Hear my song of peppy vengeance!
Livejournal wants to know: If I'm on a plane that's going to crash and I have time to make exactly one phone call, who do I call and why?
First choice: Uh, Superman. Obviously.
Second choice: Ghost Busters
With that said... More Movies!
X-Files: I Want to Believe
It's funny how something can define a little epoch of your life and then quietly slip off your radar. I went through an X-Files phase. It was during this phase that I learned I could control my fear by controlling my breathing. I also learned to go to the bathroom before watching a new episode, because I'd usually be a little creeped out by bathrooms for a few hours afterward. (HORRIBLE things happen to people in bathrooms on the X-Files). As I'm not especially titillated by horror, I guess you could say the X-Files and I were an unlikely match. But I liked the characters so much that I was happy to revisit them week after week, and I could forgive them for about anything, up to and including their stubborn refusal ever to use a light-switch when entering a spooky building. For a while there (when I was about fourteen) Dana Scully just was my notion of a glamorous woman - so competent, so cool under pressure, so manicured and windswept, all at once. And while I grew tired of endless debate over whether Mulder and Scully should get together or not, I figured as long as they were never *apart*, I was a happy camper.
My favorite episodes of the X-Files - and the ones I found the scariest, too - were always the ones involving realistic human pathologies: fetishists, cult leaders, and that sort of thing. The bloated 'Mythology' wore me out, because I had to figure they would eventually take back any apparent revelations, just as soon as it became convenient to replace one twist with another. So I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this latest X-Files movie more closely resembles the former sort of story than the latter. Of course, it involves the paranormal, or it would not be an X-File and Mulder would not be called out of hiding and into involvement, but the plot, which revolves around a series of disappearances, isn't so different from your Silence of the Lambs style thriller. The paranormal element in question is supplied by a (supposedly) psychic pedophile (played Uncle Monty from A Series of Unfortunate Events, aka Captain Bones of 'Jim-Jim-Jimmy-Jim-Jim' fame - whom I hardly recognized - though the crazy hair was about par for the course). Psychic Pedophile claims he is somehow connected to the missing women, thus providing the other members of the cast, from the supporting characters to Mulder and Scully themselves, an occasion to go around blurting out their authoritative opinions on everything from his trustworthiness to the worth of his eternal soul. Given that belief and unbelief make for the meat and potatoes of the X-Files story (and the title of the movie, at that), I am convinced this part of movie could have been handled A LOT better. I mean, if the two top explanations for this guy's knowledge are a) he's psychic and b) he's an insider to the crime, then either way he might be the best clue you have! What are you going to gain by scene after scene of blatant, lock-jaw hostility toward the mere possibility that he's telling the truth (even if he does *deserve* blatant lockjaw hostility)? There was something altogether too performative about the characters trotting out their doubts. All the same, some of the scenes between Mulder and Scully hit a vein of something much deeper and more personal: a really elegant, grown-up, tempered sort of connection, (perhaps - somehow - the moreso because they are both, taken individually, such pig-headed dopes). As when Mulder tells Scully, who can't sleep for thinking about a dying patient, 'You rest, and I'll be angry at God for you, okay?' He may be wrong-headed, but it's still kind of sweet. The fact that the same scene, only moments later, contains the line: 'Ooh! Scratchy beard!' just tips my scales. ;o9
A couple of random things: I had a wild, irresponsible hope for a twist involving Amanda Peet's character, which, had it come to pass, would have been artificial and contrived and awful and I would have loved it anyway. But it didn't. (Incidentally, I have some unsubstantiated belief that Amanda Peet is actually a *very* good actress and just has yet to find a seminal role. I'm not sure why...) Second, there came a point halfway through the movie when I realized there probably wouldn't be any Skinner this time around. No Cigarette Smoking Man and no Skinner. I was surprised at the degree of my disappointment! I didn't even *know* that I loved Skinner until he was taken away from me!!! So imagine the upsurge of my love when Skinner did arrive on the scene at the eleventh hour!!! And I swear, at the moment when Mulder looks up and says, 'Skinner?', it sure sounded to me like he really meant, 'Daddy?' Hee. Mulder missed Skinner, too. ;o9
In sum: while the film was at least as frustrating as it was enjoyable, the best moments were good enough that already they begin to seep outward, blending into the rest - blurring and brightening until, in my memory, the movie more closely resembles the ideal one of my imagination. And that'll do, pig. That'll do.
Savages
Savages is probably worth seeing just for the cast. Whoever it was thought to cast Laura Linney and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as siblings with a fraught relationship is a person who has had at least one very good idea. In fact, were it not for the cast, I'm not sure I would have made a strong effort to see the movie, since, based on its description, it sounds a little like something I have probably seen already, perhaps too many times: a brother and sister must care for the elderly father who abused them as children and who is now suffering from dementia. What sets the film apart is that it doesn't stop at cataloging the symptoms and side-effects of that abuse in the siblings' adult lives. Instead, it depicts a well-worn, layered dynamic between brother and sister - one far too complex for a connect-the-dots story of abuse. As a person with siblings (and a sometimes-troubled family constellation) of my own, I identified strongly with many of the little conflicts between the two, though I wasn't able to say which one was supposed to be *me.* Ultimately - and this may sound strange, especially because I am a sucker for the Redemptive Ending - I respected the movie for resisting the pull to a Big Healing Catharsis. Here are two people in a single slice of time. Their father will not change. Both of them have admirable qualities, deplorable qualities, and reasons for closeness to and distance from one another. Whether they will manage to transcend what has happened to them, the film leaves a mystery, but it seems to do so because it knows them so well. And because it acknowledges that no one aspect of their character or experience will be sufficient to determine What Happens Next.
