• it’s been a long long time since I wrote anything for this blog
• no one reads this blog
• I don’t have a job
• I’ve never owned a pair of cowboy boots

But today of all days (Rex Manning Day? I don’t know) none of that matters.  Especially because of the epic review I’m about to write of the last two movies that I saw in theatres, both of which starred Ryan Gosling and neither of which I’ve had time to fantasize about whilst masturbating.  But I digress.

When I first saw the poster for Drive, it was in Manhattan and it was one of the posters with Carey Mulligan in it alone.  It caught my attention with it’s pink script and extreme closeup and I remarked that it looked like a poster for a Lifetime movie.  Of course, when I found out that Ryan Gosling was in it and it was, in fact, an actual movie I wanted to see it.  I didn’t really know anything about it except the stars and that “There’s no such thing as a clean get away.”  Okay.

Turns out Gosling is a mechanic and stunt driver who has these really cool driving gloves with holes over the knuckles and lives alone.  For extra cash and most likely for the thrill of it, he acts as a getaway driver for criminals.  One day he meets his neighbor, Carey Mulligan when she’s having car trouble and gives her a ride home and then, OMG, they’re in love.  Then, before they ever fuck, her husband (oops) gets out of jail and naturally all hell breaks loose, as it were and the whole thing moves from a kind of angsty movie about driving cars fast to a sticky, graphic, stylized bloodbath (but nary a nipple in sight, sigh).

Like, I know that it’s a cliché in movies, love at first sight, jumping, rushing in to an unexplained spiritual connection that transcends ‘dating’ and goes deeper than ‘sex.’  I get that that’s a thing.  BUT.  When you’ve got a character who time and again displays his lack of sympathy for fellow human beings, who revels in his solitary life and you’re going to give him a love interest (a mother, no less, as if) that he not only gives up all those things for, risks his life for, well you MIGHT want to give us a MOMENT where you explain what is so GODDAMN SPECIAL about this lady!  But no, she’s just pretty.  I mean, she’s definitely pretty.  But she works at Denny’s and just thinking about her makes me want to yawn.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Ryan Gosling as much as the next girl.  But I can’t help but feel that a lot of his acting talent is derived from his ability to widen and narrow his eyes.  That is, a lot this film consisted of him and Carey Mulligan staring at each other.   I don’t even really mind watching Ryan Gosling staring at things (ryangoslingstaringatthings.tumblr.com don’t take it my idea!) and the truth is that I enjoyed watching this movie, even the parts where people were having their brains splattered all over the inside of motel bathrooms.  But there really wasn’t much to it.

Still,

The Ides of March, on the other hand, has a political-thriller plot that certainly bills itself as “substance” and a dreary Cincinnati backdrop that wouldn’t be considered “style” and yet, it makes me angry just thinking about how bad this movie was/is/continues to be/will always be.  With a cast brimming with at least what Hollywood tells me is talent (Gosling, Clooney, PSH, Giamatti, Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood, the guy from Social Network with the eyebrows) you’d think that it would be difficult to fail!  And yet!  Every scene was hackneyed, boring, predictable, stupid.  Lacking any charm, humor, suspense, realism, meaningful characterizations, believable dialogue.  ALL OF THOSE THINGS WERE MISSING.

Here, let me recount to you my favorite scene.  It’s before Evan Rachel Wood and Ryan Gosling have sex.  They are having drinks at a bar, sitting across from each other with their faces very close to one another.  This is the dialogue (I’m only barely paraphrasing):

 

ERW: How old are you?

Ry: How old do you think I am?

ERW: Ummm [bites lip] 30?

Ry: You think I’m 30?!

ERW: Ooh, sorry.  How old are you?

Ry: I’m 30.  [pause] How old are you?

ERW: How old do you think I am?

Ry: 21.

ERW: I’m 20.

Ry: That’s young.

ERW: Too young to fuck a 30 year old?

