Yeah, so. I took a grading break today to go see This Means War. I hadn't really planned to see a movie today; however, as I was running past Showplace Cinemas South (Evansville's cheap theater) this morning, I noticed that We Bought a Zoo and Sherlock Holmes were playing, and I thought to myself, "Huh. I kind of wanted to see those. Maybe I will, now that they're at the cheap theater. Hey, I haven't checked the movie listings this week, I wonder what-- OH MY GOD THIS MEANS WAR COMES OUT THIS WEEKEND!" Yeah. I was excited. I could not talk myself out of going today.
Friends, it was all that I hoped it would be. You all know how much I love spy stuff, especially when it's fun. Like, I know most people will say that the first two seasons of Alias were the best, and objectively, they are right. However, I have a soft spot for Season Four, when they all went black ops, so basically they had access to all of the CIA's resources but were only accountable to each other, and EVERYONE was out in the field, including Marshall. It was kind of ridiculous, but very fun. It also included my favorite episode of the series, "Welcome to Liberty Village," in which Sydney and Vaughn were stationed in a village where Russian spies were being trained to act like American citizens. That's right: Sydney and Vaughn were Americans...pretending to be Russians...pretending to be Americans. It was awesome. Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be writing about This Means War.
Reese Witherspoon plays Lauren, a career woman who tests consumer products for a living; like, she's the one who gets to, for example, set cooking pans on fire to see how they withstand heat, or whatever. It looks like a pretty fun job, and her knowledge of consumer products comes in handy in humorous and useful ways at key moments in the movie. Her story is that she followed a boyfriend to L.A. from her hometown, Atlanta, only to have him cheat on her. She runs into him early in the movie with his new fiancee, and of course she is wearing running clothes and has headphones on and is singing to herself like a crazy person, and of course after she lies that she has to go meet her (nonexistent) boyfriend, he catches her eating sushi at a restaurant that she goes to alone so often that the staff there refers to her as "Table for One." So, in a nutshell, she has a lot going for her, but her love life is in a pretty sorry state.
This leads her best friend, Trish (Chelsea Handler), whose function in this movie is to make sex jokes and act gross and generally just be Chelsea Handler (who I used to think was funny but have grown tired of), to set up a racy profile for her on an online dating site. There, Lauren meets Tuck (Tom Hardy), a CIA agent who tells people he's a travel agent, has a young son, and hasn't dated much since his divorce. He's very sweet, and they hit it off...but on her way home from the date, she also happens to meet FDR (Chris Pine), who unbeknownst to her is Tuck's best friend and also a CIA agent (he tells people he's the captain of a cruise ship). Lauren and FDR don't actually hit it off right away; he's one of those too-smooth guys with a line for everything, and she's on to him right away. However, he is persistent, and she agrees to go out with him. Their first date doesn't actually go well, either, until she runs into her ex-boyfriend again and FDR does a PERFECT job pretending to be her boyfriend, being super charming to the ex-boyfriend's new fiancee, and driving the ex-boyfriend crazy by repeatedly calling him by the wrong name. It's pretty great. Anyway, so before she knows it, Lauren has gone from dating no one to dating two great guys.
Tuck and FDR find out pretty quickly that they're dating the same woman. However, both of them really like her, so they decide that they will both continue dating her and just let her choose. The thing is that since they're spies, they have the means to spy on her, and spy on each other on their dates with her, and gadgets to sabotage each other's dates with her. It's all pretty silly, but very fun; I was grinning from ear to ear for most of the movie and laughed out loud repeatedly. I thought the movie did a great job of keeping it fun while raising the stakes-- allowing relationships to deepen, conflicts to develop, complications to arise, etc. I thorougly enjoyed it. If we're going to place this in some sort of "Spy vs. Spy Romantic Comedy" genre, of which Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Duplicity are also a part, then I'm going to go out on a limb and call this my favorite of that genre.
Side note: while buying a ticket for this movie, I witnessed a very funny exchange between a young (maybe five year old?) boy who was very excited to see Ghost Rider and his dad, who was acting all confused, like, "What? You don't want to see The Vow?" And the dad was being so convincing about pretending he was going to take this kid to see The Vow that it is to the kid's credit that he did not completely lose it. Anyway, good stuff.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Monday, February 6, 2012
thoughts on Smash series premiere
I dug it, for the most part. I like Debra Messing. I like Katharine McPhee (and have since her Idol days...I'm remembering an awesome performance of "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" kneeling on the edge of the stage, as well as a truly bizarre duet with Meatloaf on the finale of her season). I didn't particularly care for the way that the musical numbers would switch back and forth between reality and fantasy, though I guess they have to, to some extent, if the characters are going to do things like walk down the street singing. And, during the part when Katharine McPhee went to the director's apartment, naturally I was sitting on my couch freaking out, all, "Does this kind of thing really happen?! This is so inappropriate! I'm so uncomfortable!" Anyway, I'll stick with it. I like it so far.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
thoughts on My Week with Marilyn/The Descendants
My Week with Marilyn
I saw this almost a week ago and haven't felt like writing about it. After thinking about it a little, though, I think I get it, even though I didn't much care for it. Basically, we all know those people who the world seems to revolve around: other people will put up with things from them that they wouldn't put up with from anyone else, and if they ask you to do something, you drop everything to do it. Their attention makes you feel special. However, if you are someone who doesn't see what everyone else sees in this person, you are just exasperated by the lengths that others are willing to go to for them.
