Watched: Cherrybomb

Amped up, hormonal glorified music video. I know I'm not a teenager anymore because a movie like this doesn't really affect me that much anymore. Beautifully filmed, fairly competently acted, but it was still better when it was called Skins or Misfits.

Watched: Young Adult

So this was super depressing to me, in a way I can't quite explain. I feel like I need to watch it again because  I want to, and also I just want to continue watching Charlize BE Mavis, in all her psychotic glory. It feels to me the way that Angelina Jolie's performance felt in Girl, Interrupted. The character is horrifying and vile and kind of irresistible, all at the same time.

I've never been a big Charlize Theron fan (although I've also never seen Monster) but I think this movie has converted me. She just so fully inhabits a bitter, sad woman who can't even really begin to realistically fight against the horror of her own life, and so instead creates a house-of-cards like alternate story in which she is successful, happy, well-rounded, and everything else. The only commonality between what we see happening to her and what she sees happening to her is her actual physical beauty, which is in no way diminished here like it was purposefully in Monster (I'm not even going to address that movie where she prettily has cancer and plays mind games with Keanu Reeves nor the one where she's a pretty miner). And yet, even that is bifurcated between what we see when Mavis wake up, always disheveled, hungover, disgruntled, and the end result of a very complicated beautification process (presented several times for reinforcement by way of montage, thanks guys for really hitting that home! It takes time for her to look like this! Most of its fake!). And EVEN THEN, after all the effort is shown, she still always looks over the top, as though she understands perfectly well the appropriate attire for any given situation and then goes several steps beyond just because that's who she is.

I really appreciate that while this movie was clearly not Juno, tonally or character-wise  it still feels like it could inhabit the same world as Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody's first effort together. It's a little bit bleaker, darker, angrier. But then Juno has a fair deal of darkness people sometimes forget about. But there are still some great (dark) funny moments that remind me of Juno.

Also, Patton Oswald is great in this. I thought he was great in Big Fan too. I thought he was great in Ratatouille. I thought he was great in The Informant! I think he is a legitimately really good actor.

 Frowny face.

So much boozing.

 Spackle.

 This was maybe my favorite joke in the whole movie because who hasn't sat down at a table in a strange place where you didn't know anyone and could only look around so many times while you waited for whoever before you get out the ol' mobile and start pretending-texting away? Not anyone who's been a cell-phone dependent adult in the last decade, which is to say, almost no one.

  I have been to this Macy's. On this kind of day. For this kind of purpose (sort of, I was there to find a dress for an event). It is an unspeakable horror.

 Pom! Besides Charlize and Patton who were aweome, little Pom (Mavis names it Dolce but I refuse to acknowledge that beyond this parenthetical statement) deserves an award for being the best! Or at least a nomination! OH WAIT THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED BECAUSE LIFE IS GRAND!!!

 Pom clearly planning his acceptance speech since this scene asked very little of him.

Spite donut! The very best kind of donut? Dicuss.

Watched: Hackers

Delightfully wacky 90's time capsule. Angelina Jolie, practically a fetus, already doing the whole femme fatale seductress thing that she will go on to do for approximately 95% of her career. If ain't broke, don't fix it, right? Johnny Lee Miller is a horrible protagonist, although I've seen him in stuff I like (Trainspotting, MANSFIELD PARK JANE AUSTEN WHATUP!) here the combination of the nasal American accent he occasionally drops and his sneering braggadocio he's just basically the worst. Even when he's cool he's still just such a massive dork and yet an asshole at the same time that the rest of the movie kind of suffers from it, I think. Oh well. It's still amazing for its pure, unadulterated 90'sness.

 That guy, who I most remember from when he played Eliza Dushku's brother in Bring It On! Aw, look at what a baby he is here. He smokes in this movie, but he's also got braces. The combo is hilarious.

 Matthew Lillard I love you! Matthew Lillard I miss you! Matthew Lillard come back and be the weird, loud obnoxious in every ensemble comedy again!

 Meatloaf and one my favorite hammy, mediocre actors from the 80's/90's, Fisher Stevens. Fisher Stevens movies I can remember watching off the top of my head: Only You and this one. Clearly I'm going to need to double down and do a Short Circuit marathon. Why have I not seen more Fisher Stevens movies? He's so annoying!! So many missed opportunities to hate myself and the world!

