Donnie Darko

I'm trying to think of a good word to describe this movie but the only one that keeps coming to mind is a rude one. An insufficient substitution would be "mind-bending". I'm not going to bother rehashing the plot here, but my take in a nutshell is that Donnie was called into a tangent universe the night of the jet engine crash (and that tangent universe is, by the way, where the jet engine came from). Donnie was killed by the jet engine upon his return to the "real" universe when the tangential one broke down as predicted. 

I wondered why Donnie did not try to avoid his death from the falling jet engine the second time around, when he was back in the primary universe. But then I realized if he avoided death again, he would only find himself in another tangent universe (or a repeat of the same one?) which would at some point break down; and then he would be Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, only creepier.

Lars and the Real Girl

I am at a loss as to how to categorize this movie. I expected it to be a comedy, though certainly one of the more quirky and less mainstream types. But this movie did not make me laugh. It wasn't quite a drama, but it was closer to drama than comedy. Though it didn't make me cry, either. I suppose the closest I can come to describing it would be by calling it the darkest of the dark dark comedies, but not funny. Really, it was an amalgamation of genres: it had the soundtrack of a quirky indie and the premise of a comedy, but it played like a drama. Or tried to.

Ryan Gosling stars as Lars (channeling David Arquette in both looks--must have been the mustache--and personality) as a painfully awkward pseudo-adult who lives in his brother's garage. He is shy to the point of creepiness. In a normal movie you would find out he's a serial killer or suffers from MPD. Or both. But not in this movie. He's just delusional enough to believe his blow-up doll is a real person. And his brother Gus is such a normal person! The contrast between the brothers is stark.

The movie started towards a theme of "Everybody's weird", first with Lars' coworkers and their affinity for action figures and teddy bears to keep them company in their cubicles at work, then with the church support group. If they had worked that angle a little more, they might have been able to weave in some laughs, but that fizzled out quickly. Even if they had followed that thread farther, I'm afraid it wouldn't have flown with me. Yes, everyone has their quirks (some more than others) but not everyone is delusional.

I couldn't laugh at this movie. The one scene that may have coaxed a slight grin out of me was the one where Gus and his wife Karen "meet" Bianca the Real Girl for the first time. The expressions on their faces were priceless. As for the rest of the movie, I can sum it up in the conversation Gus and Karen had while bathing Bianca:

Karen: "Oh, come on, it's funny!"

Gus: "Is it?"

Karen: "I don't know... I don't know, maybe not."

I must make special mention of the scene towards the end of the movie: Bianca is "dying", they're at the lake, poignant music is playing, and I'm wondering, What are they wanting me to feel? I'm not laughing, nor is this heartwarming or bringing a tear to my eye by any means... I'm just kind of grossed out. Especially when he kisses her. And then cries. Seriously, was I supposed to be sad about that? Was I supposed to laugh about that? I just didn't know what to do with it.

I must be missing the big picture and taking this movie too literally. (It wouldn't be the first time). It has to be an analogy for something and I can't see it. I guess I need someone to explain it to me. That's the only logical excuse I can think of for this movie. But at the end, what did I learn? And is Lars all of a sudden going to be a normal person? I kind of see this issue in black and white. Either he is going to snap back to reality, look at those photographs with Bianca in them, and say to himself, What the heck was I thinking?? I was freakin' out of my MIND!! OR, he is going to live the rest of his life believing Bianca was a real person who really died, in which case he is still freakin' out of his mind. And then I think, it's just a movie... none of it was real...

Nifty note: I was pleasantly surprised to hear the Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love" playing when Lars and Bianca arrived at the party. But on second thought I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised to find obscure music in this movie.

Secret Window

This movie was so-so. It had a few twists and turns that surprised me, so at least it wasn't completely straightforward, but it really seemed to get more and more predictable as it went on. 

One big thing that surprised me was that, before I started watching it, I was expecting a sort of re-hashing of another of Stephen King's novel-to-movie translations, Misery. Mainly, I was expecting the novelist in this movie to be the good guy through and through, so I was surprised that he turned out to be the crazy one.

I have found that, as gripping as Stephen King's novels can be to read, they don't survive the leap to screen particularly well. So many of the movies made from his books seem rather corny (hah, I guess that's a pun for this one... a steaming bowl of corn...) and false, perhaps even melodramatic. There are a few notable exceptions, done with more subtlety; The Shining was one of the good ones. He also had a few that were kind of a departure for King, containing a tension common to most of his work but with a very different subject matter (The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile). Most of his other movies I've seen (like this movie, and Pet Sematary) were just somewhat overdone. 