Marilyn Monroe was one of those people that the world revolved around, according to this movie. The problem, for me, is that I didn't quite get why. I don't know much about Marilyn Monroe, which is my own fault, I guess; however, the movie doesn't let us know a lot else. This is partly because she apparently remained a mystery to a lot of people, including the film's main character; however, what we learn about her over the course of the film wasn't really enough for me. Additionally, everyone in the film talks about what a good performer she is when she is at her best, and how she lights up the screen; Michelle Williams didn't really sell me on that. I will admit that I've never really cared for Michelle Williams and was maybe predisposed against her, but either way, I just didn't find the movie all that interesting.
The Descendants
There is a moment in this movie where George Clooney's character, Matt, tells his daughter, Alex (played by Shailene Woodley from Secret Life of the American Teenager), that her mother is going to die. She has been in a coma for a few weeks, and it has been determined that she will never wake up, and that they should turn off the machines keeping her alive. He tells Alex this while she is swimming in the pool in their backyard, and when he tells her, she reacts by ducking underwater and bursting into tears. A few moments later, she yells at him, "Why did you have to tell me when I was in the pool?"
This is a movie that is largely involved with the giving and receiving of bad news. On a few occasions, this telling is planned in advance and done very carefully. More often, however, it either just comes out (as in the previously described scene), or is said at least partly in anger, as when Alex tells Matt that her mother, Elizabeth, was cheating on him; Matt responds to this by pulling on the first pair of shoes he can find and sprinting down the street to his best friends' house, where he demands to know what they know and hurls the news that his wife is dying at them. It is these moments, the moments where characters are told bad news and we see them react, immediately and emotionally, that ring the most true for me in the movie. It made me recall the times in my own life when I've received bad news, and how it never happens at the "right" place and time. It just happens wherever you are at the time.
That's what I really liked about this movie-- that for as much as this movie is about dealing with the death of a loved one, it acknowledges that this horrible event doesn't erase anything else that's going on in your life at the time. The family's sadness over Elizabeth's death is mixed up with their anger over her infidelity. Her death also happens at the same time that Matt and his cousins are trying to decide who to sell a valuable piece of land to, or whether to sell it at all. Additionally, her death doesn't change the fact that Matt and Elizabeth hadn't been happy for a long time, or that Alex and her younger sister Scottie both have their own lives and issues. This movie is about dealing with saying goodbye to Elizabeth in the midst of all that.
Two small things that bothered me: Matt waits until he has told literally everyone else that Elizabeth is dying before he tells ten-year-old Scottie; when she is eventually told, the actual words come from a woman who I assume is the hospital's grief counselor, not him, and we don't even get to hear most of what the grief counselor says. Every moment that he didn't tell her, I got more and more uncomfortable, and I kept thinking she was going to find out accidentally, or react really violently when she did find out. Her actually finding out is pretty anticlimactic. I was also bothered by a character named Sid, a stereotypical dumb surfer dude who is friends with Alex and who is with the family throughout most of the film. He also has a knack for saying incredibly inappropriate things. I guess he was there for comic relief, and to give us the perspective of someone less close to the situation. I still didn't think he was all that necessary.
Regardless, I liked the movie a lot, for the most part. I'd recommend it.
I saw this almost a week ago and haven't felt like writing about it. After thinking about it a little, though, I think I get it, even though I didn't much care for it. Basically, we all know those people who the world seems to revolve around: other people will put up with things from them that they wouldn't put up with from anyone else, and if they ask you to do something, you drop everything to do it. Their attention makes you feel special. However, if you are someone who doesn't see what everyone else sees in this person, you are just exasperated by the lengths that others are willing to go to for them.
Marilyn Monroe was one of those people that the world revolved around, according to this movie. The problem, for me, is that I didn't quite get why. I don't know much about Marilyn Monroe, which is my own fault, I guess; however, the movie doesn't let us know a lot else. This is partly because she apparently remained a mystery to a lot of people, including the film's main character; however, what we learn about her over the course of the film wasn't really enough for me. Additionally, everyone in the film talks about what a good performer she is when she is at her best, and how she lights up the screen; Michelle Williams didn't really sell me on that. I will admit that I've never really cared for Michelle Williams and was maybe predisposed against her, but either way, I just didn't find the movie all that interesting.
