah, blah, the symbolism in the yadayada when Jamal did X was *yawn*, and the cinematography was excellent.

The movie moved me in the direction it intended to move me, quite effectively, I’m pretty sure.

Kudos to all involved. A hearty “wow” from at least one rapt reviewer.

This has been another shorter movie review at Beware The Man.

 

Juno The Second (Viewing)

I was pretty late to the party in terms of seeing it the first time.

Here’s the “professional” version of a review. Amanda is right, Juno was simply too mature and clever and funny and smart and more or less perfect for the first half of the movie. It’s a bit hard to swallow.

But unlike Amanda and her fellow pros, I don’t view the movie through the abortion lens, nor do I subtract from its score for presenting a child as the font of sense in an adult world.

Here’s the boring, inarticulate amateur critic’s take: My idea of a good movie is pretty simply summarized by this question: Did the movie move me in the direction the filmmakers wanted to move me, and by how much? In Juno’s case, the answer is a strong thumbs up.

What I especially liked about the film is that it dealt with real family deals in a the way that most sane families deal with them. The movie is, despite Juno’s first-half precociousness–and let’s not forget that some kids actually are sort of precocious and remarkable, which I thought the movie made plausible by the stylistic parenting of Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons–a pretty interesting slice of life. And to me the overarching theme was not one at all about “choice,” but more about two traditionally “different” personalities finding love and happiness and all that good shit, blah blah blah, and those people being smart and kind and harmless and loving, even if they are a bit weird, “traditionally.”

And who isn’t?

 

Strange Movie Combinations

Let me just preemptively say, yes, I need a life. (Even though mine is really good on balance.)

So this is the double-header, another big Friday night for the single guy: Into The Wild, a Sean Penn true story about a young dude tortured by his parent’s dysfunction, who decides to go all anti-materialistic semi-hippie, loner, which eventually kills him. Followed by The Truman Show, which I’ve only seen once or twice, a long time ago, about The reality TV show, with an unknowing protagonist played, IMO, quite well by Jim Carrey.

I really enjoyed both films. But such an odd juxtaposition given the times we live in.

I relate a lot to both primary characters. I spend an allegedly unhealthy amount of time alone, and an equally allegedly unhealthy amount of time bummed out by being watched all the time, in pretty much every sense of the word when I’m not alone.

Color me unconvinced about the unhealthiness of both.

In any case, I highly recommend the two movies in a row. Gets a person to thinkin’. Two characters involved in thematically different, but incredibly similar struggles. It would be easy to characterize the struggle as the “search for self,” but that cliche does nothing but make me laugh. I think a better description is fighting the bullshit on one’s own terms.

I’ve been telling my friends and family that an odd sense of fatalistic calm has come over me recently. I’m secure about loving and being loved, I’ve lived a good honest and open life, I’ve done my best to follow The Golden Rule, and I think life is just the most remarkable thing.

Except the ending part, of course. The strange thing is that I’m so calm about that part, too.

I will control what I can, which is my nature. But I’ve no illusions about the things I can’t.

The only thing I can say for sure is that I’m not missing, or merely spectating, in the next revolution.

And there was something deeply profound in both movies, more explicitly put in Into The Wild, where the character (a real person) writes things down. The last thing in the movie he writes down is, I think I have it right, “Happiness is only real when it is shared.” (That’s close.)

People ask me why I don’t travel alone, all the time.

 

Watching Meryl Streep On The Dave Show…

…it seemed appropriate to tip my hat to one of the greatest actors/actresses of my lifetime. From The Deer Hunter* forward, her work has never failed to astound me. And when I found via the credits she played an old rabbi in Angels in America I had to go back and watch it to believe it. Dazzling. Amazing.

She is a remarkable actress, and she’s a remarkable person. A truly beautiful woman, without the benefit of “classic” physical beauty.

To me, she’s as lovely as they come. Brilliant, funny, famous, normal and humane is not an easy combination to come by.

I had no idea she’s been married for 30 years to a guy from IN. Which in Hollywood-speak just makes her more remarkable. I’m no hero-worshipper, far from it, but I think Ms. Streep is as worthy as anyone.

That’s all. Just a shout-out to an amazing person and role model to humans everywhere. I love her and her work.

*My Deer Hunter experience was pretty amazing in and of itself. It was right after it opened, and I was with a bunch of pals at the University of Illinois at the local theater on Green St. I’ll never forget the looks on the faces of the people walking out while we were waiting to get in. An unprecedented number of them were crying. NOBODY was talking. I was your standard teenage smartass, as were all my pals. I don’t remember very much about what transpired between us watching these folks, clearly shell-shocked, shuffling zombie-like out of the theater, but I’m sure there was some level of “c’mon” involved, just by virtue of our age-informed arrogance and stupidity.

3 hours later, we made the same silent, teary, shocked march out gazing at the people waiting for the next show with a weird mix of fear and empathy and…respect for what they were about to go through. It was barely 7 years after the war ended, and by then everyone, even Republicans hated it.

Most people tell me Apocalypse Now was the greatest Vietnam film ever. I’ll never agree. The Deer Hunter brought the war home, personalized it, made it relatable like no other, at least to one rapt viewer. I grew up in rural Midwestern blue-collar America, and I retain many pals from that era. It was awfully easy for me to put myself and my loved ones in the film.

Update: I’ve never been able to steel myself to watch it again, despite it being easily one of my all-time favorite movies. There aren’t many of those.