The Road

There are only a few things in the world that give movies a run for their money in terms of my personal entertainment. Sports. Music. Books. That's pretty much it. So when a movie comes along that's based on one of my favorite books of all time, I'm in. The Road, of course, being based on a novel of the same name by brilliant and eccentric author Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy is a genius. For those of you who don't know, he also wrote No Country for Old Men which the Coen brother's brought to the screen back in '07 to the tune of 4 Academy Awards, including best picture, best director, best supporting actor, and best adapted screenplay. Those are 4 serious awards. It's not like they won best sound mixing and costume design. Another of McCarthy's novels, Blood Meridian, is rumored to be in preproduction for a 2011 release. It takes an interesting type of novelist to write books that are adaptable to movies. Some guys have made a career out of it, namely John Grisham and Michael Crichton. With those two guys, it's almost like they wrote screenplays and then just decided to turn their scripts into books first. I guess I can't complain though. The two of them brought us The Firm, Jurassic Park, Twister, The Rainmaker, and A Time to Kill (Matthew McConaughey's only good movie happens to be a great one) among about a dozen other's. But those two guys are mega-commercial. And if you add JK Rowling's Harry Potter movies, Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series, and Nicholas Sparks' chick-flicks into the mix, you'd be hard pressed to find a novel to film adaptation that wasn't an incredibly popular book. That's why McCarthy is so interesting. He's sort of a weird guy. His books are dark. Like really dark. He's a Pulitzer Prize winner. Not a pop star. He's a complete recluse, having given only a handful of interviews in over 25 years. But his books are compelling. So very compelling.

The Road takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. And while we're never really told what exactly happened, it's pretty safe to assume there was some sort of nuclear fallout. Everything on the planet has been wiped clean. All animals and vegetation are dead. A blanket of ash covers everything. And most of the very few people who are left alive have resulted to barbarism. Cannibalism even. Gangs of men rove the barren streets murdering, raping, stealing. Trying to survive. There is no color. Anywhere. The world is bleak, dark, and cold. It's truly a worst case scenario for this planet and for mankind. The plot is simple and the characters are few. A father and son head South towards the ocean. They're nameless and referred to in both the credits and the original novel only as the Man and the Boy. That's the first thing that strikes you. There's not a single character in the entire movie who has a name. It's as if names aren't important. Any past identity has been deemed irrelevant.

The Man, played by Viggo Mortensen of Lord of the Rings fame, is grizzled, protective, weary, suspicious. Whereas the Boy, played by newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee, is somber, afraid, but yet still curious and hopeful. It's this dynamic that provides much of the driving force of the movie. The Man has a responsibility to protect his son. But it's more than that. It's greater than a responsibility. It's greater than an obligation. It's more of a calling. A commission. A task of paramount importance. After the Man kills a gang member, played by a guy who's name you won't know but who's face I guarantee you'll recognize, who tries to attack the Boy, the Boy asks the Man if they're the good guys. If they will always be the good guys. And while the Man's answers in the affirmative seem to satisfy the Boy somewhat, he still seems uneasy. (Back to that "guy who's name you won't know but who's face I guarantee you'll recognize" bit. I love that. I love recognizing people in movies and even being able to name three or four things that they've been in but still have no idea what their name is. I always wonder if that person considers them self famous. I mean, I know who they are, I just don't know their name. Do you have to know a person's name for them to be famous? There are all kinds of people who I'd recognize and even want to take a picture with or something whose names I don't know. I'd just call them by their character. Is that a bad idea? I don't really care. If I see Rickety Cricket or Mr. Eko running around somewhere, I'm stopping them and taking a picture.)

One particularly interesting aspect of the movie is the use of timeline shift. The Man had a wife and the Boy had a mother. And several times, the timeline shifts back to an earlier point of post-apocalypse where the Man, the Woman, and the Boy were still living together at their home. The Woman, played by Charlize Theron of Moster, The Legend of Bagger Vance, and The Cider House Rules, thinks that the three of them should just commit suicide. end their lives and the constant struggle of life. The Man will have no part of it. Death is not the answer. To the Woman, however, it is the only option. In one of the most stirring scenes of the movie, she removes her coats and everything else shielding her from the bitter cold that seems to have enveloped the earth, and walks out into the utter blackness. Leaving her family behind and effectively killing herself.