The Descendants
There is a moment in this movie where George Clooney's character, Matt, tells his daughter, Alex (played by Shailene Woodley from Secret Life of the American Teenager), that her mother is going to die. She has been in a coma for a few weeks, and it has been determined that she will never wake up, and that they should turn off the machines keeping her alive. He tells Alex this while she is swimming in the pool in their backyard, and when he tells her, she reacts by ducking underwater and bursting into tears. A few moments later, she yells at him, "Why did you have to tell me when I was in the pool?"
This is a movie that is largely involved with the giving and receiving of bad news. On a few occasions, this telling is planned in advance and done very carefully. More often, however, it either just comes out (as in the previously described scene), or is said at least partly in anger, as when Alex tells Matt that her mother, Elizabeth, was cheating on him; Matt responds to this by pulling on the first pair of shoes he can find and sprinting down the street to his best friends' house, where he demands to know what they know and hurls the news that his wife is dying at them. It is these moments, the moments where characters are told bad news and we see them react, immediately and emotionally, that ring the most true for me in the movie. It made me recall the times in my own life when I've received bad news, and how it never happens at the "right" place and time. It just happens wherever you are at the time.
That's what I really liked about this movie-- that for as much as this movie is about dealing with the death of a loved one, it acknowledges that this horrible event doesn't erase anything else that's going on in your life at the time. The family's sadness over Elizabeth's death is mixed up with their anger over her infidelity. Her death also happens at the same time that Matt and his cousins are trying to decide who to sell a valuable piece of land to, or whether to sell it at all. Additionally, her death doesn't change the fact that Matt and Elizabeth hadn't been happy for a long time, or that Alex and her younger sister Scottie both have their own lives and issues. This movie is about dealing with saying goodbye to Elizabeth in the midst of all that.
Two small things that bothered me: Matt waits until he has told literally everyone else that Elizabeth is dying before he tells ten-year-old Scottie; when she is eventually told, the actual words come from a woman who I assume is the hospital's grief counselor, not him, and we don't even get to hear most of what the grief counselor says. Every moment that he didn't tell her, I got more and more uncomfortable, and I kept thinking she was going to find out accidentally, or react really violently when she did find out. Her actually finding out is pretty anticlimactic. I was also bothered by a character named Sid, a stereotypical dumb surfer dude who is friends with Alex and who is with the family throughout most of the film. He also has a knack for saying incredibly inappropriate things. I guess he was there for comic relief, and to give us the perspective of someone less close to the situation. I still didn't think he was all that necessary.
Regardless, I liked the movie a lot, for the most part. I'd recommend it.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
thoughts on "Take a Back Road" music video
I've never written about a music video before. I don't even watch many music videos. However, I saw this one this morning, for a song that I have enjoyed for several months now, and found I had a surprising lot to say about it.
I think Rodney Atkins is supposed to be an angel similar to the angels in the movie City of Angels in this video. I did not get this until the end, when he claps the cute cop on the shoulder and the cop, without acknowledging that he has been clapped on the shoulder, walks over to the cute single woman and strikes up a conversation. I believe this explains why no one seems to notice Atkins walking around with his guitar in places he doesn't belong, like in Interstate traffic. I believe this is also why they show him perched on a bridge and a water tower at different points in the video (I hope he was placed there using special effects, by the way, because my heart leapt into my throat every time they cut to him just casually sitting on a bridge, playing his guitar).
Anyway, despite this bit of curiousness, I did like this video. I like the point where the guy is sitting in traffic, looking frustrated, then a song he likes comes on the radio and he just sits back with a smile, like everything's okay now. That's how it is for me, too. In fact, just this morning, when I turned on the TV and a video I like immediately started up ("Beautiful Every Time" by Lee Brice), I thought to myself, "Today is going to be a good day." I also full-on went "AW!" when the cute cop went over to talk to the woman. However, I do think this is weird: no one appears to be able to see Atkins throughout the video, including at the end, when they are at the barbecue. However, at the barbecue, people *can* hear the song, as evidenced by the fact that many people are clapping in rhythm to it. How is this possible? They can hear the other two musicians they show at the party, but not him, the singer? Weird.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
thoughts on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The guy at the ticket counter at the AMC on the West Side talked me into buying their Rewards card. Then as he handed me my ticket, he said, "You'll like this movie. Parts of it are kind of vulgar, but it's good. It's like three hours long, though, so go pee before you go in." Farily accurate assessment (though I'm not sure if I would have specifically chosen the word "vulgar"), good advice.
I don't have a ton to say about this movie, but my general assessment is, "It was like the book, only more confusing." I hadn't read the book for about a year, which I thought would be good so that I wouldn't be constantly comparing everything, but it took me awhile to remember who certain characters were, and I still feel like I'd like to skim through a couple of parts of the book again. Also, while some things in the book happen quickly and are surprising, here it seems like a lot of the surprises come completely out of nowhere. Plus...Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander are both farily complex characters. Mikael Blomkvist also has fairly complex relationships with the people in his life, which I think is fairly normal for a man of his age and life experiences. I just don't think the movie captured those complexities, and that they, for the sake of time, had to skate over certain details that deserved more attention. I guess the thing that I liked best about the book was the characters and their relationships, and I was disappointed in the amount of attention the movie was able to give them.
