Meandering: Klown

Loved this movie.  Everything The Hangover should've been.  Somehow this film manages to makes the ridiculous circumstances feel like natural extension of the two main characters's lives.  The Hangover always feels put on to me.  People trying to be funny rather than allowing the story and situations to do the work.

Meandering: Bourne Legacy

I enjoyed the movie more than I thought I would.  But not as good as the previous ones.  Felt more like a normal action/thriller.  My biggest complaint is that there's no way that movie should be 2 hours and 15 minutes.

Meandering: Lawless

I've seen the Proposition - also by John Hillcoat and written by Nick Cave and Lawless exhibited many of the same problems.  In short they are - uneven pacing - bad job building tension and then paying it off - a dismissal of basic logic that undermines our connection to the characters.

Meandering: Looper

I saw an early screening of Looper today.  I'm not supposed to talk about it - but as I'm pretty sure nobody reads this blog I'm going to talk about it a bit.

I'll start off by saying I didn't love Brick - Rian Johnson's first movie.  I liked the tone of it.  I enjoyed the feeling of swirling intrigue and the idea that dangerous violence could be right around the corner at any moment.  Really the hard part of the movie was understanding what the hell was going on.  The dialog was virtually indecipherable for me.

I could understand every word of Looper - but, like Brick, I still don't really know what the movie was about.  Or rather, I know what it was about, the movie just didn't take me anywhere.  The scenes were watchable.  The acting was good.  The visuals were engaging.  But what story is being told?  What emotional journey am i going on.  And who am I rooting for?

Time travel is innately non-sensical.  There is no way to explain away all the problems that jumping through time create in a linear story.  Looper tries to get away with by having Bruce Willis slam his hand on a table and shout at JGL "It just doesn't matter"  Well it does matter and I didn't buy it.

This movie was made with help from the guy who made Primer, Shane Carruth.  You felt it.  The movie stays away from almost any emotional content.

In the end, the movie front loads a big explanation of JGL traveling through time and then meeting the older version of himself- and none of that really seems to matter - because the movie is actually about protecting a small boy from being killed.

The movie is all over the place.  I wanted more of a central character - who's story had an emotional component for him.  What were the stakes?  They didn't seem particularly high to me.  What does he care about - nothing of particular importance.

Just too many smart people making a movie with too much going on and an abandonment of the essentials that make people like movies - emotion!

Meandering: The Night of the Hunter

Oh underlying psychological trauma - how I do love thee!

I didn't expect such an old movie to have such powerful moments for me.  In particular the moment Mitchum is captured by the police and the young John flips out and starts begging them not to take the only father figure he has left.  That's some wonderfully twisted shit.  Mitchum's father figure has done nothing but lie, steal and murder yet here is this boy, who ostensibly hates Mitchum, begging the police...and really begging Mitchum's "father figure" not to leave the family.  

This denouement is supposed to feel victorious but it instead tips the viewer's emotions on end by taking a supposedly simple triumphant moment and using it to rip the scab off of a child's already battered psyche.  Awesome!

Must see films

In light of Scorsese's list of 85 must see films - I thought it would be interesting to assemble my own list.  My viewing is not nearly as wide as...well, many, many people's but here goes.  This is a work in progress.


Lawence of Arabia
Manhattan
Cross of Iron
The Graduate
Straw Dogs
The Wild Bunch
Red River
Bull Durham

Meandering: Newshour 1-5

I've enjoyed watching Newsroom.  Jeff Daniels is incredibly watchable and I enjoy him a great deal.

However, there is one main element of the show that does not sit right with me.  Sorkin just isn't very hip.  I wish I knew another way to put this - but that's the general idea I take away from the show, especially when you compare it to the other noteable HBO / cable shows out there.

Newsroom seems content to deal mainly with the first and second layer emotions that its characters feel.       And it deals with them using relatively mundane devices.
Jim is in love with Maggie.
Will is angry at Mackenzie.
Don is nervous about Jim.

All of these playout more or less how you'd expect them to - and I expect more from Sorkin.

Jim insinuates that Maggie can do better.
Will sleeps around
Don sets up Jim with another woman.

All of these elements play out in a broad emotional spectrum.  And each of these arcs (and their accompanying) emotions playout in single episodes which conclude with Cold Play songs.

