Month: February 2014

The World’s End (2013)

8/10

Let’s just get it out of the way and say it; Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz were both better. Alright, alright, but The World’s End is still pretty funny and more than worth the time spent sitting in front of a computer, television, or movie screen to watch it.

The film did cause me to start skipping down one of my mind’s back corridors in search of an imagined future where I will reunite with my friends for an End All Drinking Expedition similar to the one undertaken by the group pictured on the poster above. We’re going to have to go with my college group of friends here, because, (and you would know if you’ve been following my writing) I didn’t have many friends in high school, and those friends and I certainly never had any drinking experiences. I didn’t have any drinking experiences until I got to college (with the exception of a few beers pilfered from my father and drank in our basement bathroom in the middle of the night; a shining moment in the history of my young life right there…).

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Best Unintended Uses of OkCupid

I added some new edits to my OkCupid profile yesterday. There’s a constant ebb and flow between presenting myself in a manner that would be appealing for “normal” people and diving headfirst into some of my more unusual characteristics and mannerisms that signify I am unsuitable relationship material for most of the globe. And therein lies the rub: Do you display your freak flag proudly? Do you string it up the flagpole, pour gasoline throughout the fairgrounds, and then immolate the land as a beacon to individuality? Freaks attract freaks and weird follows weird and if I am looking for a relationship, shouldn’t I be wearing my honesty like I do my favorite pants – daily, through every holiday and every season, and regardless of stains or clumps of dirt or affinity to attract the snaring hook of a drawer or a corner of a desk?

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Certified Copy (2010)

8.5/10 – Grilled Seal of Approval

Turkish auteur Abbas Kiarostami’s first film outside of Turkey is a pleasant commentary on the changing state of relationships over time. When I watch one of these films (and by “these” I mean films with middle aged actors trying to figure out why their relationships went wrong or how to spend the rest of their lives or any number of other midlife crisis problems) I can’t help but wondering how my reaction to them will change over time.

I am currently young and able and as experienced in love and sex and relationships as one normally is at 25, so I look at these “midlife crisis” films from the far off perspective of an outsider. I can identify with the feelings and the situations, sure, but I will never truly understand the content until I have lived through it and have made similar mistakes and have had similar successes and conquests.

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Animal Kingdom (2010)

9.5/10 – Grilled Seal of Approval

Oh yes. Oh Hell Yes.

David Michod is a director on the rise and this is a very, very good film.

Hey, you know me by now, right? I make some jokes, I talk a lot of bullshit, I generally speak in terribly grammatically incorrect circles and tangents, but I’m not going to do that for Animal Kingdom. I’m not going to do it. I want to do it, but I can’t and I won’t. The movie is just too good to do anything except give it a proper standing ovation. The film is sort of like going to a monster truck rally when you are eight and being all excited to both see giant machines crushing and crashing into each other and waves upon waves of mullets and then, to top it all off, the lights drop off the earth, the engines become machine guns of explosion, and the trucks fly off their jumps and into the stratosphere,

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The Descendants (2012)

9/10 – Grilled Seal of Approval

I’m going to paraphrase something George Clooney says in The Descendants. He’s talking about the perception of life in Hawaii from the perspective of those on the mainland. Life in Hawaii is a never ending beach vacation filled with Mai Tais, jet skis, and blissfully warm weather year round. Or so the mainlanders imagine. It’s a fantasy, and the reality is that Hawaiians have all of the normal problems in their lives, and the additional grip of living in the most expensive state in America. Though, of course, to that the mainlanders just shrug and say it’s the price of doing business in such a beautiful place. Everything always looks greener on the other side, right?

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