That said, I thought the casting was good, for the most part. I liked Daniel Craig as Blomkvist, and I thought Rooney Mara totally disappeared into the role of Lisbeth Salander. Totally wasn't expecting Robin Wright as Erika Berger. Erika Berger, in the book, anyway, always just struck me as more sophisticated and put-together than the roles Wright often plays. I thought Wright did fine; I just wouldn't have pictured her in that role.
Obviously, I was squirming and covering my eyes during the rape scene. I thought the film handled it okay; it was just difficult to watch.
I guess that's all I'll say. I thought the movie was okay. I didn't love it.
I don't have a ton to say about this movie, but my general assessment is, "It was like the book, only more confusing." I hadn't read the book for about a year, which I thought would be good so that I wouldn't be constantly comparing everything, but it took me awhile to remember who certain characters were, and I still feel like I'd like to skim through a couple of parts of the book again. Also, while some things in the book happen quickly and are surprising, here it seems like a lot of the surprises come completely out of nowhere. Plus...Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander are both farily complex characters. Mikael Blomkvist also has fairly complex relationships with the people in his life, which I think is fairly normal for a man of his age and life experiences. I just don't think the movie captured those complexities, and that they, for the sake of time, had to skate over certain details that deserved more attention. I guess the thing that I liked best about the book was the characters and their relationships, and I was disappointed in the amount of attention the movie was able to give them.
That said, I thought the casting was good, for the most part. I liked Daniel Craig as Blomkvist, and I thought Rooney Mara totally disappeared into the role of Lisbeth Salander. Totally wasn't expecting Robin Wright as Erika Berger. Erika Berger, in the book, anyway, always just struck me as more sophisticated and put-together than the roles Wright often plays. I thought Wright did fine; I just wouldn't have pictured her in that role.
Obviously, I was squirming and covering my eyes during the rape scene. I thought the film handled it okay; it was just difficult to watch.
I guess that's all I'll say. I thought the movie was okay. I didn't love it.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
thoughts on In Time
So, I go for months seeing very few movies, and then I see two in two days. That's how it goes, I guess. On Saturday, the day before I left for Christmas break, I went to see In Time at the discount theater. I've had a few days to think about this, so I'm going to give you my verdict right off the bat: Interesting idea for a movie, good actors. However, I think that a better movie could have been made with a similar idea and the same actors. With that in mind, here goes:
Justin Timberlake's character, Will, tells us in voiceover as the movie begins that humans are now genetically engineered to stop aging when they turn twenty-five; at that point, they have one year to live, unless they can get more time. Time functions as currency; for example, a small purchase, like a cup of coffee, might cost four minutes, while a larger purchase, like a car, might cost something like sixty years. At your job, you get paid in time, rather than in money. I'm going to get a few of my nitpicks out of the way right off the bat:
1) I would have liked more of an explanation for the whole "we stop aging at twenty-five" thing. So...you have, like, bionic organs that never wear down? Could you still die from a disease, or have all of those been cured? One character "drinks himself to death"...doesn't this mean that you can still die if you abuse your body, and that this could theoretically also happen slowly over time? I mean, some characters are living to be well over a hundred years old...is there really any way to avoid the daily wear and tear on your body that happens through basic every day activities, let alone through eating unhealthily, not exercising, smoking, and other relatively common unhealthy behaviors? If they would have explained that people do sporadically have to go to the doctor for some sort of rejuventaing treatment, or-- okay, I'm going to stop trying to make sense of something that doesn't actually make sense. Given the lack of time devoted to the explanation in the film, I don't think we're really supposed to be asking these types of questions...but they would be interesting ones to explore, don't you think?
2) Everyone's personal clock displaying how much time they have left to live is displayed on their forearm. Further, it is very easy to transfer time from one person to another; you basically just have to take their hand and sort of twist, with the person giving their time's hand on top. This causes the following problems for the movie's characters: Having your clock displayed on your arm is basically the equivalent of not only walking around with *all of the money you have* on you at all times, but being forced to carry around a sign displaying how much money you are carrying. This, combined with the fact that time can be transferred from person to person so easily, means that everyone lives in constant fear of being robbed. For poor people living in the ghetto (like Will), this means that it is fairly useless to have more time than what you absolutely need to live from day to day; if you had more, it would just be stolen from you, anyway. If you are rich, you have to walk around with guards all the time.