 

Oh hey, that was PAINFUL.  Evan Rachel Wood wants to FUCK Ryan Gosling (I approve) and it’s not sexy in the least!  It’s retarded!  (also, get some bronzer, girl – I know you rock that peaches & cream look but shit you’re so pale!)

The ‘love’ stories in these two movies could be held up in some kind of film or directing or casting class as an example of chemistry (Ryan Gosling & Carey Mulligan stare at each other and it’s like, ooooh yeah) vs no chemistry (Ryan Gosling & Evan Rachel Wood fuck and it’s like, ho hum, yawn, is this movie over).

It was terrible.  So terrible.  Still,

But last night’s double feature, followed by a Q&A with Tarantino himself, was by far the most anticipated.  Not to sound completely lame and sooo cliche (I am completely lame and sooo cliche but shh) but Pulp Fiction is the reason I went to film school.  I don’t like writing it down or sharing it.  I feel pretty fucking lame about it, but that shit blew my mind when I was finally allowed to see it — I must have been, I dunno, 13 or 14? To this day (that is, to yesterday), despite all my viewings of it on DVD in various stages of stupor, I had never seen it on film, in a theatre full of people.  So the prospect of that was very exciting.

I’m not going to review Pulp Fiction.  I have no desire to and I never have.  I’m sure it has flaws but I don’t see them.  I just like it.

Inglourious Basterds was easily one of the best — if not the best — movies that I saw last year.  It’s epic and funny and creative and beautiful.  I don’t just mean, technically beautiful (which it is) but Diane Kruger and Melanie Laurent are possibly two of the most classically, not quirkily gorgeous women, like, ever.  Maybe that’s not true, but both of them are captivating.

So, between the two screenings (well, actually right after Inglourious Basterds started — I don’t understand how so many people showed up at 6PM and stayed straight through until it ended after 1AM — don’t they have jobs?), a friend and I snuck out to grab a bite at the Pig & Whistle next door to the Egyptian.  No sooner had we ordered a drink from the bitchiest of waitresses (seriously, everyone that works at that place is a cunt, sorry, but it’s true) than Quentin himself walked in, looking lost.  He doesn’t wander though, he walks with purpose.  He was wearing weird dark blue pants, a hoodie with a bright green hood and greed Adidas with no socks.  Basically he looked like a homeless person.  He found the woman he was meeting, a thin blonde with wavy hair and proceeded to drink what looked like a Greyhound (good choice) while she interviewed him.  Maybe 10 minutes later, in walked another familiar looking face who walked over and shook his hand.  It was none other than Max Cherry himself.  It was a surreal Hollywood moment.  Then Max and his wife(?) sat down across from us, my friend grabbed a couple of snapshots and we left to watch the end of the movie.

Max Cherry Decides What To Eat

A Q&A followed at which I think Tarantino was kind of drunk.  I don’t know, it was interesting hearing him talk but I was so fucking exhausted by that point it was kind of like “ummm…ok, I need to go to bed.”  Still, it was slightly more interesting than the other time I had seen him when I just stared at him from across the room at Good Luck Bar.

God, the wheels really fell off of this post at some point didn’t they?  Oh well, at least I wrote.

Some day I will stop getting excited about movies.  I will learn my lesson and go into even the most highly touted and slickly marketed film skeptical and broken.  Unfortunately this has not happened yet and in I went to see A Single Man expecting Tom Ford to translate his piercing stare and effortless style into something not just pretty but moving.

But of course.

He didn’t.

Yes, this story (based on a presumably monstrously depressing novel of the same name by Christopher Isherwood) of a gay man in 1960s Los Angeles mourning his dead lover is — dramatic.  The idea of being forced to suffer in silence and secret because of prejudice is a depressing one.  But the subtlety of the subject matter — what is more subtle than the day to day process of grieving — is overwhelmed by droll, condescending voiceover, pointless quirks and dialogue and situations that are anything but subtle.