Perhaps what I'm getting at is the complete lack of subtly on the part of Newsroom.  The beauty of a multi-part tv series is that you don't have to make everything happen immediately and you don't necessarily have to wring every last ounce of emotion out of each interaction.  Sorkin is painting with broad, bold (not in a good way) strokes.  Yes, I find myself tearing up on a regular basis - but at the same time berating myself for letting such flimsy setups affect me as they do.  The Newsroom has the same emotional makeup as a tv commercial in which a son buys his father the car he's always wanted...and they hug at the end.

The Newsroom stands in stark juxtaposition to a show such as Girls which gives away far fewer emotional progress reports.

Lake Tahoe

I've bee meaning to write a bit about my trip to Lake Tahoe.  The drama of the weekend is worth noting because it's so out of the ordinary of my experience.  However, I've told the story so many times now I don't much feel like detailing it again.  So just a few notes:

People are idiots when they drink.
Some people, no matter how much they deny it, really are looking for crazy drama in their relationships.
I cannot feel much sympathy for these people - i believe they should be smarter.

Meandering: Killer Joe

For the first ten minutes of Killer Joe I thought it was a drama - and I hated the movie.  However, once the truth of its dark comedy core revealed itself i fell in love.

I could have realized its dark comedy DNA quicker, of course.  (Brilliantly) Introducing Gina Gershon via her bush should have made it obvious.  But the over-cooked dramatic acting on display in the first few scenes had me wondering if Friedkin had forgotten how to direct actors.  The explication, tension and drama of the scenes felt forced - driven by the stage play script rather than any sense of these characters as real people.

I've read some reviews since seing the movie and certainly the words lurid and gothic are apropos for the movie.  I'm trying to remember when a strong enough sense of the ridiculous entered the movie as to make me change my view of it.

I possibly enter every movie attempting to take it seriously.  And I knew nothing about Killer Joe going in.  Lurid black comedy can certainly  be misconstrued as (bad) drama for a while.  But after a while - the ridiculousness of the situations and characters reactions  starts to tip the scale and I start to appreciate the tone of the whole in a different way.

So much of enjoyment is based in what we want/expect in relation to what we get.  I wonder how much movie studios pay attention to this element of viewing pleasure.

I think the turning point for me was Marc Macaulay.  He stepped out of the car and I thought he was going to play an overly dramatic version of Phillip Seymour Hoffman from Punch Drunk Love.  However, his one scene turned out to epitomize the whole movie.  Fun, ridiculous and charming...even if violence brims just over the horizon.

I read some viewer's comment that hated the movie - it said "the movie proves just how difficult what Tarantino does actually is"  my thought was that this movie is exactly in Tarantino's wheel house and I can envision Quentin on the floor in hysterics throughout Killer Joe.

Meandering: Magic Mike

Steven Soderburgh has so many wonderful facets but regularly fails to deliver a fully developed movie on all fronts.

I'm always struck by the visuals of his movies and their boldness.  Few filmakers find the sweet spot between documentary verite and big budget unreality the way Soderburgh does.  The movies feel real without being too much so.

There's a wonderful artistic feel to much of his camera work.  Showing us shots and angles we've not seen before (so we're not used to them) but which seem so much better suited than the normal coverage to get his point across.

There's so much moment to moment virtuosity in his movies.  The shooting/editing never fails to grab me.  Hard cuts to title cards, glamorous dance sequences, quiet backlit moments.  But the essential dramatic storytelling of the movie fails.

Through much of the movie I would have thought that he wasn't overly interested in emotional storytelling - however the false feeling conclusion of the movie tell me he obviously was.  The emotion/love story of the movie almost feels tacked on - as if the studio decided it needed more heart.  I would have rather he kept thing slightly more at arm's length.

Meandering: Spider Man

I came away from the new Spider Man with a distinctly "meh" feeling.  It wasn't bad - I know a bad movie when i see one.  It wasn't overly long...which is always a positive factor.  It just wasn't particularly good.

The myth of spiderman doesn't seem to work in modern day.  In the 1960's i can see it as being very cool to have a guy who can make homemade web to stop villains.  But the necessity of amping up the action for a modern audience just doesn't sit naturally with the original story.

To mythologize a character the origin story needs to be air tight emotionally and almost air tight technically.  In 2012 it's not the super powers resulting from a spider bite that are the problem - it's the homemade web spinners that are able to hold falling cars.  There are just two many elements which are kept in the realm of logic that, if placed more in the supernatural/science fiction/ultra/bio-technology sphere, would allow us to concentrate on the myth rather than on the specifics.

