(500) Days of Summer

Oh. My. God. Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

image from http://www.impawards.com/2009/five_hundred_days_of_summer.html

I actually don’t like movies with this kind of plot line, where a guy is worshiping this girl like whoa and she’s just like “Yeah, I mean, no…” Every other movie I see that’s like that just leaves me feeling like the writer is reliving being a nerdy teenager in love with the head cheerleader.

But (500) Days of Summer is not actually that sort of movie.  For one thing, JGL as Tom makes his character really relatable and funny while he goes through his tumultuous relationship with Summer.

They jump around in the timeline of the relationship a lot, but it ends up showing just how roller coaster Tom’s life is when he’s involved with Summer.  On that note, I didn’t like Zooey Deschanel that much, but there’s also my bias of not like female characters who get put on pedestals.  The thing is, since it’s from Tom’s perspective, you can’t really separate that view point of her.  But damn, I keep seeing Zooey Deschanel everywhere, which might be from her indie music cred while I keep thinking about Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s performance and how much better I liked his character.  Maybe if we come up with a cutesy shortening of his name, people will talk about him more? (I am thinking of an RPattz treatment for him).

As far as indie romances go (or non-romances, as an intertitle/voice over is quick to point out), (500) Days of Summer is artfully done.  I would go so far as to say classy, although it does use the stereotypes typical to indie characters, like love of music, weirdly unique apartments, retro-cute costumes, etc.

Kinky Boots

image from http://www.troyangrignon.com/KinkyBoots.jpg

I liked it!

But it had the effect of making me list all of the songs I want to see drag queens sing before I die.

Now that’s a risk worth taking!

Sunshine Cleaning

One of those movies that reminds me how much life can suck while making me laugh at the same time.

…

Albequerque . Current Day.  Amy Adams is a maid with an adorable (if public-school challenged) seven year old son!  A Rebel Rebel younger sister!  A shennanigan-y father!  An affair with her married high school sweet heart!  And it kind of… really… sucks.

So here’s an idea!  New job!  Cleaning up after dead people.  Ick.  Have to afford that private school somehow!

I really liked Sunshine Cleaning, but it was also one of those movies that reminded me how low that life can become.  The film suitably opens up with a suicide and is later marked by two others.

While the cleaning company is the major plot device, the movie is really about the relationships Rose (Adams) and Norah (Blunt) have with other people.  Rose is trying to hold onto the life she had in high school with the affair and her desperation at a baby shower to show that she is a success.  Norah finds herself caught up in a friendship of a daughter of one of their decomp clean up jobs, always getting caught up in who these people they were cleaning up after were as people.

Sometimes the film relied on hijinks to move the plot along, making their sad business seem quite funny, but with the sad effects after death, especially after suicides, the grimness of their jobs and life seep through the celluloid.

Roarin’ Racecars: Easy Virtue

One of those movies where the orchestration between casting, scenery, costuming, and soundtrack was absolutely perfect.

I had some fun at the movies this week.  Easy Virtue is British Wit, but also Brideshead Revisited-lite, for your consideration.

John (Ben Barnes) is bringing home his American wife, Larita (Jessica Biel) for the first time after their affairs and such on the Cote d’Azur.  The Matriarchal area (Kristin Scott Thomas) of his family is greatly displeased with his floozy and spends the rest of the film trying to convince them to get a divorce.  What adds a dramatic layer is the Whittaker father, Jim (Colin Firth) who deftly proclaims himself as part of the Lost Generation from World War I and who never wanted to return to the family estate.  While the rest of the family is putting Larita in the deep freeze, she hits it off with Jim who understands what the outsider position in that family really means.

The whole thing screams “BRITISH!” from the rooftops, from the setting to the British Wit dialogue.  I don’t know why, but the Butler character, who is hilarious in dry humor, also seems very British to me.  Dry humored butler character… anyone see where I’m coming from with this?

The entirety of the film is about stagnation versus change during the tumultous 1920s.  While Larita and Jim represent changing attitudes and moralities, the rest of the Whittaker family represent the old norms, going as far back as using marriage to save the family lands.  This comes to a climax at a New Year’s Ball and a sensual tango between Larita and Jim.

I think my only problem during the film was that I got distracted by myself.  Drinking coffee during a movie is not the best of ideas, the caffeine leaving me scatterbrained.  Whenever another member of the audience did anything, my attention shifted.  So here’s a lesson, ladies and gents: Caffeine and focus during a movie are not mutual acquaintances.

In terms of cast, I really liked everyone.  Except for Ben Barnes as the clueless Whittaker son/recent groom.  I don’t know why, but his performance was kind of take it or leave it, most likely just the fault of his character.  I came for Colin Firth, but was really impressed by Jessica Biel.  She gives a great perfomance throughout the film, funny and tragic in all of the right points.

One Last Note:

Love the motorcycle scene during the Hunt.

Kamikaze Girls

It’s a lot like reading a shojo manga, but live action.  And mildly insane.

 (Yeah I… I really don’t care that I’m using the same image twice in this case).

Kamikaze Girls also known as Shimotsuma monogatari (or Shimostuma Story) is the hyper-tale of Momoko, the antisocial Lolita who is forced to leave her city when her father is exiled by the yakuza.  In the country she meets Ichigo, the tough (but stupid) yanki, and wackiness ensues, etc.

If you have no idea what “Lolita” or “yanki” mean, here’s a brief recap:

Lolita:  Japanese fashion style popular among teenagers to early twenty-somethings, Lolita is typified by lots of lace and frills and usually emmulates a period of history in style, though with shorter skirts and platform shoes.  In the case of Momoko, she is reliving the Rococo period of Europe, which results in a hilarious explanation of what thos 18th century crazy, Mozart-loving Europeans were doing: Embroidery, sex, elegant conversations, more sex, and then a walk through the countryside.