As the eponymous man, George, Colin Firth is sad eyed and straight faced.  More slender than normal he fills out his suits very nicely.  Julianne Moore, as his (pardon the expression) fag hag Charley is glamorously over the top with piled high hair and caked on mascara, but her truly dreadful British accent is too much to bear.  And the gorgeous gay men that not only fall all over themselves to get to George (yes, how depressing that must be for him) have not only the perfectly sculpted forms of actors, but the offputting feminine faces of model.

Finally, A Single Man falls into the trap that far too many modern period films and television shows (I’m looking at you, Mad Men) of giving  not just a nod to their contemporary era.  An oversized movie poster advertise, not something obscure or artsy but Psycho.  A newscast on the radio isn’t talking about the local school board or traffic conditions, it’s talking about the Cuban Missle Crisis.  Particularly in this film, the style is of the decade is so pervasive and well-done that there is no reason for these insulting shout-outs.

I didn’t enjoy this movie.  It is nice to look out, well-framed and just attractive.  I wouldn’t mind having it play on mute while I sipped Pinot Grigio on a third date.  But it’s not moving.  It’s not a good story.  It’s not even satisfyingly depressing.  It’s just kind of…suck.

The movie opens with a series of quick cut close ups of Ryan preparing to go on the road.  His clothes are folded neatly and fit perfectly in his carryon, then he whisks his way through check in and security.  Get it?  He travels a lot so he’s good at it.  The problem is, the contents of the sequence betray Ryan’s precision and his antiseptic life, free from messy connections.  But the style does not.  The shots are oddly framed and sloppily edited.  Far from precise and clean, they are confusingly messy verging on amateurish.  Unfortunately, this is just the beginning of the problems with Up in the Air.

The film continues to follow Ryan on the road, through his encounters with Alex (Vera Farmiga), a lovely female road warrior with whom he begins a torrid romance, his training of Natalie (Anna Kendrick, who went from high school senior in New Moon to college graduate in a matter of a month), the seemingly heartless ingénue whose idea of romance involves finding someone that fits all the boxes on her checklist and his trip to his sister’s wedding where he is forced to reexamine his life philosophy: make no connections and you can achieve your goals free of baggage.  Except for maybe a carry-on.

No, the story certainly doesn’t break any new ground, but the way in which it doesn’t is so completely disappointing and frustrating.  There are elements of the story that, while not brilliant, are easy setups.  Easy like kicking over bowling pins.  But then, a few scenes later, when you’re looking for the payoff, it isn’t where you thought it would be, or worse yet, it isn’t there at all.  Why waste time and energy making a scenario that begs for resolution and then leave that part out?

Worse yet is the “twist” in Ryan and Alex’s relationship.  It’s surprising, but not in a way that you can go back and rewatch it into making sense.  No, it just makes no sense at all.  It serves the purpose of making Ryan sad, but it does not at all jive with the rest of the story.  It was so bad it made me use the word “jive”.

I wish I could say that I knew what Jason Reitman was going for in making this movie.  The undercurrent of Ryan’s job – the message that even if you lose your job, you’re going to be ok – is one that sort of makes sense.  It’s a nice uplifting message, I guess.  But I can think of about a billion ways that such a message could have been conveyed in a more coherent and dare I say entertaining way.  I could even see Ryan Bingham as a character as being quite compelling.  But I wasn’t convinced the two stories fit together.  At all.

So, big deal, a movie was disappointing and shitty.  Oh well, happens all the time.  But what doesn’t always happen is all the attention that has been heaped on it.  Even though it’s not in wide release until Christmas, it has already won awards from the National Board of Review for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film.  WHAT.  WHAT.  BEST FILM?!  They know that Inglourious Basterds came out this year, right?  And Adventureland?  And  at least 5 other movies that don’t completely suck though I can’t think of them right now??

