thoughts on Delivery Man

Vince Vaughn stars as David Wozniak, who makes deliveries for his family's butcher shop and has a knack for getting himself into ridiculous situations.  He won't let his girlfriend Emma (Cobie Smulders) come over anymore because he doesn't want her to know he's trying to grow pot.  He currently owes some mobster types $80,000 for reasons that I was never exactly clear on.  Emma tells him in an early scene that she's pregnant, but she's doubtful whether she can count on him to step up and be a father.

He soon finds himself in another ridiculous situation.  Apparently, when he was in his twenties, he donated a ridiculous amount of sperm to a sperm bank and is now the biological father of 533 kids.  He signed a confidentiality agreement when he donated the sperm, but now 142 of the kids are suing the sperm bank to try to find out his identity.  He is given a manila envelope with information about the 142 kids, and he starts paying them visits without telling them who he is.  He has fathered quite the assortment of children, it turns out (all of whom are now in their late teens or early twenties).  There is a wannabe actor who David covers for at work so that he can go on an audition.  There is an NBA basketball player.  There is a young woman who he saves from a drug overdose.  There is a young man with cerebral palsy.

What I have just given you is maybe the first third of the movie, and it's pretty good.  David and the people in his world are likable, as are many of the kids.  After a point, though, there's just too much going on.  One somewhat creepy kid figures out who he is and tries to get closer to him while keeping David's identity from the others.  David's lawyer and friend, Brett (Chris Pratt), suggests that David countersue to keep his identity a secret.  David doesn't really want to, but he needs to pay off the mobsters.  Also, he's trying to prove himself to Emma...all the while keeping this HUGE secret from her.  "I can't do this without you," he tells her at one point.  "Can't you?" I asked aloud (my two friends and I were the only ones in the theater).  He supposedly wants to build a life with her, but he's not telling her about a huge thing happening in his life.  Why is she in this movie, even? Supposedly her pregnancy is the thing that makes him want to grow up and figure himself out, but it's really his interactions with the kids that do that.

So...it was okay.  I liked most of the characters, but the story (which, granted, was fairly ridiculous from the beginning) lost me after a point.

thoughts on Frozen

In this animated Disney film, Elsa (Idina Menzel) and Anna (Kristen Bell) are sisters and best friends.  Elsa has the ability to freeze things just by touching them.  As kids, this is fun (they build a snowman and bring him to life, they slide around on the ice, etc.) until an accident that happens while they're playing almost kills Anna.  Elsa and Anna's parents take them to some trolls who save Anna's life and warn them that Elsa's powers will only grow stronger; she must limit her contact with others and try to suppress her abilities.  Meanwhile, the trolls will erase Anna's memories of Elsa's magical powers.  Elsa and Anna's parents close the gates to the kingdom, and Elsa shuts herself in her room.  Because Anna no longer knows about Elsa's powers, she has no idea why Elsa never wants to play with her anymore. 

The girls grow older, and their parents are killed while traveling by boat.  Elsa is going to be queen, and the gates to the kingdom are opened for the coronation.  Anna meets a prince named Hans (Santino Fontana) and immediately falls in love with him.  When she tells Elsa she plans to marry him and have him move in with them, Elsa gets very upset, and her emotions set off her powers.  Horrified, she runs away where she believes she can be free to use her powers without hurting anyone.  Little does she know that she's set off an eternal winter in the kingdom.  Leaving Hans in charge, Anna runs off to find her, getting help along the way from Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), an ice salesman whose business isn't going so well these days; his reindeer, Sven; and Olaf (Josh Gad), the snowman Elsa brought to life as a child.

There's a lot to like about this movie, everyone.  First of all, for all of the magical things I just mentioned-- Elsa's powers, the trolls, the adorable talking snowman, etc.-- it all feels really REAL.  You just really hurt for Anna when Elsa keeps pushing her away without telling her why.  Also, while there are characters in this movie who are not good people and who do bad things to the main characters, this is not a story where the characters just have to overcome a villain and everything will be fine; most of their problems come from chance accidents, from fear, from dishonesty and secrets, from impetuous decisions-- the same types of things most of our problems come from in real life.  Like in real life, then, the problems are solved when characters figure things out, when they make sacrifices, when they are honest with themselves and others.  There's romance in this story, too, but it sometimes causes more problems than it solves, and definitely doesn't make everything perfect.