Cinedigm CEO - Indie film renaissance

Cinedigm CEO Chris McGurk broke from the traditional gloom and doom many Los Angeles Film Festival keynoters have expressed regarding the future of showbiz. Noting that one previous speaker said, “and I quote: “The sky really is falling”, McGurk pointed out that “the only thing Hollywood has done better than building an industry is predicting its imminent demise.” Once again “doomsayers seem to be proclaiming the Seven Signs of the coming Indie Apocalypse” but McGurk said he sees “the Seven Signs of its Renaissance” — thanks to lower production and distribution costs because of the “digital revolution.” Despite having what he described a reputation as being “a suit” he said “I think I’ve actually become somewhat of a softie in regard to at least one aspect of the film business. Somewhere along my corporate ride in Hollywood, I fell in love with independent film.” McGurk sees enormous targeted opportunities for filmmakers, distributors, marketers and exhibitors. And variety that can satisfy broadly different kinds of people who love movies.

Summarized and paraphrased, here is McGurk’s speech:

My current role again has me highly focused on independent film, as chairman and and CEO of Cinedigm, an end-to-end digital distribution company for indie content. Digital distribution is a godsend, McGurk maintains, and not the enemy as some content.

“It is estimated that by the end of THIS year over 80% of theaters in the U.S., and over 60 percent of theaters in the world will be digital. For you, the audience, the big advantage of digital theaters is that every print is as pristine as the ones that studio executives see in their screening rooms. And those digital prints will ALWAYS remain that way. No more movie experiences where the images are so scratched, the entire movie looks like the climactic scene in The Shawshank Redemption.

But, digital goes way beyond improving the look of films. It will soon be key to delivering a far greater and more vibrant variety of content into theaters.

The studio system deteriorated in the 1960s because the huge overhead of backlot filmmaking was making movies prohibitively expensive. Expenses soared again in the early 1990s resulting in 1991′s Katzenberg Memo, which cautioned against what he called the Blockbuster Mentality that was driving runaway production costs. He was motivated to write the memo because of the enormous budget of the Disney film, Dick Tracy, which cost a grand total of … $46 million.”

These days, the major studios consider $46 million an arthouse budget. Tentpole film productions routinely run $250-$300 million, with marketing costs to match. As a result, even major blockbusters are only generating single-digit returns. And when one of those films tanks, the write-offs can be devastating, and we have seen a couple of instances of that recently.
…
There a signs that this business cycle is once again repeating itself, setting the stage for the Seven Signs of the Renaissance of Independent Film, which I would now like to share with you.

Sign Number One: The Production Revolution. High-resolution digital cameras and computers mean that the cost of of making a theatrical quality movie has plummeted.

Sign Number Two: The Distribution Revolution

Just like the indie boom of the 80s and 90s, new forms of distribution are central to the coming resurgence. Digital is the friend and not the enemy of the filmgoing experience. It has done much more than give you scratch-free prints. It is also the enabler of Sign Number One – the drop in production costs. And it is underpinning Sign Number Two, which is completely transforming distribution.

First of all, there is digital distribution into theaters. Massive numbers of film prints — at $1200 a pop plus freight charges — are no longer necessary. The process has been replaced by satellite and hard-drive delivery at less than one-tenth the cost.

The impact of digital distribution goes far beyond the theaters … and into the home and mobile platforms. There is cable and satellite Video on Demand, Amazon, iTunes, Xbox, Hulu, Vudu, Netflix, TVOD, AVOD, FVOD, SVOD, regular VOD — All those VOD acronyms that everyone talks about and very few understand what they really mean.

This “digital revolution” means that, just as happened in the ’80s, there is an exploding demand for filmed entertainment and huge competition among digital retailers. It’s an “arms race” to ensure that each one has a high quantity of high quality content to drive viewership, whether ad-supported, subscription-driven or transactional.

Margin Call as a landmark example. It wasreleased last October 21 on just 199 screens. That same day, it was also released on VOD, allowing in-home viewing for about $8. Two months later, it was put out on DVD. The movie cost $3.5 million to make and took in $4 million on VOD, $5 million in domestic theaters and another $5 million internationally. So it was solidly profitable before it even went into other ancillary markets… something that rarely happens with major studio releases. Margin Callprovides a glimpse of the kinds of distribution opportunities that are now available for independent films.

The coming renaissance of indie film will be advanced by the same driver that propelled the first one in the ’60s – lower production costs – and also the same driver behind the second one in the ‘80s – expanded distribution platforms. That’s an incredibly powerful combination.

