Posts tagged with "movies"

Chasing Amy

And while I was falling for you I put a ceil­ing on that, because you were a guy. Until I remem­bered why I opened the door to women in the first place: to not lim­it the like­li­hood of find­ing that one per­son who’d com­ple­ment me so com­plete­ly. So here we are. I was thor­ough when I looked for you. And I feel jus­ti­fied lying in your arms, ’cause I got here on my own terms, and I have no ques­tion there was some place I did­n’t look.

I sup­pose I would have enjoyed Chasing Amy more if the dia­logue had been more believ­able, but I could­n’t buy it.

We don’t live in a Dawson’s Creek world where every­one’s a psy­chol­o­gist, com­plete­ly in tune with their emo­tions and the emo­tions of oth­ers.

People aren’t con­fronta­tion­al in real life either. They don’t say what they mean or mean what they say.

And when you’re try­ing to tell the girl that you’re in love with her, it does­n’t come out as some flow­ery, roman­tic verse, it comes out in jum­bles. You’re trip­ping over your own words cause it’s the girl.

Maybe I was just hop­ing for a love sto­ry that worked out. I would have giv­en in to the sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief that peo­ple actu­al­ly talk like that, had there been a hap­py end­ing.

Show Me Which Constellations You Know, A Denouement

Eternal Sunshine 1

Eternal Sunshine 2

Eternal Sunshine 3

People always say that this song or that book or some movie is a sto­ry about them­selves in some way. One of my friends is tru­ly deter­mined that his life has been proph­e­sied in the eight and a half minute rock-opera Paradise By The Dashboard Lights. My sto­ry was told in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, but it was­n’t any­thing with as much grandeur, it was sim­ply about a girl.

Interestingly enough, it’s not the sto­ries them­selves, but the details of each sto­ry that give them such relat­able con­vic­tion. In Paradise By The Dashboard Lights, Meatloaf sings about a coerced com­mit­ment lead­ing to an even­tu­al eter­ni­ty spent with the wrong per­son because of a stub­born, but more impor­tant­ly moral, refusal to break a promise. The prog­nos­ti­ca­tion of these par­tic­u­lars sends my friend sweat­ing when­ev­er he hears the song.

For me, it took the form of pangs, from the details of Clementine’s char­ac­ter. The fucked up girl look­ing for her own peace of mind, who applies her per­son­al­i­ty in a paste. A per­son who keeps you off bal­ance, always guess­ing, and con­stant­ly frus­trat­ed. A girl who sends off sirens in your brain telling you to run as far as you can before you get burned, but you stay any­way, against all log­ic, resigned to the even­tu­al fate.

And here I was, wait­ing to be saved, think­ing she’s a con­cept, or she’ll com­plete me, or she’s going to make me feel alive. When it did­n’t work out, I used to say that it was for the best, that I was in it to have no regrets, but it was real­ly because I could­n’t leave. I was drawn mag­net­i­cal­ly, inex­plic­a­bly, to the last per­son to deserve even the effort of all the torn up thoughts.

To the one that got away.

On the week­end, I dis­cov­ered that I could final­ly watch Eternal Sunshine with­out those pangs when I had felt them for so long, even when I already knew how impor­tant it is not to for­get these expe­ri­ences, as Joel fig­ures out while hid­ing Clementine in his sub­con­scious. All the resid­ual emo­tions have passed, and now I can talk, and laugh, and think, and share the expe­ri­ence like an embar­rass­ing ado­les­cent mem­o­ry. It only took two years.

Everybody’s got­ta learn some­time.

Ghost World

I usu­al­ly have to be in a very spe­cif­ic mood to watch Ghost World, but some­thing about it is strik­ing a chord with me right now, and this time it’s not just SJs sullen voice. The humour is dri­er than Rushmore, which says some­thing about the skills of Terry Zwigoff’s as a direc­tor. The risk of unsat­u­rat­ed humour is that it very eas­i­ly goes unrec­og­nized, espe­cial­ly with­out a laugh track. The last time I watched Ghost World was before I ever saw Mr. Show, so it’s only now that I can real­ly appre­ci­ate David Cross’s cameo per­for­mance.

Seymour is my god, cause it’s obvi­ous­ly him and he does­n’t care.

Pieces Of April

I real­ly don’t know what I was expect­ing from Pieces of April, but its doc­u­men­tary-style direct­ing and well thought out script made it an effec­tive movie nonethe­less. In the end, Peter Hedges presents the last few scenes in still pho­tographs, let­ting the audi­ence come up with their own reac­tions and dia­logue. All one is sure of is that every­thing is resolved, and every­one is hav­ing a good time. And for a movie like this, that becomes the most impor­tant thing.

Movie Review: Troy

Troy end­ed up being a mediocre movie, that did­n’t have much plot, char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, or any good action scenes (save one, maybe two). I’m sure there was more in it for the girls than the guys. I mean, Diane Kruger is hot, but much bet­ter with­out all the make­up and frills. I was pleas­ant­ly remind­ed about Odysseus’s lit­tle part in the sto­ry, although they got Sean Bean to por­tray him, the actor who also tries to kill Frodo in Lord of the Rings, betrays his part­ner in Equilibrium, screws up a weapons deal then throws up in the get­t­away car in Ronin, and tries to destroy England in GoldenEye.

After see­ing Bean in these fuck-up, bad guy roles, it’s hard to imag­ine him as the great Greek hero, espe­cial­ly since Odysseus has always been my favourite Greek char­ac­ter. He’s the guy who’s total­ly bal­anced; a brain, an ath­lete, a host, a war­rior, an artist, famous for his clev­er­ness and cun­ning. He’s the guy who stayed faith­ful to Penelope while being pur­sued by Calypso and Circe, the guy who dared to lis­ten to the sirens sing, the guy who came up with the idea of the Trojan horse, the guy who tried every­thing in his pow­er to get his crew home safe­ly through every obsta­cle imag­in­able, but the only one with the tenac­i­ty to make it. If Odysseus was alive today, I’d give him my props.