So, big deal, who cares about awards and Oscar buzz.  It’s just a popularity contest with no real relation to what’s good or not.  But the critics, they surely won’t stand for this kind of suckage.  Right, Rotten Tomatoes?  Wait.  89%?? ARE YOU SERIOUS?!  A.O. Scott of the New York Times?  You think what?  That  “this is a classic in the making”?  Could I really be so far off base?  I don’t understand.  I don’t understand.  This movie was so so bad.  With characters who weren’t whole, cinematography that was not good, a story that wasn’t interesting or important.  Did I see the same movie?  Did I accidentally go see New Moon again?

I hate you and everything you stand for, Up in the Air.
On a less infuriated note, here are some things I found acceptable:
The Sam Elliott cameo towards the end.  That guy and his mustache can do no wrong.

Vera Farmiga’s haircut.

Creating a new category for my blog called “suck”

This poster that I found online:

The opening of The Burning Plain is similarly uncomfortable with a haggard and naked Sylvia (Charlize Theron) sucking deeply on a cigarette and kicking John (John Corbett) out of her room in the small hours of the morning.  Frigid and blank, Sylvia’s character is no mystery and when we shortly find out that her lover is also her employee at an upscale restaurant in addition to being married to another woman, Sylvia’s unfeeling attitude towards him is not a surprise.  But just as the drama is ramping up in this dreary Portland debauchery, we’re transported to New Mexico where an adulterous couple has been burned alive in a mobile home, leaving their children to pick up the pieces.  Without giving anything away, these two stories eventually catch up to each other and weave together.  

Actually, the way in which they weave together, and the way in which I feel compelled to not give anything away, is one of the most irritating things about the film.  It seems to set itself up to be some sort of mystery, when to me the atmosphere, characters and storyline were much more those of a penetrating drama.  In this instance, the details being unnecessarily confusing becomes frustrating rather than rewarding.  When things are finally revealed and connections made, it feels like the filmmaker is looking directly at you and asking “Bet you didn’t see THAT ONE coming!” when, if you’ve ever, you know, seen a movie before, you most definitely DID see it coming. 

As a for instance, oh that’s so weird that she doesn’t want him to touch her boob I bet she had cancer and then 30 minutes later “I had cancer” comes out or her mouth and you wish you were the one who had cancer because if you were in the hospital at least you probably wouldn’t have to watch this movie because it isn’t even out yet and I assume in the hospital you have to settle for DVDs.* Arriaga is preoccupied with the complications of his characters, but rather than explore them, he seeks to disguise them in the complications of the story lines that don’t even end up being all that complicated,  just annoying.

The specifics of his characters’ problems could also be revealed in more subtle and organic ways.  When Sylvia (do you ever hear this name and not think of Sylvia Plath?  I personally don’t, and I think this is what Arriaga is banking on) walks up to the edge of a cliff, looking depressed and contemplates jumping over (we have to assume) it seems heavy handed and forced.  When the young girl, Mariana (Jennifer Lawrence), who has watched her mother burn to death, burns herself without pain in that way that freaky chicks do,  it is much too neat and matter of fact and parallel.  It doesn’t seems real and therefore isn’t compelling.

What I really want to latch onto in The Burning Plain is the complicated mother/daughter dynamic, particularly the climax that this conflict often reaches when the daughter is an adolescent.  This is a universal struggle and I love the idea of it being explored.  I could embrace this theme if only there weren’t so much filler packed in around it and a general feeling of hostility and disappointment towards all the female characters.  Sylvia has numbed herself to pain and pleasure and has sex simply to feel anything.  She never seems sympathetic in her neutral colored J. .Crew outfits with her unemotional sexuality.  Even as her secrets are revealed, her redemption is too tentative to truly bring relief.  Mariana, the teenager, is similarly cold and unforgiving while her mother, Gina (Kim Basinger) is an adulteress, abandoning her children to meet her Latin lover in a trailer.  She dies without any redemption.  Even the wife of her lover, Nick (Joaquim de Almeida), is portrayed as somewhat heartless and not present for her children when their father dies.  For a story that tries to explore the complexities of women, it uncovers nothing but their faults and even goes so far as to exalt the father characters as affectionate protectors and providers while their female counterparts are only philandering and selfish.  It’s difficult to appreciate characters when it seems that the filmmaker himself has such contempt for them.  