On to the third sign: Big Talent is Into Small Films. There’s been a very interesting phenomenon underway recently. Bigger and bigger stars are willing to make smaller and smaller films. In addition to Margin Call, which starred Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore and Jeremy Irons, there’s Bernie with Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine and Matthew McConaughey, or Hysteria with Maggie Gyllenhaal, or A Dangerous Method with Keira Knightley and Viggo Mortensen or Melancholia with Kirsten Dunst or the upcoming360 with Jude Law and Anthony Hopkins or The Paperboy with Nicole Kidman, John Cusack, Zac Efron and Matthew McConaughey.

Major talent behind the camera is also attracted to indie production, including directors such as Ron Howard, Paul Thomas Anderson and Darren Aranofsky, and screenwriters like Scott Frank, Mark Boal and Peter Morgan.

One reason is the dramatic drop in the total number of theatrical releases. In 2010, about 100 fewer movies with budgets above $1 million were produced than in 2008. This is almost a 25% decline. Unavoidably, fewer movies result in fewer jobs. Talent at all levels has to look beyond the major studios for work.

Secondly, the emphasis on big budget comic book films has actually reduced the demand for big name actors. When you’re counting on Thor to open a movie, you don’t need Tom Cruise.

Third, actors want to, well, act. So, even if they get a high-profile part playing a Marvel character, they often still want to take on the challenge of something less … muscular. So, many are willing to take serious pay cuts for the chance to play a more complex, challenging and less mainstream role.

All of this increases the viability of independent films.

Then there is the Fourth Sign of the Indie Renaissance: Exhibitors want independent films … desperately. Less than 5% of seats are occupied in theaters Monday through Thursday … and only about 15% on an annualized basis. Yes, over a 12-month period, movie theaters are 85% empty! This resulted in the two largest theater chains – AMC and Regal – forming a new indie studio, Open Road Films.

Exhibitors also will need to be more flexible about release and DVD windows. Blockbuster franchises need a longer theatrical window, but indie films that are released on a few hundred screens need quicker transition to ancillary markets to survive.

Which brings me to the Fifth Sign of the Indie Renaissance: Narrowcasting. For the right program and the right price, those empty seats can be filled and that popcorn can be sold. He cited the record-breaking performance of The Avengers. An incredible 22 million people in the U.S. and Canada saw the film during its first week. But that leaves 323 million people who didn’t!

There are a whole lot of people who aren’t so excited about watching highly pain-tolerant men save the world. They are instead interested in a wide variety of other subjects that they’d like to see up on the big screen. Look at the success of live, digitally-delivered productions of the Metropolitan Opera, which have been booked into targeted theaters near where opera-lovers live. Or, at the other end of the branding spectrum, there is the Kidtoons series, which our company distributes, that are targeted to children and their families and play exclusively at weekend matinees.

The creative possibilities are endless: Action sports series, comedy nights, educational extension programs during the day, ballet, Broadway and other cultural programming, and so on. The idea is to fill seats by precisely aligning content with avid audiences in a communal setting.

In essence, the strategy is to program a targeted digital theater footprint by day and daypart almost like a TV network.

And it doesn’t have to be top-down programming. There are innovative new services like Tugg, Gathr and Cinedigm’s own crowd-sourcing platform that allow people to vote online for content they’d like to see in theaters. Once enough people sign on, the movie is booked and seats get filled.

All of this will require a modification of expectations on the part of filmmakers. They have been conditioned to believe that getting “validation” for their films requires a release into more than 500 screens. That model rarely works anymore because it’s very unlikely there will be a financial return on the cost of the big national TV media buy that’s required to support such a wide release.

The new narrowcast release strategy, combined with the kind of creative windowing we saw with Margin Call, will get filmmakers access to more eyeballs under an economic model that is more likely to generate real rewards.

Of course, narrowcasting won’t replace blockbuster filmmaking. The 20 million people who want to see Avengers 10 during opening week can still get their fix. But there are millions more who want something else. And they want to see it together in a theater. We can give it to them.

The Sixth Sign of the Indie Renaissance complements the Fifth: Targeted Marketing

Once you narrowcast into a theater, it is invaluable to then use targeted marketing to make the right people aware that the right programming for them is in their local theater.

And the best tool for doing this is social media.

Or, let me put it this way – Those of you who bought the Facebook IPO, hold on to your stock. Social media is still the future.