Things happen in this movie that I honestly don't want to write about. Just some awful, awful things. Some portions of the film are so horrible that the viewer can do nothing but gaze with a somber and depressed disposition. But for every devastatingly awful moment, for every minute spent simply staring at the screen in silence, there is hope. In spite of all of the pain, the suffering, the struggle, the atrocity, this movie, or film as it should justly be called, the story still remains hopeful. And it's because of the Boy. The Boy, having really known no other life, judges every thing and every day against a baseline that to anyone who had lived before the fallout would be horrible. But because horror is normal, there can still be good. And that good really stands out. And even though the Man is jaded, he still teaches his son to find and seek out good. He tells him that he is "carrying the fire" inside of him. He treats him to a can of Coca-Cola. But he never lies to him. He admits his struggles and his downfalls. He is a really good parent. And because of that, the Boy still exhibits some of the wide-eyed wonderment one would expect out of a 10-year-old kid. The Boy even seeks to help other's whom he perceives as another one of the "good guys", including an ancient looking man, played perfectly by the great Robert Duval, an actor who's career achievements and seminal roles are so numerous that you should know exactly who I'm talking about without me giving you the resume cheat sheet like I usually do.

And that's the prevailing message. Amongst disaster, and tragedy, and atrocity, and some of the most inhumane behavior possible, in a world that does not resemble the world we live in today a single bit, good can exist. Good does exist. Did you catch that? Nothing is to evil. No situation is too bleak. No man is too desperate to deny the fact that good exists. I just think that's so amazing. It's so encouraging. The world is a crazy place man. I mean really crazy. We have unstable governments with nuclear weapons, civil war engulfing dozens of countries, more slaves on the planet now than at any other time in world history, and any number of other global and local calamities. A film like this can scare you. What if something like this isn't that far off'? I suppose I can't say for sure what I'd do. I'd like to think I would do the right thing. I'd like to think I'd be one of the "good guys". Good is out there. The word "hope" is used in the book of Job, a book that tells a story of despair, more than a dozen times. Hope is always out there, as long as you want to find it.

I highly recommend this film. I highly recommend this book. And I don't think you need to do one in particular before the other. Both are extremely eye opening and enthralling and devastating and uplifting in different ways. There are quite a few differences between the two, but I'm not a purist. That stuff never bothers me. This movie is really a must see. Just make sure you put yourself if the right state of mind first.

Get Him To The Greek

I learned something tonight. I'm not really into comedies that try and "say something". You know what I mean? The last thing I want is to go to a movie where I intend to laugh and get preached at. Like pretty much every movie Adam Sandler did after The Waterboy. I'm not saying that Get Him To The Greek was like that though. Because it wasn't really. Just thought I'd throw that little tidbit out there.

The trailer for this movie is what really roped me in. Jonah Hill, looking fatter than ever, and Russell Brand, looking more deprived than ever, running around and drinking absinthe. That was pretty much enough for me. And if you don't know about absinthe, check out the story told by L. Gabrielle Penebaz on The Moth Podcast. But anyways, Hill, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, plays some sort of low-level record company executive for Pinnacle Records, a fictional record company owned by Sean "Diddy, Puff Daddy, P Diddy, Puffy, Indecisive on What Nickname is Appropriate" Combs. He comes up with the idea to have Aldous Snow, a crazy, drug-addict rock star play a 10th anniversary concert at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. Sean "Diddy, Puff Daddy, P Diddy, Puffy, Indecisive on What Nickname is Appropriate" Combs, then decides that it will be Hill who is to bring him from London to LA, via Manhattan for an appearance on the Today Show. Hijinks ensue. But the problem is I now judge all drunken hijinks on a scale from any of the really bad National Lampoon's movies made in the 90s to The Hangover. And just nothing will match up with The Hangover. At least in my mind. And it didn't help that both Brand and Hill can get a little annoying after awhile. They both serve better as ancillary characters in a bigger narrative, instead of as leads.

The plot was also flawed. Inasmuch as there wasn't much of one to speak of. The basic premise was great. Mild mannered guy has to get an insane rock star halfway across the world in 3 days. They just couldn't come up with any really hilarious things for them to do slash have happen to them along the way. Which troubles me. I mean, how hard is that really? I wouldn't have even cared if they stole plot points from any number of comedies about traveling from Point A to Point B.