Also, Lorraine Bracco, don't look so worried- it only gets better from here on out.

Bunk Moreland!!

 90's movie= at least one mall or mall-esque shot.

 The former Mr. Jennifer Lopez!

  Hacker clubs.

Hacker television personalities. Because, you know, of course.

Watched: Friends with Kids

I didn't laugh out loud once. Possibly I was not supposed to, and this was in fact one of those dastardly "dramedies" where the humor is supposed to be muted to the point of barely-there, and the drama lukewarm. If so, well done! No, seriously, there are so many people in here to whom I have such good will due other projects they've done that I love (about 89% of the cast just hopped on over from the set of Bridesmaids, one of my favorite movies from last summer) that I really wanted to like this much more than I did. It's not badly written or badly acted, I don't think. There are some nice moments. And Jennifer Westfeldt sure does love a dinner table scene, she's got about a half dozen of them in here. I actually found them to be the best part, when all the characters were contained in one room bouncing off of each other. But for the most part I ended up just kind of passively taking it in, thinking "huh, so that happened" and then moving on with my day. Maybe I'm just a bad viewer. Shrug.

 Bit part for Emily Gilmore. Why?? GIVE EMILY MORE SCREENTIME! The woman deserves it. She is a national treasure, that lady. (Yes I know that is not her real name but that is not relevant. To me she will always be Emily Gilmore.)

Watched: Yellow Sky

Very much what, I think, people think of when they refer to the "classic Western". Wikipedia says this was supposedly based on The Tempest, although I have never seen nor read that so I can't attest. But it does have kind of the feel that it's taking elements from something else (I was getting a heavy blend of High Noon and Treasure of the Sierra Madre from the plot mechanics). And also, the romantic story between Anne Baxter's 'Mike/Constance Mae' and Gregory Peck's 'Stretch' (two stupid name demerits there, guys) is just shy of non-consensual, which I really wish classic Westerns did less of. Hear me, William A. Wellman? Less of that, please. On the one hand, I understand the entire group of men acting like complete pigs to this girl and her decrepit grandfather, the only people left in an otherwise ghost town. On the other hand, it gets pretty gross.

That being said, DAMN, did the man (or whoever was working for him) know how to frame shot or what? There are some epic, gorgeous, totally iconic shots in this thing. I'd never watched the movie before yet I recognized them the minute I saw them from years of imitation in other Westerns, Looney Tunes, and various other media. Well done there, everyone involved in that aspect.

Also, I love Anne Baxter. She continually plays batshit crazy characters who are either spit-nails tough or vulnerable in an extremely dangerous and deceitful way. I'm think specifically of All About Eve, where she plays the young sycophant who drives Bette Davis' prima donna into a drunken, paranoid frenzy, but she's also great in The Magnificent Ambersons and The Blue Gardenia. Wikipedia lists her as being in the 1956 The Ten Commandments as well although I only vaguely remember her, mostly that voice. It seemed like she was always speaking several registers deeper than what you would expect her to sound like, and she was always just a little bit out of breath. Helped with the whole slightly crazy character she did so well.

Also, Gregory Peck is in this. He is both square-jawed and handsome, so well done there. Okay fine his performance is good. But it's no Atticus Finch.

Watched: Fright Night

Ehhhhhh. Far more decent and well-done than it needed to be, but still wasn't that into it. Which surprises me because there's a bad-ass Colin Farrell-y vampire, Toni Collette gets to curse a bit, McLovin plays a bitter, dorky teenaged vamp (SPOILER ALERT SNERK), Imogen Poots continues to have a hilarious name. And yet. And yet. I have the original as well, I may have to come back to this to compare and contrast.

Watched: Martha Marcy May Marlene

A discomfiting, unsettling movie about how dangerous we, and those around us, can be. Even when we don't at first glance appear to be so. This movie takes some patience. It's nice to look at (sometimes), and mostly contemplative, and is really more about the settling in of events into our psyches, perhaps our souls, then the exact events happening at the moment. At least I think so, as it explains why the titular character's memories are so fragmented and haphazardly presented (usually associatively, in reaction to something she's experiencing in the movie's present). Which is to say: this movie's real fucked up, in more ways than you might expect for a movie about runaways getting roped into dangerous, sexist, orgy-having murder cults. So... yeah.