Yanki: The punks of Japan, without a musical affiliation!  They form biker gangs that roam the country and cause fights.  Usually typified by dyed hair (before it became popular, blond hair was a sure sign of being a yanki) and long coats with Chinese calligraphy on them.  In Ichigo’s case, this is a scooter (she couldn’t pass the test for a real motorcycle) and calligraphy spelled wrong in her bike gang, the Ponytails.

Momoko likes being antisocial: According to her, it was always in her nature.  Her father was a low-ranked yakuza (Japanese mafia) member and her mother was a whore, but between them Momoko was born (and her mother had an affair/second marriage with the OB-GYN).  Momoko, in the divorce, decided to stay with her father, because it was more fun and tells her mother to go out, get plastic surgery, and compete in beauty competitions because that’s all she’ll ever have. 

And Momoko grows up, only to fall in love on a class trip with BABY THE STARS SHINE BRIGHT, a frilly Lolita brand.  She spends the next year or two conning her father out of cash to buy these expensive outfits, but once in the countryside, her fuel has dried up.

So she puts an ad out and Ichigo, the yanki rebel idiot, winds up at her door.  And continues to do so, because she… she’s an idiot, let’s just say.  Or likes Momoko’s twisted personality.  Putting that aside, Ichigo tells the reluctant Momoko, who doesn’t want any friends (she finds her ideal death eighty years in the future in a “BABY” dress, found by a robot) her life story and the story of the infamous Yanki leader who wanted to join up all the girl gangs in the province and fight the yakuza.

This could be subtitled as “Modern Japanese Culture in a Box” but there are some subtle plot structures and character development.  Also, more of the Japanese culture could probably be explained better in the book, like how Ichigo wants to live the life of a yanki character in a manga, “Momoko”, which isn’t explained as well in the movie, most likely due to time constraints.

This is my favorite girl-friendship movie because both characters develop according to their reactions to each other.  Ichigo finds acceptance instead of expectations because of Momoko and Momoko learns to trust in other people and do something with her life besides just lazing about and taking strolls.

All of the characters are clowns and over the top, but the hyperactivity of the movie makes it so much fun.  Everything is in day-glow colors and the cinematography is a lot of cuts and short comedic moments to change from scene to scene or to see into the mind of Momoko.  It is a sugary-sweet guilty pleasure at one moment while also managing to convey a deeper meaning just five minutes later.  And it’s endlessly quotable, like “Humans are cowards in the face of happiness.”

There is, of course, the vivid contrast between prim Momoko and vulgar Ichigo, but they each reveal their own faults and gifts, so it comes off as a bit of a cliche, but it works magnificently.

But I’m a Cheerleader

SUCH a 90s Satire, It’s not even Funny

directed by Jamie Babbit (1999)

Starring Natasha Lyonne and Clea Duvalle

But I’m a Cheerleader starts out with cheerleaders being… they’re naturally cheerleader selves.  And our good friend Megan, with her perfect cheerleader big hair and other sterotypical lifestyle of the average teen, not enjoying her make out session with her buff boyfriend (but I can understand this, because from what I could see of the scene, he couldn’t kiss).

This, however, plus other signs, leads her friends and parents to believe that she’s a lesbian and is shipped off to True Directions.  There she meets Graham, who opens her eyes to a new lifestyle.

I like this movie because it parodizes the Anti-Gay movement so well and their favorite war cry “It’s Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve!”  Best seen through the crazy woman running True Directions, with her obviously fabulous  son and her determination to put men and women in their “proper” roles: Such as, women as housewives, men as… lumberjacks (not kidding, it does).

This movie is rated R for the obvious sexual orientation reasons, and I don’t really feel like going into them right now.  Masturbation, sex, kissing, etc etc.

The extremity of the movie is what makes it fun and hilarious.  I equally love when the Gay Troopers come in to take the kids to a field trip to the local gay bar.  It’s this gay couple who went there and then realized that they would rather just be true to themselves afterwards, so now they offer a different option to the new campers.  And that is where Megan and Graham have their first kiss, awww… (well, first kiss outside of Megan’s dreams.  And, let’s assume, Graham’s).

The settings really form part of the hilarity, since it starts in creepy suburbia clearly stolen from Edward Scissorhands and then moves to this pink and blue house with rooms decorate to the proper color of the sex that’s practicing in it.  Except for some green rooms, which represent something.  Something like greed or ignorance.  It’s the color of the boss-lady’s bedroom and the office where the campers meet with their parents.

The relationships developped between characters, or the ones that do, seem realistic enough for me.  If you consider being trapped on a farm with others of your sexual orientation for two months, the logical matching up would occur.  The relationship between Megan and Graham seems very well crafted, since it’s Megan’s first love so she’s all puppy-eyed and Graham is torn between Megan and her parents’ expectations or financial support. 

I do have problems with this movie, which is that half of the evidence presented as to why Megan is gay is rather baseless.  As I mentioned before, her boyfriend just can’t kiss.  Then it was because of a Melissa Etheridge poster in her room.  Things like that, added to staring at the other cheerleaders and not having pictures of boys in her locker at school.

So, to sum up: It’s a satire made in the 1990s.  The opening premise is really weak in order to launch this plot immediately and as expediently as possible.  Very entertaining to watch unless you’re squeamish about the sex stuff, which is understandable because, yeah, that stuff can be rather awkward to watch.