There were some standout performances in the movie that served as pleasant distractions.  Joaquim de Almeida as Kim Basinger’s lover is penetrating and passionate, even pit against Basinger’s all too familiar meek and unhappy mother character.  The young actors were also breaths of fresh air, particularly Jennifer Lawrence as Mariana.  Though saddled with obnoxiously corny dialogue at times, she is bright eyed and sad.  

It wasn’t surprising to me to hear that Arriaga had spent over a decade working on the script for The Burning Plain.  It felt like it had been steeped in that kind of self-indulgence and that makes for an uncomfortable and unsatisfying viewing experience.  A film like this doesn’t have to redeem the human race, or even all of its characters, but when we’re forced to swallow a happy ending (ew) with no cogent explanation, what’s the point?

*can you get Netflix delievered to a hospital?

Less Than Zero and Rules of Attraction

I’ m going to do my very best to keep these two movies from running together in my head because despite their differences they are both about (1)Rich attractive kids (2) who like sex (3) and drugs (4) and do both a lot.

In Less Than Zero, a young and pouty Robert Downey, Jr. plays Julian, a recent high school graduate and drug addict with a rich father.  His two best friends are Clay, an adorable Andrew McCarthy in pushed up sleeves and Blair (of course her name is Blair), a perpetually astonished Jami “can’t spare a square” Gertz.  Clay and Blair are dating right up until they graduate from their posh Los Angeles high school when Clay goes off to college and Blair stays behind to pursue her modeling career.  Of course, as soon as Clay crosses the city limits, Julian and Blair fall into bed together and it’s all fucked.

In Rules of Attraction, Jami Gertz’ wide-eyed insecurities are replaced with the slouching bohemian elegance of a pixie/punk Shannyn Sossamon who plays Lauren.  Lauren is student at Camden College, of many deciduous trees and picturesque snowfall — not to mention all the glory of liberal arts decadence and indulgence.  However, she is determined to stay pure, despite the urgings of her loose roommate Lara (Jessica Biel).  That is, until a fateful encounter in a hallway with Sean Bateman, a brooding and sinister looking James Van Der Beek.  Sean likes Lauren, too, but with one manipulative and untruthful word, Sean and Lara fall into bed together and it’s all fucked.

Do you see how I might get these two a little bit confused?

In Less Than Zero, director Marek Kanievska (you wouldn’t  recognize any of his other work if I put it in these parentheses) goes out of his way to indulge in the decadence  and pace of the 80s with over the top theme parties, towering hairsprayed bangs, and frenetic, amoral sexual encounters.  Though Roger Avary certainly appreciates the excess of Ellis’ novel in Rules of Attraction, he goes much further in creating an atmosphere and pace of tragic self-indulgence.  Though this works in some key scenes, I got particularly annoyed by the gimmick where the film ran backwards and then forwards again in order to make way for the multiple narrative lines.  It was interesting one, maybe two times, then I desperately just wanted the movie to move forward.  I felt the same way about the fact that the narrative was framed with the end at the beginning and then back to the beginning and then all the way through forward.  I will give credit that I was never confused by the jumping around, but that’s hardly an endorsement of the choice.  I also very much disliked the 5 minute interlude of a peripheral character’s trip to Europe in which he narrated quickly while we see him meet and hook up with many beautiful European women.  It comes back to be a little meaningful to the central story, but I didn’t like it.  It was weird.

