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The Flower of Carnage
Feb. 27th, 2007 07:45 pmLast week I managed to see two movies, one with Nicole and one with my dad. We are so far behind on movies, even just the ones that we want to see, that it's not even funny. But movies are now firmly behind TV on our list of things to watch.
My dad's birthday was on the 12th, but he was in town on the 14th so we had him over for supper then instead. Then we did our Valentine's Day movie date on the holiday Monday, seeing a matinee and going for supper afterwards so that we could still get the boys home and send Simon off to school in the morning.
We went to see "Stranger Than Fiction". Both being writers, the premise sounded interesting, and we were not disappointed. Will Ferrell did the uptight IRS guy meeting the free-spirited Maggie Gyllenhaal excellently, but that was just the plot of the novel he was in. Emma Thompson as the neurotic writer was maybe a bit cliched--I mean, not every single writer in the world is stuck banging out their words on a manual typewriter, nor do we all go through dramatic writers' block. Similarly, the thought that a publisher would actually send someone to her apartment to help her finish her novel struck me as unlikely.
Dustin Hoffman was good as the literary professor that Ferrell turns to when he starts hearing the narration. He takes the bizarre situation more or less in stride, dealing with it as both a serious problem and an intellectual exercise.
The cause of the weird crossover of the fictional world with reality is never really dealt with, but the character wrestling with knowledge of his own impending death, and the author struggling with the reality of the character they're trying to kill, are both well done, and are really the heart of the movie. I wasn't as sure about the professor arguing that the death will make the book a masterpiece. But overall it was a good movie; it reminded me somehow of "Click", and even "Groundhog Day" a little, and I liked both of those. Now maybe we'll have to try some other Will Ferrell movies and see if he's any good, or if he just lucked upon a good script this time.
My dad and I went out last Thursday. That's become our birthday ritual--he takes me out for a movie on my birthday, and I take him out for one on his birthday--one Nicole doesn't want to see, in both cases. We decided to see one of the Oscar nominees, which was fairly safe because Nicole's not really big into "Oscar material", though have started to enjoy watching the ceremony.
We ended up seeing "The Last King of Scotland". I would probably have been just as happy to see "Dreamgirls" or "The Departed", but this one worked out best schedulewise. I thought that Forest Whitaker did a great job as Idi Amin--if it hadn't been for his telltale drooping eyelid, I would never have suspected it was him. (I'm happy that he won the Oscar, though I wasn't impressed by his speech.) A bit of a harrowing story, but I was expecting nothing less. A little bit fictionalized, of course--the young Scottish doctor who was the main character apparently didn't exist--but it resonated nonetheless.
One of these we really have to see "Dead Man's Chest", though. Before it gets totally spoilerized for us.
My dad's birthday was on the 12th, but he was in town on the 14th so we had him over for supper then instead. Then we did our Valentine's Day movie date on the holiday Monday, seeing a matinee and going for supper afterwards so that we could still get the boys home and send Simon off to school in the morning.
We went to see "Stranger Than Fiction". Both being writers, the premise sounded interesting, and we were not disappointed. Will Ferrell did the uptight IRS guy meeting the free-spirited Maggie Gyllenhaal excellently, but that was just the plot of the novel he was in. Emma Thompson as the neurotic writer was maybe a bit cliched--I mean, not every single writer in the world is stuck banging out their words on a manual typewriter, nor do we all go through dramatic writers' block. Similarly, the thought that a publisher would actually send someone to her apartment to help her finish her novel struck me as unlikely.
Dustin Hoffman was good as the literary professor that Ferrell turns to when he starts hearing the narration. He takes the bizarre situation more or less in stride, dealing with it as both a serious problem and an intellectual exercise.
The cause of the weird crossover of the fictional world with reality is never really dealt with, but the character wrestling with knowledge of his own impending death, and the author struggling with the reality of the character they're trying to kill, are both well done, and are really the heart of the movie. I wasn't as sure about the professor arguing that the death will make the book a masterpiece. But overall it was a good movie; it reminded me somehow of "Click", and even "Groundhog Day" a little, and I liked both of those. Now maybe we'll have to try some other Will Ferrell movies and see if he's any good, or if he just lucked upon a good script this time.
My dad and I went out last Thursday. That's become our birthday ritual--he takes me out for a movie on my birthday, and I take him out for one on his birthday--one Nicole doesn't want to see, in both cases. We decided to see one of the Oscar nominees, which was fairly safe because Nicole's not really big into "Oscar material", though have started to enjoy watching the ceremony.
We ended up seeing "The Last King of Scotland". I would probably have been just as happy to see "Dreamgirls" or "The Departed", but this one worked out best schedulewise. I thought that Forest Whitaker did a great job as Idi Amin--if it hadn't been for his telltale drooping eyelid, I would never have suspected it was him. (I'm happy that he won the Oscar, though I wasn't impressed by his speech.) A bit of a harrowing story, but I was expecting nothing less. A little bit fictionalized, of course--the young Scottish doctor who was the main character apparently didn't exist--but it resonated nonetheless.
One of these we really have to see "Dead Man's Chest", though. Before it gets totally spoilerized for us.
