The Kids Are All Right and Inception
We have spent the weekend going to see movies. Enclosed are reviews. First up we went to see The Kids Are All Right, which I definitely do not recommend.
lysimache was very excited about seeing this, because, hey, a mainstream lesbian movie! Starring Annette Benning and Julianne Moore! Written and directed by Lisa Cholodenko, who made High Art, a lesbian movie with which you are probably familiar. (It is very good, but also very sad.)
lysimache assured me that this is a mainstream lesbian movie where no one ended up dead or straight at the end, and having seen it, I have to say that this is technically true, because they're all gay again by the end. The actual implementation is, um, rage-worthy. Perhaps we should have done more research. (But at least they're not overdosing on heroin, right? Right?)
Okay, so it's about this lesbian couple and their two children conceived via anonymous donor, and then one of the kids turns 18 and so they want to meet their biological father, and they do, and they like him, and the family slowly disintegrates as one of the lesbians begins secretly sleeping with him (continuing, of course, to identify as a lesbian), but then they break up and everyone fights and the lesbians are sort of back together at the end. Yeah.
The IMDb reviews are split into "this is a very good movie that is an accurate portrayal of marriage" and "what the fuck are you saying about my orientation?" Guess which reviews are from straight people.
I just have to wonder, *this* is the mainstream lesbian movie a lesbian director wanted to make? Society already thinks we're all sitting around waiting for the right man to come along. Sure, people behave in ways that do not actually correspond to their stated identification all the time, I know that, and the character was lonely, blah blah, the guy just happened to be there, but this is not doing anyone any favors. I hate it so much.
Also it made
lysimache cry for most of yesterday. :(
So today we went to see Inception, which I'd wanted to see for a while. I really liked Memento, plus apparently Arthur/Eames has become the Surprise Fandom Hit of the summer, although Sherlock (BBC) is now giving it a run for its money. (Yes, I found inceptionfilm and inception_kink.) And I try to keep a finger on the pulse of fandom, to, y'know, spot when it's having squee attacks. Usually single movies do not create a giant fandom, but I remember TPM, you guys. (Man, I've been in fandom a while.)
I liked it a lot. It's definitely one of those Very Clever movies, much like Memento (duh), that I end up liking a lot but I feel a vague guilt for liking because the Very Plotty Movies With Secret Twists are such a manly, manly genre made to appeal to, I think, the kind of cinema nerds who are voting this thing the #3 best movie ever on IMDb right now. (I strongly suspect these people are all boys.) It is extremely hard-SF, is what I'm trying to say, and I feel like I don't fit in with it. Even though I like it! I feel like I shouldn't! Such gender-performing guilt!
(...maybe slashing it will make me feel better?)
I can see why everyone's all over the Arthur/Eames. They clearly have some past history, and there's nothing more fandom likes than frenemies with some phallic gun jokes, right? Yeah. I don't know that I think either of them were particularly pretty, as fandom seems to, but they are not my type. But if there is slash I will happily read it. Especially if involving lots of Eames. I guess I did like him.
On the other hand, Marion Cotillard was very pretty, and if she's been in one of those French movies where people drink a lot of wine and have incomprehensible conversations about philosophy and then very artfully-shot sex scenes and more wine and an ambiguous ending that makes no sense... I would totally watch that, is what I'm saying, and not for the philosophy.
And hooray for Ellen Page as Ariadne. I like Ellen Page.
lysimache says she thinks naming her Ariadne was way too clever in a bad way, but she also hates this kind of movie a lot. Me, if someone had told me before that this was basically Memento as a SF-y heist movie, I would have seen it the day it came out. Because this is Memento: The Heist Movie. And it is awesome.
It was a little long, and a little too action-y in places, but eh. They didn't make it for me. Other than that, squee.
I really think the dream-manipulating conceit is very cool, and I hope fandom takes this and runs with it and writes a bunch of AUs and fusions and crossovers so that I can get the plot trope with added characterization. (The characterization here, such as it was, existed basically to fuel the plot. Ah, hard SF, this is why I don't read much of you. Not that all of it does this, of course.) So maybe fandom will give me the same trope with some characterization! That will be nice! Not that I mind pondering the nature of reality and Plato's allegory of the cave and whatever! It's what I thought the movie would be about, and I was right.
And the ending: So, it was a dream all along? Or not? That top had some wobble to it; it could have fallen. The last time it fell over was in Africa, so maybe everything after was a dream? Or maybe he wasn't really spinning it then? Or maybe he just didn't wake up from the last job?
Whee. I think I shall have to 0wnz0r this on DVD.
Hey, Inception fandom, will you rec me some fic? (Or you can just come squee at me.)