The creepiest part of this movie was during one of Mort's first naps when he dreams, without sound, that something is shaking the door to his cabin while a weird glowing blue light shines in from the outside. Too bad the rest of the movie couldn't maintain near the amount of tension found in that brief scene. The fact that there was no sound to that scene was definitely a plus. The wrong music or sound effects would have completely negated the scary factor. 

At least I got my ironing done while watching this movie, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

Casino Royale

This was the usual James Bond fare; entertaining fluff, a little bit of eye candy. It was funny to find that, though I'd since forgotten, I had watched this movie before. Before (re)watching it I couldn't remember anything about it (except for the obvious things that I probably would have known even if I hadn't seen the movie--for example, that it starred Daniel Craig). I guess you could say it didn't make much of an impression on me (neither last time nor this time), and I'm pretty sure it won't be one of those movies I watch over and over again, even though we own it on DVD.

A few things of note: a fun parkour scene in the beginning as Bond chases an African bomb-maker through a construction site. The bomb-maker was a much more skilled free-runner, but Bond showed himself to be the more intelligent a few times. Also, I stared in disbelief as I saw James Bond headed down a road in the Bahamas driving a Ford rental car (the sacrilege!!) but he soon regained my respect by winning a beautiful old silver Aston Martin in a poker game (whew!!)

The 39 Steps

This movie was recommended to me by an old friend as one of his favorites. It's a movie I had never heard of, and if I hadn't heard about it from Chris it probably never would have come to my notice. I've seen the more well-known Hitchcock movies (Psycho, North by Northwest, and Vertigo), among others, but have never even really looked at the entire list of movies he directed until now--and I see a few more I'd like to watch. But back to this movie.

*SPOILER* I like that I did not guess that Mr. Memory's memory was to be the method of transporting the sensitive data out of the country. Looking back, I feel I should have known to attach some significance to his presence in the movie, but I suppose at the time I just assumed it was a way to establish that Hannay (played by Robert Donat) was Canadian (though I'm not sure now why that matters) and, more importantly, a way for Hannay to meet Annabella. But I always enjoy it when a movie keeps me guessing.

I found it to be an annoying plothole that the assassins were able to enter Hannay's apartment and stab Annabella in the back without waking (or killing) Hannay, especially as Hannay did not seem at all worried that the intruders could still be in his apartment. I guess it shouldn't be very surprising that any assassin worth his salt could pull this off without detection, and I suppose the fact that they left Hannay alive could be explained by the idea that, by leaving a dead woman in his apartment and thus framing him for murder, they both get Hannay out of their way and cover their own tracks. However, that still leaves the problem of Hannay being completely unconcerned that a killer could still be in his apartment. Plus... if you were an assassin and you didn't know how much information your mark had passed on to the man in whose apartment she was staying, wouldn't you kill him too, just in case? Oh well. It was still a fun movie to watch.

It was funny to notice what must have been really risqué back in 1935--in this movie they showed a woman's brassiere (no woman in it, of course) which I can imagine causing quite a scandal 74 years ago.

By the way, *I* know what causes pip in poultry.

Lords of Dogtown

I don't have much to say about this movie. To me, it was kind of like "Gleaming the Cube" meets "Boogie Nights". I did find it interesting that the movie's writer, Stacy Peralta, seemed to make himself appear to be practically a saint: handsome and fresh-faced, loyal although no one returned the favor, hard-working and straight-laced; nothing was ever his fault and he was always the victim, although he rose above it all by virtue of his strong moral fiber. OK, so I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea. I guess that's one of the benefits of writing the screenplay for your own life's story. I just can't help but wonder if his friends from back then would agree with the portrayal of his character. The fact that they wouldn't is sort of hinted at in Kathy Alva's response to Peralta's insistence that he was the last one to leave Skip's team: "Everyone sees it their own way, I guess."

I was glad this wasn't the first movie I'd seen Heath Ledger in. Not only was he rather unattractive in this movie (he was a dirty, scruffy hippie who was apparently high constantly) but his acting really wasn't all that great, either. He spoke in an annoyingly affected manner, keeping his upper lip curled so that he appeared to have buck teeth. I just have to assume that's the way "Skip" was in real life.

It was interesting that Nikki Reed seemed to play the exact same character as in the movie "thirteen", maybe just a little older, and with a different name and family. Kind of starts me thinking she wasn't acting but was just being herself...