Thematically, I struggle to grasp the same key point in both movies, which is: Um, why?  Namely, why is this person soooo into that other person?  In the case of Clay and Blair — Andrew McCarthy is at the peak of his charms.  This isn’t to say that he could do better than Jami Gertz…but maybe he could do better than Jami Gertz who fucked his drug addict best friend.  We’re never allowed any glimpses into why the relationship even existed.  Instead, Blair just kind of blinks at everything and speaks gently and then does another line of blow.

Similarly, we get to know why Lauren likes Sean (it’s because he made her “zhing” — an inexplicable chemistry that, I don’t know, it made sense to me) but never why Sean likes Lauren.  They barely speak and suddenly he is desperate to be with her.  Again, she is beautiful and she smiles at him and maybe we are meant to see this as an insight into his character (read: KIND OF CRAZY)  but it always bugs me, this love at first sight stuff.    Especially since the rest of his character is made out to not give a fuck about anyone else or anything for the rest of the movie.

Watching both of these films in a short time span was really interesting since their themes are so similar but they are from different eras and subject to different interpretations.  I wasn’t particularly taken with either one but neither were they wholly disappointing.  Both had their aesthetic charms and interesting if not Oscar-worthy performances.  It’s not shocking to see Robert Downey, Jr. give a good performance as a tortured drug addict…it’s slightly more compelling to watch Dawson as a sociopathic, suicidal drug dealer.  James Spader as a menacing kingpin trying to collect his money in Less Than Zero is again not surprising, but Jessica Biel as a coke whore is nothing if not interesting.

Where Less Than Zero exists firmly in this 1980s era, both in the world of the film and with casting choices, Rules of Attraction is much more open to interpretation.  Surely fashion seems to imply a place in the 90s but the characters and their portrayals are more timeless.  This is due in part to the fact that none of them have gone on to continued success like Downey and Spader have for the last 2 decades.  Therefore, watching the performances in Rules of Attraction is untainted by other roles and sustained fame.  Unfortunately, this doesn’t help the fact that some of the performances (ahem – Ms. Biel) are a little bit weak and distracting.  So we’re left to wonder – did they just do decadence better in the 80s, before grunge and disaffected teenagers were the norm?  When the kids in Rules of Attraction are doing blow and fucking, I kind of wonder why they weren’t just smoking pot and falling asleep.

The 2008 awards season is now in its death throes, being as it’s 2009, but it still seems prudent to make some generalizations about what seems to be the most compelling fodder for “good” films last year.  One central theme that doesn’t seem to be getting old is the single, aging man, searching for something to bring meaning to his life as he starts to see his own mortality on the horizon.  The most obvious instance this year, of course, is Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, but the same elements weave themselves through Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and even arguably both of Kate Winslet’sshowcase pieces The Reader and Revolutionary Road.  Though it has garnered fewer accolades than most of these films, Joel Hopkins’ Last Chance Harvey, which went into wide release January 16th, is deserving of a spot on this landscape.

Dustin Hoffman, an actor that is probably no longer concerned about his own legacy (though  he may cringe a little at Mr. Magorium’sWonder Emporium), plays Harvey Shine, a failed jazz pianist and commercial jingle writer who travels to London for his daughter’s wedding.  Struggling to find meaning in his work and out of place in the wedding party, things are bad enough when his daughter, Suzy (Liane Balaban), tells him that she wants her stepfather, the improbably tan and impossibly charming Brian (an improbably tan and perfectly charming James Brolin) to give her away.  Harvey attends the wedding, smile pasted on, then dashes off to Heathrow to get back to New York in time for a meeting.  Meanwhile, Emma Thompson as single and cynical but charming Kate Walker is caring for her neurotic mother, being set up on blind dates by her co-workers and dreaming of a career as a novelist.  Naturally, they meet at the airport and despite Kate’s reluctance, the pair strike up the only kind of friendship that movies need: unlikely.  Immediately, there is a palpable realism about their interactions.  It isn’t the electric but ultimately fleeting sparks of a storybook romance.  Instead it is an understanding, laced with skepticism.  An instant trust underlined with pragmatism.  In short, something akin to real life.