This creates a great deal of the movie's drama, so from a pure storytelling standpoint, I can understand why things work this way. I can also understand why, from a practical standpoint, it would need to be fairly easy to transfer time from one person to another; with people running out of time constantly, you need to be able to give someone your time easily in order to save their life. What I don't understand is, given that this way of life has been going on for at least four or five generations, judging by the age of some of the characters, why they haven't come up with a better system for the storing and transfer of time. We have a better system for storing and transferring money right this second. However, this aspect of the plot is part of what I would identify as one of the movie's main arguments, which is:
Using actual seconds, minutes, hours, days, etc. of your life as currency is ridiculous. As the movie points out, there is more than enough time to go around; there is no reason why, for example, every single person couldn't be given seventy-five or 100 years to live at birth, have *money* be currency just like it is now, and have everyone know that when your time's up, your time's up. A significant portion of movie involves Will and Amanda Seyfried's character, Sylvia, stealing time and distributing it to whoever happens to be around, thoroughly messing up the economy. There's obviously some sort of argument about distribution of wealth going on here, too, but that's a whole other thing that I don't really care to get into.
The movie's other main argument, as I undersand it, is:
The system in place in this movie basically ruins everyone's quality of life. Poor people's days entirely consist of figuring out how to earn/steal/borrow more time. Rich people, on the other hand, never do anything risky. As we learn, though people supposedly can't die of natural causes other than their clocks simply running out (though, as mentioned before, certain plot points seem to contradict that), they can, just like we can today, die in accidents. As a result, rich people don't do anything even remotely risky; when Will acquires a great deal of time/money and goes to buy a car, the salesman tells him that he can have it delivered. "Delivered?" Will asks in confusion. "To wherever you plan to have it displayed," the salesman explains. Rich people don't drive; you could die that way. Sylvia has lived her whole life with the ocean right in her backyard but has never, until she meets Will, swam in it; it's too dangerous.
To me, this is the most interesting idea the movie brings up: in today's world, we all know that we are going to die at some point, yet we willingly engage in a number of activities that we know could potentially kill us. We might doubt the likelihood of dying while participating in these activities, and we certainly hope that we won't; however, we know it is a possibility, and we still drive cars, swim, and do other far more dangerous things. Would knowing that you could live forever *unless* something unforeseen happened make you less likely to take even the most basic of risks? Similarly, would you put off doing certain things literally forever if you knew that you would probably always have the chance, and always be physically well enough to do them? And if you, like the rich people in this movie, rarely (if ever)experienced the death of someone you knew, would you have an almost paralyzing fear of death? These are issues that I don't think about every day, and I like that the movie brought them up.
However, in the end, the movie doesn't have enough time (heh) to explore all of the legitimately interesting issues it raises, nor does it have time to fill the plot holes that are present. Add to that the issues with distribution of wealth/the differences in the ways that rich and poor spend and guard their money/the difficulty of moving between social classes/the social problems that are created by poverty that I have barely even scratched the surface on in this review, but that are very present throughout the movie, I think that I would definitely say that the movie is trying to do too much. Add to *that* the fact that the movie eventually devolves into a fairly standard chase movie and that I actually wound up getting a little bit bored watching a movie with endless possibilities, I can't say that this was an awesome movie. It was, however, interesting. Grab a friend, see it, and have a lively conversation afterwards.
Justin Timberlake's character, Will, tells us in voiceover as the movie begins that humans are now genetically engineered to stop aging when they turn twenty-five; at that point, they have one year to live, unless they can get more time. Time functions as currency; for example, a small purchase, like a cup of coffee, might cost four minutes, while a larger purchase, like a car, might cost something like sixty years. At your job, you get paid in time, rather than in money. I'm going to get a few of my nitpicks out of the way right off the bat:
1) I would have liked more of an explanation for the whole "we stop aging at twenty-five" thing. So...you have, like, bionic organs that never wear down? Could you still die from a disease, or have all of those been cured? One character "drinks himself to death"...doesn't this mean that you can still die if you abuse your body, and that this could theoretically also happen slowly over time? I mean, some characters are living to be well over a hundred years old...is there really any way to avoid the daily wear and tear on your body that happens through basic every day activities, let alone through eating unhealthily, not exercising, smoking, and other relatively common unhealthy behaviors? If they would have explained that people do sporadically have to go to the doctor for some sort of rejuventaing treatment, or-- okay, I'm going to stop trying to make sense of something that doesn't actually make sense. Given the lack of time devoted to the explanation in the film, I don't think we're really supposed to be asking these types of questions...but they would be interesting ones to explore, don't you think?
2) Everyone's personal clock displaying how much time they have left to live is displayed on their forearm. Further, it is very easy to transfer time from one person to another; you basically just have to take their hand and sort of twist, with the person giving their time's hand on top. This causes the following problems for the movie's characters: Having your clock displayed on your arm is basically the equivalent of not only walking around with *all of the money you have* on you at all times, but being forced to carry around a sign displaying how much money you are carrying. This, combined with the fact that time can be transferred from person to person so easily, means that everyone lives in constant fear of being robbed. For poor people living in the ghetto (like Will), this means that it is fairly useless to have more time than what you absolutely need to live from day to day; if you had more, it would just be stolen from you, anyway. If you are rich, you have to walk around with guards all the time.