There were some bright points though. Sean "Diddy, Puff Daddy, P Diddy, Puffy, Indecisive on What Nickname is Appropriate" Combs was actually really funny. And Russell Brand's ex-girlfriend, played by Rose Byrne whom I know primarily from her role in the FX show Damages, is funny, if not a little disconcerting. Damages has been one of my favorite shows for the past couple years, and I highly recommend it. And furthermore, everything that FX does is just really good. The Sheild, Rescue Me, 30 Days, The Riches, Damages, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Archer, The League. All are great programs for completely different reasons. FX gives HBO a run for it's money in terms of original programming, and it's a standard cable channel that doesn't cost extra.

You know, I'd see this one again. Not in the theater because movie tickets are just too damn expensive. But I'll probably end up watching it in the fall with some guys who didn't see it in theaters. I was disappointed by the complete lack of plot, but I did laugh a lot. And that's what comedy is all about Charlie Brown.

Sideways

So I picked up this movie at like TJ Maxx from the bargain movie bin for like $3.99 awhile ago and never watched it. I do that sometimes. I just buy really cheap movies that I'm interested in seeing and that I think will make my overall collection look more impressive. And I knew this one had gotten a fair share of Oscar noms, a respectable 4 during a year that had quite a few good movies come out including Million Dollar Baby, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Aviator, Hotel Rwanda just to name a few. And I finally sat down to watch this one tonight. With a glass of wine of course.

The movie is about two 40-something old friends played by Paul Giamatti, one of my favorite actors, and Thomas Haden Church, a guy who I know mostly from George of the Jungle with Brendan Fraser. Giamatti plays a middle school English teacher and aspiring novelist who's divorce two years ago has left him depressed, empty, and drunk. Church plays an actor who's bygone soap opera fame has left him fairly wealthy but kept him living in the past. He's about to get married, so the two of them set off for northern California for a week of wine tasting. Giamatti is a moderate wine expert. Slightly snobby in his tastes, as evidenced by, for whatever reason, his hatred for Merlot. Church is certainly uncultured by Giamatti's standards, but eager to learn and have one last good time before he gets married. Right off the bat, it's clear to see that the two of them have different intentions coming into the weekend. Giamatti wants to just do the one final thing that he enjoys in life, drink wine. And Church wants to have a fling before his wedding.

Enter women. Two women to be exact. Maya, played by Virginia Madsen, who hasn't been in anything that I remember seeing her in, and Stephanie, played by Sandra Oh from Grey's Anatomy. Church and Oh hit it off and Church's intended fling ensues. Giamatti, still reeling from his divorce, is clearly interested in Maya, who seems to return some interest as well. But his insecurities and regrets from the way he dealt with his former wife seem to haunt him and keep him from moving on. Additionally, Church's complete lack of care for his future wife has no regrets about cheating on his fiancée. This bothers Giamatti who, having cheated on his wife, does not want Church to make the same mistakes as he does. Giamatti finally gains the courage to pursue Maya and they have sex and some sort of undeveloped good times before Giamatti lets it spill that Church is getting married. This ruins both of their Napa Valley trysts and send them both back to southern California hurting.

That's the basic plot. But this movie really left me wanting more. I didn't particularly like any of the characters. I think that was the biggest problem. It just seemed like nothing really clicked for me. They story was fairly un-compelling. And while it wasn't totally predictable, there was just very little too it. It was sort of funny. It was sort of romantic. It was sort of interesting. But just sort of. And sort of doesn't really cut it. It was filmed ok. About 40% of it was great from a cinematography standpoint, but the rest of it was just so so. It's almost like the parts that were really great to look at were thrown in there to give a big studio movie some credit. Overall it was a pretty unimpressive movie. I probably wouldn't watch it again. I did learn a little bit about wine tasting towards the beginning. Which was cool. And the movie poster is really cool looking. I certainly wouldn't buy it again. Even at the stellar price of $3.99.

Crazy Heart

I finally got to knock this one off my list. And I'm really glad I finally got to it. It's always fun to watch movies after they've received their awards and accolades and then assess them for myself. The main hype around this movie was the acting of Jeff Bridges as Bad Blake, a washed-up, alcoholic country singer. Bridges earned his first Academy Award, and it was very well deserved.

Maggie Gyllenhaal, who I almost always like, plays a reporter that Bad meets in Santa Fe. She asks him for an interview and movie magic ensues. Their romance seemed just a little strange to me. He easily has 20 years on her, if not more. And their chemistry, while apparent and unforced, just bothered me a little. Only a little though. She has a son named Buddy, apparently she's a fan of Elf, played by a cute little kid named Jack Nation. Which, by the way, is an awesome and sure-fire movie star name. Jack Nation. Yeah, I can see that name in lights. I hope it's not a weird stage-mom concoction.