Hopkins, whose only credits are a short entitled Jorge and a lauded but little seen feature called Jump Tomorrow (which appears to be based on Jorge), ambitiously wrote Last Chance Harvey with Hoffman and Thompson in mind.  The fact that they both agreed to be a part of the project speaks volumes about the strength of the script.  Both Harvey and Kate are the kind of sympathetic and well-developed characters that any actor surely longs to play.  Hopkins’ choices as a director are simple and effective.  As the pair stroll the streets of London, he lets the scenery and his impeccable actors tell his poignant story without interference. Hoffman especially makes easy work of defining himself as Harvey.  It takes only a few words and movements to establish the complex relationships that exist between himself and his daughter and his ex-wife (Kathy Baker).  As much as any of this year’s awards fodder, Last Chance Harvey is a simple story of redemption.  Admittedly, significant portions of the film are not comfortable to watch because Harvey is enduring an awkward struggle, but like his character, the film redeems itself with the one thing that no one seems to be able to resist right now: hope.

All of this is to say that if you swoon at the sight of quirky indie bad boy Sam Rockwell like I do, you will probably find Moon to be wholly watchable.  If you are ambivalent or hold any negative feelings towards him, well, you might not.

The year is…sometime in the not so distant future.  Sam Bell (Rockwell) is working alone on the Moon, seemingly mining resources for use as energy back on earth.  He spends his days in the station with no companionship besides intermittent video messages from the company for whom he works and his wife and daughter and a space computer voiced by Kevin Spacey.  As the film begins he is nearing the end of his 3 year contract and preparing to return home to earth.  Unfortunately, something goes awry and when he returns to the ship after crashing his moon-mobile (I’m certain there is a more technical term for this) he finds himself face to face with a hotter, meaner, better groomed version of himself.  At first it’s impossible to tell if this is real or if so much time alone in space with KevinSpaceyComputer has caused him to go insane.  We quickly realize that the former is true and the two Sam Bell’s have to both figure out why there are two of them and how they will get back to earth unharmed.

The premise of Moon treads familiar science fiction ground and while it is an intrinsically interesting idea, something is missing in its execution.  The pacing of the film is uneven: it’s slow to get started then throws a lot of information at you, rapid fire.  Combined with direction that is passable at best and characterization that never goes quite as deep as I wanted it to left Moon without the stakes that it needed to be a really good movie.  By the end, I was still interested but the amount that I actually cared about the outcome was slim to none.  It also suffered from overscoring which is admittedly a pet peeve of mine but makes it that much easier to dismiss dramatic events with a frustrated eye-roll. 

I enjoyed watching Moon, but it’s the kind of movie that you’re not going to keep thinking about when it’s over…unless you see it on Netflix and wonder “why wasn’t that movie better”*

*or, “Sam Rockwell has a hot ass”

If you’ve been to the movies in the past year, I can almost guarantee that you saw this trailer at least once. I happened to see it about 12 times (I wish I were exaggerating) and it got to the point where if I heard Jamie Foxx say “I’ve had a few setbacks” and cue the sad cello chord one more time I was seriously going to flip.  But, The Soloist was finally released and after indulging in The Informers (RIP Brad Renfro) and Earth (RIP Elephant) I went to see it.  And it sucked.  I’m going to go out on a limb and guess this is why the release date was pushed back a thousand times and the studio decided not to use it as the Oscar bait that it was so clearly intended to be.

Robert Downey, Jr. plays LATimes columnist Steve Lopez (Lopez? really?), an immature and self-involved guy who is divorced from his editor wife (Catherine Keener) and was recently in a sort of heinous bike crash.  Still scraped and bruised, he meets Nathanial Ayers (Jamie Foxx) in downtown LA, playing the violin.  He finds out that Nathanial studied at Julliard and makes it his mission to help him through a series of front page columns and, you know, hanging out.  Some heavy handed flashbacks provide us with Nathanial’s backstory — turns out the talented musician is schizophrenic and had a mental break down at Julliard, then ran away from home many years before due to his persecutory delusions. 