In addition to a great story, let's also not forget that this movie is all just generally very well-done.  The songs are so good I'd like to get the soundtrack.  The animated winter wonderland the characters live in is beautiful.  Olaf the Snowman is super cute.  The characters are likeable.

Yeah.  Not only is this the best Disney movie I've seen in awhile, I daresay this is the best movie, period, that I've seen all year.

thoughts on Scandal 12/5

I like this show, but I've said it before, and I will say it again: this is a mean, dirty world these characters live in.  I HATED the torture stuff with Huck and Quinn, and...CYRUS PIMPED OUT JAMES WITHOUT HIS KNOWLEDGE OR CONSENT AND THEN GOT MAD AT HIM FOR GOING THROUGH WITH IT!!!!  What kind of person does that to their spouse?! Of course, though, I will be back for the next episode, what with the Sally Langdon "I've committed a sin" gasp-worthy moment at the end. This show!

thoughts on Dallas Buyers Club

Matthew McConaughey stars as Ron Woodruff, an electrician and bull rider living in Dallas in the mid-1980s. He learns, following an electrical accident that puts him in the emergency room, that he is HIV positive.  Early scenes of the film have established that he was at a higher-than-average risk for this, and that there were signs of this long before he was diagnosed; he has sex with multiple partners (often, multiple partners at one time), and we see him coughing frequently and getting dizzy and collapsing at one point, though you can imagine he chalks this up to the fact that he drinks, snorts coke, and gets into a lot of fights.  The doctors (played by Denis O'Hare and Jennifer Garner) give him thirty days to live.  Ron spends the first few of these days in denial; he thinks that only gay men get HIV.  However, after he does some research and learns that the virus is spread through unprotected sex, he realizes that this is actually happening. 

He goes back to Dr. Saks (Garner) and asks her about a then-new drug called AZT, which is currently being tested on human subjects (Saks thinks the testing process has been rushed).  Since the drug is still being tested, Saks can't prescribe it to him, but he manages to work out a deal with a janitor, who sneaks him some.  Eventually, someone at the hospital figures out that some is going missing and begins locking it up, at which point the janitor tells Ron about a doctor in Mexico.  Ron is initially skeptical, but driven to desperation-- both by his sudden lack of AZT and by the fact that virtually everyone in his life has turned their back on him; he even returns to his trailer to find an eviction notice on the door-- he checks it out. 

The doctor there prescribes drugs that work better (AZT is apparently very hard on the body, especially when one has a weakened immune system), and Ron arranges to take a large amount of them back to the United States.  With the help of a transgendered man named Rayon (Jared Leto) that Ron met in the hospital, he sets up a "buyers' club" in which people can get whatever drugs they want for a monthly membership fee.  He is able to do this for a time because the drugs are not technically illegal, just unapproved, and because he's not actually selling the drugs, but rather membership in the club.  However, he faces opposition from the medical/pharmaceutical community (Dr. Saks is sympathetic, but there's only so much she can do), and is also continually hindered by the fact that his health is continually declining, as is Rayon's.

The movie is about several things.  It's about how completely awful it must have been to have AIDS in the eighties, when they hadn't figured out how to treat it effectively and when the public had some pretty major misconceptions about how you contracted it. It's about the fact that sometimes the medical community is hindered in their efforts to provide the best care and treatment possible for their patients by regulations, restrictions, and the influence of the pharmaceutical industry.  And, it's about Ron, who starts out just trying just to survive and winds up helping a lot of people, and who grows less homophobic through his unlikely friendship with Rayon.

The story itself is very interesting.  It felt a bit longer than its slightly less than two-hour running time, perhaps because it's hard to tell where the story is going; after he establishes the buyers' club, you're not really sure what will happen next or what you should want to happen next, and the main characters' deaths are a forgone conclusion.  However, it informed me about things/events I didn't know a lot about and made me want to learn more, which I appreciated.  The performances are solid across the board.  Jared Leto's character is the most likeable, and I think his performance was probably the strongest, though I have no complaints about McConaughey's, either.  Garner has the least to work with of the three, but her role is important in that 1) you need someone from the medical community that isn't villainous, as some of the other medical professionals come across and 2) Ron needs someone neutral, sympathetic, and informed to talk things through with.  There's sort of a romantic vibe between the two of them that not much comes of, but that's really not what the movie was about.

Anyway, I thought it was a solid movie.  Worth seeing.

