because I’m pretty much definitely for sure going to see Goon. Sorry, whatever, I’m sure it will be terrible. I still want to see it.
I am looking for something classic that she will adore. (We’ve already been through Little Women, Stand By Me, Princess Bride and all three Back to the Futures.) Help?!?
Give me something to read. Give me something to watch. Give me something to hear. Please?
Good?! Oh it was so much more than good. It was stressful. It was exhausting. It was beautiful. It was sexy…in a creepy way? Creepy sexy? Mila Kunis! Holy eff that girl is gorgeous. Portman is, too, but the soap opera worried face/furrowed brow held throughout most of the movie sort of distracted me from her perfection.
The film is not flawless, but almost. My favourite thing of all is that it employs all these devices and all of them work and none of them feel contrived or too heavy hitting. And, just as I couldn’t figure it out from the trailor, I spent most of the movie not really being able to figure out what it was supposed to be. And I liked that. It was a mind fuck, through and through, expertly orchestrated and executed.
The only thing that was a bit weird was that the (packed) theatre laughed a lot…in moments that, though a little funny, were more dark than laugh out loud. But maybe it was a nervous thing?
Anyway, go see it! Go see it, go see it, go see it.
I saw Love and Other Drugs. Ick. I like me some Jakey, but jeez I’d like to see some original characters in a love story. I hate the sick/dying/free spirit/anti commitment/sexy sexy sex a lot/oh but deep down she wants commitment/artist character more than almost any other.
Also, an interesting thing about these kinds of movies. When you’re not in a relationship or in a shitty relationship they’re like, wow sigh so beautiful. But when you are, you’re like, whatever. That’s lame. The real shit is far better. So, you know, that’s nice. Because weeping through shitty rom coms despite seeing through them is pretty much never a good thing.
So! Last night my best friend and I went to see Conviction. The buzz thus far is suggesting Hillary Swank will see her third best actress nom for her role as Betty Anne Waters, the real life woman who became a lawyer to get her brother out of prison for a murder he didn’t commit. I’m not a massive Swank fan, I find her kind of grating and I didn’t think she or Million Dollar Baby was as holy wow amazing as a lot of other people did. The thing about Hillary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby is that, yeah she’s a solid actor but really, in both cases the greatness of the movie was all about the story. Conviction is no different. Her performance is just that, solid – nothing more, nothing less. But because the story is so mind bogglingly incredible, all she really had to do was not be terrible and it was going to be just fine. (Juliette Lewis, on the other hand, has an itty bitty part, but absolutely kills it. Sam Rockwell, too, is super duper awesome good and defs deserves a nomination.) She shouldn’t take home the award for this role and she definitely shouldn’t be winning her third Oscar for this role. That would just be wacky.
All in all, I liked the movie. I like that they didn’t try to play Kenny Waters as saintly. He was a likeable character, for sure, but he was also violent and troubled and they didn’t try to paint it otherwise. I do think, however, that in changing the ending (in real life Kenny Waters died six months after being freed from prison) they made a bad call. The story they told was incredible, absolutely. But the story they chose not to tell, to me, is actually far more intriguing. How does somebody even begin to carry on after being falsely convicted and wrongly imprisoned for almost two decades? And for Betty Anne, to go through what she went through, succeed, and then bury her brother six months after freeing him? I’d love to have seen that story.
Still, the movie as it is is well worth watching. Next up? Ugh. The Social Network. I can’t even tell you how much I don’t want to see this stupid movie!
My best friend and I are going to be watching a movie a week (might become a couple movies a week in the new year) until February in an effort to see all the Oscar nominated films before the big deal day at the Kodak. (We are those people, the ones who make a big, big deal out of watching the Oscars . Whatever, it’s who we are.) Anyway, if you really want to see each and every nominated film (even shorts! even docs! even foreign language films!) you’ve gotta start early. And that means wading through a whole lot of potentials based only on hype and buzz. Last year that even meant watching that awful, terrible, saccharine and tear soaked Sandra Bullock football flick! (Never finished it.)
Here’s our initial list:
black swan
conviction
nowhere boy
the fighter
blue valentine
127 hours
social network
howl
hereafter
somewhere
true grit
the fighter
get low
never let me go
it’s kind of a funny story
buried
So there is a least one that will not likely be nominated for anything but, damnit, I still want to see. But what am I missing? Help me add to my list?!?