You know, I was going to do a tidy little plot synopsis as a part of this review. But I don't think I will now. Because frankly it's unimportant. The movie was satisfyingly undeveloped. The plot was simple, the conflict straightforward. It was pretty much just about Bad. It starts off with him performing a show in a bowling alley piss-ass-drunk, even leaving the stage to vomit in a garbage can outside. You can tell he's unsatisfied. You can tell that he's broken. You can tell that he has a lot of skeletons in his closet, a lot of baggage. But you can still tell that he's hopeful. He loves his music. And he really loves to perform. You can just tell. A bit later in the movie he walks into a bar in Santa Fe where he's playing to find a piano player who's going to be part of his backing band for the night's show just ripping on the keys. The guy's really good. And Bad acknowledges him, and his talent, and says that it's going to be really nice to play with a talented pianist again. And he does it all with a big, sincere smile on his face. Then he goes back to his motel room and gets drunk. Alone. It's that kind of dichotomy that makes Bridges' character so intriguing. The broken alcoholic juxtaposed with the enthusiastic musician.

Very little is said about his past. Besides a couple jokes about his 5 ex-wives and the mention that he has a son that he's never met. But not of that matters. Bridges takes over the screen in every frame. Everything going on plot-wise simply serves to provide a platform for Bridges' performance.

Aside from Bridges, the best part of the movie was easily the music, written primarily by T Bone Burnett, known for his work with artists like Counting Crows, Tony Bennett and Allison Krauss and Robert Plant and for soundtrack contributions to O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Walk the Line, and Ryan Bingham, a bull-rider turned Americana singer/songwriter. Bridges sings and plays guitar and so does, wait for it, Colin Farrell. (Yes, that Colin Farrell! He even sings and speaks with a country accent. Very convincingly too. I was so surprised. Farrell has always interested me, his rise and fall as one of Hollywood's baddest bad boys. And then he stunned me with his brilliant performance in In Bruges, one of my top 10 favorite films to date. While this role isn't one of his best acting endeavors, it is really good. Especially considering that he has one of the heaviest Irish dock-worker accents I've ever heard.) Every song seems to come genuinely from Bad's soul. And Bridges plays a huge role in that. He's a great singer and I'd honestly listen to anything he put out there. Full of regret and dissatisfaction, his songs epitomize the character. Frankly, the movie wouldn't be half as good without the music. And I don't even like country music. I would venture to say that I hate country music. I've always liked bluegrass and folk, just not country. It seems to be generally uninspired, ignorant, and annoying. If someone try's to tell me that that "Big Green Tractor" song is any good I swear I'm going to go postal. But this brand of country is different. It's about something more. It's honest. It's genuine. The way music should be. Good music should speak to you. And if I'm to be honest, if "Big Green Tractor" speaks to you, I'll never speak to you again.

Remember Me

Yeah yeah, I'm the worst blogger ever. I just haven't seen any movies in awhile. You'll live. And yeah, yeah. I saw a Robert Pattinson movie. Don't judge me. Oh, and spoilers abound so watch yourself. When I saw the previews for this movie a couple months ago, I thought it looked good. And I wasn't that worried about seeing a movie with a Twilight actor in it. Then I tried to watch New Moon yesterday. Which was bad. The acting in that one was so rough that I couldn't make it through. So I was a little wary of the potential bad acting. But this movie was really good. I really, really enjoyed it. Girls kept telling me this movie was "Like amazing!" And that's usually code for, "I'm not going to like this." But I did. I really did. Robert Pattinson was very good. And Emile de Ravin, Claire from Lost, is also good. Despite her pretty bad American accent. The rest of the cast also plays their parts very well. Chris Cooper, October Sky, Breach, The Patriot, and a slew of other movies I really like, plays Claire's dad, a Sgt. in the NYPD. And Pierce Brosnan, James Bond, Mamma Mia, Mrs. Doubtfire, plays Pattinson's dad. An uptight lawyer with mixed up priorities. He does this great kinda "used to be poor Brooklyn guy trying to be uppercrust" accent.