Eagle versus Shark
Since it was billed as a tale of quirky geek-love, I wasn't sure why there was a 'versus' in the title. Turns out: that 'versus' is all-too-appropriate, for it is the story of one geek's narcissism versus another geek's clingy determination to finally have a boyfriend. I am not sure whether we are supposed to think that if the girl fights for her love long enough, the boy will get over his preoccupation with one-upmanship (letting him one-up her was, in fact, the only way this girl could find to get the boy's attention) and start to be a decent sort, or if we are supposed to think that both characters are so messed-up that they deserve each other. Either way, this is the sort of movie that, when it infuriates me, makes me simultaneously feel that I am taking it too seriously, and, when it amuses me (as in the funniest scene, which involves a face-off between the narcissist and a paraplegic), makes me feel that I am not taking it seriously enough. It was quirky, to be sure, and unexpected, and even winning from time to time, and I wanted to like it very much. (An indie from New Zealand! With Jemaine Clement, for heaven's sake! Isn't that the kind of thing that, I dunno, *smart* people like?!) But at the end of the day, I'm just not sure it conjured up in me any real *affection.*
The Last King of Scotland
You know how history kind of gives away the ending to Apollo 13? (Not that it helped me any. I was still convinced they were *never* going to make it home). Well, history has taught me enough about the beneficiaries of African military coups, that I could not quite come at the events of The Last King of Scotland with the same fresh, susceptible eyes that James McAvoy's character, Nicholas, does. Still, the movie does a frightfully good job of sucking you into its popularity contest - of making you complicit in Nicholas' tragic errors. Because Nicholas is frightfully likeable - he glows with likability and good humor, and it is almost enough to make you forget that he is a Bear of Very Little Brain and probably even less ethical resolve. (Amin, too, while he lacks Nicholas' open-heartedness and innocence, is a bit like some randy old man in your extended family for whom you can't help but have a grudging affection - until he turns into a monster, that is). I think what makes Nicholas' seduction into Amin's inner circle so particularly poignant for me is that Nicholas is not greedy. He does not have a yawning hunger for money or power or fame; in fact he wants to be wherever he can do the most good. But he also wants to like and to be liked, and his mere pleasure at being accepted and valued is enough to blind him to signs of the horrors to which he has become a facilitator. I have a more than sneaking suspicion that I would be highly vulnerable to much the same thing. Though perhaps not from the African military dictator specifically.
(As one peripheral matter of curiosity, James McAvoy spends the early part of the movie hanging around with this *gorgeous* tawny, freckly-skinned woman with flyaway blond hair - a woman who looked vaaaguely familiar to me. Twenty minutes later, like a thunderbolt: Duh! Totally Gillian Anderson. And gorgeous. And one more reason I was hopped up to see X-Files this weekend).
Nancy Drew
My sister sent me Nancy Drew for my birthday! Yay! And no, it's not my birthday yet, and yes I opened it and watched it anyway! Because I had never seen it before. And I wanted to. (See! This is the kind of thinking that lands you yucking it up in the middle of a genocide! Shame on me).
My friends, I will watch this movie again and again just for the clothes. Nancy Drew's clothes and props give me this brief but piercing impulse to be more *prim.* To wear more plaid. (Though I already wear a fair amount of plaid). And especially to carry baked goods around in only the neatest of little round tins! I was slightly bothered by the fact that Nancy Drew herself always sounds like she's reading her lines off of cue cards (though I have no idea whether to lay this at the young actress' doorstep or if it was a mannerism deliberately imposed by the director), but the movie is a fun romp that brings back A LOT of memories. (The classic Nancy Drew books were what made my love of reading really take off; before discovering them, I was regarded as a slow and poor reader). I got very emotionally involved in those books, as in: totally mad when I found out you do not, in fact, look very much like a ghost if you go out in your nightgown with flashlights tied to your wrists. All in all, you gotta love a movie that makes polite and wholesome look like so much dingity-danged fun. (And with respect to actual kid role-modellery or whatever, suggests that it's totally cool to excel when you're good at something, even if the other kids make fun of you). On that note, I leave you with a mystery. Let us call it... The Case of the Inappropriate Song?
There's a song played over the closing credits to the movie. A fun little song: the beat kind of smacks of a Scooby Doo-type sleuthing montage. Fun enough, sez I, that I noticed, got curious, and even bought it off of itunes (you never know when you're going to need a Song of Peppy Vengeance). But given that Nancy Drew ends with mystery solved, Nancy and Ned fuh-ever, everything copacetic (come on, you totally already knew that; I didn't give anything away), what exactly is this song referring to?!!!
I meant every word I said,
I never was lyin' when we talked in bed.
I'm retracin' every step in my head.
What did I miss back then, I was so, so misled!
I'm waitin', waiting for nothing;
You're leavin,' leaving me hanging.
When did your heart go missing?
When did your heart go missing?
I treat you like a princess
But your life is just one big mess.
When did your heart go missing?
(*bmp*) When did your heart go missing? Yeah.
Of course, online lyrics inform me that the guy is saying over the fade-out: 'I'm gonna call the police! Call the heart-missing investigative team!' Or something like that. So maybe that's Nancy Drew's next case: The Case of That Heartless Chick?