This time, I will not be ignored.
Funny how most of my recent entries have been about movies.
Shows you what I do when I have free time.
-
Do you know who Jamie Bell is? No?
Heard of the movie Billy Elliot? Seen King Kong? Watched the previews for Jumper on tv? Then yes, you do.
And he's amazing.
He's ranking way up there on Laurel's list with the likes of Edward Norton and Johnny Depp. (In other words, the people that I look up on IMDB and then obsessively download every single movie they've ever been in.)
That's how I found out about The Chumscrubber.
What a fucking creepy movie. Generation Rx, indeed. [Spoilers ahead, for those who haven't seen it/actually care.]
At one point (when Dean is searching Troy's poolhouse thing for the drugs, and Troy first appears and speaks to Dean) I literally slammed the pause button on my computer, jumped up, turned on all the lights in my house, and grabbed two stuffed animals before I could keep watching. (I thought it was turning into one of those pyscho/horror flicks. It didn't. But I thought it would.)
Poor Dean. Poor Charlie Bratley. Everyone's poor parents. I don't think there was a single person in the movie I didn't feel sorry for. (Except perhaps Dean's brother Charlie, who was hilariously cool, except I don't really want him anywhere near my food.) Even Billy, whom I absolutely detested at the beginning of the film. In all truth, I hated him at the end too ("Do it again! Come on, man! Do it!"), but I felt so sorry for him. All he had was perfect vision, drugs, and a father who beat him. And in the end, he lost those, too.
Justin Chatwin was spectacular as Billy. His eyes in the scene in Lee's basement gave me honest-to-god chills. Speaking of actors and their eyes, Ralph Fiennes has the most beautiful eyes in the entire movie. I don't know whether he wears eyeliner 24/7 or what, but like I said, beautiful. And Thomas Curtis (Charlie Bratley) looks like Haley Joel Osmont reincarnated, except that Haley Joel Osmont isn't dead. But whatever.
One thing I didn't like was Dean and Crystal's blithe hooking-up at the end. I tend to really dislike female characters in movies, books, and tv shows, when I feel that they are simply thrown in because every other character is male, or to add a love interest to the story. I felt, however, that Crystal and Dean's relationship was played through in a sufficiently low-key, real, honest way. There were no big, dramatic kisses in the midst of the penultimate scene - there was just a heartfelt hug, some sweetly unconscious hand-holding, and a girl waiting hopefully for the boy on the other end of the line to tell her he liked her too. (And who would blame her? Jamie Bell's hot.) But I have a ridiculously large amount of hate for the concluding shot that shows the two dressed in white, kissing at a restaurant table while the rest of the world blurs around them and a narrator claims that they "escaped". No one else's ending is such a cookie-cutter cliché. Catching a glimpse of the satisfaction on Lee's face as he ratted out his friend to a jury, it seemed like I caught a glimpse of his future. Billy, approached by two inmates in the prisonyard, is obviously about to land himself a whole new slew of issues. And poor Charlie Bratley, left to his father; "Everyone says he's better off now," the narrator declares, but you know - you just know - that he isn't. And Crystal and Dean escaped? Ugh. That ruined the ending for me.
But Jamie Bell's "Don't ignore me, Charlie" totally made it bearable.
Reading this article brought a whole new level of understanding of the movie to me. Because I'd found the movie simply through Jamie Bell's credits, I hadn't even looked at a promo poster or the dvd cover or anything. I didn't understand the significance of the dude carrying his head (as portrayed on Dean's shirt here) nor did I understand the opening's video game imitation. The first mention I noticed of the Chumscrubber was the poster on Charlie B's wall. Although, thinking back, I suppose that was the game that Dean's brother Charlie was playing. And there must have been other references that I didn't notice.
I'm looking forward to watching the movie again with the knowledge I have from that article. I would never have consciously recognized the camera angles, colour vs monochrome, how the only pop-culture reference ever was to the Chumscrubber. It will be interesting to look for those things in my second viewing.
In other words: kurasari, you need to download and watch the movie, so that we can discuss deep, meaningful symbolic stuff. And yeah. Also Jamie Bell = win.
EDIT: JUSTIN CHATWIN PLAYED GOKU IN THE UPCOMING DRAGONBALL Z MOVIE??