Pattinson plays Pattinson. Brooding and angsty, he seems really comfortable as this character and may face typecasting for much of his career. He has no direction in life. He doesn't work, he doesn't go to school, but he does "audit" classes. Which means he attends and learns without being graded or paying for the classes. It's kind of the Good Will Hunting approach but he just goes into the classes instead of just reading in the library. He and his roommate, Aiden, played by Tate Ellington who plays a very traditional comic relief role with brilliance, get into a fight and are arrested by Chris Cooper after Pattinson mouths off to him. Aiden, as a dare, convinces Pattinson to ask Claire out on a date to get back at Cooper for being a dick. Words of wisdom, don't date girls as a dare. It never works out properly. They fall in love, as they often do in movies. Claire's dad finds out about their relationship and Pattinson finally confesses to Claire that their relationship started on a dare. She get's upset and storms out. I don't know how I feel about that response. I mean, I understand that he wasn't really honest with her, but whatever. Their relationship is really now. Why does it matter why he approached her in the first place? Whatever. Girls are tricky.

One of the more interesting story lines involves Pattinson's family. His brother committed suicide on his 22nd birthday and it tore his family apart. He has a little sister, Caroline, played very well by Ruby Jerins, a very cute little girl with a lot of potential as an actress, who thinks that Pattinson hung the moon. Her artistic talent makes her something of an outcast among the "pretty" girls in her class. Pattinson tries his best to support her, but there's only so much he can do. Their father, divorced from their mother, is simply a check to them. He values his work over everything else and Pattinson really resents him for it. The conflict really comes to a head when Brosnan misses Caroline's art show. Pattinson storms into his office and really lays into him. They almost come to blows before they're stopped by others in the room.

The movie's set in 2001, in New York. You know this from the very beginning. And I thought right away, 9/11 is going to be related somehow. I didn't know how though. After Caroline is bullied to the point of breakdown by the "pretty" girls, Brosnan starts to come around. Pattinson flips out one morning after walking Caroline to school and destroys some school property and is arrested for the second time this movie. After bailing him out of jail, Brosnan gets a fire under him and begins to stand up for his family. Pattinson agrees to meet Brosnan at his office to go over some information about his lawsuit.

Then the movie gets interesting. Pattinson and Claire had just started to rekindle their relationship, and his family situation was finally turning out well. Pattinson is early to his dad's office and as he stands at the window of the office, the camera pans out and reveals that he is in Tower One of the World Trade Center. And everyone in the theater thinks a collective, "Shit! No! C'mon! Really?" The screen goes black and cuts to scenes of the other characters, ash starting to fall around them, just cry and look up into the sky. It's powerful. Like really moving.

I guess I knew that this might be a 9/11 movie. But I didn't really know.

I don't know if it's too soon for a 9/11 movie. I don't think so. It's been almost 10 years. Which is crazy to think of. It's crazy to remember where you were. 6th grade, outside of Mrs. Ault's science class. I remember not knowing exactly what the World Trade Center was. I remember thinking some drunk guy got into his twin engine Piper Cub and ran into an apartment high rise. I wasn't prepared. No one was. This movie took an interesting angle though. It got us invested in the characters, and then shocked us with the tragedy. Which is exactly what happened to all of us. There were regular people in those towers. With regular lives. It was really personal. And just like September 9 years ago, we were initially all too shocked to be upset. And that's how it was with this movie. I was too shocked to be sad. This one's good. As long as you can get past "Robert is Boverred" and Claire's accent, you'll really enjoy it.

Shutter Island

Woah nelly. Watch out when you read this reveiw. Spoilers abound. This is one of the more fascinating films (Yeah, I'm saying now. Right off the bat. I'm going to snob out on you guys.) that I've seen in a long time. This may be one of Scorsese's best films to date. Everything about it was very, very interesting. Leonardo DiCaprio delivers one of his best performances too. Which is saying a lot considering The Departed, Gangs of New York, Catch Me if You Can, Blood Diamond, The Aviator, and Titanic. And that's only like half of his resume. He's an impressive actor. One of my favorites. And this may be his best. Ever.