"This is the revolution. And you are the Mockingjay." (thoughts on Catching Fire)

The second movie in a trilogy can sometimes be a hot mess.  Sometimes, it turns out to merely be inconsequential; for example I enjoyed Scream 2 (and yes, I know that they eventually made a fourth Scream movie, but I think the first three were originally envisioned as a trilogy), but after all was said and done, I recall commenting to someone, "The second movie basically could have not even happened." Not much of real consequence happened in that movie, and there was some stuff that I wished hadn't happened at all. 

More often, the second movie in a trilogy is a hot mess in that it's not a self-contained movie at all; you can't understand it without having seen the first one, and it doesn't really end, it just stops.  This is not always necessarily a bad thing.  Back to the Future Part 2, for example, is my favorite of that trilogy, but I love it because it's insane: now they're in the future!  Now they're in an alternate 1985!  Now Doc Brown is literally drawing a diagram on a chalkboard to explain what's going on!  Now Marty's back in the 1955 of the first movie, and he has to make sure not to run into his other self!  It ended with the words "To Be Continued," and very little was resolved; I recall, as a child, being all, "Wait! He didn't even go back for Jennifer!," because the movie ended with Marty's girlfriend still left passed out on a porch in (I think) alterna-1985.  I was very concerned about Jennifer.

Anyway.  The point is, Catching Fire (the movie, and, really, the book, too) is kind of a hot mess in that there's a ton going on and that it's not really a self-contained story, but like Back to the Future Part 2, it is awesome.  Though I liked the first Hunger Games well enough (I really liked it when I saw it in the theater, then found myself with more issues with it upon repeated viewings), in retrospect, it spent a lot of time setting things up; I liked that with Catching Fire, they could just jump right into things.

For those unfamiliar with the story, Catching Fire begins with Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) back home after the Hunger Games.  She and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) must go on a "victory tour" of the districts.  Before she leaves, though, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) visits Katniss to tell her, basically, that he's not buying her act: he doesn't think she's really in love with Peeta, which means that she didn't threaten to eat the poisonous berries at the end of the Games because she couldn't live without him; it was an act of rebellion against the Capitol.  At any rate, that's how some of the people watching saw it, and if a girl from District Twelve can defy the Capitol and get away with it, why can't everyone?  President Snow threatens that she'd better convince the people (and him) that she and Peeta really are in love and, basically, get this whole thing under control.

The problem is, it's already out of her hands, and they'd better get this whole thing under control...or what?  Or maybe the people won't get to go back to their regular lives of, as Gale (Liam Hemsworth) puts it, working like slaves, nearly starving to death, and risking their children in the Hunger Games every year?  At one point Katniss suggests to Gale that they run away, but he tells her no: she is in this thing now.  There's no going back.  Thus, the following conflicts are in play:

1) The Capitol wants to keep control of Panem.  Katniss is a threat to that.  However, the people see her as a beacon of hope, so simply killing her would only fan the flames of unrest.  Thus, they must either control her or change public opinion about her.  They try to do both, unsuccessfully, over the course of the film.

2) Katniss wants to  go back to life basically as it was before the Hunger Games.  It's nice to no longer be starving to death, but she doesn't like the Capitol dictating every detail of her life, as they do now and will continue to do.  The problem is, she's trapped; as Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) tells her, there are really no winners of the Hunger Games-- only survivors.  She has to play by the Capitol's rules or risk harm to herself, Peeta, Gale, her mom, and her sister.  As various characters point out to her over the course of the film, however, what's happening is bigger than all of them, and some things are more important than basic day-to-day safety and survival.

This all comes to a head in the 75th Annual Hunger Games, in which the Capitol announces the tributes will be chosen from the pool of existing victors, which means that Katniss and Peeta are going back in, along with a rather motley crew of fellow contestants.  They become allies with Finnick (Sam Claflin), a ridiculously good-looking charmer who Katniss isn't completely sure she can trust; Mags (Lynn Cohen), the other tribute from Finnick's district, who looks to be in her seventies or eighties; Johanna (Jena Malone), who strips naked in front of Peeta, Haymitch, and Katniss in an elevator (the look on Jennifer Lawrence's face throughout this scene is pretty much the greatest thing of all time) on their first meeting and is generally a badass; Wiress (Amanda Plummer), who Johanna nicknames "Nuts"; and Beetee (Jeffrey Wright), an electronics expert.  It's different from Katniss and Peeta's first Games: they've all been here before; they're willing to form alliances; and they all know who the real enemy is.