Shows you what I do when I have free time.
-
Do you know who Jamie Bell is? No?
Heard of the movie Billy Elliot? Seen King Kong? Watched the previews for Jumper on tv? Then yes, you do.
And he's amazing.
He's ranking way up there on Laurel's list with the likes of Edward Norton and Johnny Depp. (In other words, the people that I look up on IMDB and then obsessively download every single movie they've ever been in.)
That's how I found out about The Chumscrubber.
What a fucking creepy movie. Generation Rx, indeed. [Spoilers ahead, for those who haven't seen it/actually care.]
At one point (when Dean is searching Troy's poolhouse thing for the drugs, and Troy first appears and speaks to Dean) I literally slammed the pause button on my computer, jumped up, turned on all the lights in my house, and grabbed two stuffed animals before I could keep watching. (I thought it was turning into one of those pyscho/horror flicks. It didn't. But I thought it would.)
Poor Dean. Poor Charlie Bratley. Everyone's poor parents. I don't think there was a single person in the movie I didn't feel sorry for. (Except perhaps Dean's brother Charlie, who was hilariously cool, except I don't really want him anywhere near my food.) Even Billy, whom I absolutely detested at the beginning of the film. In all truth, I hated him at the end too ("Do it again! Come on, man! Do it!"), but I felt so sorry for him. All he had was perfect vision, drugs, and a father who beat him. And in the end, he lost those, too.
Justin Chatwin was spectacular as Billy. His eyes in the scene in Lee's basement gave me honest-to-god chills. Speaking of actors and their eyes, Ralph Fiennes has the most beautiful eyes in the entire movie. I don't know whether he wears eyeliner 24/7 or what, but like I said, beautiful. And Thomas Curtis (Charlie Bratley) looks like Haley Joel Osmont reincarnated, except that Haley Joel Osmont isn't dead. But whatever.
One thing I didn't like was Dean and Crystal's blithe hooking-up at the end. I tend to really dislike female characters in movies, books, and tv shows, when I feel that they are simply thrown in because every other character is male, or to add a love interest to the story. I felt, however, that Crystal and Dean's relationship was played through in a sufficiently low-key, real, honest way. There were no big, dramatic kisses in the midst of the penultimate scene - there was just a heartfelt hug, some sweetly unconscious hand-holding, and a girl waiting hopefully for the boy on the other end of the line to tell her he liked her too. (And who would blame her? Jamie Bell's hot.) But I have a ridiculously large amount of hate for the concluding shot that shows the two dressed in white, kissing at a restaurant table while the rest of the world blurs around them and a narrator claims that they "escaped". No one else's ending is such a cookie-cutter cliché. Catching a glimpse of the satisfaction on Lee's face as he ratted out his friend to a jury, it seemed like I caught a glimpse of his future. Billy, approached by two inmates in the prisonyard, is obviously about to land himself a whole new slew of issues. And poor Charlie Bratley, left to his father; "Everyone says he's better off now," the narrator declares, but you know - you just know - that he isn't. And Crystal and Dean escaped? Ugh. That ruined the ending for me.
But Jamie Bell's "Don't ignore me, Charlie" totally made it bearable.
Reading this article brought a whole new level of understanding of the movie to me. Because I'd found the movie simply through Jamie Bell's credits, I hadn't even looked at a promo poster or the dvd cover or anything. I didn't understand the significance of the dude carrying his head (as portrayed on Dean's shirt here) nor did I understand the opening's video game imitation. The first mention I noticed of the Chumscrubber was the poster on Charlie B's wall. Although, thinking back, I suppose that was the game that Dean's brother Charlie was playing. And there must have been other references that I didn't notice.
I'm looking forward to watching the movie again with the knowledge I have from that article. I would never have consciously recognized the camera angles, colour vs monochrome, how the only pop-culture reference ever was to the Chumscrubber. It will be interesting to look for those things in my second viewing.
In other words: kurasari, you need to download and watch the movie, so that we can discuss deep, meaningful symbolic stuff. And yeah. Also Jamie Bell = win.
EDIT: JUSTIN CHATWIN PLAYED GOKU IN THE UPCOMING DRAGONBALL Z MOVIE??