On the surface, this movie has all the elements of a tear/Academy-jerking drama: two powerhouse stars (who already have Oscars), based on a true story, deals with mental illness and the triumph of the fucking human spirit.  The problem is that it is all on the surface.  Sure, Foxx and Downey give strong performances, they’re good actors.  Robert Downey, Jr. could give a good performance as a bowl of shredded wheat (don’t steal that idea, I’m going to pitch it to Disney/Pixar).  But the whole story is so superficial.  The flashbacks are boring and obvious.  The snippets of Lopez’s failed relationship, including 2 or 3 instances where his ex begs him to call their son with no payoff, are flat and not compelling.  The scene where the unlikely friends go to see the LA Philharmonic at Disney Hall and Nathanial is so swept away by the music that the screen goes black and starts display flashes of color that seriously, literally, look exacty like my MacBook’s default screensaver is just…lame.  I never felt compelled to care about what happens to Nathanial or Steve.  Oh, are they going to learn lessons from each other?  Oh, weird.  Are they both going to be better people for having met?  Oh, wow, that’s great.  Is anything going to explode?  Am I going to care at all?  Oh, yeah, no.  The Soloist is the definition of formulaic and boring.  I will say with enthusiasm that your time is better spent listening to Jamie Foxx’s album.  Have you heard that song “Blame it on the A A A A A Alcohol”?  It’s way more compelling than this movie!

Eisenberg plays James Brennan who comes home to live with his parents after he graduates from Oberlin.  With a liberal arts degree (hey, I’ve got one of those!) he find himself either under or overqualified for anything that might resemble gainful employment and ends up getting a job at the local eponymous carnival.  Rather than zany, the cast of characters James encounters at Adventureland are for the most part morose and malcontent.  He quickly befriends his coworker, Joel (Martin Starr) who has a degree in Russian literature and develops an immediate crush on Em (Kristin Stewart), a beautiful, sharp and troubled NYU student who took a job at the carnival to escape a tumultuous home life. 

Upon reflection, these characters are easy to peg, but the way the story develops wasn’t what I expected and I found it moving in a way that the vast majority of movies, whether they are meant to target me as a demographic, are not.  The summer progresses typically, the carnys (sp?) falling in and out of love, drinking excessively, smoking a lot of marijuana and generally just trying to figure out life.  Oh god, I think I have been pandered to.

SNL’s Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig are hilarious as the couple that runs the carnival.  Their straightfaced enthusiasm and confusion is priceless.  Martin Starr, who was unknown to me before, was also notable in his performance as the geeky but sweet friend and Matt Bush as the asshole friend leftover from grade school was iconically funny.  If this movie were to see the same kind of success as something like Napoleon Dynamite (I’m sure it won’t, though I would be shocked to learn the comparison wasn’t tossed around at any point) then it would be Bush’s ball punching, sweatband wearing Tommy Frigo that people would undoubtedly latch on to.

I was planning on including a paragraph here about how the female characters were all somewhat detestable, but that really wasn’t the case, I think I just want it to be.  Actually, Em is probably the most complex character in the film and even though she does make poor choices and behave irrationally at moments, that is easily attributable to the fact that she is human, not that she is a woman.  This can often be a problem with feminist theorizing: it can backfire and have you (me) end up demonizing women instead of…you know, not doing that which is the whole point.

There were points where I felt like Adventureland was trying a little too hard and the peripheral characters were a little cliche, from Ryan Reynolds’ philandering maintenance man to Lisa P, the super-hot chick who is also super-Christian but there was something truthful and flawed about the way that James and Em negotiate their summer and each other that is touching and sweet.   The poster and the trailer are very misleading — this isn’t a zany summer stoner comedy, though there are moments of that.  It’s much more angsty and dark than that, but that’s a good thing.