There's a LOT going on here, but the movie handles it all fairly well: basically, we follow Katniss as she goes from thinking that if she just plays by the Capitol's rules, it'll be fine, to realizing that it was never fine and is never going to be fine unless something changes.  She basically has to adjust her whole way of thinking.  The first movie was all about survival.  This movie is about deciding what you want for yourself when survival is no longer your only concern.

So, very good as the second movie in a trilogy.  It raises the stakes and leaves a lot let to explore in the last part.  I liked it.

Nashville/Scandal

Is it just me, or has Nashville gone off the rails into total over-the-top soap opera territory? Don't get me wrong; I love stuff like that.  But that moment last week when Charles Wentworth's wife knocked on Juliette's door and just started making out with her? And then last night when Peggy decided to fake her miscarriage, and she just pulls out this plastic tub that has, like, a professionally printed label on it that says "Pork Blood"? Me to my mom on the phone today: "I don't even know where you'd GET pork blood, but I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't come in a TUB LIKE THAT." My mom: "I don't-- I don't know." And Teddy finds her curled up on the floor all, "I think I lost the baby," but he personally doesn't even accompany her to the doctor? I don't know, man.  I buy that Peggy wouldn't tell Teddy right away that she lost the baby, and obviously at some point she was going to have to tell him the truth, but that was just some ridiculousness, right there.  I'm not complaining, because like I said, I love stuff like that, but that was some nonsense. 

So, Scandal. I could get behind this show a lot more if there were no Quinn and no Huck.  Their storylines never do anything but creep me out and/or make me sad.  I don't particularly like Abby, either, but her romance with David Rosen is kind of sweet.  Also, I NEVER feel like I pay enough attention.  I need to just get a hot beverage and settle in and watch it without distractions.  So...Fitz tells Olivia he had a dream that that house was where the two of them would raise their kids someday, and I'm all, "What?! You have like three kids already with Mellie! What are you even--oh. Okay, that worked for Olivia, apparently."  Like, obviously I can see that Fitz and Olivia are hot for each other and in love and all that, but I wish she could just love Jake.  I know that she does, too, but-- damn.  Also-- did Cyrus ACTUALLY pimp out James, or did James just think that he did and go for it anyway?

Yeah.  So this is the type of stuff I'm watching these days.

thoughts on About Time (spoilers)

Domhall Gleeson plays Tim, who learns on his twenty-first birthday that he, like all of the men in his family, can time travel-- all he has to do is go into a closet, close his eyes, and clench his fists, and he'll be back in any moment from within his own life that he chooses.  What's fairly humorous-- and fairly realistic, I think-- is that he rarely goes back to do anything too major; usually, he just goes back a few minutes to save himself from an awkward or moderately regrettable moment.  He goes back to kiss the girl on New Year's Eve instead of shaking her hand and embarrassing both of them.  He stops himself from blurting out something stupid the first time he meets his future in-laws.  Occasionally, he tries to go back and help a friend or family member, but this usually results in messing things up horribly for himself.  He helps an actor in a friend's play remember his lines and misses his first meeting with his future wife (Rachel McAdams).  He tries to help his sister (Lydia Wilson) avoid spending years with a no-good boyfriend and accidentally prevents the birth of his first child.

The lessons he eventually learns-- that every little detail doesn't need to be perfect when you're surrounded by people you love; that sometimes you need to let people live with and learn from their mistakes instead of trying to keep them from making them at all; and that you should live each day like you're not going to get a "do over," because most people don't-- aren't super profound.  However, the characters are all very sweet and lovable, and I was moved to tears on more than one occasion.  My single favorite sequence happens after his father (Bill Nighy), who shares the gift of travel, tells him that he should live each day twice: the first, with all of the regular anxieties and irritations of daily life, and the second, almost the same, but stopping to notice all of the things he missed the day before.  He does this, and stops to catch the smile of the cashier who sold him a cup of coffee and a sandwich, and the beauty of the courthouse that he rushed through on his way to court.  He eventually realizes that he should just notice these things the first time around.  Again, not necessarily an *original* observation, but an important one.

It's...just a really lovely little movie.  Tim's a nice guy.  Mary's a nice girl.  He has a good relationship with his quirky family, especially his father.  His and Mary's problems are so normal-- occasionally saying the wrong thing and facing family issues like the illness and death of a parent and having a sister who worries you.  The lesson he learns is about learning to appreciate all the good you already have instead of trying so hard to make it perfect.  It's all very sweet.  I enjoyed it very much.