DiCaprio plays Teddy Daniels, a US Marshall investigating the disappearance of a female patient at the mental hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter Island in Massachusetts. As the film progresses, the viewer gains an increasing insight into who Teddy Daniels really is. He says that the reason he wanted this assignment was a result of his wife's death in a fire in their apartment. He says that a man named Andrew Laeddis set the fire, and was now a patient on Shutter Island. He wanted to find Laeddis, and somehow gain closure in his wife's murder. But it becomes clear, relatively quickly, that his story is flawed, or at least in question. He begins having these bizarre dreams of his wife, and a little girl. He flashes back to his days as a soldier in World War II, where he was a part of a company that liberated the concentration camp at Dachau, where he sees the little girl as a dead body in the camp. The dream sequences are some of the best representations of dreams I've ever seen in cinema. Scorsese does a great job making them look like actual dreams. Everyone knows that dreams rarely make sense. You do things you wouldn't do normally. You say things that don't make sense. You react to things in irrational ways, even though they seem to make sense at the time. Scorsese is able to capture the lunacy of the average person's dream in viewing the dreams that DiCaprio has.

Mark Ruffalo plays Chuck Aule, DiCaprio's new partner, a recent transfer to Boston from the Marshall bureau in Seattle. This is absolutely Ruffalo's best performance, and comes at a time in his career when he seems to be shifting from the romantic comedy type role of 13 Going on 30 to a new type of role. That of the serious actor who takes small parts in artsy blockbusters like Where the Wild Things Are and large roles in independent feeling movies like The Brothers Bloom (Which was great by they way, I highly recommend it). I was on to Ruffalo though. At one point when he and DiCaprio were questioning other inmate/patients in the hospital about the disappearance of Rachel Solando, who was committed after drowning her 3 children and the dressing them up in her home and pretending that they weren't dead, one inmate asks Ruffalo to step away and get her a glass of water. After he leaves, she violently scribbles something down in DiCaprio's notebook. I immediately turned to my buddy and whispered in the theater, "He's Dr. Sheehan." Dr. Sheehan was Rachel Solando's primary psychiatrist while on the island. He had, reportedly, left the same morning they arrived for vacation, a claim DiCaprio never believes.

Sir Ben Kinglsey, famous for his portrayal of Gandhi in a film of the same name, is magnificent as the Dr. John Cawley, the chief psychiatrist on the island. The entire movie he is mysterious. Giving half answers to all of DiCaprio's questions and remaining detached from everything that's happening on the island. He is nearly emotionless the entire film, not an easy thing to do. It becomes very clear, very early, that Kingsley knows much more than he is letting on.

It was pretty easy to see in the trailers that DiCaprio is a patient on the island. I knew this, not form the film being spoiled for me, it just seemed pretty obvious from the trailers. What you don't know, however, is if he is actually crazy or not. You don't want him to be crazy. It's Leonardo DiHottie-o after all. And you don't think he is. You think he's being set up. You think that he's been asking to many questions on the mainland, and that he's asking way to many questions on Shutter Island. But in the final minutes of the film, we learn otherwise. He killed his wife, because his wife killed their three children. Rachel Solando is a figment of his imagination. And so is Teddy Daniels. DiCaprio's real name is Andrew Laeddis, the name of the man who he says killed his wife by burning their apartment. He's created defense mechanisms in order to distance himself from the reality of his own life. Everything we saw was a part of an experiment by Kingsley, the only person who thought DiCaprio was still able to be saved. Ruffalo is in fact Dr. Sheehan (Boom, roasted.) and was posing as his partner so he could keep an eye on him while he was having his way around the island "investigating". The role playing exercise was to be the last attempt to help DiCaprio before he was given up on and lobotomized as part of government experiments.

I didn't see that coming at all. I was really taken aback. But it finally all made sense. This film is an incredibly interesting look into the human mind. And we think we see DiCaprio come out of it. He wakes, finally, from another one of his hallucinatory dreams appearing to know exactly who he really is, and what has really happened in his life. He tells Kingsley and Ruffalo all about his true name and life story. This is a good thing. This means that he's cured. Then, as he's sitting on the steps of one of the buildings on the island, smoking a cigarette with Ruffalo, he wispers to him, "What's our next move Chuck? What are we going to do next?" Ruffalo nods sadly at Kingsley across the courtyard and a few orderlies begin to walk up to him. Then, DiCaprio says something really interesting to Ruffalo. He says something like, "Is it better to live as a bad man, or die as a good man?" He the gets up, joins the orderlies, and walks away. Presumably to be lobotomized, effectively ending his life. It's so fascinating. But I'm not sure what to make of that last bit. The movie ends immediately after the aforementioned scene, leaving the viewer to wonder about DiCaprio's fate, and the meaning of his last statement. Think as you will.

