reality bites

having never seen this movie before, i dont have any nostalgic love for it. i know many people around my age look to this movie as the pinnacle of 90's love stories, but i'm just not seeing it. perhaps i am now too far away from that decade to remember the mindset enough to be drawn in. the story follows a bunch of friends who graduate college and a few years later find themselves in dead end lives still trying to hold on to the optimism and rebelliousness they had in college. ryder's character finds herself torn between the slacker friend she always secretly pined for in college, and a new successful man she meets now. perhaps it says more about me that anything else, but when she goes to the slacker friend i was mad and felt she made the wrong choice. choosing to stay with the guy who is always cynical and pouty does not seem like the right choice, but maybe thats what being twentysomething in the 90's was all about. me? i prefer to be happy and striving for better things, not mopey and unmotivated. oh, and the tacked on story of a gay guy coming out just seemed like exactly what it was: tacked on. it added very little and came out of left field. also, the bit about ryder's character wanting to create a tv show with her recorded footage seems very dated and actually kind of cheesy now. in the era of youtube, this idea seems like a boring relic.

race to witch mountain

i had high hopes for this one. well, maybe not high, but at least some hopes for this one... i've loved the rock ever since he first appeared in his own movie (scorpion king) and have been rooting for him ever since. though i'm not a fan of his recent turn as a children's movie star, i am willing to go with him most of the time. thats why i was expecting something from this movie. unfortunately i was disappointed.
this movie follows the rock as a las vegas taxi driver (right, like thats believable...) when he picks up two kids and drives them where they need to go. as it turns out the two kids are aliens trying to get back to their ship and the rock gets caught up in the sci-fi craziness. even with all the ridiculous alien stuff in the movie, its still impossible to accept anything that happens in the movie. no one actually acts in a way that would be even slightly realistic and all the characters are terribly written making no logical sense though out the film. much of this could be forgiven if it were fun, but alas, the director makes no attempts at creating any sort of atmosphere or coherent storyline flow. the action kicks up almost immediately and there is never a point where it goes from empty noise to fun action. it feels like a rough sketch of a movie, but they never bothered to tighten up the action, the characters, or the point of it all. from start to finish it is a bumpy and unsatisfying ride.

burn after reading

what a strange little film! the story follows a guy who works for the government being fired, his wife gets sick of him and wants a divorce so she can go after the man she's sleeping with. the government guy looses a cd that has some harmless files on it, and two employees of a workout chain find it. they think it is sensitive government info, so they try to go james bond and sell it to the russians. sound crazy so far? well, thats only the first half hour! things get really complicated as everything falls apart for everyone involved. i think the best way i can describe the film is to say that its an american version of a guy ritchie movie- with different accents. if you've ever seen 'lock stock and two smoking barrels' or 'snatch', then you know what i mean...

stevie

diana and i were at the video store, she wanted to get a documentary about fashion, but they didnt have it. the guy behind the counter apologized, but then recommended another documentary we should watch. he told us that it was really interesting and moving and that we would really like it. we took a look at it, but decided against it. he then offered to let us rent it for free- now thats a deal! we took it and did watch it. his assessment of the movie was very accurate.
the film follows the director as he goes back to where he and his wife lived for a few years and he looks to see what ever happened to a boy that he had been a 'big brother' to for while before he and his wife moved. the boy's name is stevie, and he wasnt totally there, mentally. its been quite a few years since they last talked, but we see that stevie has gotten much worse. stevie's problem is that he seems to have the mind of a 13 year old boy stuck in a 30 year old man. he has a developmental problem that doesnt seem to allow him to think through his actions, and he has not yet understood how others are affected by what he does and says. he's totally functional, he has a job, drives, takes care of himself, all that. it just seems like he started his rebellious teen years of talking back and being selfish, but is still stuck in that place mentally. here is where the problem comes in: he is accused of sexually abusing a young girl and now might face jail time if he is convicted. the film centers around this situation, looking back at his own abused childhood, and asks how he could have gotten to the place he is now. why didn't anyone step in to help out or to point out the problems between then and now? we see many foster families that took him in, some were bad, but some were good influences on him. the question arises about if stevie himself was a victim of a failed system or if this is his own fault.
a very moving portrait of a conflicted man and the difficult situations that got him where he is. i'm glad the movie store guy let us rent it, its definitely worth seeing.

adventureland

this one looked so promising. its got a great cast: jesse eisenberg, who i have enjoyed ever since 'roger doger', ryan reynolds, who has been great in everything since 'two guys, a girl, and a pizza place', even bill hader and kristen wiig are usually good for a few laughs, i was even willing to put up with the constant hair-touching and lip-biting of kristen stewart. the problem, though, is that the movie falls completely flat. going in i thought it was going to be a comedy. why did i think that, you ask? well, because thats the way it was advertised. unfortunately thats not what this movie is. instead, it is a drama about a kid who likes a girl who is dating a married man and all the cliche melodrama that comes with it. there were a few funny moments, but most of them were spoiled in the previews. its a waste of a perfectly good cast- they even committed the cardinal sin: they had ryan reynolds- a comic genius- and they cast him as the serious married man! what were they thinking?!? lame.

district 9

wow, what a movie! i went in to this one expecting a reality style film with some strange aliens. turns out its an amazing action movie with a really deep message about race relations.
the story picks up 10 years after aliens arrive on our planet. they are stuck here because their ship is broken. their mothership has been hovering over johannesburg in africa all this time, and they are trying to live on our planet with the hope of someday fixing the ship and heading home. the harsh reality of their arrival though, is that we humans do not except them and instead have banished them to live in a containment camp. the movie begins as the aliens are being forced to move from the current camp into a different location away from the city, because their prescience there has brought crime and ruined that part of town. we follow a government worker as he goes around the camp informing the aliens that they must relocate. well, things start to go a bit wrong, as one might expect, and this government worker gets caught up in it.
needless to say, this film is an allegory of african apartheid and shows just how wretched it really was. the message is amazingly portrayed as the treatment of the aliens is gut wrenching. the film itself does a really great job of starting in a reality film style, but shifting to a standard movie, and back again really well. we feel so strongly for these aliens as the film also makes us reevaluate how we treat each other.