Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Come on and join the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!
A new month! And with it, a new theme for Thursday Movie Picks! And this one is quite interesting: A Story Within A Story. I like stories about storytelling, but I feel like they mostly come in novels as opposed to films. Makes sense given their respective mediums, I suppose. Amazingly, only one of my picks this week is based on a novel, and that one (the first) is TERRIBLE.
Nocturnal Animals (Tom Ford, 2016) This piece of utter, complete dreck is one of the worst films I've ever seen in a theater. A Los Angeles art gallery owner (Amy Adams) receives an invitation to dinner along with a manuscript from her ex-husband - his about-to-be-published novel, dedicated to her and named "Nocturnal Animals", his pet name for her. The novel (the content of which we see acted out by Adams look-alike Isla Fisher and Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays the husband in both versions, among others) is sadistically violent and full of raw emotion. As she reads the book, she reminisces about her relationship with her ex. It sure is pretty, but Ford never gets a good handle on what he wants to say about... well, about anything really: Masculinity, violence, femininity, beauty, art, commerce, love, social mores, America. He puts the audience through the ringer and ends up with a one of those films where the plot makes sense, but nothing that happens actually makes any sense - if you know what I mean.
Definitely, Maybe (Adam Brooks, 2008) AKA How I Met Your Mother, The Movie. Abigail Breslin has been sent home from school after her first sex ed class. Naturally, she asks her father Ryan Reynolds the story of how he and her mom (currently getting divorced) met. He decides to tell her, but he changes the names (and some facts) to make a guessing game out of it: Which of the various women he meets is actually the mother? With Elizabeth Banks, Rachel Weisz, and Isla Fisher as the three options, Definitely, Maybe is one of those silly rom-coms that may not be "good", but that I kinda love anyway. It's sweet, and loves its characters, but doesn't let any of them off the hook for their at times pretty terrible behavior. And yes, Breslin is unbelievably mature for her age, and it's nearly impossible to believe Reynolds at this age as a father. But the endings - both when we find out who the mother is, and when we find out who Daddy was "really" "meant to be with" - play like gangbusters.
The Fall (Tarsem, 2006) It is the 1920s. A depressed, injured stuntman meets a young girl in a hospital. In a ploy to get her to get him more drugs, he tells her a story about five mythical heroes, which we watch come to life through her imagination, which naturally merges the story with reality. A passion project for director Tarsem, the amount of detail, care, and love poured into every single frame is evident - this is one GORGEOUS-looking film. And if the narrative story itself ends up being a bit less than the sum of its parts, then so be it; the visual storytelling is a treat.
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join us by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and posting something about them.
Teen angst, this week's topic for Thursday Movie Picks, may look different for everyone, but it pretty much feels the same. Feelings so big that you can barely express them to anyone, let alone yourself. And that's the common thread with my picks - they are all deeply, DEEPLY felt in all aspects of their production.
Rebel Without A Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) Has there been a better-filmed vision of teen angst than this one? James Dean's Jim Stark is what everyone remembers the film for (pretty tough to remember anything else in the movie when it practically opens with him drunkenly blaring "Ride of the Valkyries" and later slaying the line "YOU'RE TEARING ME APART!"), but Sal Mineo's Plato and especially Natalie Wood's Judy are even better visions of what it was like to be a misunderstood teenager in the 1950s, where suburban conformity and outward appearances meant everything. Nicholas Ray's florid direction sets the tone, and the entire cast responds in kind, performing on a near-operatic level that is totally appropriate given the emotions on display. There's a reason this one still resonates with teens now, 60 years(!!) later.
Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994) Based on the true story of two 1950s New Zealand girls who killed one of their mothers, Heavenly Creatures is a knockout of a film, one that came early in the careers of director Jackson and stars Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey, and that is very nearly the best work any of them have ever done. Like Rebel, this one puts its homosexual subtext only just barely beneath the surface, as it explores the close, nearly obsessive bond that forms between Pauline and Juliet, including the fantasy world they create... and what happens when their parents decide they are becoming too close. It's a stunning vision, with a completely unique tone that Jackson, along with his fantastic cast, perfectly balances on a knife's edge.
Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001) Has there ever been a character that looks more like contemporary teen angst than Jake Gyllenhaal's Donnie? Dark hair combed forward, with a haunted, far-away look in his eyes, this is turn-of-the-millennium teen angst incarnate. Kelly's film incorporates aspects of sci-fi and horror to give teen angst a physical presence in the form of Donnie's visions of an apocalyptic event and a man in a bunny suit. Donnie Darko is a weird, strange, unforgettable trip of a film.