(And hopefully, very soon, I will be watching the next episode of Sherlock. Squee.)
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lysimache was very excited about seeing this, because, hey, a mainstream lesbian movie! Starring Annette Benning and Julianne Moore! Written and directed by Lisa Cholodenko, who made High Art, a lesbian movie with which you are probably familiar. (It is very good, but also very sad.)
lysimache assured me that this is a mainstream lesbian movie where no one ended up dead or straight at the end, and having seen it, I have to say that this is technically true, because they're all gay again by the end. The actual implementation is, um, rage-worthy. Perhaps we should have done more research. (But at least they're not overdosing on heroin, right? Right?)
Okay, so it's about this lesbian couple and their two children conceived via anonymous donor, and then one of the kids turns 18 and so they want to meet their biological father, and they do, and they like him, and the family slowly disintegrates as one of the lesbians begins secretly sleeping with him (continuing, of course, to identify as a lesbian), but then they break up and everyone fights and the lesbians are sort of back together at the end. Yeah.
The IMDb reviews are split into "this is a very good movie that is an accurate portrayal of marriage" and "what the fuck are you saying about my orientation?" Guess which reviews are from straight people.
I just have to wonder, *this* is the mainstream lesbian movie a lesbian director wanted to make? Society already thinks we're all sitting around waiting for the right man to come along. Sure, people behave in ways that do not actually correspond to their stated identification all the time, I know that, and the character was lonely, blah blah, the guy just happened to be there, but this is not doing anyone any favors. I hate it so much.
Also it made
lysimache cry for most of yesterday. :(
So today we went to see Inception, which I'd wanted to see for a while. I really liked Memento, plus apparently Arthur/Eames has become the Surprise Fandom Hit of the summer, although Sherlock (BBC) is now giving it a run for its money. (Yes, I found inceptionfilm and inception_kink.) And I try to keep a finger on the pulse of fandom, to, y'know, spot when it's having squee attacks. Usually single movies do not create a giant fandom, but I remember TPM, you guys. (Man, I've been in fandom a while.)
I liked it a lot. It's definitely one of those Very Clever movies, much like Memento (duh), that I end up liking a lot but I feel a vague guilt for liking because the Very Plotty Movies With Secret Twists are such a manly, manly genre made to appeal to, I think, the kind of cinema nerds who are voting this thing the #3 best movie ever on IMDb right now. (I strongly suspect these people are all boys.) It is extremely hard-SF, is what I'm trying to say, and I feel like I don't fit in with it. Even though I like it! I feel like I shouldn't! Such gender-performing guilt!
(...maybe slashing it will make me feel better?)
I can see why everyone's all over the Arthur/Eames. They clearly have some past history, and there's nothing more fandom likes than frenemies with some phallic gun jokes, right? Yeah. I don't know that I think either of them were particularly pretty, as fandom seems to, but they are not my type. But if there is slash I will happily read it. Especially if involving lots of Eames. I guess I did like him.
On the other hand, Marion Cotillard was very pretty, and if she's been in one of those French movies where people drink a lot of wine and have incomprehensible conversations about philosophy and then very artfully-shot sex scenes and more wine and an ambiguous ending that makes no sense... I would totally watch that, is what I'm saying, and not for the philosophy.
And hooray for Ellen Page as Ariadne. I like Ellen Page.
lysimache says she thinks naming her Ariadne was way too clever in a bad way, but she also hates this kind of movie a lot. Me, if someone had told me before that this was basically Memento as a SF-y heist movie, I would have seen it the day it came out. Because this is Memento: The Heist Movie. And it is awesome.
It was a little long, and a little too action-y in places, but eh. They didn't make it for me. Other than that, squee.
I really think the dream-manipulating conceit is very cool, and I hope fandom takes this and runs with it and writes a bunch of AUs and fusions and crossovers so that I can get the plot trope with added characterization. (The characterization here, such as it was, existed basically to fuel the plot. Ah, hard SF, this is why I don't read much of you. Not that all of it does this, of course.) So maybe fandom will give me the same trope with some characterization! That will be nice! Not that I mind pondering the nature of reality and Plato's allegory of the cave and whatever! It's what I thought the movie would be about, and I was right.
And the ending: So, it was a dream all along? Or not? That top had some wobble to it; it could have fallen. The last time it fell over was in Africa, so maybe everything after was a dream? Or maybe he wasn't really spinning it then? Or maybe he just didn't wake up from the last job?
Whee. I think I shall have to 0wnz0r this on DVD.
Hey, Inception fandom, will you rec me some fic? (Or you can just come squee at me.)
(And hopefully, very soon, I will be watching the next episode of Sherlock. Squee.)
Read this entry on Dreamwidth ||
comments