This creates a great deal of the movie's drama, so from a pure storytelling standpoint, I can understand why things work this way. I can also understand why, from a practical standpoint, it would need to be fairly easy to transfer time from one person to another; with people running out of time constantly, you need to be able to give someone your time easily in order to save their life. What I don't understand is, given that this way of life has been going on for at least four or five generations, judging by the age of some of the characters, why they haven't come up with a better system for the storing and transfer of time. We have a better system for storing and transferring money right this second. However, this aspect of the plot is part of what I would identify as one of the movie's main arguments, which is:
Using actual seconds, minutes, hours, days, etc. of your life as currency is ridiculous. As the movie points out, there is more than enough time to go around; there is no reason why, for example, every single person couldn't be given seventy-five or 100 years to live at birth, have *money* be currency just like it is now, and have everyone know that when your time's up, your time's up. A significant portion of movie involves Will and Amanda Seyfried's character, Sylvia, stealing time and distributing it to whoever happens to be around, thoroughly messing up the economy. There's obviously some sort of argument about distribution of wealth going on here, too, but that's a whole other thing that I don't really care to get into.
The movie's other main argument, as I undersand it, is:
The system in place in this movie basically ruins everyone's quality of life. Poor people's days entirely consist of figuring out how to earn/steal/borrow more time. Rich people, on the other hand, never do anything risky. As we learn, though people supposedly can't die of natural causes other than their clocks simply running out (though, as mentioned before, certain plot points seem to contradict that), they can, just like we can today, die in accidents. As a result, rich people don't do anything even remotely risky; when Will acquires a great deal of time/money and goes to buy a car, the salesman tells him that he can have it delivered. "Delivered?" Will asks in confusion. "To wherever you plan to have it displayed," the salesman explains. Rich people don't drive; you could die that way. Sylvia has lived her whole life with the ocean right in her backyard but has never, until she meets Will, swam in it; it's too dangerous.
To me, this is the most interesting idea the movie brings up: in today's world, we all know that we are going to die at some point, yet we willingly engage in a number of activities that we know could potentially kill us. We might doubt the likelihood of dying while participating in these activities, and we certainly hope that we won't; however, we know it is a possibility, and we still drive cars, swim, and do other far more dangerous things. Would knowing that you could live forever *unless* something unforeseen happened make you less likely to take even the most basic of risks? Similarly, would you put off doing certain things literally forever if you knew that you would probably always have the chance, and always be physically well enough to do them? And if you, like the rich people in this movie, rarely (if ever)experienced the death of someone you knew, would you have an almost paralyzing fear of death? These are issues that I don't think about every day, and I like that the movie brought them up.
However, in the end, the movie doesn't have enough time (heh) to explore all of the legitimately interesting issues it raises, nor does it have time to fill the plot holes that are present. Add to that the issues with distribution of wealth/the differences in the ways that rich and poor spend and guard their money/the difficulty of moving between social classes/the social problems that are created by poverty that I have barely even scratched the surface on in this review, but that are very present throughout the movie, I think that I would definitely say that the movie is trying to do too much. Add to *that* the fact that the movie eventually devolves into a fairly standard chase movie and that I actually wound up getting a little bit bored watching a movie with endless possibilities, I can't say that this was an awesome movie. It was, however, interesting. Grab a friend, see it, and have a lively conversation afterwards.
Friday, December 16, 2011
thoughts on Young Adult/other randomness
1)I've thought to myself more than once this past semester, "Why are TV and movies so crappy these days? I used to really enjoy TV and movies." I think the issue is actually largely with me. I've been really busy this semster, and, thus, much more impatient and critical, at least when it comes to entertainment. If I'm going to go to the movies, it has to be something I REALLY want to see. If I'm going to watch a TV show, then every episode had better be, at the very least, pretty good. The end result of this is that I've been to the movies only four times this semester, counting today, and that I've stopped watching both Glee and The Office. For the most part, I think this is a Good Thing, because though I had, before today, seen only three fall movies (50/50, Footloose, and The Muppets), I thoroughly enjoyed all of them. Less quantity, more quality, is what it comes down to.
2)Anyway, whether the issue is actually with me or not, the previews featured at today's showing of Young Adult indicated to me that movies are about to get awesome again. Coming to us in the (relatively) near future are This Means War, a spy vs. spy movie featuring Reese Witherspoon that looks Just Awesome; American Reunion, a sequel to the American Pie movies (I know!!!! They made a sequel!!! Featuring what looks like the WHOLE original cast!!! I will gladly admit that the American Pie movies got progressively worse as they went along, but...if you can't tell from the number of exclamation points, I'm excited about this), and Rock of Ages. Now, I don't know much about Rock of Ages, but apparently it was a Broadway musical, and from the looks of the preview, the concept is that a bunch of actors that I kind of like sing all of my favorite songs from the 80s. In other words, other than Hunger Games, it may very well be the coolest thing I see in 2012. I'm serious.