And movie marketers have a big advantage in this space. Just consider old-fashioned TV commercials. Nowadays, millions of people speed through them on DVRs. However, there’s one kind of commercial for which viewers regularly hit the stop button on their DVR – ads for upcoming movies.

This is because everybody hates commercials, but everybody loves movies. That’s why people stop to watch the spots for upcoming films. And that’s why people will also stop what they’re doing on a computer or mobile device to click on an appealing piece of movie marketing.

And that brings me to the Seventh Sign of the Indie Renaissance:

More dollars … and, by the way, more euros and yen and pounds and pesos and rubles. Because, make no mistake about it, the same hopeful signs that we are now seeing at work in this country are at work around the world.

I’m sure you’ve all heard the truism that cinema exists at the intersection of commerce and art. Well, I’m originally a numbers guy and, in our business, there’s a foolproof equation: More commerce equals more art.

So, if you like the art of film, you should like anything that helps the commerce of film. And that’s what all of the other six signs of the Indie Renaissance do: They help generate more of the money filmmakers need to make films.

• The first sign makes it cheaper to shoot a film,
• the second makes it easier and more efficient to distribute a film on multiple platforms,
• the third brings in bigger stars to act in a film and better writers and directors to create it,
• the fourth addresses exhibitor demand for independent film,
• the fifth makes it possible to narrowcast a film into high-yield theaters,
• and the sixth allows for targeted marketing directly to the people most likely to go see a film.

All of these add up to a more profitable business, which inevitably adds up to a more productive and expanded business. Which means that, as in the first golden age of independent film that started in the late ‘60s and in the second one that started in the late ‘80s, all of you movie lovers will have more movies to love at the multiplex … or on your TV or your computer or your iPad … or other devices yet to come that will provide even more digital canvasses for today’s cinematic artists.

Because we’re dealing with a bright Renaissance and not a dark Armageddon, I’m going to depart from apocalyptic tradition and add an eighth sign.

It’s really nothing new, and that’s why it’s so important. I hinted at it when I was talking about marketing, and it’s simply this: People love the movies.

This is why the Oscar broadcast is still one of the highest-rated shows every year.
This is why magazine covers still feature movie stars. This is why, even with our big-screen high-def, surround-sound TVs, we still want to go out to watch a movie in the dark with a bunch of strangers who BOND with us over the film… laughing, crying, being scared together … in a social experience that is almost tribal in nature.

So, I will confidently predict that we are about to see cinema history repeat itself yet again. In the past, whether it was the arrival of sound or TV or home video, each time new technology came on the scene, it was initially viewed as the enemy. Instead, each time it led to new paradigms of success. I am confident that the same will be true of digital technology … and the sky will continue to remain right up there where it belongs.

Meandering: Season 2 Game of Thrones

Overall I found the second season lacking.  There were fewer engaging characters with strong arcs.  Less movement of plot.  And a general sense that the whole season was a place holder - feeding out tidbits of information without really moving anyplace.

Whether this is objectively true or not I don't really care.
Winterfell is burned.
Jon Snow is with the wildings
Rob is married.
Dinklage is now on the outside looking in.

And I just didn't find myself caring.

Meandering: Lola Versus

Greta Gerwig is Lola.  About a woman getting dumped three weeks prior to her wedding and the ensuing few months of her life.

I haven't seen the director's first movie - but it was evidently a well respected indie movie.  So - I think it sad that his second effort was so..."blah."  I have two major points of contention with it.

1) The lack of structure.  There really is not second act to this movie - at least not in any story kind of way.  The main character just sort of wanders about, getting herself into trouble.  The main character just sort of wallows in self obsessed early adult melancholia.  The second act doesn't go anywhere - it just sort of loops constantly back on itself.  She falls for her friend, she sleeps with her ex, she dates her friend, she gets high with her ex, etc, etc

2) If you're stay away from a more structured movie - at least give me an interesting voice in which to tell your story.  There are plenty of amusing moments and clever turns of phrase.  But in the end the dialog and the filmmaking do not stand out in any meaningful way from so many other failed romantic comedy attempts.

So the movie is neither Hollywood enough, nor indie enough and as a result it's just not particularly good.  It simply wallows.

Meandering: Chronicle

For so many reasons this movie shouldn't work.  The plot is aimless.  The supporting characters thin.  The emotional beats unconvincing.  But - obviously - movie goers really enjoyed the movie.  I am only luke warm on it.