A Serious Man

This one was strange even by Coen brother standards. And you know, I didn't get it. Like at all. Which doesn't really happen to me often. I don't know. I watched it with a couple friends of mine, both just as "movie snobish" as I am, and none of us got it. and we're all pros at turning nothing, or next to nothing, into something. And we didn't get it.

Let's start with what I do know. Michael Stuhlbarg, who's resume includes a couple random TV episodes and a few movies I haven't heard of, is very good. Even though I'm not sure what he's good at. He plays a Jewish physics professor at some very small, almost community seeming, college. And I think he might be brilliant at it. But there's very little talk of that. He seems like a good guy I suppose. No terribly obvious flaws. But his life seems to be somehow spiraling out of control. His wife wants a divorce, and then wants to immediately marry a family friend, even though she insists that there has been no infidelity. And he believes her completely and steadfastly which I find strange. Then one of his students, unhappy with a failing grade, tries to bribe him. One of his next door neighbor's keeps mowing some of his grass, insisting that the property line is further towards Stuhlbarg's house than Stuhlbarg thinks it is. And his other next door neighbor, a cougar by all accounts, sunbathes naked in her back yard. His wife's "fiance", isn't that weird to say, then dies in a car accident and he's stuck paying for it. All the while, he keeps trying to see different rabbi's to get advice. A lot of other weird and incongruous happens too, but it would take several more paragraphs to aptly describe it all. It's just all really strange. I don't know. I don't like this feeling. I guess this is how regular people feel when the come out of "deep" movies.

I really think that everything has meaning. Especially Coen brothers movies. But I can't siphon meaning out of any of this. It all just seemed like it had meaning, I just couldn't glean what that meaning was. I can't even really come close. Some parts of me want to come to the conclusion that the movie is about meaninglessness. But I hate stuff like that. The point should never be that there is no point. That's just really stupid. That doesn't make a statement. That doesn't say anything. Except for saying that you're an ass for trying to say that everything is meaningless. I like the Coen brothers too much to think that they played that card. I mean I really like the Coen brothers. Burn After Reading, No Country for Old Men, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, all great stuff. I've never seen Fargo, but it comes highly recommended. By everyone. So I don't think they did that. The "Life is Meaningless" card is so 1960s, anarchy, apathy art. And that stuff is lame.

This movie's shot really, really well though. One of my friends, who's a photographer, remarked that every single frame of every single scene in this movie would be a great photograph. And he's really right. It's one of the prettiest Coen movies to date. They do a great job of framing closeup shots, and they're lighting is always great.

I think I liked this movie. I wanted to like it. I'm a sucker for Academy Award nominations and this one's up for Best Picture and Original Screenplay. And I don't really understand those nominations actually. The story is too ambiguous to be the Best Screenplay of the year and I don't think it stands a chance up against Up in the Air, The Hurt Locker, and Avatar (which I really, really hope doesn't win), among others, for Best Picture. I think the Academy likes the Coen's just as much as I do and so they give them courtesy noms. Which I'm OK with I suppose. This movie really just baffled me. Every component, good and bad, just didn't add up to anything that I could figure out. I just didn't get it.

(Footnote: I'm going to do this one as I rewatch it. One thing we all picked up on right away has to do with the student who's unhappy with his grade. One of his complaints is that he understands the anecdotes, but that he doesn't understand the math involved with the physics. This is almost the same exchange that Stuhlbarg has with one of the rabbis later on in the movie. Stuhlbarg say's to his complaining student that it's the math that matters, and that the anecdote's are just that, stories, fables, they don't really matter. One of the rabbis gives a similar answer to Stuhlbarg's questions about why all of these things are happening to him, the rabbi starts telling this long story that ends up being completely meaningless. The rabbi says, "We all want answers, but Hashem (God) doesn't give us any." I think that's what this is. An answer free movie. I actually think that this movie is about nothing. The Coen's, already having won their Academy Awards, just turned in some nothing. I tried reading some other reviews online, something I don't normally do when writing my own, and they all came back one of two ways. In paraphrase: 1) The Coen brothers deliver their most personal, dark, and humorous film to date. A modern day Job. A masterpiece. 2) The Coen brothers made a beautiful, empty movie. Unfunny, and ultimately meaningless. I'm obviously in the latter category. In one of Stuhlbarg's bizarre dreams he's teaching his class about the Uncertainty Principle of physics and he exclaims, "We can't ever know anything!" And I guess with this movie, we never really will.)