3)Okay, so Young Adult. In a nutshell, this is a movie where Charlize Theron's character, Mavis, does a bunch of things that made me mentally chastise her multiple times during the movie: "You're being so inappropriate!," and, "You shouldn't drive! You're drunk! You got a cab that other time! What the heck?!," and, "Stop drinking so much! Just leave like he told you to!," and, at one point, simply, "Stop it." It's much like when Friday Night Lights was still on and I used to sit there the whole time yelling, "Stop it, Tim!," or just, "Tim Riggins!" Both Mavis and Tim are heavy drinkers, so there you go.
Anyway, the actual plot of Young Adult is that a woman who was a big deal in high school, and who thinks she's better than everyone still living in her hometown (she moved away to Minneapolis), decides to go back home to try to win back her high school boyfriend, who is married and whose wife just had a baby. This is a bad idea in the first place, but while there she keeps getting drunk and doing increasingly inappropriate stuff. She also makes friends with a guy she ignored in high school, Matt; the parts where the two of them hang out are the most enjoyable parts of the movie. The rest of the movie is fairly uncomfortable to watch, but I'll still say that I enjoyed it as a whole. Like, at first I wasn't really buying Charlize Theron as Mavis; she's a little bit too pretty to play a woman who was once the prettiest girl in a small-town high school. And she looked just wrong schlumping around in a Hello Kitty t-shirt and sweats. I started to like her more in the role as the movie went on, but I still think it would have worked better for the part if Mavis were played by someone who was only reasonably attractive but thought she was way better-looking than she actually was.
Also...I like Diablo Cody, who wrote this movie. Juno is one of my favorite movies. However, the more Diablo Cody works I see/read, the more I realize that all of her characters kind of sound the same. On the one hand, I guess that's good because it means she has a distinctive style. On the other hand, it doesn't really make sense, given how different the characters she writes actually are. The weird thing about this movie is that everything that Diablo Cody has written up until this point has suggested to me that she has a very positive view of humanity. This is one of the things I like about her, actually: that most of her characters react to the events in their lives in a much nicer/cooler way than what I would expect, given my own experiences. This movie is darker, though the thing here is that most of the people in this movie react to *Mavis* in a much nicer/cooler way than what you would expect. The sad thing is that many of them do this because they either feel sorry for her or don't care much about her one way or the other. So, yeah. Dark. I kind of walked away with the impression that we weren't really supposed to like either Mavis *or* the people from her hometown, which seemed weird, for a Diablo Cody movie. Hmm.
A random thing that occurred to me as I was watching this movie: my parents no longer live in the house I lived in when I was in high school, so I have no idea whether or not it's normal for parents to keep their child's room *exactly like she left it when she graduated and moved out*, as Mavis's parents do. It seems kind of creepy and excessive; like, obviously, I can see keeping *a bedroom* for your child, and leaving a couple of things on the wall that she would like (my parents do this for me, even in their new house), but you would think that they might need to also use that room for other things. That said, it made me giggle when Mavis dug through her old container of scrunchies, because-- hee. I had so many scrunchies.
Another random thing that occurred to me as I was watching this movie: before Mavis leaves Minneapolis, she complains to a friend (another former Mercury, Minnesota resident now living in the city) about how horrible their hometown is, leading me to believe that she is from some total backwoods hole. Then she gets to the hotel she's staying at and I'm genuinely confused, all, "Wait...is she stopping somewhere on the way to her hometown? Because this place doesn't seem that bad. Or small. They have a Chili's." The longer she is in Mercury, the more of these confused thoughts I have: "But there's a Thai restaurant! How small can this place be if they have a Thai restaurant?" And her ex-boyfriend, Buddy, asks her to meet her at a sports bar that she thinks is totally lame, and I'm all, "What? It looks like Buffalo Wild Wings. I wouldn't go there every day, but it's fun now and then." Also, her ex-boyfriend invites her to come see his wife's band play, explaining that the band members are a bunch of moms who enjoy playing together. "They're bad, huh?" Mavis asks conspiratorially. Buddy kind of just shrugs, but when we actually see them play, I think to myself, "Aw, they're not bad at all! They're a good little cover band! And they look like they're having so much fun!" I guess what this comes down to is that 1) I've lived in places a heck of a lot smaller than Mercury, Minnesota, so chill out, Mavis, and 2) I'm less of a jerk than she is.
Final random thought: at one point, Mavis comments that she is depressed, and Matt suggests that she go out and get some exercise or something. Me: "Oh, that probably would help a lot! It's weird that she never works out!"
So...yeah. I both enjoyed it and found in uncomfortable. I'd recommend it overall, though.
2)Anyway, whether the issue is actually with me or not, the previews featured at today's showing of Young Adult indicated to me that movies are about to get awesome again. Coming to us in the (relatively) near future are This Means War, a spy vs. spy movie featuring Reese Witherspoon that looks Just Awesome; American Reunion, a sequel to the American Pie movies (I know!!!! They made a sequel!!! Featuring what looks like the WHOLE original cast!!! I will gladly admit that the American Pie movies got progressively worse as they went along, but...if you can't tell from the number of exclamation points, I'm excited about this), and Rock of Ages. Now, I don't know much about Rock of Ages, but apparently it was a Broadway musical, and from the looks of the preview, the concept is that a bunch of actors that I kind of like sing all of my favorite songs from the 80s. In other words, other than Hunger Games, it may very well be the coolest thing I see in 2012. I'm serious.