But the movie did a number of things right:

83 minutes
The promise of the premise was paid in full - friends exploring their new found super powers in fun ways.
High school - a milieu we all know and identify with.
A believable friendship-
An effective - albeit unconvincing in my mind - story arc for the lead character.

Meandering: Girls 1-5

I like the show Girls.
But I rather hate the girls themselves.

Angst runs through me as I watch them complain, whimper and "suffer" through their daily lives.
The only obstacles these women face are of their own making - but man are they hard to overcome.
How does one overcome being a snobby, self-involved idiot.
And why do I enjoy watching it.

The only answer I can come up with is that every time they seem to learn a little bit about themselves - they suffer all the more for it.

I'm watching this show because it's one step forward and two steps back and they'll get somewhere eventually.

Meandering: Avengers

What a fun movie.  Even though weighed down by burdensome action sequences the juggling of characters and story lines was so deft as to keep me involved throughout.  Certainly Whedon is good at character moments - witty character moments in particular.  Aside from Batman - this is the high water mark for summer superhero blockbusters.

Meanderings: Elena

Saw the movie Elena last night.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1925421/

It's Russian, very slow paced and (excluding a few minutes in the middle) quite watchable.
The movie involves an older woman (Elena) who recently married an old, rich guy and wants him to support her shiftless adult  son from a previous marriage.  He's reluctant.

Though the situation of the film is quite clear, there's a distinct lack of plot or forward movement - quite intentionally so.  This entire movie is basically the first act of a Hollywood movie.

Nevertheless - I'm interested in the fact that I found it so watchable.  The movie was pointedly meditative. There's no dialog for the first six minutes and in fact the opening frame is a two minute static frame of the apartment in which the couple live.

There's something potent that comes from simply observing characters.  My brain fills in all the small spaces where plot and activity would usually be.  I've just mentioned The Assassination of Jesse James in a previous post - it does the same thing - allows each individual audience member's psyches to fill in the space.  I love it.

I moved through a phase wondering if I'd filled such blanks incorrectly.  If i'd missed something and ended up liking a character I'm "supposed to" dislike or vice versa.  As if there's an exact answer.  But in my ego-laden old age I enjoy being given the space to meditate on characters without being force fed a feeling about them.  Indeed, the movie as a whole embodies that idea - as the plot's "climax" does not prescribe and audience reaction.

Elena kills her husband, steals his money and give it to her shitty family.  But the husband was essentially cutting her out of his will and leaving his money to his own good for nothing offspring.  This kind of reminds me of the TV show Girls - full of unlikeable characters but really engaging to watch.

Andrew Dominik

I am very excited about this movie from Andrew Dominik who made The Assassination of Jesse James.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1764234/

Meandering: Mr Foe

directed by David Mackenzie
A slightly unbalanced boy/man is obsessed with his mother who died when he was a teenager.  The boy, an amateur voyeur,  has a strange sexual/maternal fixation with first, his step-mother (whom he, in his paranoia, thinks murdered his mother) and then with a young woman who looks much like his mother.

The boy, Hallam, is in dire need of some kind of closure over the death of his mother.  That unstable ground tilts him into the sexual desire he feels for these two different women.

We watch his fixation with the young woman hotel manager in awkwardly as it's unclear of how he's reconciling the maternal feelings he's having for KaTE with his obvious relationship/sexual interest in her.

It all resolves when Hallam tries to kill his step Mom and Daddy tells him that his mother loved him - even though it wasn't enough for her to want to stay alive.


I found this movie watchable - but it did not blow me away.
I'm always slightly less interested in movies in which the main character is mentally unbalanced...and the conclusion of the movie will involved him coming to terms with/being healed of that imbalance.  Good Will Hunting somehow escapes my disdain for this - I'm not sure why.

I did like the examination of maternal/sexual fixation.  However, fot such dark and subversive themes to work i think the movie needs to remain more outwardly subtle.  When one of the story lines involves the son trying to kill his step Mom, an act which triggers the emotional cure for the son - it's all too out in the open.  He was sick - he tried to do something horrible - realizes his wrongs - starts to get better.


This is one of those movies that makes me realize just how hard making a good film of this kind is.  There needs to be an examination of themes - but at the same time an A story that moves things forward - but isn't too on the nose.

I'm trying to think of a movie that does this well. Two movies jump to mind, though I don't think they're the answer but....nevertheless.  One Flew over the Cuckoos nest.  The Beat my Heart Skipped.

Again - very difficult to have basically a crazy person - perpetrating crazy actions - as the main character.  How can this resolve itself in a meaningful and believable way?