3)Okay, so Young Adult. In a nutshell, this is a movie where Charlize Theron's character, Mavis, does a bunch of things that made me mentally chastise her multiple times during the movie: "You're being so inappropriate!," and, "You shouldn't drive! You're drunk! You got a cab that other time! What the heck?!," and, "Stop drinking so much! Just leave like he told you to!," and, at one point, simply, "Stop it." It's much like when Friday Night Lights was still on and I used to sit there the whole time yelling, "Stop it, Tim!," or just, "Tim Riggins!" Both Mavis and Tim are heavy drinkers, so there you go.
Anyway, the actual plot of Young Adult is that a woman who was a big deal in high school, and who thinks she's better than everyone still living in her hometown (she moved away to Minneapolis), decides to go back home to try to win back her high school boyfriend, who is married and whose wife just had a baby. This is a bad idea in the first place, but while there she keeps getting drunk and doing increasingly inappropriate stuff. She also makes friends with a guy she ignored in high school, Matt; the parts where the two of them hang out are the most enjoyable parts of the movie. The rest of the movie is fairly uncomfortable to watch, but I'll still say that I enjoyed it as a whole. Like, at first I wasn't really buying Charlize Theron as Mavis; she's a little bit too pretty to play a woman who was once the prettiest girl in a small-town high school. And she looked just wrong schlumping around in a Hello Kitty t-shirt and sweats. I started to like her more in the role as the movie went on, but I still think it would have worked better for the part if Mavis were played by someone who was only reasonably attractive but thought she was way better-looking than she actually was.
Also...I like Diablo Cody, who wrote this movie. Juno is one of my favorite movies. However, the more Diablo Cody works I see/read, the more I realize that all of her characters kind of sound the same. On the one hand, I guess that's good because it means she has a distinctive style. On the other hand, it doesn't really make sense, given how different the characters she writes actually are. The weird thing about this movie is that everything that Diablo Cody has written up until this point has suggested to me that she has a very positive view of humanity. This is one of the things I like about her, actually: that most of her characters react to the events in their lives in a much nicer/cooler way than what I would expect, given my own experiences. This movie is darker, though the thing here is that most of the people in this movie react to *Mavis* in a much nicer/cooler way than what you would expect. The sad thing is that many of them do this because they either feel sorry for her or don't care much about her one way or the other. So, yeah. Dark. I kind of walked away with the impression that we weren't really supposed to like either Mavis *or* the people from her hometown, which seemed weird, for a Diablo Cody movie. Hmm.
A random thing that occurred to me as I was watching this movie: my parents no longer live in the house I lived in when I was in high school, so I have no idea whether or not it's normal for parents to keep their child's room *exactly like she left it when she graduated and moved out*, as Mavis's parents do. It seems kind of creepy and excessive; like, obviously, I can see keeping *a bedroom* for your child, and leaving a couple of things on the wall that she would like (my parents do this for me, even in their new house), but you would think that they might need to also use that room for other things. That said, it made me giggle when Mavis dug through her old container of scrunchies, because-- hee. I had so many scrunchies.
Another random thing that occurred to me as I was watching this movie: before Mavis leaves Minneapolis, she complains to a friend (another former Mercury, Minnesota resident now living in the city) about how horrible their hometown is, leading me to believe that she is from some total backwoods hole. Then she gets to the hotel she's staying at and I'm genuinely confused, all, "Wait...is she stopping somewhere on the way to her hometown? Because this place doesn't seem that bad. Or small. They have a Chili's." The longer she is in Mercury, the more of these confused thoughts I have: "But there's a Thai restaurant! How small can this place be if they have a Thai restaurant?" And her ex-boyfriend, Buddy, asks her to meet her at a sports bar that she thinks is totally lame, and I'm all, "What? It looks like Buffalo Wild Wings. I wouldn't go there every day, but it's fun now and then." Also, her ex-boyfriend invites her to come see his wife's band play, explaining that the band members are a bunch of moms who enjoy playing together. "They're bad, huh?" Mavis asks conspiratorially. Buddy kind of just shrugs, but when we actually see them play, I think to myself, "Aw, they're not bad at all! They're a good little cover band! And they look like they're having so much fun!" I guess what this comes down to is that 1) I've lived in places a heck of a lot smaller than Mercury, Minnesota, so chill out, Mavis, and 2) I'm less of a jerk than she is.
Final random thought: at one point, Mavis comments that she is depressed, and Matt suggests that she go out and get some exercise or something. Me: "Oh, that probably would help a lot! It's weird that she never works out!"
So...yeah. I both enjoyed it and found in uncomfortable. I'd recommend it overall, though.
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